I will start with a poem. I wrote this for the Open University Creative Writing Course taken this year - 2008.

  Yesterday

  Gone forever are the polished doorsteps,

  Parks, allotements, playgrounds and swings.

  Three pence newspapers, blue police boxes,

  Double deck buses, cardboard bus tickets.

  Gone forever ther Odeon and Gaumont,

  Saturday morning bliss never to return.

  Parents shopping without their offspring,

  Safe in a world of make believe.

  Gone forever the talkative neighbours,

  Newspapers in letter boxes, milk bottles on steps.

  Open front doors, windows and balconies,

  Farthings, tanners and eight edged coins.

  Gone forever the friendly, small corner shop,

  Market stalls, fairgrounds and zoos.

  Pea-soupers, yellow, thick and frightening,

  Trolleybuses, charabancs, horse and carts.

  Gone forever the communal laundry,

  School uniforms worn with pride.

  Golliwog badges, Corgi and Matchbox cars,

  Cigarette coupons and Greenshield stamps.

  Gone forever the air-raid shelter,

  Where many a war was fought and won.

  The cottage hospital so small and bright,

  The tidy graveyard with flowers and peace.

  Gone forever is my youth and innocence,

  Left behind in a dying town.

  Gone maybe - but never forgotten,

  Always remembered, always loved.

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