There’s a first time you hear a word
A brief, crazy time when that word drifts free
With all its spikes wobbles and and curves
A moment where it bobs around
Loose of meaning
Just a sound
Just a thing unto itself
Alive
It doesn’t last long
Words solidify
Form themselves around meanings and objects and emotions and items of furniture
And sort of die
Associations capture sounds in sticky webs
The thrilling nonsense of dancing consonants and vowels
Calcifies into everyday usage
Becomes functional
And you forget, for the most part
That first time, when they were just a glorious noise
However
I do remember where I was when I first heard the word
Wakefield
It sounded so mysterious
I was ten, I think, and in tremendous pain.
I’d fallen onto concrete, through a roof,
And though confused I remember a grown up saying
“We need to get these kids to Pinderfields,
In Wakefield”
Wakefield! Place of healing. Far away.
It sounded flat, and dark, and grey.
Get these kids to Wakefield!
Rewind a bit.
These kids? What kids?
What kids have tumbled through a roof?
What kind of roof can a kid tumble through?
Roofs are solid, surely?
This one wasn’t.
Not entirely.
It was the roof of a garage that belonged to my friend John
Or more precisely to his father, his progenitor
Except it wasn’t a roof of a garage
Because we were Blake’s 7
And this was the flight deck of the starship Liberator
Blake’s 7 is a TV series from 1981
It’s set in space
We were pretending to be Blakes 7. In space.
I say Blake’s 7
I didn’t have six mates
Blake’s 3.
Four if you count the milk crate
Which to all intents and purposes
Played ORAC
ORAC was the computer in Blake’s 7
He was the same shape as a milk crate
We were ten. Leave me alone.
Who’s we? you ask, delighted at my tale
Despite its lack of evident structure
It was me and John and Lisa
That’s who
John was my friend and Lisa was his sister
Though it was only me and Lisa who went tumbling through
Because it turns out we weren’t sitting on a roof
We were sitting on a window covered with a sheet
Which just looked like a roof
But sadly, for Lisa and me, lacked the robust, child supporting qualities
You would have got from a roof
I hurt my back, I was otherwise fine
Lisa fractured her skull so I assumed she was dying
And that’s why she had to go
To Wakefield
Lisa went to Wakefield and got her head fixed
My friendship with John was gone by 1986
We moved on, we grew up
I became friends with Paul
Blake’s 7 was cancelled after series four
And when I was 21 I moved to the town
That first spoke its name when I was
Lying in pain on the ground
And it’s where I have stayed
And it’s where I lie now
I am lost and I’m found there
And my fracture remains
And this random word, “Wakefield”, has settled to mean
“I am home in this place”
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