wearing a grey flannel suit.
I had my own suitcase.
I thought it was going to be fun.
so the first night I didn’t have any sheets.
to think of the timetable as a game of ‘Battleships’.
but I didn’t like the work.
but they didn’t have them there.
They had the Beacon Series.
then I started saying nothing.
because I’d forgotten to hang something up.
I was so far away from home I used to forget things.
I forgot how to get undressed.
after you’ve put on your pyjama bottoms.
I was fully dressed again, feeling tired.
and she wanted to know why it was dry.
I was miles away. I said I didn’t know.
waiting for me to make a slip.
on his fingers as he took hold of my ear.
and my eyes shut, looking Mr Ray in the eye.
Every time I looked round he added a minute to my sentence.
to write reports. He drew a wooden spoon.
with this feeble and incompetent creature.
when he opened the envelope and shouted.
Mr Ray was standing there, stockstill.
I wasn’t happy with aspects of my case.
open like a book. I couldn’t understand my face.
in search of a parting that would change all this.
a streaky, yellowish brown with permanganate of potash.
combing my hair straight down and pretending to wash.
in a kind of surrender. No one else could get in.
stiff with unreality and fear.
My scalp stung from onsets of a steel flick-comb.
My parting was raw from realignment.
with a handle and a zip.
where I was off to looking like that.
tongue hanging out, jacket pushed back like a Ted.
My father made me go upstairs and start again.
that my hair was my hair, nothing more.
with the stuffed crocodile, wondering what to do.
Have a shot of crème de menthe?
Or go upstairs and look for evidence of myself?
from Eden Roc and Monkey Island Hotel.
on slicked-back Derby Days before the war.
and thought they were the same.
Good looks were everything where I came from.
They made you laugh. They made you have a tan.
They made you speak with conviction.
‘Such a nice young man!’ my mother used to say.
I’d have to do more than that to satisfy my honour.
set at right-angles to his profile.
and armed with a sort of quiff.
I had to make him laugh.
as if it rhymed with ‘late’.
as he calmly demolished me.
in ‘One of Our Aircraft is Missing’.
I should have run for cover.
and opens fire on the Nazis.
when I went away to school.
was going to be enough.
I slid across the hall into the changing-room.
as I went flying past.