The long hot summer of 1976

This was a summer of soil
Of dust in gutters
Of long walks to the shops
In shorts
To buy mint flavoured Dalek ice creams
Thank you for the 5p we told our folks
By walls we sat and licked
With magnifying glass we burnt wood
With the power of the sun shared tricks
of
Amazing science
And the school field was scarred with creosote
On Saturday’s
The smell confusing and distinctive
We could never decide whether or not it may be edible
And daisy chains were tied
With first summer loves
Our first broken hearts lay beneath
Cloud shapes
And she made chameleons
Whilst the boys made gods of war
The thunderbolt shapes tore the fragile day
And apart from rain
It was steaming
The pavement leached oil
As though in pain from blisters
The same shapes as our backs
Mum covered us
But black was the wrong colour this time
The bumble bee abundance
Made us dive for a zig zag cover
And wasps stuck in jam laced traps
Made me conscious of the fact that
Its dog eat dog this afternoon
And a blazing 8 weeks of sun it was
The days of street games
Of rival gangs of eight
Of digging holes
And china plates of old
We found broken pottery
We played with broken bits of glass
We knocked on friends doors after school
All in the same class
Of the bricks in the wall
We peddled tram cars
And we learned to be fools
On grifters and wheelie bar rules
With the innocence and naivety that summer
The girls made us jump through hoops
At the playing field
And any flash of fleshy we would gratefully scoop up
Just to see what they looked like
We pinched our knee skin together
And he told me that that is what a vagina looks like
Our oggling eyes on park swings
And roundabouts
Caught knicker bocker glances in pink
The pretty frills forever enticed
The present day consensus, I think
Is still the same
The cut grass still brings it back
The instant transportation
To 76
We sang songs about the queen
And how she pulled down her Harvey nicks
About her violet charm
And about house bricks
That cracked under heat
The stylistics on the radio
Mums ankles and above the knee
Would show
The pathway were wandering hands
Would reach and go
Eventually, should we ever get that tall
Should the tugging shawl for mums attention
Ever leave
Should the grievance for summer ever go
For its never been that hot since
And the shrimps are still small
And the lanky lame still incredibly tall
All teased under sunshine
All children under sunshine we were
melting