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Cardboard Models

They used to appear

In the classroom:

Cardboard boxes,

Announcing their contents:

Corn Flakes, Weetabix, Rowntree’s jellies, custard by Bird’s;

Brought in daily by pupils:

The completely practical and the totally absurd.

They used to roll

Around the classroom:

Cardboard tubes,

Shed of their layers

Of toilet tissue, Bacofoil and stubby kitchen roll;

Commandeered by the boys,

Making models, their goal.

Oadby’s grandstand roof reminded me

Of those ‘craft afternoons’

At Audley Junior School.

The girls left to endure sewing

Then I sneaked off with the lads to an isolated playground,

Behind the Junior School,

To play football, without anyone knowing…

Oadby’s grandstand roof reminded me

Of crafted, cardboard buildings

At Audley Junior School.

The boys were very much in a hurry,

Just weeks before the end of summer’s term,

Flimsy, painted roofs glued onto cardboard walls

Appeared in the Junior School,

The sparse ‘craft lessons’ meant hurry and scurry…

My classroom was a hut, near the Infants’ rear playground, so the Year 4 lads and I would sidle out of the doorway and play an hour of great soccer, leading to a mass craft blitz in the final weeks of June, to create models and woodwork for the end of year exhibition. They were brilliant. It’s what they did…

Oadby’s small lean-to grandstand somehow reminded me of the pointless cardboard models, which I hated…

I wrote this in February 2011, on the occasion of my first visit to Oadby's ground, a 1-4 loss to Dunkirk...