Marsh Lane Part 1

  “Grab the polaroid camera, there’s a rat in Emma’s cot
We’ll lash the photo on a banner and make a stand against this lot.”

“I know that Wiel’s disease is probably a risky chance to take;
but imagine the shocking headlines that our protest march will make.”

The closure of the dock mills has caused the rodents to invade
Our terraced house on Compton Walk was the first home Roland made

Joe Benton was a councillor then, before he was MP
He helped support the residents of Marsh Lane make their plea

 The houses where in squalor and the maisonettes unsafe
 But we paid the same as homes nearby, although their bricks where newly laid

 The corpy argued austere funds, as Thatcher had made her cuts
She targeted us on Merseyside as the votes where red for most of us

 Miss Dyson taught in St Mary’s school, she was stern with hair scraped in a bun
 Her glasses steamed with stress and ire as she screamed at everyone

 One day I ran free from my pram, with an orange snowsuit on
I’d inherited that from my brother, Chris, who was fondly known as bonge

 The police gave me a Breakaway biscuit as I waited for my mum
 It was fitting as they'd found me legging it, breaking away from everyone

 It’s not the first freedom attempt from the children, mother made
 Parenting six children was a taxing escapade

 We dangled out of widows and truanted from school
Fished for frog spawn on the cut and broke all of Winnie’s safety rules

 Our bonge was playing with his car on the hand rail of the moving stairs
 The escalator grabbed for him and this was met by horrified glares

 As I watched cartoons in TJ’s, in a booth next to the café bogs
 I was unaware the my brother was trapped out there in the escalator’s coggs

 He ended up in the paper, with his arm embraced in a sling
 A blue eyed angel with a cheeky smile and a barely damaged wing

 He was a lucky get, our Chris, escaping from it's clutch
They had fitted a handy cut off switch a week before it caught him by the scruff

 The corpy agreed to knock down bricks and replace them with new homes;
 but we'd been given an exchange to a bigger house so it was time to change postcode

We left to head to Netherton before the red brick homes were built
We squeezed into a Cul de Sac with it's own charcoal bomie scorched field

Each November, neighbours gathered and burned unwanted things
We lit sparklers and set fireworks off and cooked baked beans in their tins

 The schofield’s van showed up each week, with litres of glassy pop
All the mum's had crushes on the bloke who served from the four wheeled shop

My mother found this shameful, as they fluttered their lashes at the lemo man

Then we reminder her "six kids, three dads" to thwart her pristine frigid sham

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