What You Do With Days

By Steven Kay

This is a book of poems soaked in the spirit of Sheffield through and through, then and now, by Michael Glover, a Sheffielder by birth, and author of the bestselling 111 Places in Sheffield That You Shouldn't Miss.

It listens in to local talk, watches how local folk booze and goster, frolic, caper, saunter around, let their hair down or get it done specially for Saturday night out on the town, or just sit back in Millhouses Park in the sun, gently doing nowt much at all. Take a sip.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Steven Kay
• Release date: Aug 17, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463818756

Steven Kay

I aspire to publish books that fill a gap in the market: novels, collection of short-stories and non-fiction that the mainstream publishers might not take risks on. I intend to never compromise on quality of the writing though.

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A Personal Note About This Book

These poems about the city of my birth and growing were written over a long span of years, perhaps about thirty in all. The last of them turned up very recently. That is how it is with poems. They just turn up – like uninvited guests. Or like old friends. Somewhere between the two. How fresh the past comes to seems as you grow into your life! Almost more vividly present than the present itself, which can be a little hazy and undependable by comparison.

This book is divided into various sections. The first three demand at least a modicum of explanation because they are particular locations, two to the unfashionable north-east of the city, and one to the more prosperous south-west, where muck never hung in the air or besmirched freshly laundered sheets. 45 Coningsby Road in Fir Vale is the small terraced house where I lived until I was nineteen years old. These poems are set either in that house or within its immediate neighbourhood. That little terraced house was small, cold, damp and delightful to a child who knew nothing else. Its staircase up to the two bedrooms and attic upstairs was terrifyingly steep, which was fun. Mountaineering in all but name. A lot of people lived there with me, and when they rowed, as they often did, the racket of those voices in contention made the walls bow outwards. Almost.

I went to school at Firs Hill Primary. I was a dutiful boy, quiet, none too assertive, often in fear of big, brassy lasses, and towards the lower end of the second division when it came to skills involving legs and feet. 43 Green Oak Road Totley, where my mother and her husband went to live after the purposeless demolition of our side of Coningsby Road – it was demolished in order to facilitate the widening of Herries Road, which never happened – was quieter, and nudged up against magnificent countryside. It was also a small, tuneless box of a place to me, without much spirit or even a modicum of mayhem. I missed the cramped dampness of Coningsby Road. And so the poems in this section feel a little more lonely and less convivial. Most of the rest of the book finds me going into town with my collar up, listening in to what other people say to each other, observing what they do, how they walk or caper or booze or frolic, and generally sniffing around and enjoying everything that the big city of Sheffield promises when it brazenly winks back at you.

Michael Glover 2019

45 Coningsby Road

Back Yard Scene, 45 Coningsby Road, Fir Vale, Sheffield 1958

My mother ran and whisked the washing in.

The soot flakes fell, black snow from a grey sky.

The beer barrels came trundling along,

With surly men in aprons by their side.

The shelter that had kept the Germans out

Stood staunch and ugly by the lavvy doors.

We crept in there to hear our voices shout

Out swear words, tell real ghost stories, lose balls.

An outside lavvy’s not a bad thing though,

Especially when the greens make you feel sick.

I stuffed them in my cheeks like hamsters do,

And shot them out in bits. The water flicked.

2

A Right Old Back Door Scene

You don’t have to say anything.

You’ve said more than enough already,

So much so that I switched off for most of it.

If you want to, just do it.

Why bother about what I think?

You never did before.

There’s an open door in