Beyond Wigan Pier,
flat caps are worn with a sense
of irony
to the visiting football fan
that made their way through tunnels
and forgotten history book sampled landscapes
of the once industrial blackened soot North,
Orwell no longer in residence
and yet in this barbarous age,
a depression in all but name,
the great decline of the 21st Century,
but as long as you can get your nails done
and have the latest must have Playstation
diversion, then obviously the world is just great and green;
past Wigan Pier, a pie disappointing
on its way in, no beer, still not drinking alone.
It was just like Saturdays of my childhood,
out with my Dad
watching Aston Villa, though these days
the team travels to the land of the organic,
ironic flatcap and braces, rather than facing
down a mountain at Maine Road or Anfield.
Saturdays,
when Saturday came and the day was all about the game,
home perhaps in time for Doctor Who,
but always about the Saturday Pink,
the slight change in table positions
which had to be digested and memorised
for school all the following week,
the headphone in one ear,
avoiding mix up with wax,
the lemonade through a straw
and then when He was not looking
sipping from a half pint cobbled glass,
when Saturday came, listening into the gossip from the terraces
and singing lyrics in which you didn’t truly understand,
now of course you would not dare through shame utter a
fragment
unless it was to retell the story, warts and all,
kick the ball
kick the ref,
kick the ref, bloody hell,
West Brom winning away,
City running rampant…in my childhood dreams,
Liverpool destroying everything in sight,
Wigan…well they’re new to the league,
forget who they replaced,
Workington wasn’t it, Dad?
When Saturday came,
Wigan in the March,
Villa sort of well languishing
in the second tier,
a lowly tear
unseen by the crowd
but I catch in my Dad’s eye
as he sees Dennis Mortimer
lift the European Cup in 1982,
black and white photographs allude and prove to the fact
he was there, loyal to the last,
like Orwell, loyal to the words, always those words
that caught me off guard when I learned the fate
of Boxer in Animal Farm,
the working man left to die,
the working class game once stolen by Napoleon
and leased back through television rights.
On the Road past Wigan Pier,
there are superstores and ice creams,
housing estates and Wigan’s two stations
within a Peter Withe strike on goal…
on the road past Wigan Pier
when Saturday comes again.
Ian D. Hall 2017