THE WILLOW POND
Mervyn Linford was born in 1946. He left Timberlog County Secondary Modern School in Basildon at the age of fifteen and has lost count at over two hundred jobs, including: transport, construction, sales, and the army. He has always had a love of poetry and started to write seriously when he was twenty-seven years old. He has been widely published in magazines, anthologies, and newspapers and has won and been highly commended in a number of poetry competitions such as: first prize in both The John Clare Cup and The Hastings Open. His work has been broadcast on national and local radio and he has had four collections of his poetry published: ‘Two Essex Poets’ with the late Frederic Vanson, and ‘Talking to the Bees’ both by The Brentham Press of St Albans; and ‘Autumn Manuscript’ and ‘The Beatitudes of Silence’ by The Littoral Press of Southend on Sea. ‘The Willow Pond’ is his first prose work to be published. The sequel: ‘Bullshit and Bootlace-Ties’ is finished and ready for print and he has two other works waiting for publication: a lyric novel ‘The Weather Man’ and a novella, ‘The Rise and Fall of Snowy Garden’. He now lives in Southend on Sea where apart from writing both prose and poetry he concerns himself with love, nature, and spiritual matters.
Comments on the author’s work:
Two Essex Poets (with Frederic Vanson)
Brentham Press.
‘Linford is a man with a notebook out in the landscape of Essex….. I thoroughly enjoyed all of his poems and look forward to his next collection. Two Essex Poets is definitely a book to treasure.’
Angela Topping – ORE.
Talking to the Bees – Brentham press.
‘I think it rather remarkable that, given the quality of the work, you have not yet found a publisher. I should imagine that one of the other smaller presses or indeed one of the larger commercial houses will, in the near future, succumb to your work. I certainly hope so.’
Michael Schmidt – Carcanet: 1992.
Autumn Manuscript – The Littoral Press.
‘Linford is a craftsman of the finest sort. He carves meaning and metaphor, observation and emotion, into dynamic shapes – leaving no unpolished images.’
Hilary Mellon – SOL.
The Beatitudes of Silence – The Littoral Press.
‘There are some lovely and fully achieved poems here.’
Harry Chambers – Peterloo Poets.
THE WILLOW POND
MERVYN LINFORD
THE LITTORAL PRESS
First Published in 2004
The Littoral Press
38 Barringtons, 10 Sutton Road,
Southend on Sea, Essex. SS2. 5NA.
United Kingdom
© 2004 Mervyn Linford
Cover photograph Clare Harvey © 2004
The right of Mervyn Linford to be identified as author
Of this work has been asserted by him under
The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-0-954184-42-1 (Print)
ISBN 978-0-957660-83-0 (eBook)
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form
Or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by
Any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing
From the Publisher
eBook conversion by Vivlia Limited
For Clare
CONTENTS
5 ‘If Winter Comes’
6 A Totter’s Redemption
7 The Willow Pond
8 Markets and Moving Images
9 Bikes, Breaststrokes and Bandages
10 ‘The Railway Children’
11 Factory Fodder
12 Pigeons, Sex, and other Spectral Events
13 The Long Short Trouser Caper
14 Trappers
15 Bait and Tackle
16 Last Flings
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Memory and perception are fallible. If you asked anybody mentioned in this memoir just how they remembered the time, places, people, and events recorded, it is almost certain that their interpretations would be somewhat different to mine. There are bound to be differences as well as commonalities - this is only natural. All I’ve tried to do is to be as honest as possible about the way I personally remembered and perceived some of the main events in my childhood. Whilst writing the book I came to realise just what a problem child I must have been, and although at the time I thought that my parents were unnecessarily strict I can now see that they were faced with a prepubescent dilemma of immense proportions, one that they could only deal with in the best way they knew how. I never went short of anything as a child and the older I get the more love and respect I feel for my long-departed mother and father. My brother is five years older than me and as a consequence of that fact we were never very close as children, but since my parents have passed away we’ve become closer than we’ve ever been, and I am proud to call this lovely man my friend.
Mervyn Linford
Southend on Sea
Essex. 2004.
Chapter 1. Loose ends - New Horizons.
It was one of those August days. One of those bygone, half-forgotten, ‘there were summers in those days,’ sort of days. At the back of the Rathbone Street Market, between the bombsites and the glassworks, the results of another, ‘war to end all wars,’ could be seen in the guise of prefabricated buildings. Those regimented lines of post-war asbestos, angled at the essence of utility. It was eggs on the pavement, frying, sort of weather. Pigeons in rickety lofts, crooned and bubbled in the heat. Chickens in the rat-infested yards, scratched at the tufted ground, hungry for the thinnest pickings. On that spit-roasted, dog dozy, fly buzzing doldrums of a day, my life was about to change forever. The powers that be, in deference to the principals of liberal minded beneficence, had offered the residents of this somewhat un-des residential quarter the option of a new start. Not just a new start, but a new start in a New Town. Like a rash of incurable philanthropy building-sites were breaking out all over the Home Counties and beyond. Basildon, as yet a figment of my ‘Swallows