I’m Coming for you Bob...
To Hull & Back...
to Carver’s Just for the Mushy Peas!

As a little lad, I think on a Sat’day morning, we’d go

to a market somewhere, was it on the docks?

Asked our Brian, he’s smart, he said it were... I thought - he’d know.

...After all the mooching, the tugging, the shushing, the rows
and all me mam’s “where’s he gone nows?”

If I stuck it out long enough wi’out gerrin’ a clout,
we’d sit inside, or sometimes out,

of a blue striped tent - and I’d eat mushy peas.

There might have been chips,
 there could have been fish;
Mam always had fish,

Brian, would have had a pattie... well, he was 12(ish)

Not sure I’d even have known about patties all them years back.
But anyway peas is what sticks in my mind…

and all down the front of me jumper...or sometimes on me mac.

They say - if you haven’t been to Carver’s
 you haven’t been to Hull.

Well Bob... I’m coming back!… And’ll
bet,
when I was digging mushy peas
 with my fork back in Fifty Three,

it were your Grandad, (also Bob) would have been serving me!

Cheers! And, I know it's cheeky - but - Can I have scraps wi'that?

Ted Slade • (my cousin)
Withernsea, Holderness, East Yorkshire

Last night the sea ripped the beach from its bed.
We heard the screams
but know too well not to interfere
in these family disputes.
In the morning we gathered to look,
ghouls at a death,
the sea at our feet, calm,
sated, gulls riding at anchor on it shoulders.

The meadow’s gone the same way,
yard by yard, year by year.
Now the house sways on the brink.
When he saw his rose bushes
scattered down the cliff, Jack cried.
Finally we moved out when
the garden shed was launched
one winter’s night.
Very Important Persons
brought their sympathies,
and went away nodding.
Perhaps we’ll become little islanders.
Though surely not.
... New Atlanteans at least.

Ted Slade • 1939-2004

So many asked me
how I coped over the years
some say it as a joke ‘how do you cope?’
a rhetorical question ‘I don’t know how you cope?’
some ask it as if they’ve know me for ages ‘how are you coping?’
some say it as if it was them going through it ‘I wouldn’t cope if I was you!’
some act as if they’ve been through it ‘I wouldn’t put up with it’
others don’t bother to ask
and then the rest when you try to tell them they don’t care
COPE
I haven’t ever got on with the word cope
and if it was a person I would meet it in a taxi pick it up go to a pub get it drunk and try my best to ‘accidentally leave it behind’  in a crowd of dancing virgins in a nightclub I’ve never been in before.

Rivers flow down towards the bay
And with them, lifetimes swept away
Of cobble stones and windswept sand
And legends of our native land
I walk alone down avenues
Of shifting sands and ocean hues
And faces from another time
From road to sandy bluffs, I climb
Down by the sea, the windy shore
Whispers their names, who are no more
Pale ghosts who wander by the sea
Up from the waves, they call to me
Of whalers, who for glory, yearned
And sailing ships that ne'er returned
Of sailors brave and lovely maids
To them, the ocean serenades
I sip my beer and hear a gull
Lost on these timeless streets of Hull.