SCOTT
We used to go for chips every dinner time.
We’d cross Merthyr Mawr Road, then cut in the back of the tennis club.
Then by the side of the river, into town.
There was a chip shop with a pool hall above.
It’s a rock club now.
You may know it.
We’d bomb down there and wander back
Stopping on the bridge, sitting on the stones in Newbridge
Fields for a bit
With chip cones steaming off vinegar in our hands.
One day you said
D’you think you go on after you die?
Or is that just it, once you’re gone you’re gone?
You said, it’d be handy to know either way.
But so far no-one in history had figured it out.
And you said
Well then boys.
Looks like it’s down to us.
We decided that whoever ghosted first should return and
Using our poltergeist powers turn off a light
On October the tenth, at ten o’clock precisely.
The tenth of the tenth at ten.
All the tens, you said.
Never gonna forget that, are we?
We spat in our hands and shook: I shook Welly’s hand,
Welly shook Rob’s hand, Rob shook Huw McArthur’s, Huw
McArthur shook yours, and then you shook mine
And shaking spit round the gang
Sealed our oath –
That for the rest of our lives, on the tenth of the tenth, at ten
We would all be looking out
For a message from the dead, in the dying of an electric light.
And then we all had to finish our chips eating with the wrong hands
Cos our right hands were covered in spit.
…
And yeah
That first year
On the tenth of the tenth, at ten
I was on the look-out.