I would rather work in mill than in pit

I hurry in the clothes I’ve now got on,
trousers and ragged jacket; the bald place
upon my head made by thrusting the corves;
my legs have never swelled, but sisters’ did
when they went to mill; I hurry the corves
a mile and more under ground and back;
they weigh three hundredweight; I hurry
eleven a-day; I wear a belt and chain
at the workings to get the corves out;
the getters that I work for are naked
except their caps; they pull off all their clothes;
I see them at work when I go up; sometimes
they beat me, if I am not quick enough,
with their hands; they strike me upon my back;
the boys take liberties with me sometimes,
pull me about; I am the only girl
in the pit; there are about twenty boys
and fifteen men; all the men are naked;
I would rather work in mill than in pit.

17-year-old Patience Kershaw’s account of working in a Halifax coal pit, from Facts and Figures, May 1842.

Without conscience

He will choose you,
disarm you with his words.

Control you with his presence.

He will delight you with his wit and his plans.
He will show you a good time.

You will always get the bill.

He will smile and deceive you

and he will scare you with his eyes

and when he is through with you, and he will be through with you,
he will desert you and take with him
your innocence and your pride.

You will be left much sadder but not a lot wiser
and for a long time you will wonder what happened and
what you did wrong.

And if another of his kind comes knocking on your door,

will you open it?

From The Psychopath in Prison, an essay by Dr Robert Hare. By Deborah.

In Other News

I always go
for the beheading option
but
when I’ve calmed down
realise
that it’s not possible
in a free market economy

Anyway how are you?

I’ve been writing
even tweeted the National Gallery

All I need now is a job,
a relationship
and a cup of tea (not
necessarily
in that order)

Taken from a friend’s email, 26 September 2012. By Ailsa Holland.

Redemption

Then I got up to leave
and said Stand up.
He stood. I said: Look at me.

I’m a middle aged man
with a limp and a wheeze
and a son and a wife that I love.

I’m not just a little avatar.
You’re better than this.
You have a name of your own.

Be proud of it.
Don’t hide it again
and I won’t ruin it.

Now shake hands.
‘I’m sorry.’ he said,
and looked like he meant it.

Then we shook on it.

From Meeting A Troll. By Angi Holden.

We used to meet here, you and I

A cento

I was born when you needed me,
my life what I make it.
The constant smack of wet on wet

Trains rush by, boy on a bike
unfinished symphony
skimming stones as far as
Brindley’s heavy mitred gates.
Spreading rumours
in bracelets of fog.

There was a fatalism
as she walked along the towpath.
Black luck, slams hedges shut
in a dark space.
The bruise of blue on bone.
Rigid and dead – silent.
Yorkshire stone
and dagger-beak
seal our fate.

Don’t cry for me dear father
I bow my smokestack slowly
The canal is deep enough.

Lines from the 19 poets who contributed to the Rochdale Canal Festival 2012 (Connie Ramsay Bott, Janine Bullman, John Darwin, Sheila Stretton, Jeanette Lomax, Eileen Wright, Andy N, John Betjeman, Ann Oxley, Annie Wright, Paul Blackburn, Diane Cockburn, Gaia Holmes, Anne Caldwell, Julia McClay, Jo Bell, Pat Trythall, Greg Freeman, Eileen Earnshaw, Val Chapman). By Winston Plowes.

Jammy

Consider
the fact
that
for 3.8 billion years,
not one
of your pertinent ancestors
was squashed,
devoured,
drowned,
starved,
stuck fast,
untimely wounded
or otherwise deflected
from its life’s
quest
of delivering a
tiny
charge
of genetic material
to the right partner
at the right moment
to perpetuate
the only
possible
sequence
of hereditary combinations
that could result –
eventually,
astoundingly,
and all too briefly –
in you.

From Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything (2003). By Ailsa Holland.