London Road Girl

Thin brown girl sails up to me,
A look, and 'Business?' enquires she.
On London Road she's working hard,
In front of fancy restaurants
Who've spent so much on fine pretension;
She doesn't seem to see the tension.

I'm taken aback,
Haven't got the knack
Of fending off the likes of her,
In such a posh surrounding.
I mutter 'No',
She makes a show
Of heartfelt disappointment.
Could it be real?
What does she feel?
What's in her water bottle?

I buy a snack,
Start walking back,
Munching on a cheese stick.
She comes alongside,
Matching my stride,
Asking her unending question.
Ten minutes ago
I told her no,
It seems she has forgotten.
 

Remembrance Sunday

On Sunday morning I was walking across the Victoria Park as people were assembling 

for the service of remembrance which takes place annually at the war memorial on the

edge of the park.
 I found myself walking counter to the stream, and so had a good look at the 

people who were attending. Many were middle-aged. There were a lot of family groups. 

Some looked haggard. One man was weeping. There were a few I took to be 

recently discharged from some armed service, younger men who looked down on their 

luck.
 I wondered who they were coming to remember. I doubted it was the dead of 

WWI, or even WWII, the names on the memorial.
 I know of no monument to the recent dead, killed in the oil wars against 

Iraq and Afghanistan. Perhaps the public are not meant to remember them, the unworthy

dead. Orphan boys who were expended in wars which were fought at the behest of 

foreign powers, or big business. I suspect the people at the memorial cared about 

some of them, presumably mostly officer types who were less likely to be alone in the world 

than the hapless squaddies.
 Will anyone ever build a monument for them? If it were built now, they would 

have to keep adding names, an embarrassment to authority.