Slip in their veins

I started as a boy
straight from school
in nineteen fifty
and I enjoyed my
twenty five years here.

It was almost like
a home from home, really.

It was always said
that potters had
slip
in their veins
instead of blood.

That’s what we were.
We were potters.

Terry Abbotts, former Royal Doulton worker, interviewed in Ceramics: A Fragile History. The Age of Wedgwood, first broadcast 17 October 2011. Submitted by Ailsa Holland.