THE ARP WARDEN'S BICYCLE CLIPS: A NEW POEM...

(The poem below was written about a WW2 teaching session I used to offer at Birmingham Museum… 

I would be in role as a soldier who had returned home on leave and was talking about my imaginary father’s wartime ‘occupation’ as an air raid warden.

I would open his bag and discuss the contents with the children in my group.

To my surprise, a pair of rusting bicycle clips, used to keep the flapping bottoms of trousers clean and undamaged, proved to be quite a talking point and some of the guesses as to what the two clips had been used for were rather eye-opening…)

The ARP Warden’s Bicycle Clips…

Carefully removing them from the canvas bag,

The watching children were invited to suggest

What they were used for by an ARP warden

And one guess was for making an arrest…

The demonstration though was inconclusive,

The bicycle clips too easily came to grief,

So the arresting child went in one direction,

As I jogged off in another like a thief…

Perhaps they were bracelets, or headbands?

Accessories a warden wouldn’t necessarily choose,

Or maybe necklaces, indeed more like chokers

And anyway, of what was my father being accused?

Perhaps they were tweezers to pull out stray hairs,

Or a surgeon’s instrument to remove a bullet from a body,

Then pinch the skin together, ready for stitches,

Though in a somewhat crude manner and rather shoddy…

They were possibly used to pinch the nostrils though,

To protect a fellow from a gassing or a smoking;

Sprung neatly onto the end of the nose

To prevent raging coughing or choking…

Maybe they were earrings, someone thought

But on my father, the wartime volunteer?

Or perhaps linked they were a percussion instrument,

Like a triangle at an orchestra’s rear?

By far the most bizarre suggestion however

Came from a young lad with humour quite dry, 

Who thought they were powerful magnets

To pull German fighters out of the sky…

I was impressed by that impression and launched 

Into a German accent and an airman’s puzzled quips:

“Hans, there’s a boy down there in Aston, 

Trying to pull us out of the sky with bicycle clips…” 

Even with the clue of being something to do with bicycles,

The use of the clips usually passed pupils by:

Were they locks for your bike left outside a shop?

Or did you cycle and throw them into a German’s eye?

One girl though suddenly realised what they were,

“They are bicycle clips, I’ve got some at home!” she announced with a bellow;

“Why on earth didn’t you suggest that before?” I asked her,

“Well you see, mine at home are yellow…”

Pete Ray

June 2018