Northampton - A History Lesson

I love history. I hate history books.  I love Northampton. I hate Northampton.

I love a bit of prose, though.

Northampton.

1279.

Ages ago. 

Before the Reformation and even Coronation Street.


The Jews crucify a young boy.

And Northampton folk, ever thorough and fair,

Drag fifty Jews through their own thoroughfare.

Gold Street turns red as they’re drawn at horse’s tails and hanged.


I’m drawn, myself, to Gold Street 700 years later.

Though I seek biology, I’m too young for history.


Northampton.

1886.

Still a while for that Bet Lynch smile.


Charles Bradlaugh, MP for this borough.

He wouldn’t lie and ally to a God.

Enter party-loving Northampton folk to start the hokey-cokey

Four times in and out he went as we shook Parliament all about.


Joyce supported him.

Gandhi attended his funeral.

Dossers and drunks now accompany his statue

Forever searching and lying and trying to ally to a God.



Northampton.

1941.

Nineteen years to go.


A returning Stirling bomber. Crippled and circling

Enters Gold Street at 100 feet and not rising.

Wood Hill turns grey metal where it landed

Northampton’s one and only raid by one of its own.


As kids, one of the only nightclubs we could enter 

Was in Gold Street named after this bomber

How I wished a German Fokker had crashed

We’d have never got in!