KBGS Old Boys' Forum

A place to discuss Keighley Boys' Grammar School. 


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Re: Not quite Highway 61 revisited.

A scone is two slices of potato with fish in the middle then battered.
It's only round the Keighley Area that they are called scones. They are called fish cakes or cakes anywhere else.

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 1959-64

Current location (optional) KEIGHLEY

Re: Not quite Highway 61 revisited.

A fish cake is a mix of fish and potato,with bread crum cover, whereas a scallop round my parts is the same as a scallop.Any advances?

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 58-66

Re: Not quite Highway 61 revisited.

Sorry, I meant scallop same as a scone. This is geting a little philosophical.

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 58-66

Re: Not quite Highway 61 revisited.

Surely a scallop round your parts would be rather uncomfortable Alan.

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 58-65

Current location (optional) Leeds

Re: Not quite Highway 61 revisited.

This is getting silly.
A scallop when purchased in a Fish & Chip shop is a slice of potato battered, and very nice they are too.

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 1959-64

Current location (optional) KEIGHLEY

Re: Not quite Highway 61 revisited.

Yes Alan (B) , The Kings Head indeed at the junction of South Street and Goulbourne Street. A popular pub for we 'Lund Parkers' It sold Hammonds Ale.
Its still there.

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 58-64

Current location (optional) Wirral

Re: Not quite Highway 61 revisited.

I know it's still there,Brian.I drove past it the other day.(As for scallops and scones,I have to say you are wrong,David).

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 58-66

Re: Not quite Highway 61 revisited.

Well, at least he's right about what constitutes a "fishcake" or "cake" in areas outside Keighley.
I would always receive the item David describes, when requesting a "cake".
Incidentally, a request for "fish cake & chips" always carried an implied comma between "fish" and "cake" and resulted in all 3 items.

God, I need to get a life! (or my employers to provide some meaningful activity).

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 58 - 65

Re: Not quite Highway 61 revisited.

No Mean City.
But Paul said, "I am a Jew, from Tarsus, a citizen of no mean city. I beg you, allow me to speak to the people.” Acts 21:39


1.

A river of soft water
out of the high moors,
a market for woollen goods
in a wider world,
all that was needed to build a town-
so they did.

Cluttering the valley,
sprawling up steep hills,
a collage of styles,
materials and aspirations,
it decays now.

The solid stone Victorian mills,
once all hum and clatter and pomp,
are still now
their chimneys cold,
the slow brown river,
dammed and wiered,
is a Lethe where wraiths,
roam the banks,
murder their memories,
choke on their childhoods.


2

It doesn’t matter what the weather is like outside, there is a draught that sidles along these lightless passages and up flights of stairs that are pitched in gloom and wedged with shadows.
Dust descends where a muddle of feathers rots and the purple lump of the decaying squab, beak still gawping, serves a pulsing knot of maggots that unravel its web of brief life.
All who live here are guttural and stiff-tongued. The rank air threatens and stultifies speech, stilts words till they shift meaning; barked curses and screams are the only remnants of any coherence.
The flats loom over streets, where the wail of sirens bodes, where night coils and envelops. Light spews over wet ways, a bovine piss clatters against the privy of a wall, a bawled obscenity pursues as the pack bays. Someone coughs and bleeds. Distant shouts, derisive as a donkey’s bray, echo down dark canyons where life grows cold and fetid as old bibles in dank cellars.
The valleys of the night are littered with this debris, ragged wads of shade that merge, coagulate to a thicker dark, to tear comfort from each other’s arms, tangle and forget, as the night bird sings to their flutes of subdued laughter and tunes of lust.


3

Between the market stalls he loped
with the soft pad of unshod feet.
He stooped low, drifted past me, silent and swift.
The rank animal reek of him
wafted over me as I stepped to one side.
to let him pass.

Shoppers shrank away, stilled in disbelief;
he was lean as a stick, pale as winter sunlight,
his shag of fair hair, a matted shock,
fell forward over his eyes.
He gave one feral snarl of terror and warning
that parted the people ahead.

A hand of uncut nails
clutched white chicken bones
against his grubby jeans,
ragged to the calves.

Lycanthrope. Discard.
He melted into the shadows
faded into memory
gossip
myth.

4

Once I was green as new grass springing.
I really believed that it only needed effort,
time spent, a set of new ideas,
ends pursued with vigour and endeavour
and things might just change, get better.

I stand upon the evening hills to watch
the world rehearse its madness
as it spins into another night.
I hear their clamour, baffled by intervening trees;
watch lights flicker, faint as galaxies,
dimmed by the space between us.

I dead-head my petunias,
will cut the lawn tomorrow
and trim the hedge next week- perhaps.
It is enough for me now.

Re: Not quite Highway 61 revisited.

Enjoyed your poem, Arthur. Says it all.

Re: Not quite Highway 61 revisited.

'He stooped low, drifted past me, silent and swift.
The rank animal reek of him'

Sounds like Gilbert Wilson to me!

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 59-66

Current location (optional) Embsay

Re: Not quite Highway 61 revisited.

"a Lethe where wraiths,
roam the banks,
murder their memories,
choke on their childhoods."

Arthur, is this a comment on the kbgs.com Forum?

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 52-60

Re: Not quite Highway 61 revisited.

No, intelligent and sensitive people just trying to tell the truth. Have you some objection to that?

Re: Not quite Highway 61 revisited.

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 52-60

Re: Not quite Highway 61 revisited.

Hi Terry. I suppose it might well be construed as such although in truth I enjoyed my childhood very much and remember it fondly. I was even a little reluctant to lay it to one side but the RAF sorted that out. BTW I know you well Terry and your comment was undoubtedly made with your tongue firmly in your cheek.
Cedric! Nice to see you about. I sometimes wonder what happened to you. We were fellow warriors in the battle mentioned in the last part of the piece, weren't we? I imagine you are still out there with girded loins. Thank you for flying to my defence, albeit unnecessarily.
However, your reply seems to have left Terry speechless which has to count as some sort of accomplishment. LOL.
I am glad you all find the piece valid and pertinent. It is my view of what Keighley has unfortunately degenerated into. I am the chair of governors for a local school which draws most of its children from the flats referred to in the second part of the piece and I visit the flats regularly. It is, of course, my perception of the place but honest enough for that.
Thanks for reading Arthur Seeley.