A Childhood Memory
Early Training for Arborfield

I used to bicycle to school when I was young and on the go.
And in Winter time I mind it wasn't nice.
We kids, we'd ride our bikes through slush and often through the snow
On surfaces made treacherous by ice.

I'd put my bike together with parts filched from ******* pit.
Parts I'd garnered, here and there, to take back to my home.
I washed them first in kerosene, then soaked in oil each bit.
Once assembled, then the World was mine to roam.

Although it looked quite battered and it rattled every ride,
And the wheels, they wobbled and it had a squeak.
That bike was mine, all mine, and if you classify by pride
I'd reckon RollsRoyce wouldn't stand a chance, well, so's to speak.

But the brakes on that bike they never worked,
And its metal handle-bars were bare
And in Winter it was pretty scary stuff,
Because of brakes, and ice on roads, and never having gloves to wear.
.
And at school (with bike stowed in racks) I'd join the queue,
My runny nose and hurting ears; numbed hands and finger tips quite blue
With cold; shivering before the class room door.
Waiting for my turn at taps and running water, and for my hands to thaw.

Can it be so long ago,
That which seems but moment past
When first I tasted of your lips,
And knew my lifelong love was cast?

Can it be so long ago,
That which seems but moment past?
Would that time would let us know
The now and then, the first, the last.

Can it be so long ago,
That which seems but moment past?
Would that I could dam the flow
But life, as water, runs too fast.

All the way with L. B. J.,
Was what was said back in the day.
But what it meant, if truth to tell,
Was two years servitude in hell.
That is, for those without the bent
For service life, cared where they went.
Most of them, well, from what we saw,
Without preamble went to war.

'But Lyndon Johnston told the nation
Have no fear of escalation',
This, a song of protest from that day.
But for those that really cared,
(another word for being scared,)
It didn't stop them being sent away
To twelve months service and a war.
So tragic now. What was it for?

And when Nixon asked the British
For the Black Watch, they turned skittish.
And the Parliament it stood to tell him no.
They thought it was unreasoned war
And that is what the people saw,
And so the Black Watch weren't allowed to go.
And yet we here went 'All the way...',
And for our dead - now rue the day.