On Top Of The World Poem by PAUL COLVIN

Messy hair with no front teeth
Dirty noses, mucky face
Big wide grins and rosy cheeks
We think we’ll never age.
Torn shirts, sleeves rolled up
String holds up your shorts
A leather football by your feet
Above them tartan legs.
A big fat lip or one black eye
But always with skint knees
Fights arranged to show who’s boss
With boxing gloves or not.
Knuckles cut, rapped by cards
Covered now with scabs
Glasses bound with plasters
One lens usually smashed
And brylcreem wrapped about your hair
Stolen? But of course!
No trainers then just sandals
Or hobnailed football boots!
The ball, uncoated leather
With a bulging dirty lace
And every time you headered it
It cut your head to bits.
If you didn’t you were dead
We cried but that was rare
No molly coddling then.
Some of us had hankies
But we’d rather use our shirt
And those multi-coloured jumpers
Hid a multitude of sins.
We were rogues and knew no fear
But respect, we knew that well.
Boxing gloves were everywhere
They were on your Christmas list
So out you’d go on Christmas Day
And squared up to each other
When flyweights faced the fatties
And hoped you weren’t punched.

The rounds were counted in your head
And when you thought the time was up
Out came the pot and spoon!
Then when you had finished
The pot went on your head
Playing soldiers round the dump
Gaining points for how you died.
The first to reach a hundred won
That was twenty deaths a day
Dinnertime was getting near
So we’d be on our way.
No one had a watch
We had timers in our guts
And we never came back late.
The pot came off as we walked back
Its use was now a drum
And the clunking spoon would let mums know
That we were coming home.
I haven’t even started yet
But I think you know me now,
Was a pretty picture painted
Of my golden age now gone?