Park Drive and Snuff Tins

 

Park Drive and Snuff Tins

 

Back then, there was Woodbines and Park Drive,

cupped hands, charcoal blacked matches, bitter winds,

catherine wheels of collieries’ lifting gears

spinning cog-webs beyond the gasometers’ rear

and the Chesterfield Canal to walk beside

on the way to school, aged five.

No hotels on Park Lane, Mayfair -

that came a couple of years later,

a warm back room, Sheffield, 34 Bocking Lane.

For now just collect working men’s crushed packets,

chucked from pit overalls, free of fags,

but if you found one, you’d have a drag

or be tempted to. We’d squeeze them from sleeves

into squares, back-pocketed for playground gaming,

flicking them onto unsteady piles, and aiming

with budding care. A winner, topping all who fight,

grins - later sorts treasure with gloating delight.

Better yet, those rare, discarded snuff tins in rectangle blue

with atomic text that offered no clue –

just the promise of filthy keen tin shearing skin,

the welling of dark gobbets of blood on grubby cuffs

and enough ring marked collars in goose-grease grey

for smoothing irons to tuck tail and dash away.

And after school, heading homewards on the towpath

past the BBQ chippy and working men’s caffs,

you’d keep your eyes peeled for everything you’d lost,

sifting daily through dog-shit in the wiry grass,

nettles, ragwort and tall towers of cow parsley,

or maybe return triumphant grasping pockets of card,

secret them carefully under stones in his yard.