This is actually 1959, but it gets us all in. Dad, Me, Mum and Chris. Photo from Edie Clark collection.

When my parents became the second tenants

of one of the first homes fit for heroes to live in

some time in 1957,

they had to take it as they found it

aged beyond its years

1 cracked, stone floored scullery

1 indoor coal cupboard

1 outside toilet

a pantry under the stairs

bare floorboards, splintery and grey

round, brown bakelite switches, hard, chunky, glowing like dulled conkers

black iron fire places

and, here and there, rusty nails driven into bare walls to hang up pots, pans, hats or coats.

My Dad set to work, digging up weeds, planting potatoes and runner beans – bright scarlet flowers amid leaves waving like wings

building cupboards

planing, sawing, sanding, plastering, painting, papering

smells of blowtorch burning acrid, sweet paint and hot sawdust, damp earth and cut grass, squelchy paste and crisp, dry paper.

My Mum cranked the mangle handle in the steaming scullery

pulling boiled sheets from fat iron pans with wooden tongs

smelling of lavender and soap

washing, scrubbing, polishing grimy surfaces

putting out washed milk bottles that gleamed like a Grenadier Guardsman’s boots

and fresh, fresh laundry flying high on lines stretched between old ship’s masts, newly painted burgundian Green.

I was 3.

My part in this spring offensive

rejuvenating the prematurely decrepit

was to polish a tile

singular and special for being deep crimson red

cracked and broken, but with a leathery glow as though it was made of melted down cricket balls, red boot toe caps, the heart of a winter hearth

just inside the front door, alone as a relic of happiness

that I could make gleam and smile

if I polished it hard enough on my hands and knees

just like Mum.

When the time came too soon

to neatly nail hardboard over the grooved wooden doors and paint them slickly over with easily cleaned pastel gloss

replace the bakelite relics with neat, flat squares of snappy grey plastic – switched on with a whispering click, not an emphatic clunk

and entomb my tile under clean, new lino

it felt like burying an emotion under a wipe clean surface

and the spirit of Barry Bucknell bestrode the world like a collosus.

August 2005

Any old iron? Any old iron?

Any, any, any old iron?

You look sweet

Talk about a treat

You look dapper from your napper to your feet

Dressed in style

In your brand new tile

And your father’s old green tie on…

Well I wouldn’t give you tuppence for your old watch chain

Old iron, old iron…

Popular song of the time.