How many times does the opportunity arise
in which you can visit the ghosts
and smile with relief as a tear gently rolls down your cheek?
A bedroom door hides many a secret from the world,
the stolen, lengthy, beautiful snog with a girlfriend, heavy petting banned
in the local swimming pool, but a delight worth risking
when she cycles
over to see you from Wendlebury one summer’s day
in ‘85 and music from a band worth loving plays, crackles, skips
like my heart as she leans in again,
First published by Ace Magazine on-line. May 2014.
It was all about England having qualified for the World Cup for the first time since I had started following football with passion in 1976 that led me to watching nearly every match in the 1982 tournament with a grin and in equal measure, painful despair, etched all over my face.
I remember fragments of the World Cup in Argentina, however by and large the 1978 World Cup was something that by-passed me in much the same way as every other lad in my year at school developing a love of cars and engines, I knew it existed, but I had other past-times to pre-occupy me.