50s Britain
50s Britain. Dark, threadbare, exhausted
Houses and somewhere in the distance a
Wireless; its heavy 1930s glass accumulator
Bubbling out the last few volts before need
Of recharge
Housewives Choice, Worker's Playtime
Listen with Mother, The Billy Cotton Band
Show. No end of programmes geared to raise
The morale of a war-weary nation. A time
When radio variety was at its height and loved
By millions
Come nightfall, should the accumulator be back
From the charging station and following BBC
Radio Newsreel. There came a happy choice of
Evening entertainment: Radio Luxembourg or
AFN (American Forces Network) glowing spots
On the dial where popular music streamed over
The airwaves and from where Rock & Roll
Launched itself across the Atlantic
So long ago and yet still fresh in many a heart
A time of abject poverty, scarcity of food, milk
Rationing, make-do-and-mend and no bananas at
The Co-op. Undaunted by whatever the remnants
Of war might throw at them people stuck together
Looked out for each other and put a capital C in
Community. Little money about at the time but
A glimmer of hope shone at the end of the tunnel
Beginning perhaps with the Festival of Britain in
1951 when people at last began believing in the
Possibility of a brighter future
Lee Cooper jeans landed on our shops,
Maxwell House coffee brightened our breakfast
And the first supermarkets began to appear
Meanwhile, something stirred in Liverpool
And early in the next decade The Beatles burst
Onto the scene and The Liverpool Sound was
Born and the rest as they say is history
© Joseph G Dawson
07/05/2017
