Not That Temperance Lot

Weatherspoon’s
As well as opening for breakfast
Also had a dancing area

A sop perhaps to obtain a longer licence;
One which goes from the early morning
Back into the early morning

Nevertheless
The dance area was a valuable attraction
A Venus flytrap of sorts

To encourage all the musk-laden trade
That could be mustered; the dance floor
Was popular with the Juke-Box students

The last dance came towards a close...

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Class Apart

Joe also knew intuitively
That these new visitors
Wouldn’t be like the wealthy tourists of old

Those selfish transitory leisure classes
Who came here simply to be served
Who came here for their pampered egos

To be preserved in aspic
With no care for those who served them
They were well prepared, happy

Happy to move on
To move swiftly on...

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Involvement

Joe saw energy in the town
A youthful vibrant energy
An energy that his village had lost
Lost so so completely

He turned to his old friends
And said; boys
With what this town’s already got
It’s going to go somewhere

I’ve read the posters
They are asking people
That means you, and me, all of us...

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Urbanisation

Joe thought his village cold and dead
Yet here it is, in our day
A model
For new urban developments

Rural life transposed to commuter land
Villages overlapped with other villages
Developers redeveloping the rural idyll
Building a pastiche of a past life

What is everyone scared of
Why standstill, or worse
Why try to go backwards
Thought Joe

For Joe the town was different...

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Music It Is

In Weatherspoon’s
Joe is alone
His friends have decided not to join him
He sits beside the jukebox

A cold beer
A warm cigarette
A rough-cut shirt
His best biker’s leather jacket

His sharp-cut leather boots
His extravagant belt
With buckles, studs, and trophies
Youth in all of its glory

Fearless, that is until...

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