Let’s do this together

After the huge outcry at poetry being made optional at GCSE level next year, the pencil pushers have done a reverse ferret and decreed it back on the books again.

My mother-in-law and retired headmistress, Sarah, declared, “They’d be better off dropping English and just teaching poetry”, which is very romantic but probably wouldn’t do much for the nation’s spelling. Obviously I had to put my hand up to say this.

There’s no doubt that poetry is good for our mental health. Children use it to express their feelings in a way technical drawing or double maths never will. And it’s a constant companion to our older community who use it to preserve precious memories and ease their loneliness.

At school they got tired of me penning love odes to Duran Duran’s Simon Le Bon and sent me to a Saturday workshop to write poetry. This meant getting up early at the weekend to sit in a classroom with a bunch of other surly kids who would have rather been out shoplifting in Woolies than analysing Wordsworth’s stanzas.

But eventually I learned to value those mornings, and the many poets and authors who gave up their time to teach a bunch of spotty London kids about rhythm, meaning and the colour of words.

Come to think of it, I never did hear back from Simon. He must be kicking himself now…

Email siobhan.mcnally@mirror.co.uk or write to Community Corner, PO Box 791, Winchester SO23 3RP.

The 1940s will always be remembered as a more innocent time – tea dances, gravy stockings, Vera Lynn singalongs – and according to reader Dave Groves from Hucknall, Notts, selling unidentified white powder to school children.

Dave writes, “I’ve loved reading what folk have been remembering. When I was a child in the 1940s in Harborne, Birmingham, we had a little sweet shop which sold a fine white powder called Lingo Fizz.

“You licked your finger, dipped it into the powder and sucked it off. It went pink and fizzed, and two ounces lasted forever.

“For a change you could buy a Tyler’s lollipop, or, if you had a bit more money, you could visit Morgan’s, the only shop that sold Keiller chocolate fingers, which were chocolate-covered fruit cream sticks. I must have kept the firm in business!

“Also Caley Tray (six chocolates moulded into a bar) was another favourite, and I think was made in Norwich.”

While Sue and Larry Oliver have more painful memories of their childhood treats. “Merry Maid caramels – mouthwatering filling removers!” they said, possibly through gritted dentures.

Join our Bring Them Back campaign and write to me at siobhan.mcnally@ mirror.co.uk