Ian Anstice
Winsford
Grey dual carriageway winds through the town
Seventies estates, in grey and brown
But the natives are friendly, the people are nice.
Wilmslow or Winsford? I would not think twice.
Victorine Lejeune-Stubbs
St Andrews is a Methodist Church
With very nice Ladies
After all the Church's duties
They organised jumbo sales, coffee mornings,
And afternoon tea with all the trimmings
They are very kind and hospitable
But in their duties very able
Every month, there is also a cameo
Where everybody is welcome to come and go
It's a great pleasure for a stranger
To be with Ladies who are so eager
To give understanding and friendliness
I really thank you all for your kindness
Victorine Lejeune Stubbs
Winsford Salt of the Earth
The flashes sparkle their silvery brine water
Toward the beautiful and mighty river Weaver
On the meadow bank beside the green peninsula
I had difficulty to imagine
The subterranean world of salt mines
Which converted two centuries ago Winsford
Into Cheshire's most prolific salt producer.
West of the Weaver, up the hill in Over
St Chad's my parish church still nestles
Amid green and pleasant fields
It's a oasis of lush tranquillity, within
The rolling pastures of the Vale Royal
Where I like to dwell on my thoughts and poetry.
When the One Pound notes were issued
They were nicknamed Bradburies
From Lord John Bradbury of Winsford
So I am not the only one to be proud
To have my name associated with Winsford
This extraordinary place, salt of the earth
Which is now my treasured home, my delightful oasis.
Winsford
Afternoon tea:
scones and jam and clotted cream.
He turns over the paper napkin
and draws a teapot.
Spout to the left – Chester, he says –
handle to the right:
Macclesfield, Congleton.
A knobbed lid on the top:
Warrington.
He marks the centre with a single cross.
That’s Winsford. Where I come from.
Thirty years later I am asked the same question.
I turn over the paper napkin
and draw my Cheshire teapot.
The single cross.
There, I say,
That’s where I come from.
Writer-in-Residence Spring 1990 - Winsford
St. Luke's Hospice
"Hospice" had hissed of disinfectant,
sheets so clean they chafe, and colours
as the colour blind see them.
Like "Whiston" where my mother, fragile,
catheterised, stumbled through last weeks
of a ten year acquaintance with death.
But here the smell is ground coffee,
perfume of flowers inside and out.
In the garden a fountain burbles.
The patients, primly dressed, glance
through newspapers, play scrabble, dominoes.
The nurses dress wounds, bathe, take photos
like doting parents. The hairdresser, masseur,
priest, are cheerful visitors dropping in
to this family house with its bright pictures.
A lace tablecloth and flowers celebrate lunch,
tea is poured into fine china: the shells
of its border remember the inaccessible sea.
The conversation turns on the weather,
constipation, what drugs today, deaths
past and approaching, or fended off.
We're soothed by the afternoon snores of men,
the rasp of tapestry wool dragged through canvas,
the whisper of knitting. |