Carol Ann Duffy — The Captain of the 1964 Top of the Form Team

Do Wah Diddy Diddy, Baby Love, Oh Pretty Woman were in the Top Ten that month, October, and the Beatles were everywhere else. I can give you the B-side of the Supremes one. Hang on. Come See About Me? I lived in a kind of fizzing hope. Gargling with Vimto. The clever smell of my satchel. Convent girls. I pulled my hair forward with a steel comb that I blew like Mick, my lips numb as a two-hour snog. No snags. The Nile rises in April. Blue and white. The humming-bird’s song is made by its wings, which beat so fast that they blur in flight. I knew the capitals, the Kings and Queens, the dates. In class, the white sleeve of my shirt saluted again and again. Sir! … Correct. Later, I whooped at the side of my bike, a cowboy, mounted it running in one jump. I sped down Dyke Hill, no hands, famous, learning, dominus domine dominum. Dave Dee Dozy … try me. Come on. My mother kept my mascot Gonk on the TV set for a year. And the photograph. I look so brainy you’d think I’d just had a bath. The blazer. The badge. The tie, the first chord of A Hard Day’s Night loud in my head. I ran to the Spinney in my prize shoes, up Churchill Way, up Nelson Drive, over pink pavements that girls chalked on, in a blue evening; and I stamped the pawprints of badgers and skunks in the mud. My country. I want it back. The captain. The one with all the answers. Bzz. My name was in red on Lucille Green’s jotter. I smiled as wide as a child who went missing on the way home from school. The keeny. I say to my stale wife Six hits by Dusty Springfield. I say to my boss A pint! How can we know the dancer from the dance? Nobody. My thick kids wince. Name the prime Minister of Rhodesia. My country. How many florins in a pound?