VERTICAL HOLD... (My poem about my fixing the TV picture from the loft in Shard End, Birmingham...)

 Vertical Hold…

(Shard End, Birmingham...)

“Hell’s Bells…” was

Heard from the loft

As he adjusted an aerial, which

Tickled me

Actually,

Though I knew he was mad…

The bellowing 

Continued

As he enquired and demanded, which

Scared me,

Certainly, 

Although he was actually my dad…

I tarried in fear

At the foot of the stair,

Nervous eyes on a lounge mirror,

Mum reclined on her chair.

She was uncertain about what she should say

As the vertical hold lost its self-control,

So she muttered, “That’s better…”

As images continued to roll.

Clearly I took the collective flack

 Between mum’s indecision and dad’s vexation,

Allied to his impatience, ill temper

 And his vicious, helpless frustration.

“By jingo…”

His distant verbal aggression

Rasped from the rafters

Worried me,

Truthfully,

Though I knew his mistake…

The reliance

Burdened 

My timid, unassuming mother, which

Saddened me,

Definitely,

Alyhough I refereed for her sake…

Pete Ray

If the television picture was poor and rolling and not fixed by my father leaning across the set to adjust, it was a climb into the loft for him. 

It was a difficult place to be working and 

communicating with the lesser beings downstairs. 

Mum was torn between not getting it right and 

annoying him further by delaying his sojourn there. 

I was on the stairs, attempting to see a reflection of the TV in a lounge mirror but basically I was reliant upon mum’s understandable hesitancy… 

THE MIRROR...
WITH THE LOUNGE DOOR OPEN, I COULD STAND AT THE BOTTOM OF THE STAIRS AND JUST ABOUT SEE THE TV REFLECTED IN IT...
RIDICULOUS...

Crazy days…

MY PARENTS & ME AT THEIR 25TH WEDDING ANNIVERSARY PARTY, 1968...