Doorsteps

Rumour spread quickly. 

It didn’t take too long. 

Cheap lunches on sale. 

This way. Follow me. 

It soon became 

the student lunchtime throng. 

We would queue outside the back door, 

come rain or shine 

out of sight, waiting to order / 

ordered to wait, in line 

It was a strange place to queue, 

but none ever complained 

at the rear of the newsagents 

over on Folly Lane. 

Out front the shop legitimately 

selling papers, journals, magazines 

In the back room, selling 

doorstep sandwiches 

from a doorstep, unseen. 

You could have any flavour you liked 

for fifty pence (just half a quid) 

as long as it was cheese and pickle 

(or sans pickle, but no-one ever did).

Students are always ravenously hungry 

so we took all we could get. 

We would sit out on the grassy verge to eat, 

except when it was wet. 

The owner carved judiciously 

with his lethal looking bread knife, 

Hacking great doorsteps from 

fresh loaves of bread; 

sometimes it was his wife. 

Reinforcements stacked to one side 

like some far exotic mansion. 

On the other, Cheddar cheese blocks 

and massive jars of Branston. 

Carved into rustic lunchtime meals 

for hungry students just like me. 

Doorsteps on the newsagent’s doorstep 

way back on nineteen-seventy-three. 

Steve Wheeler © 8 November, 2020

Photo by Steve Wheeler