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Carling with Cathy: Written and spoken.

Posted: Sun Aug 18, 2019 8:28 am
by Gyppo
Here's the soundcloud link
https://soundcloud.com/user-593821894/c ... cathy-best

And here's the words.  (A few more words crept in because they seemed to improve the flow when spoken.

Carling with Cathy

Sitting on my Gran's gate
in the sunshine,
sharing a can of Carling.
Black label no less,
with the girl next door.

Tall enough to get served
at fourteen, and a 'smooth git',
a polished little lady-killer
(in manners at least)
until I tripped over my own hormones.

Her mum came out, 
screaming like a banshee,
calling me words I'd never heard
and banished her to her room.

I went through to Gran's back garden.
Cathy was already leaning from her window.
So I perched on the washhouse roof,
passed the can up to her,
and we played Romeo and Juliet
'til the can was empty.

Gyppo

Re: Carling with Cathy: Written and spoken.

Posted: Sun Aug 18, 2019 7:07 pm
by ajduclos
Ahhhh.... such similar backgrounds, as different as they may be - beautiful !!!! \

Aj

Re: Carling with Cathy: Written and spoken.

Posted: Sun Aug 18, 2019 7:16 pm
by Colm Roe
Nice one Gyppo.
Carling Black Label brings back some memories...but I started a bit later than 14  :o
It's a charming poem. And hormones have a lot to answer for  :lol:  We are animals  :D

Re: Carling with Cathy: Written and spoken.

Posted: Wed Sep 04, 2019 6:27 pm
by poet-e
As an American, I didn't know:
  • can of Carling (assumed beer?)
  • smooth git (like grit??; couldn't find online def)
  • washhouse
But nice imagery/story.

Re: Carling with Cathy: Written and spoken.

Posted: Wed Sep 04, 2019 7:12 pm
by Colm Roe
Carling is beer. (Lager)

Git (slang) ... Git is a term of insult with origins in English denoting an unpleasant, silly, incompetent, annoying, senile, elderly or childish person. As a mild oath it is roughly on a par with prat and marginally less pejorative than berk.

 Washhouse an outhouse or room in which clothes are washed.

Re: Carling with Cathy: Written and spoken.

Posted: Wed Sep 04, 2019 7:28 pm
by Gyppo
In answer to your questions...  Although Colm has more or less covered it.

1)  Carling was a well known lager back then in the UK.

2)  Smooth git:  Git is short for illegitimate, therefore a smooth git was a smooth bastard.  Like a lot of British slang an insult can become almost a term of endearment, or at least respect, amongst friends.

3)   Wash house.  A lot of terrace houses built in the fifties or earlier had a brick outbuilding attached at the back of the house, this contained a wash-boiler in the days before washing machines were commonplace, and usually a mangle as well for squeezing the worst of the wet from clothes, blankets, etc.

The wash boiler was sometimes fired by a gas ring, but allowed you to light a fire underneath the copper wash tub if there was no gas supply.  Gran's still had the hearth, but there was a gas ring on a thick rubber pipe from a spare gas tap in the kitchen.  The hose had to be replaced every few years as it started to perish.

The wash-houses were usually in handed pairs between each pair of houses along a terrace, built as a single unit but divided by a breeze block wall.  Each pair shared a communal flat roof, so I could climb up from Gran's side of the fence between the back gardens and step across to sit under Cathy's window. 

In a hot summer the tarry roof topping became soft and slippery and sometimes migrated onto your clothes or shoes.

I went back for a look around just a few years ago and a lot of the front gardens have been turned into carparks, because the roads weren't wide enough for people to park on both sides.  Back when they were built, immediately post WW2, not that many people had a car.  Men went to work on bicycles and women stayed at home.  A different world ;-)

Gyppo

Re: Carling with Cathy: Written and spoken.

Posted: Mon Sep 09, 2019 5:53 pm
by poet-e
You English ;)

Glad I asked.  Thanks for explaining!  Footnotes may help...

Re: Carling with Cathy: Written and spoken.

Posted: Wed Sep 11, 2019 2:22 pm
by Deb
Thank you for taking me back to my younger years. I was there too, in a different space but in the same place.


I enjoyed this piece and will be back to enjoy its lighthearted nature.



~Deb