Aoife's Blog: A Morning at the Charlie Ratchford Centre
February 9, 2011
On Friday I went to the Charlie Ratchford Centre, a resource centre for Camden residents aged 60+ that is located just off Adelaide Road. Here's a poem I've written about the people I met and that I hope captures some of the spirit of the place.
A Morning At The Charlie Ratchford Centre
I'm given the grand tour by a soft spoken man
they call Magic who tells me he's moving,
meaning he's lost his job because Camden
is closing five out of eight of its havens
for the older person. He whisks me round
through octogenarian IT, drama classes,
dances, pottery, poetry, politics, negotiating
wheelchairs and lack of staff with considerable grace.
Yolanda knows what it is to be mispronounced,
one friend calls her Heathrow, another Atlantis.
She chuckles I'm either an airport or a lost continent,
I'm not sure which. Yesterday she went to a tea dance,
ballroom, salsa, Latin, bit of disco, but when she got there
she discovered she'd brought two left shoes. Not that
it stopped her, she just laughed and danced in her bare feet
the way she did back when she was still a young girl.
She says when her husband died at the age of thirty five,
she gave her twelve year old daughter two shillings
to buy a sunflower in a pot, a tiny piece of happier times
which still sits on her shelf way up out of reach.
Now when her daughter, aged fifty five, comes to visit,
she asks 'have you really still got that old thing?'
And she doesn't know how to expand the details
of what it means it to her, to explain why this present
is as precious as the day she first needed a gift of sunshine,
the day she found herself a freshly plucked widow
planted in the long, dry shadow of grief.
Julia's not bothered about introductions
when what she needs is coffee.
'Bit of a rough day, Julia?'
Julia raises one perfectly drawn eyebrow
and replies with slow defiance,
'Every day is a bloody rough day.'
She doesn't think much happened on Adelaide Road
though there was that murder in the 1800s, just nearby,
when she was a child they'd never go down there
because this woman had been killed in her house.
She understands the streets of history, the Primrose Hill tunnel
you can still see if you look over the wall near St Mary's,
a marvellous piece of architecture hidden unless
you remember how to look. That's what time does,
disguises the places you once thought you knew.
Brian says Charlie Ratchford was a mayor millionaire
who owned all the land around but he died a few weeks
before the centre opened so never knew it was named
for him. This woman Phyllis was born in the house
that was here before they built it. She had a fish
and chip shop and every morning she'd scrub
the whole place spotless. One time just when
she'd finished she saw this customer's dog
wee all down the wall so she went up to the owner
and said here's the mop and bucket, clean up that mess.
And he did because you didn't get on the wrong side of Phyllis,
formidable she was and she liked things done properly.
If she was here, she'd be able to tell us a thing or two.
He asks if we've read about that woman who kissed
her boyfriend for the very first time and died. Can a kiss
be fatal or should you not believe everything you read
in the papers? Julia jokes that's what they used to say
about Diana, that she kissed a prince and found a frog.
Yolanda tells us how when she was in Venezuela
one time there was a frog in the sink
and she thought about kissing it but figured,
knowing her luck, it'd be poisonous
and before she'd made up her mind to risk it,
silly creature jumped up and disappeared.
Brian shows us his Valentine card from the girls
at the desk where he gets his injections, he has
to go there every day so they all know him.
Cancer troubles, heart troubles but he's never
had a Valentine before and isn't it good
how every single one of them signed it?
He doesn't think a poem has to rhyme
but he likes that they took the time
to make sure that this one does.
George believes in rhyming. He was in the RAF
and is now writing his life story in verse.
He's ninety two and he's written pages and pages
but when you've lived this long there's just a lot to tell.
Once he won a poetry competition and the prize
was a caddy of Scottish tea. He got to meet
John Betjeman who was very pleasant and shook him
by the hand. He always remembers that.
Mary came from Galway over forty years ago,
Galway to Camden town, blimey, that's a long way
and a long time. Julia says they used to say about
Camden that it was a shame the Luftwaffe missed it.
You'd all the Irish men in Arlington House,
packed into the tiniest of rooms and too proud
to go home. Now it's the East Europeans
sleeping rough because they bought
that old myth about London with its streets of gold.
Julia reckons it's alright for Lord Sugar and his lot,
not so great for those who had to rebuild after the war.
George makes a strange sound, deep in his throat,
and we ask if he's alright. He's not and I find myself
holding a black bucket up to his mouth for him to be sick.
His skin has gone the palest shade of yellow
and he's shaking as someone runs to call an ambulance.
He opens his eyes and says to me, 'I vanished, didn't I?'
The paramedics arrive but he's not conscious as they
move him out. We think it's a stroke but nobody's sure.
George lives alone, if he'd not been here with us,
he'd have no chance at all. This man who in his nineties
writes poetry and who fought the Nazis. Maybe David
should think about that before he goes closing down
all these centres of history and dignity. Maybe we
should all think about how fragile our losses are.
by Aoife Mannix
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