Making Do with Dusty Springfield

Gold cherry

By Turlough

Sun, 05 Jan 2025
  • 372 reads
17 comments
 

 

Making Do with Dusty Springfield

 

Gravestones leant against the red brick wall

Like dockers waiting for work

A redundant cemetery, reborn Ayresome Gardens

Flaunting football pitch and swings

Folks weren’t dying like they used to

 

‘At night I dream we are kissing

Then when I wake up you’re missing,

That’s what Paul sings’ you said

‘But I only love George’

Skipping towards the rocking horse

 

But where would you be tomorrow

In your plastic real leather jacket?

Did George have a bright red jumper

Like mine, knitted by his Nan

Gone bobbly down the front?

 

‘Our Dad smokes, could be singing

But doesn’t even talk

I wish our Mam had a pop star man

Like I’ll have’ you said

‘When I’ve married George’

 

‘When John and Paul stop singing

George plays his guitar on his own

We’ll have peach sundaes at Rea's caff

And if we’ve nowt much to say

Then he can play his guitar’

 

Beckoned by shops on Linthorpe Road

The other kids ran off

Faces pressed to Lucozade glass

Yearned elusive Matchbox cars or

Sindy dolls faded by imagined sun

 

‘George would never run off like that’

You sighed

‘George would stay and play his guitar’

I didn’t run off like that

I could sigh too

 

Patricia and me alone in the park

But she saw only George

St Philomena’s bells the only sound

Plenty more fish, I thought

And Dusty Springfield had nicer eyes

 

Image: My own photograph of George Harrison’s face on a window at The Beatles Story Museum in Liverpool. Behind him is the broad majestic Mersey and sunny Birkenhead.

 

Further Reading: Subsequent to this, I wrote about how Ayresome Gardens came to be, and how that green oasis near Middlesbrough town centre hid dark secrets from the past.

Eleven Thousand Silent Playmates

Certificate 12
Poem
Poetry in Commotion
Autobiography

Comments

Submitted by seashore on

I really like this. As you know, very much my kind of thing. Nostalgia at its best.x

Submitted by Turlough on

Many thanks our Coral. 

I've still got a stack of nostalgia to go at so there'll no doubt be more. It's just a shame that nostalgia's not as good as it used to be.

Tx

Turlough

Submitted by Insertponceyfre... on

This is how memories are best painted - little dots of paint which make one beautiful whole. Thank you Turlough. Is there a way you could edit your lyric quote down to three words so our ABCTales copyright expert won't have kittens?

 

Submitted by Turlough on

Just done it! I hope I'm legal now.

laugh

Turlough

Submitted by Insertponceyfre... on

Thanks for responding so swiftly - all fine now

 

Submitted by Insertponceyfre... on

This wonderful piece is our social media Pick of the Day!

Please share if you enjoyed it as much as I did

 

Submitted by Turlough on

As John Lennon once sang, 'And all I have to do, is thank you girl'.

(Is it alright to say that?)

laugh

 

Turlough

Submitted by airyfairy on

Strictly speaking, no lyrics at all, only titles can be quoted. But three words is unlikely to get us thrown in jail.

The kittens are doing nicely, thank you.

Great poem, by the way.

Submitted by Turlough on

Many thanks AF. 

I'll keep all this in mind for any future musical dabblings. Perhaps if I concentrate on the works of Russ Conway. 

laugh

Turlough

Submitted by Insertponceyfre... on

We do, and I’m very grateful to her!

 

Submitted by Mark Say on

.... and a voice that can still make me go weak at the knees.  Her greatest hits is one of our regulars for ing car journeys.

 

Submitted by Turlough on

Spot on there Mark! Dusty was an incredible woman with an incredible voice but a sad life. I've a bundle of her CDs that I never tire of, each containing some of those songs that make the hairs stand up on the back of my neck.

 

Turlough

Submitted by celticman on

ah, we used to have a real leather plastic couch. It was kinda brownish. Tanned 

 

Submitted by Turlough on

We got our couch in Slough. It was a Slough couch.

Turlough

Submitted by Di_Hard on

Love

"Gravestones leant against the red brick wall

Like dockers waiting for work"

and this bit reminds me of so many times at school

"‘At night I dream we are kissing

Then when I wake up you’re missing,

That’s what Paul sings’ you said

‘But I only love George’

Skipping towards the rocking horse"

When I first started at big school, there was a lovely girl called Barbara who was very kind, and twice my height, (she must have been in the senior school) and who in my memory always had a hockeystick. While waiting for our school bus, which was ALWAYS late, she would keep us from thinking about our numb fingers and toes by telling us how she was going to marry prince Andrew. Where they would meet, what she would say, what he would say. All the helicopter rides and how she would teach him hockey.
Dusty Springfield is a much better dream

 

Submitted by Turlough on

By jingo! Barbara certainly dodged a bullet there! 

Did you ever meet her after the point at which she must have realised she'd have to choose again?

As for Dusty... well I've since learnt that I wouldn't have been her type.

 

Turlough

Submitted by Di_Hard on

She really did! I never met her after she left school, though I know she got married, and had children. Dusty might not have been your type, either - would she have been ok with huge, poisonous millipede things and power cuts and cats breaking the loo?