Hackney

One last time before we split
let's go and sit
in the grassy bit
in the churchyard astride the log
throw sticks for the dog
and look at the playground
and the place where the nursery stood
Before we're gone for good

Isn't this a heartland too?
We have poundshops, pawnshops, boarded-up shops
and industries replaced by social services
We too have schools with leaking roofs
and youth in gigs and gangs and anguish

Isn't this a heartland too?
We have hearts and we have lands
Hearts that beat on rundown streets
and lands blemished with landfill
and corporate-municipal scandal

This site was a nursery
next to the municipal mortuary
Council care from the cradle to the grave
with alphabets and sing-alongs and rhymes
Once upon a time

Then they closed it.

Next it became a unit where the students
the schools had driven up the walls
were taken to be straightened out
or at least kept away from trouble

Then they closed it. And sold the site.

On 13 January, I addressed Hackney's Health and Wellbeing Board as part of its Patient Voice agenda item, discussing provision for autistic adults in the Borough. Rather belatedly, Hackney is now considering a draft plan to implement its duties under the Autism Act. Here's what I said ...

A Petrarchan sonnet (yes, really) on getting a night bus to catch an international train ...

I used to but I haven't missed this bus
At 5a.m., a half-full cart to take
The staff who clean and guard before you wake
Who start the engines 'fore the rest of us
From brief repose unwilling exodus
Hold open half-mast eyes on work-worn faces
Resignedly wishing they weren't going places
No chat, no caucus, nothing to discuss
But then I disembark and change my routes
And switch dimensions through a boarding gate
Some two hours later morning, bright debate
White, coffee-charged commuters sporting suits
While most of those on night bus 38
Were black and wearing hi-vis, smocks and boots

Get this! Hopelessly unthinking about the barbarity and injustice of state executions, we have a "pop-up restaurant" themed as "death row dinners". Pass the sick bag.

(Swearing appropriate to the tone of the verse)

Why the fuck did you nick my bike?
What have I ever done to you?

Since Eighteen Ninety
In all of its finery
Stood Gibbons the furniture sellers
London’s last such attraction
With cash-only transaction
Until plastic caught up with the fellas

They eventually gave in
To modernity’s whim
With a sign saying ‘We accept Visa’
Through bombings and raids
Gibbons still stayed
Hackney’s very own Tower of Pisa