There was a time when being ill

as a child was no fun at all,

shut up inside your room,

the curtains drawn, snapped shut,

the 1970s flowered patterns

almost falling off with a startled,

frightened look upon their stems

and a quiver of desperation as they shook

themselves to the floor.

 

The woe betide stare of,

“If I catch you peeking out through

the now flowerless curtains,

then there will be no soup, just dry,

throat grating, pain inducing, rasping,

vexing toast, no butter and you will eat

the crusts, puts hairs on the chest”,

enough to make you feel sick throughout

the day.

 

Sleep for a few hours, with the sunlight

of a beautiful late September morning

streaming through the threadbare curtains

or in winter with the blankets freezing

to your toes, afraid

to move them just in case

the skin peeled off like a satsuma being eaten

by a clumsy and hungry Orangutan,

swift and with nothing left alive at the end.

 

If allowed downstairs, the day wasn’t to be

much better, not the Saturday classics

like Tiswas, anarchy on the sofa, Noel Edmonds, cardigan

king swopping what you wanted to get rid

of for the scabs from the Chickenpox,

I would take that collection of board games now,

it was more on the scale of programmes for Universities

and schools, just think of how much being ill now

is cooler, box sets of Doctor Who to watch all day.

 

Then though the terrifying sight

of a very clever man with a beard longer

than an Enid Blyton book, read over and over again,

explaining the dynamics of the internal

combustion engine and Cleo Laine

rattling the single paned windows

through a single, lonely speaker,

slightly off balance

this was the television programmes of despair and the ill.

 

The school term of 1978 to 1979

was the worst, I seemed to catch

everything under the sun

and I was hardly ever at school as the ill-health

seems to have dogged me since,

but instead of being too terrified to move

lest dry toast make an appearance,

and the threat of being bored all day,

now I look forward to the sofa sessions

and the black-out curtains,  I just

miss Cleo Laine being wonderful on T.V.

 

Ian D. Hall 2015