The Poem That Changed His Life by Michael Bloor

I was reading James Fenton’s ‘Selected Poems’* and was very taken by one called ‘The Skip,’ in which the poet decides to take his life and throw it in a builder’s skip, parked outside the next-door neighbours’ house. Then he goes down to the pub. And coming back home, half-pissed, he’s surprised to see that his life was no longer there – some bugger had nicked it. The next morning he wakes up, checks, and sees that there is in fact a life lying in the skip, but it’s not his: someone must’ve spotted the poet’s old life lying in there and decided to swop. So the poet takes in the other life, sodden from last night’s rain, dries it on the stove and finds it fits him like a glove.

Well, I could see the appeal of all that. I kept a look-out for a few days and sure enough, there was a skip with a life in it, outside a house on Prospect Terrace, a bit past the paper shop. There was a kitchen sink on top of it, but it wasn’t damaged: just a bit dirty with plaster dust. I reckoned it was hardly used. So I took it home, gave it a good clean-up, and swopped it for mine. That night, I dumped my old life in the Prospect Terrace skip, because I figured that was the convention that a responsible person ought to follow.

My rent was paid up to the end of the month, but I didn’t see the point of hanging around. So I went down to railway station and bought a single ticket to Abergavenny, a fine little town for my new life. I remembered a nice old-fashioned pub, called The Hen & Chicks, from a previous visit (in my old life). I dropped off my bag at a Bed-and Breakfast place and headed off to the pub. I smiled to see a builder’s skip two doors down from the B&B. (I had a quick look, but couldn’t see anything of particular interest). There was a trad jazz band playing in a corner of the pub, just like on my previous visit, though the boys in the band looked a good bit older.

I got talking to a lovely woman, who said her name was Myfanwy. What a wonderful name! Then, amused at my astonishment, she told me her full name was Myfanwy Angharad Llewellyn. Wow.

She asked me what I was doing in Wales: was I on holiday? I wondered if I should tell her about the skip and decided that it might be a bit premature. So I just said this wasn’t my first visit and I was looking forward to revisiting some of the sights and places I remembered: the castle, the Great Carved Tree of Jesse in St Mary’s Church, and so on. Most of all, I fancied revisiting the famous Haunted Dolls House in the Toy Museum.

Myfanwy’s face fell. The Toy Museum had closed down. And no-one seemed to know what had happened to the Dolls House. She wondered whether it had been destroyed because the ghosts of previous deceased owners were said to have sometimes been seen waving forlornly from the windows. And, apparently, a carpenter who’d been employed to do some restoration work on it had phoned the owner and told him to come round to the workshop right away and take the thing back. Otherwise, he’d throw out.

She’d gone quite pale. I thought about getting her a stiff drink, but settled on suggesting fish ‘n chips from the chip shop.

We took the fish ‘n chips to a seat at the bus station. I could see the colour was back in her cheeks. A thought was nagging at me and I risked asking her if she thought the carpenter really had chucked it out into the street.

Myfanwy poked thoughtfully at her fish and shook her head. ‘Well, it was a bit too big to just leave it on the pavement. I expect he found a builder’s skip and dumped it in there. You get all sorts of stuff in those skips. Good and bad.’

*James Fenton (2006) Selected Poems. New York: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux.

Michael Bloor

Image: An orange skip beside the road from Wikicommons by David Wright / Crossroads and Skip Crossroads_and_Skip_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1116404.jpg