Watch me go leaping in my youth
down Dog Leap Stairs
down firescapes.
The Jingling Geordie
born in a brewery,
drinking the money
I dug out of the ground.
Cloth cap in hand I go
marching in the jangling morning
to London gates.
Jingling Geordie
living in a hop haze,
cadging from the Coppers
I went to the school with.
Older I get in my cage,
singling out a girl half my years
to hitch with.
Oh yes! I’m the Jingling Geordie,
the one who pisses on himself,
wrenching out the telephone
his father left off the hook.
Listen to my canny old folk songs;
they lilt and tilt into the dank alley,
into the howls of strays.
Oops! the Jingling Geordie
goes out on his town,
rocking and rolling a night away,
stacking it with the weary rest.
See my ghost in the discotheque,
in the dusty lights,
in the baccy rows.
Jingling Geordie,
dancing gambler,
betting he’ll slip
back to the year when the Lads won the Cup.
Well I walk my kids to the Better Life,
reckoning up the rude words dripping
like gravy off me granda’s chin.
Whee! goes the Jingling Geordie;
figment of the gutter brain,
fool of the stumbling system,
emptying my veins into a rich men’s palace.
KEITH ARMSTRONG
