Paddington Poetry Jam

dverse open link night

in sydney this is my home
even when i was a student
living on a shoe string

i lived here
in the days when the 'royal'
was not a trendy pub






where local ladies called ruby and pearl
with rollers in hair nets had a shandy
shelled the peas in the ladies parlour
just a working class pub



(i lived in this street as a student )




( the street where i live now)

the gentrification
has not improved the ambience
of this inner city suburb
but at  least it has has eliminated the dog turds
which one had to hopscotch over to get
to the shop previously






beautiful fireplaces,old doors and stained glass
are tossed in the street to make way for the
the sanitised art gallery show room look
favoured by the vacuously rich this season




renovation is a great topic for bragging
at dinner parties in local restaurants
none of which could be taken seriously
as far as the quality of fare goes

which brings me to thomas dux my local grocer
beautiful but in this case the nearest shop
being definitely the dearest stop so overpriced
where the price of a bag of cherries could
feed a third world family for a month



ten minutes away
is the harbour pool 'redleaf'
good for a quick swim


' Redleaf ' Harbour Pool

when i was a child
the old hungarian ladies with blue tattooed numbers on their arms
wore shower caps with half moon specs on strings breast stroking up down
up down rabbiting on to each other while we dug holes in the sand to china
they have long since gone and a part of my life here has gone with them

even though the backlanes no longer drip with frangipani and jasmine
now replaced by  the structural look -  fashionable no mess cacti
even though the 150 year old fig trees have been chopped down at the scottish hospital
to make way for development

paddington will always be that magical place for me
the place which once held all my hopes and dreams
the place of my youth
a long time ago



Scottish Hospital



Scottish Hospital