Their Daughter's First Day & A Long Farewell In Perry Barr

 When We Say "Farewell" But In Our Heart, We Know It's "Goodbye"

Here's part of what once was Birmingham City University's "City North" campus in Perry Barr. As I write, it has been leveled and a new housing scheme is part of the developments that are in progress right now. The original intention was for an "Athlete's Village" for the 2022 Commonwealth Games. Spiraling costs and other challenges meant that Athlete's Village proposal was abandoned and that the area will be part of the Perry Barr Regeneration Scheme. 

Places hold memories  

This is Perry Barr from the 1930's and I lived there in the late 50's early 60's. We lived in the house in the right foreground. It was the Caretaker's House for a Primary and Secondary Modern schools campus. They, together with everything else in view, have gone

So let's fast forward-it's September 2016 and I'm working at the BCU City North site. It's Welcome Week at the University for first year students. At the bottom of this building there was a cafe with some outdoor seating and I am watching the parents of student hang on to every minute they could before saying goodbye to their daughter. It is a hard watch: they are in deep pain.

Perhaps having lived there and my first school was on the same site (Birchfield Road Primary School), I felt keenly the longing for being in a place where change didn't have to happen and all the good things stayed visible, reachable and could be savoured in a second.

Would my dad come around the corner and catch me playing on the flat-roof of a building adjacent to the science block on the old secondary school site? Could I climb down the drainpipe that was hidden from view, would someone tell him that they'd seen me up there? Even now, some 58 years later, I am confident that I can describe the layout of our house, the school buildings and playgrounds: emotions and memories; they're powerful companions.

So back to that day in September 2016-I wrote a couple of notes that grew into this-it was re-discovered yesterday-19/12/2020 and I've rephrased a couple of lines today.

The Deferred Farewell

They talked,

Well, she talked

He heard and didn't listen

Or listened and didn't hear

Whichever it was

Deferred responses holding a Silence

That was holding an Ache

That was holding a pain that was

Heart and Soul deep

And still, she talked.

They stayed to make sure that her room

Their child's new home for....?

It seems like forever.

Hey! It's just three years

That's what we said,
In the empty one back home

Both spaces in which soon

Together or apart

Each newly, lonely heart will break.

When I was looking for some images of Perry Barr, this came up. It's the Blazer Badge of the 

Secondary Modern School that once shared the site and provided me with an adventure playground. The power of the motto the context of the poem and all it means to me isn't lost!

jd. 20.12.2020