The Aylesbury Estate

That's the best thing I've read for a while, Jolono, and you say you're no poet - and I don't say that lightly. It reminds me a little bit of John Cooper Clarke's Chicken Town, it has a similar bitter atmosphere with a hint of humour. Great stuff!

I love the generational inevitability of this - it comes full circle. The rhyme is deceptive too - because it is dark content within rhyme; double the blow. You beauty!!

This made me giggle, the way you put today's society it's all summed up in your awesome poem. It's a shame really but I enjoyed the poem, please keep writing. Well deserved cherries here Katie x

A brilliantly written poem jolono. Some great rhythm and rhyme, telling of this tragic life on The Aylesbury Estate. You excelled yourself with this one. Jenny.

Hi Jolono what a brilliantly constructed poem. Sums up the Aylesbury (and sadly many other places in UK). Luckily my family got off there before it got that bad, but it was never great. People preferred their old terraced houses (some with rats and all) that the estate replaced. Progress eh. Linda

Awesome Brilliant Excelled Beauty Great Each descriptor selected from each commenter - says it all mate. I'll add tuppence worth too. Walrus mentions JCC and he is one of my heroes. Aylesbury sounds lovely. ;)

Jolono, Speechless mate. This is oh,so, good! Awesome, mOya

Life on the Aylesbury Estate. 'Nasty, brutish and short'. Hard hitting, well rhymed, sharply ended.    

I've now Googled the Aylesbury Estate and I can tell by the picture and the location that I either lived on the estate or in a council flat very close to it ( Walworth Road rings a bell my flat could have been in the neighbouring patch of council flats where the deadly rivals live) for about 6 weeks in the summer of 1983. I remember it felt too long a walk away from the Elephant and Castle tube with its bewildering exits. East Street market was a landmark. The flats were in row after row of boxy redbrick streets at right angles to a main street. Very geometric. We chucked our rubbish down smelly  chutes. Access to the flats if the tenant was not on the ground floor was up flights of stairs and along exterior walkways.

There were lots of  A4 size notices displayed everywhere. 'Free Albert Mariner' I think it was. He was a local big name in the BNP.

Once inside the  front door the rooms of the flat I shared with 2 other girls ( my friend who I moved in with and a touchy Australian girl who was already there) were OK. Normal size and shape. Nothing wrong with them.

Becoming a tenant was easy. Lambeth Council was giving the flats away to organised squatters groups as this was better for everyone concerned than there being lots of empty flats. We did not pay rent.

Back in 1983 I do not remember any feeling of physical violence. However the flats felt very dull and dismal. When I moved in I had started to become ill with depression. I became rapidly worse.

So being a lily-livered daughter of the suburbs I hopped it back home to Mum and Dad!     Elsie