The Belt Room

By Glenn Telfer

A collection of poems inspired by a Scottish education in the ‘60’s.

1982: Time, Gentlemen, please. There will be no more belting of children. From now on they will be belting us!

The Glasgow poet considers the belting days. And in particular the connection between academic improvement and thrashing the living daylights out of children. He is well qualified to comment, having received well over 1000 rounds in his fairly average school career. (Think of a Vickers machine gun on a tripod and 4 boxes of ammo).

The final record of a pedagogic technique whose recipients are on life’s home run.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Glenn Telfer
• Release date: Apr 7, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311846969

Glenn Telfer

I am now almost fully grown, being born in 1956 in working-class Glasgow, Scotland (from Kinning Park, Dennistoun and Ibrox, if you’re asking). The hammer and tongs, coal-powered world I grew up in is as gone as Troy, and with it the industrial working class that served it. What seemed so solid and forever, disappeared almost overnight and is rapidly becoming unknowable except through people like me. The hasty departure of a way of life and its replacement by globalized uncertainty is both the background to my life and the raw material of my art. Considering what’s gone, what’s here, what’s yet to come is what I’m about; itemising the bill of life through my writing. Other poets have explored this too, but none are as like the poet as he is himself. This is my special qualification. Imagine being able to write a book? Even when I was a wee boy throwing stones and playing street football I wanted to be a writer. And all the while I thought I was living my life backwards and sideways I was actually tracing a Celtic knotwork to here. Whatever the reason for this want, this writing may be the cure. May be is also maybe not.

Book preview

Red Coat, Black Shirt

the cut of the cloth and colour

scarlet enough to burn the eyes

brought distinction to

the wearer, but not alas

cheering crowds or covetous

looks the sort desired

it looked red iculous and

took courage to wear

this uniform nicked,

or more likely robbed, from

a Butlin’s employee last summer

covering a once white shirt shaded

by neglect like a shoe-rag

but, as she so often does,

Providence stepped in to

provide the compensating balance

of pride that matched his poverty

blow for blow until it mastered it

by fierceness

in his falling down Glasgow

tenement slum he was prickly

as a highland chieftain, with

the warrior skills to match

his forehead with a briefly

mocking face and finding

that his jacket, while wet

as a sod with the juice pumping

from Tony’s burst-asunder nose,

its colour proved a bloody camouflage

and was fit for the next class

without comment

while his better dressed

semi-conscious opponent

lay like a heap of red rags in

the corner of an abattoir

hardly aware that the reputation

of Butlins had been restored.

The Belt Room

Nothing?

You are wearing the wrong face

for doing nothing.

I’ll give you another face

that matches better.

Hands out!

Teaching by the example

frequently repeated at home

corralling their thoughts

blocking bad choices

at life’s daily crossroads

by a strip of leather.

Teaching manners especially

where ladies are concerned.

You are aware that you did

NOT hold the door open

for the fairer sex; hands out.

Believe me, Mr Munro,

you will pay more than

this in later life if the

tawse here cannot impress

on your mind the danger

of disrespecting women.

Teaching philosophy from the school

of sarcasm.

Teaching posture as a branch

of military discipline.

Teaching respect of institutions

like British Rail

to students and passengers alike

by belting the former on the platform

while on a school trip.

Pegging esteem at its right level

invariably but