Chestnuts at Great Walstead Prep School.
I have found that more and more; when I talk of my childhood, I come to harsher and firmer interpretations of it. When I see Charlotte and James and know they are the same age now as I was, when I was living away from home, hundreds of miles away from my family, for months at a time; I find it hard to understand why that might have happened. I also remember some of the bullying and the loneliness and pure bewilderment and yet this poem, of sorts, reminds me that memories are not cast iron and that there are many ways of remembering the past. I also wish I could describe these times more aptly but I am no Ted Hughes.
Chestnuts at Great Walstead Prep School.
Scuffing the leaves, finding the soft spiked pods
Picking out the chestnuts, still fresh from their cases.
Brushing specks of earth from their shells.
Filling our pockets until they bulge.
Walking back to class holding the excess in our held out jumper made pouches.
Taking my penknife; making a slit in the tight skin and peeling.
On the flat side it comes off easily.
Around the base it needs nipped away, chip by tiny chip.
The casing gets under my finger nails and hurts.
Scraping away the membrane bit by bit
Taking it out of the brain like crevices.
Getting impatient; taking a bite
Tasting the horrible bitterness of the outside before
Meeting the sweet crispness of the inside.
Poking holes in the chestnuts while sitting round the fire in the hall
Tipping them into the embers at the edge.
Sitting on logs waiting until the unpierced one bursts with a bang.
Raking them out of the embers.
Some of the nuts are too far in and now glow redly, like coal
Some are charred black on one side.
Waiting for them to cool, tipping them from hand to hand
Breaking the brittle case, peeling them.
Popping them into our mouths; far too hot; the sweet floury taste.
The hard bits where they are burnt. Hands all smoky and covered in ash.
I can’t remember whether the leaves were green.
I can’t remember my companions.
Small, sweet echoes of a past
Where the only worry was when the bell would go to send us to bed
Where matron tucked me in and I ignored the crying of the boy besides me who wouldn’t stop missing his home.
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(Photo: because I have none of chestnuts so instead, a happy one at Kilchurn Castle Argyll Dec 2020)
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