A Sixties Adolescence

 

Just fourteen and not yet shaving,

Awkward at the youth club dance,

Older girls in floral dresses,

Knowing that I had no chance.

 

Harder grind at daytime lessons,

Can’t do French its such a bore,

English homework that’s a pleasure,

Simple signs of what’s in store.

 

Khrushchev settled in the Kremlin,

Shadows of the mushroom cloud,

Batten down the A-Bomb shelter,

Play the music long and loud.

 

On to college wine and cider,

Campus pleasures through the night,

Flirting at a student demo,

Posers for the greater fight.

 

Certain now I’d missed the call up,

National Service not for me,

Plan for life and not for dying,

Live for now not history.

 

Buy a Norton motorcycle,

Featherbedded in its frame,

BSA’s no competition,

AJS are much the same.

 

Freedom of the open highway,

Pocket money takes you far,

Feel the speed that sets blood coursing,

Burn the road and touch the star.

 

First real love, a wayward pleasure,

Lustful longings quite sublime,

Days to dream and endless evenings,

Days of wonder, endless time.

 

Twenty now and quite immortal,

Twenty now both sure and proud,

Jet black hair and six foot something,

Don’t I stand out from the crowd?

 

Evenings in the city nightclubs,

Waiting for the slower dance,

Lovely girls in short tight dressers,

Knowing I have every chance.

 

Weekday mornings in the office,

Starting on the corporate climb,

Bite your lip and mind the bosses,

Watching clocks and wasting time.

 

Sell at last the motorcycle,

Buy a car with room for two,

Better be a man in manhood,

That’s the proper thing to do.

 

So that was my adolescence,

Wild and witty, fast and free,

Taught me all that is my being,

Told in all what life should be.