1980

State school came to its compulsory conclusion that summer
as I took my ‘O’ Levels and CSEs.
Apart from a U in Biology, anatomically a bummer,
my grades weren’t bad; a B in History,
passes in Maths, French and English Lit,
A CSE grade 1 in French (encore!)
and another in what was civilly called Citizenship.
Grade 2 in Photography, a 3 in Biology and Chemistry a 4.
Add the English Language ‘O’ level I’d got in January
and a considerate employer may well have considered me.

As it was, I went careering down the non-career path
and started Exeter College and Further Education.
I had no idea what I wanted to do apart from learn and laugh
and the world of work seemed a Victorian world of degradation.
The only world that struck a chord was music
and, having started my first part-time job at The Countess Wear Lodge Motel,
at last I had money to afford records. In came The New Romantics
as Punk died a death. But all that was immaterial.
The only group I wanted to splash out on
was The Beatles. The year of John Lennon.

Every two weeks I’d buy two Beatles albums
and play them back to back, on my bed.
Maybe I played air guitar (I certainly hadn’t started playing the drums)
but heading for WH Smiths of a Saturday, something popped in my head.
But what am I writing? Wilfully or not, I’m lying!
I only had the red and blue collections before he was shot!
Everything else I got later in ’81, that’s when I started buying.
Sgt Pepper was the first proper L.P I got
a few days after that dark wintry morning
when Mum woke me up, yawning.

The news she brought was it must have been drugs.
Only when I got to Dave Robinson’s English lesson
did the fact he’d been murdered reach my lugs.
That evening on TV, coverage of his demise was incessant.
I still have the front pages of The Daily Express
(Yellowing and crumpled now) with its Death of a Beatle.
Old enough to understand the previous generation’s shock at Dallas
I recorded, and still have, his interview with Andy Peables.
I was 16 at the time, and despite my being, then, an ‘A’ Level student in History
I hope you’ll pardon this poem being a little out in its chronology.