Our day out
Between kicking a ball and vandalizing boredom, I swung around lamp posts
and mouthed my maisonette backdrop around the block.
I would burn spiders with a magnifying glass, a clear conscience, and a smile.
But in a few years - the estate molding me would be bulldozed,
thought so bad by Thatcher’s Britain, to not be fit
for the working class. An irony mocked
by the language of laughter, too cracked to reach the eyes.
Adults knowing best would be glad to get out and escape this,
but to us kids who never knew better; this place was a playground paradise.
I wouldn’t have wanted to fight anywhere else!
But like I said - we didn’t know better.
In the years to come we would move into real housing
and I would feel lost. Eventually
I would become civilized
and afraid -
just like everybody else.
Chris Co
Fri 4th May 2012 11:21
Hi Ray,
Our Day Out...as capitalised... was a play wriiten in the late 1970s by Willy Russell about deprived kids growing up in deprived Liverpool. The play was recorded for television in the 1980s. This was the time I was growing up in the same city on one of its poorer housing estates.
The play starts out as a coach trip, but the plot darkens when it becomes obvious that the kids from the back streets of Liverpool, have little to no hope in terms of a future. The picture is painted that they are no-hopers; that a day trip is as good as anything is going to get for them...they'll soon be back on the estates.
In one scene at a zoo there is a bear in a bear pit.
The scene starts off when one of the kids asks a teacher if the bear could kill you. The teacher replies saying “Well why do you think it kept in a pit?” Another kid joins the conversation by saying “ I think it is cruel don’t you?” The teacher replies to him saying that it is not if it is treated well. “No. Not if its treated well. And don’t forget it was born in captivity so it won’t know any other sort of life”
A kid replies "It must know other ways of living, sir. Y’know, free, like the way people have stopped it livin’. It only kills people cos it’s trapped an’ people are looking at it. If it was free it wouldn’t bother people at all.”
The kids like the bear are trapped. The kids can't escape a poor background in Liverpool and likely can't escape a poor future as a result.n The bear will be in the pit for all his life, like the kids In Liverpool, and will be treated the same way, and will be living the same way for the rest of their life. The bear doesn’t learn anything good other than, try and scare humans off, when they are being cruel, the kids don't learn much different.
It also includes the idea that the bear if placed in better surroundings would still be just as dangerous, still a bear. The analogy is clear; you can take the boy out of the ghetto, but you can't take the ghetto out of the boy. In other words there is no point in giving these kids (kids like these) a chance or a better home...they'll just be what they are anyway. (how more wrong could an idea be?)
I saw the kids that grew up before me on the estates, I saw that half of them had zero education. I was very fortunate to have very well educated parents in the home. But I saw a disproportionate number of kids from the estates were in remedial classes...like the play. I saw how the estates promoted the idea that school and homework was for losers and that it didn't matter anyway as there was no hope academically. I also saw that a lot of bad lads turned out...not surprising!
Fighting was a daily routine on the estates, but you could and would get battered if all the kids thought you were a 'suck'...which means someone pushing to do well at school. The pressure was to conform and that conformity was, play out late, play footy, jump across bin sheds. Play hideO on the roof of the old people's home, break into houses or the local school, and most importantly mess about in school.
I got to escape this background when Michael Heseltine came to Liverpool as Tory minister and they found the conditions...to not be fit to live in. The estates were knocked down and we moved... as I said into real housing. Oddly for the first couple of years I didn't know what to do without having bin sheds to jump across (I know that might sound quite mad) and green space and back gardens were confusing lol. Back on point...
You might not be able to take bears out of bear pits, but you can take children out of deprived conditions and things can as a result...improve greatly.
Our day out for me was in getting OUT and not suffering a future like those before me on that estate or like kids in that play.
P.S
I can see what your saying about the line changes, but I like the sprung rhythm that currently exists. That said, I have added two commas and a semicolon. Hopefully this makes for superior sonic units, whilst retaining meaning and rhythm. Thoughts appreciated...I always do consider tweeks.