Revolution in the Street
John Claiborne Isbell

The milk fag brought the milk, for this was all

some time ago, when we were in our teens.

And there were times the starlings in the yard

pierced the milk’s metal top to drink the cream.

Mid Front was for the Head of House, but I

shared First Front with Chris White, the violinist.

And we drank coffee there, and in our ease,

we played at the composer game, or set

the needle in the groove to 10cc.

For they were new then. All the songs we played,

and played again, as Mr. Henderson

or Mr. Sugden wandered through the yard

to lunch or to a lesson. It is true,

First Front had a loose floorboard – you could hide

your empty bottles there. An OKS

showed us that trick one afternoon, and we

did no such thing. We gazed at the cathedral

beyond The Grange and Galpin’s, and we drank

that coffee we had made. We did our work.

We played at chess or cricket. In the miles

that stretched beyond the town, the rutted fields

would hold cold water in their furrows, and

one ran through that to catch the boy ahead

before the stile. “I’m Mandy,” 10cc

are singing now, “fly me.” It’s been a while

since I have felt this music fill my soul

with something close to rapture. In the game,

we’d name nation and century. Could it

be Chopin or Vivaldi? Could it be

some rock song from those days when punk began

to reach past our wing collars and our ties

to speak of revolution in the street?

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Fliss: Greetings, John, and welcome to the 18th issue of Well Met! It’s our one-and-a-half-year birthday.

John: Greetings, Fliss, and Happy Birthday-and-a-Half to Well Met!

F: Hooray! Thanks, John. And here’s Word-Bird, with the one-and-a-half cakes I suggested we might enjoy last issue! That’s half a cake for each of us, I suppose.

Word-Bird: Yay!

J: Woo-hoo, the cake divides perfectly in three!

F: Very much so! Do you have a favourite type of cake, John?

J: Hmm. Well, I am quite partial to carrot cake!

F: Well, that’s what you can have! W.-B. and I shall share a strawberry cheesecake, we think.

W.-B.: Woo-hoo!

F: Indeed, W.-B.! Now, with regard to the poem, is the ‘fag’ of the first line a younger student performing a duty in this situation? I think I remember the word from Roald Dahl’s Boy, but I’m not sure.

J: Yes, the milk fag distributed the milk, and that was a chore for junior boys. Personal fagging was gone by the time I went to King’s, but only recently. It’s a tricky word and to be avoided in the US and no doubt other countries, but it was our word and we lived it daily. I’m not able to rewrite history to rename it. I imagine all that is gone now, so this is a bit Tom Brown’s Schooldays. Thank you very much for the carrot cake! I don’t mind if I do. I also wish you well with your strawberry cheesecake.

W.-B.: Cheesecake! Yay! Om-nom-nom-nom-nom... [sounds of dining].

F: Wow, W.-B. is really tucking in! Yes, ‘fag’ is not a word one sees in this context now. I wouldn’t have known this particular meaning had I not read Roald Dahl. We appreciate the starlings, of course! Now, these Fronts; are they areas of the school? I think of a common room, where pupils are allowed to relax between lessons. And there seems to be a house system too? We’re just in the WM van again, working our way around.

J: Hooray! So I was in School House, which had three senior studies, First Front, Mid Front, and Third Front, and I was in First with a very good violinist. They were called studies but they were our rooms, with beds and desks. We had about a dozen houses all told. Mid Front had its own tie.

F: It’s quite a system, John! The composer game sounds fun; how did that go?

J: Well, one of you would put on classical music and the other would guess the composer, starting with country and century. I was likely better at the game then than now.

F: Oh, I see! Hooray for the composer game! And teachers going past now and then. What is an OKS, please?

J: Ah! That now is an old boy – Old King’s School.

F: Thanks, John! It’s an entire culture of its own. The description through the next couple of stanzas has a comforting air, we think. I particularly like the rutted fields! So, ‘I’m Mandy’ must be a piece of music you particularly enjoyed from the times? Music is good for accessing past parts of our selves, we feel.

J: It is indeed an entire culture of its own. I do recall the rutted fields, from cross country days. And yes, ‘I‘m Mandy’ is a song by 10CC.

F: We think we’ve found it, John. W.-B. will load it into the WM van’s music system.

W.-B.: I shall do this! Here we are.

J: Woo-hoo! That is a song that brings back teenage memories for me. Thank you, W.-B.!

W.-B.: You are welcome!

F: Yes, that was good, wasn’t it? So, we’re nearing the end of the poem now, and there’s a turn towards punk, it seems. Did this filter into your schooldays in any way?

J: Well, my schooldays ended in 1980, so we’d seen a fair bit of punk on TOTP [Top of the Pops] by then: The Boomtown Rats, The Jam, The Clash, The Stranglers, X-Ray Spex. I hadn’t seen much punk in concert, but I had been to an Adam and the Ants concert in which there was a mosh pit up front. So, basically one punk gig! I saw Ultravox in concert, and The Pretenders a little later. Trying to separate this out from my student days.

F: Quite a lot of punk there, John! It’s not something I know a lot about, as I started watching TOTP in the late 80s, and mostly for the rather manufactured offerings of Stock Aitken Waterman (Kylie Minogue, Jason Donovan, Big Fun and other boy bands). Did you have a fave?

J: A fair question! I have a fair bit of punk among my albums, but I suppose The Jam and The Boomtown Rats are closest to my heart.

F: Excellent! Well, let’s take a quick look at the meter before we drive off, with some form of punk accompaniment. This is pent, we think?

J: Yup, that’s pent! You are quite correct. For a song, perhaps The Jam’s ‘Girl on the Phone’, that opens Setting Sons?

W.-B.: I have it here!

F: Well done, W.-B.! Well, thanks for joining us again, John, for our three half-cakes birthday!

J: Well done indeed, W.-B.! And thank you both for the blast from the past that this has been!

F: You’re welcome, John!

W.-B.: Hooray!

J: Woo-hoo! Birthday!

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John Claiborne Isbell is a writer and now-retired professor currently residing in France with his wife Margarita. Their son Aibek lives in California with his wife Stephanie. John’s first book of poetry was Allegro (2018); he also publishes literary criticism, for instance An Outline of Romanticism in the West (2022) and Women Writers in the Romantic Age (April 2025), both available free online. John spent 35 years playing Ultimate Frisbee and finds it difficult not to dive for catches any more!

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Revolution in the Street John Claiborne Isbell

Revolution in the Street
John Claiborne Isbell