During Lockdown

Growing up in a village
in the 1920s,
my mother told me
how all the boys
would run down the road,
chase the source of a noise,
crying, "Aerer, aerer!"
(they didn't say plane)
or, "Motor, motor!"
(not car, back then).

Today, in a sky
that for weeks has been
unbroken blue and fair,
I thought of these things;
saw a vapour trail unzipping the sky
as something new and rare.

© Celia Warren 2020

The village my mother grew up in was Flixton, in Lancashire, which is now part of Greater Manchester. She also described how, walking home from school, she and her friends would stop as they passed the blacksmith to watch him at work. And she loved to see the big old carthorses pulling the plough or the harvesting blades, and admired the huge haystacks the farmers built.

She won a scholarship to Manchester Grammar School, but couldn't take it up as her family could not have afforded the daily train fares. Instead, she went to Urmston Grammar School. What a different world it was! I wonder what she would have made of the current situation. She'd probably have kept calm and kept knitting! :-)