The teachers sat on the same table. They had no choice, however undesirable. We always sat next to who we wanted to and budged up if we got next to anyone who
had nowhere else to sit or wasn’t it Or had fleas or some social disease. You took your plastic white tray And perused the menu of the day;
Whatever went with mash potato. Rice pudding for afters and away you’d go. The dinner ladies would daily serve the same thing every week. No-one had the nerve
to say; Liver again! I didn’t. It was my favourite then. I got my share as everyone gave me theirs. Away from parental guidance, we’d just talk. No-one ever gave a fork.
John Di Girolamo was born during the swinging middle ages as the Battle of Hastings raged outside on a cold, miserable Saturday evening just outside 'The Juggler's Arms' in Oxford, Torquay and Exeter at the same time. Born to a family, he spent most of his early years learning how to open umbrellas for a rainy day, and the runnings of horses and sword swallowers and the costs they incurred. Having graduated in 'Circus Management', he took to spinning plates for a living and persuaded his father to buy a restaurant to fund what he believed would be a lucrative career move. However, in the the days leading to The Age of Post Punk', he quit and would embark upon what was to go down in history doodles as a notebook.
Few knew it then but he had already started copying poetry, and often written by other people. As the minutes passed by, and Sardinia loomed, the idea of collages and drawings suddenly hit him as a way of filling up what had become a kind of book with pages and all. One day while storming off in a huff because his mum told him to, he struck upon the idea of putting it all together over a long-playing record (later a CD) and during a commercial break in the digital age, decided a blog would end Cromwell's ill-fated republic.
Sent off by recorded post, it would be by chance that his poems would get to their ultimate destination as, meanwhile, his pigeon who had queued so loyally for so long, sadly died the day before it was sacked.
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A Pretty Kettle of Poetry 