A boozer within
hockling distance
From the Tyne.
Now taken-down
And made into
A roundabout, a
Road widening scheme.
Whatever happened
To Slalom D ?
That super strength.
That would have you
Spinning on your back.
Because that’s what
Happened to the Doll.
It was spun around
And taken-down,
Smashed to smithereens.
In the basement
is the Loftus Room.
Where a grand piano
waits to be played.
There Swan demonstrated
the first electric light.
Forget about Edison
and all that shite.
This was the place
it happened first.
Where a Pet Shop Boy
sneaked down for a smoke.
Where upstairs is a library lined
with busts of marble men.
There’s a hush and a musty smell
of old books and floor polish.
A lady serving biscuits, coffee and tea,
and we sit round a large table reading.
On a Saturday morning at the Lit and Phil.
At weekends she worked
The Handyside Arcade.
Selling postcards and badges,
saying: right-on and peace and love.
And she smelt of magic,
that we came to imagine.
Like a place in Morocco,
but what did we know.
Oh she would pout like Bardot
I mean Bridget Bardot.
All French girl
transplanted to English.
So on weekends and whenever days,
whenever she was there.
We took turns to
visit her counter.
And that’s how it was
until one day she went.
Taking with her a piece
of our boyhoods.
But in truth I believe,
through manhood and middle years.
She inhabits our dreams,
at weekends through to whenever.
[Postscript]
The Handyside Arcade in Newcastle
was the haunt of Hippies, then Punks.
It was demolished in 81 to make way,
for a big nothing.
Original photo by kind permission of Skida
I remember the feeling well,
and the smell, a musty stink,
and the lady ladling out
cups of tea,
and the busts of important men
atop roman plinths,
and the racks of books,
and the bit below stairs,
the Loftus Room,
a large black grand piano.
A time when everything that’s read
comes from a comic,
book and newspaper.
