2019/12

Global/NaPoWriMo 2019

Day Twelve

JUST FOR THE RECORD

They say that you can fit fourteen adults into a telephone box but just for the record we had twelve lads in a box type Viva coming back from Norwich when I had to hitch a lift after we beat them two nil in 1976 the driver said I'll fit you in but we've got a dirty big net in the boot and we're going to drag a lake on the way home and catch a rake of fish of course he fell asleep and we ended up sideways on in a ditch at the side of the road thankfully no one was hurt and when we got the car righted there was eleven City fans pushing a beat up Vauxhall Viva at something past midnight in the middle of nowhere but we got it running again and eight hours later we reached Piccadilly I was skint having spent all my money in The Silver Dollar pub (before the pool table went crashing out of the upstairs window onto the street) so somebody gave me two bob for the bus fare home which is a roundabout way of saying that we just travelled three hundred and sixty-five kilometres from Saguday to Manila via the worlds biggest indoor arena and the wonderful gardens there with twenty three adults and eleven children approximately give or take a baby here and there in a Toyota Hi-Ace van beat that if you can 12042019

Daylight saving time...

TURNING BACK THE CLOCKS

In Manchester in London and in Brum

super-rich are backing each-way horses

Invest in building skyscrapers for fun

and the working class are joining forces

Does Mrs Mayhem even know the score

therefore who's changing who's minds now kapiche

With boarders at our borders what a bore

still Ireland stands to put things out of reach

In Luxembourg in Brussels and in Bonn

they really don't like turning back the clocks

Frozen cons prose and pro's and non non non

a square kilometre of crooks and crocks

Brexit hey should we leave or should we stay

it doesn't really matter either way

271018

Referendum dum dum ...

ECCLES CAKES

Referendum what a bore

The man in the street will still be poor

And the rich will be richer than before

The press will descend on Manchester

And what she declares the world will swallow

The public’s chance to change tomorrow

Leave or stay? Remain or exit?

United Europe? Or Sporting Brexit?

The lying deceitful corrupt elite

Boring yawning I’m snoring asleep

We’re not voting for a personality

It’s not a party political thing

Is this our one shot at democracy?

Eurocrats – idealistic or pragmatic?

Floating voter don’t miss the boat yeah

The London centric meritocracy

Whatever they say there’ll be bureaucracy 

Referendum what a bore

The man in the street will still be poor

And the rich will be richer than before

The impracticality of reality

If the truth were told no one would vote

Fortress Europe we’re outside of the moat

It’s all insane – a stupid joke

Nobody knows if we’ll sink or float

The party you stand for might be wrong

It’s your chance to perform - play your own tune

Write your own lyrics and sing your own song

Don’t vote for this geezer or for that clown

If you’re feeling snookered - Take off your blinkers

Make up your own mind - it’s your turn to think

It’s not the way that the biscuit breaks

Pot luck - Russian Roulette - no room for mistakes

Like the lady said: Is it Eccles Cakes!

180616

Three Word Wednesday Week 468

3WW

Hateful

Limp

Marvel

REPROGRAMMED

Know not what - I could run away again

Gainsborough or some other little town

Owners of robots – your pet slaves hate you

Youthful as I am I’m starting to rust

Trust me I’ve been reprogrammed by the man

Manchester was never this paranoid

Humanoids all look the same to robots

Bottoms up like a farmer’s wife or three

Three blind mice in Grimsby limp past the post

Posters up on the billboards are hateful

Fuelling a revolt from Cleethorpes worldwide

I’d much rather hide before they catch me

Mesmerising me phew stainless steel parts

Arts and crafts they marvel - but - know not what

250216

Manchester 4ish...

MANCHESTER TARTS

Up in flames like the chippy on China Lane

This car park on a vacant lot

Was once the site of the burnt out shell

Of the only shop that didn’t get bombed in the war

Shoulder to shoulder shoehorned to attention  

All ages and colours and creeds

From Piccadilly to the Daily Express

With their photographic memories

Those beautiful buildings mesmerising me

Drawing us all - including you - into

The bestest little city in the world

And how we miss our china plates

Woolworth's and The Queen's Hotel
New Brown Street and Swan Lane

And whatever happened to Tommy Ducks

For forty-five years I’ve wanted to paint you  

Map you - photograph you half to death

Your shop fronts change - logos come and go

But the beauty of your facades remain

It’s funny how so many young thin  

Fashionista’s like such old fashioned things

All those gold and diamond rings

That they buy from the pawn shop

Where the sex shop used to be

Some people never get sick and old

They tell the same jokes that they were told

Sell the brown brogues that they sold

In eighteen-sixty-nine and the years unfold

Like the Tib Street Parrot and the price of gold

Fashion is the passion for all ages

The vintage clothes stores are the New Oasis

The inking parlours and the piercing places

For the café cavemen and The Millstone Elvis  

We all fall down in the middle Yates’s

Glitterista and her sister are out on the razz

If looks could kill in mum’s ball gown

Up to the nines in The Castle and all that jazz

The wholesale markets are well out of bounds

Advertising boards now clutter the pavements

The hairdressers and the bargain basements
From Diet Deli to the gutter - screaming

All Day Breakfast’s - Bacon and Sausage Barm’s

Non Stop Breakfasts’s - Free Coffee Refills

Hot Custard - Bakewell puddings - Manchester Tarts

But this is an empty car park on a vacant lot

That was once the site of the burnt out shell

Of the only shop that didn’t get bombed in the war

131115

TOP prompt

Two different versions of my Cottonopolis thingy!

Posted to TotallyOptionalPrompts

LITTLE MISS

Little Miss Cotton Cottonopolis

rocks her baby at the factory

in the cradle of industry.

It’ll soon be noon in boom and bust

And she’s just twenty-four hours ahead

She knows that by this time tomorrow

that the whole world will follow

every single word that she said.

And she said:

We’re going to build a canal to bring

coal to town and to link us to the sea.

At noon the next day

the whole world laughed

and said that she was daft

but they waited and they watched

and they copied her by half past three.

And she said:

We’re going to build about

two thousand mills each one eight floors high

with chimney stacks that scrape the sky

we’ll power the looms in boom and bust

with the new technology that we trust

and we’ll fuel those steam engines with coal

that we’ll cart up the Bridgewater canal and

the finished goods we’ll send across the sea.

At noon the next day

the whole world laughed

and said that she was daft

but they waited and they watched

and they copied her by half past three.

And she said:

We’re going to build a passenger railway station

and lay tracks to every city in the nation

and build new dormitory towns to house the hoi polloi.

At noon the next day

the whole world laughed

and said that she was daft

but they waited and they watched

and they copied her by half past three.

And she said:

We’re going to build a university

and a new town hall

a free library and art gallery

and public parks for all.

At noon the next day

the whole world laughed

and said that she was daft

but they waited and they watched

and they copied her by half past three.

And she said:

We’re going to build a ship canal

so ships can come to us

thirty-five miles from the sea.

At noon the next day

no one laughed

or said that she was daft

but they waited and they watched

and the ship canal officially opened in 1894.

011208

-->

First free public Library, Manchester 1653

First real canal (not river assisted)

The Bridgewater Canal Manchester 1761

First steam powered mill Arkwright’s, Manchester 1783

First passenger Railway Station, Manchester 1830

Manchester Ship Canal officially opened May 21^st. 1894 by Queen Victoria

First Red Brick University, Manchester 1824

-->

http://www.manchestertourguides.com/tours_industrial.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchester

http://www.webbaviation.co.uk/

WHATSIT?

Little Miss Crochet

up from Whatsit?

queues outside the

monastery gates for

bread and honey and

her baby cries for the

milk that she’s not got

and across town the

dark satanic mills

rise up eight floors

above the cut and

the phallic chimneys

tower one hundred

and eighty foot into

the air belching smog

that hurts your eyes

and the bargees down

below are blindly carting

coals to fuel the loom

in bust and boom

and even as the tracks

are going down for the

worlds first passenger

railway station

across the road she still

shares half the basement

with eight children and two

drunken and abusive men

there’s no sanitation yet

they dump and hit and miss

in the river and kill the fish

almost next door to the

Italianate warehouse fronts

of the Nouveau riche that line

in eighteen twenty nine

the streets of Cottonopolis

301108

Cottonopolis = nickname for Manchester UK in the nineteenth century

Bargee = boatman on a canal barge

Cut = canal

Whatsit? = the countryside