Billy McBone

Billy Mcbone

had a mind of his own,

which he mostly kept under his hat.

The teachers all thought

that he couldn't be taught,

but Bill didn't seem to mind that.

Billy McBone

had a mind of his own,

which the teachers had searched for for years.

Trying test after test,

they still never guessed

it was hidden between his ears.

Billy McBone

had a mind of his own,

which only his friends ever saw.

When the teacher said, 'Bill,

whereabouts is Brazil?'

He just shuffled and stared at the floor. 

Billy McBone

had a mind of his own,

which he kept under lock and key.

While the teachers in vain

tried to burgle his brain,

Bill's thoughts were off wandering free.

©Allan Ahlberg

 Reproduced with kind permission from the author

Please Mrs Butler

Please Mrs Butler

this boy Derek drew

keeps copying my work, Miss.

What shall I do?

Go and sit in the hall, dear.

Go and sit in the sink.

Take your books on the roof, my lamb.

Do whatever you think.

Please Mrs Butler

this boy Derek Drew

keeps taking my rubber, Miss

What shall I do?

Keep it in your hand, dear.

Hide it up your vest.

Swallow it if you like, my love.

Do what you think is best.

Please Mrs Butler

this boy Derek Drew

keeps calling me rude names, Miss.

What shall I do?

Lock yourself in the cupboard, dear.

Run away to sea.

Do whatever you can, my flower.

But don't ask me!

©Allan Ahlberg 

 Reproduced with kind permission from the author

       Things I Have Been Doing Lately

Things I have been doing lately:

Pretending to go mad

eating my own cheeks from the inside

growing taller

keeping a secret

keeping a worm in a jar

keeping a good dream going

picking a scab on my elbow

rolling the cat up in a rug

blowing bubbles in my spit

making myself dizzy

holding my breath

pressing my eyeballs so that I become

temporarily blind

being very nearly ten

practising my signature...

Saving the best till last.

©Allan Ahlberg 

Reproduced with kind permission from the author 

From The Mighty Slide

The snow has fallen in the night.

The temperature's exactly right.

The playground's ready, white and wide;

just waiting for the mighty slide.

The first to arrive is Denis Dunne.

He takes a little stuttering run.

Sideways he slides across the snow;

he moves about a yard or so,

with knees just bent and arms out wide;

and marks the beginning of the slide.

Then Martin Bannister appears,

his collar up around his ears,

his zipper zipped, his laces ties,

and follows Denis down the slide.

The snow foams up around their feet,

and melts, too, in the friction's heat.

it changes once, it changes twice:

snow to water; water to ice.

Now other arrive: the Fisher twins

and Alice Price.  A queue begins.

The slide grows longer, front and back,

like a giant high-speed snail's track.

And flatter and greyer and glassier, too;

and as it grows, so does the queue.

Each waits in line and slides and then

runs around and waits and slides again.

And little is said and nothing is planned,

as more and more children take a hand

(or a foot, if you like) in the slide's construction.

They work without wages and minus instruction.

Like a team of cleaners to and fro

with clever feet they polish the snow.

Like a temporary tribe in wintry weather,

they blow on their gloves and pull together.

©Allan Ahlberg

 Reproduced with kind permission from the author

From The Girl Who Doubled

This is the story

of Alison Hubble,

who went to bed single

and woke up double.

Woke up with a twin

in her single bed.

‘Who are you?’ ‘Who are you?’

she said, she said.

Then her dad came in.

‘Good grief!  Ye gods!’

Mr Hubble declared,

as he gazed at the sight

of Alison squared.

‘I can’t believe it;

it’s hardly fair;

one daughter’s enough,

we don’t need a pair!’

Then Mrs Hubble came in.

‘Oh Alison, Alison!’

Cried her mother.

‘You always said you wanted a brother!’

‘I’m quite overcome.

Your gran’ll go wild.

We don’t expect this

from an only child.’

Later on, the doctor was sent for.

‘Hmm!’ said the doctor.

‘What have we here?

Whatever it is,

it’s double I fear.

‘If you’ve had it before,

well, you’ve got it again.’

Then he felt in his pocket

and took out a pen.

And wrote a prescription

(but gave no advice),

just some pills to be taken,

twice daily – twice.

©Allan Ahlberg

 Reproduced with kind permission from the author

Allan Ahlberg was born in Croydon in 1938, but grew up in Oldbury, near Birmingham . From the age of twelve his dream was to be a writer, and after ten years as a teacher, Allan wrote his very first book, The Brick Street Boys.  He went on to write many books, which his wife, Janet, illustrated.  Their books have been translated into twenty-one languages and have sold millions of copies all over the world.  Sadly Janet died in 1994, but Allan still writes, continuing to create stories which delight children everywhere.

Allan and Janet’s best-selling children's books include:

Peek-a-Boo!

Each Peach, Pear, Plum

The Jolly Postman

The Giant Baby

The Better Brown Stories  

Allan has also written five poetry collections for children: 

Please Mrs Butler

Heard It in the Playground

The Mighty Slide

The Mysteries of Zigomar

Friendly Matches

How old were you when you first began to write poetry?

This was at school when I was about 11 or 12.

What inspired you to become a poet?

I didn't really decide to be a poet.  In fact, I'm not sure I am a poet - I think I mostly write funny verse - and I became one by doing it.  Also I suspect I'm probably rather better at prose.  Also (again!) 'inspiration' seems a bit too grand a word in my case.  I mostly just play around with words, crack a few jokes, try to amuse.  A better term for what I do is probably 'verse'.  Poetry I think is more mysterious and beautiful.  Most of my 'poems' are probably too straightforward to be thought of as poems.  But I don't mind that (too much); a good bit of verse is better than an ordinary bit of poetry.

What was your first poem?

I can't remember what I wrote at school, but my first published poem was Please Mrs Butler, unless you count Each Peach Pear Plum.  

Did you like poetry when you were young?

Yes.  I can remember one of the subjects we had in Miss Palmer's class when I was about ten was Recitation.  We all had to learn a poem and then come to the front of the class and recite it to the rest of the children.  Miss Palmer gave us marks out of twenty and this appeared on our school reports.  I can even remember one of the poems I learnt at the time: A Boy's Song by James Hogg.

A Boy's Song

When the pools are bright and deep,

where the grey trout lies asleep,

up the river and over the lea,

that's the way for Billy and me.

Where the blackbird sings the latest,

where the hawthorn blooms the sweetest,

where the nestlings chirp and flee,

that's the way for Billy and me.

Where the mowers mow the cleanest,

where the hay lies thick and greenest,

there to track the homeward bee,

that's the way for Billy and me.

Where the hazel bank is steepest,

where the shadow falls the deepest,

where the clustering nuts fall free,

that's the way for Billy and me.

Why the boys should drive away

little sweet maidens from their play,

or love to banter and fight so well,

that's the thing I never could tell.

But this I know, I love to play

through the meadow among the hay;

up the water, and over the lea,

that's the way for Billy and me.   

James Hogg

PS Don't ask me what a 'lea' is, I wasn't sure then and I'm not sure now.  But I did love this poem, the feelings it produces, the small mysteries in it.   

How long does it take you to write a poem?

Five minutes?  Five years?  How long is a piece of string?  Sometimes what you are writing comes quickly and all in a rush.  Sometimes you don't have time to change it at all.  But sometimes it takes forever.  I wrote a poem once called Billy McBone, got the first verse easily enough, but had to wait three or four years for the rest. 

Is there a poem by somebody else that you wish you'd written?

Yes, two actually; Elegy Written In A Country Churchyard (Thomas Gray) and Humpty Dumpty (Anon).

How many poems have you written?    

About a hundred.

Do you have an all-time favourite poem?

Of mine?  Not really.  I did a book some years ago entitled The Mighty Slide.  It contained five long stories in verse.  I still like all of these, particularly A Pair Of Sinners and Captain Jim.

Do you have to be brainy to be a poet?

Absoblutely... alsoluteby... absobutely.   Yes.

Do you have any advice for young poets?

My advice to young poets is to write.  It's simple really, if you want to be a cyclist you have to ride a bike.  If you want the world record for eating pork pies you have to eat pork pies.  But actually now I think of it, this is more advice for older writers, with children it's different.  If you like writing then just do it - whenever you feel like it - just for the fun of it.  One thing I would suggest is that you keep your poems, all of them, the good and the not so good, and store them away in a box.  When you are older, whether you become a poet or not, I think you will enjoy taking them out and looking at them, and so will your children.  And theirs!

Which book did you most enjoy writing and why?  Do you think you'll ever stop writing?

I don't find this an easy question to answer.  Often the book that interests me - whether its poetry or prose - is the one I've just written, for instance, I've lately written a little picture book entitled Previously.  But it will be a year or two before the illustrator does the pictures and the book is in the shops.  

Then there's the book I'm actually writing now, a longer novel called The Boyhood of Burglar Bill.  Again it will be a year or so before I even finish this.  And I've no idea whether it will be published or not.  Also, sometimes in a curious way, the book I most enjoy writing is the book I haven't even written at all, just sitting and thinking about it, how marvellous it's going to be, the best book ever etc. Though, of course, it never is as good as you hope.  

At the moment, although I'm getting quite old, I can't imagine not writing although I may gradually write less.  The pen will get heavier as my poor old arm gets weaker.  I may need somebody to help me pick it up.  But my head appears to be as full of ideas as ever, which is to say the ideas themselves may not be terribly good but there are lots of them. 

What was your favourite book when you were young and why?

When I was young there were not many books in our house.  I don't remember seeing many newspapers either, just the Radio Times and a woman's magazine, I think it was called Secrets, that my mother used to read.  The only books I ever had were Sunday School Prizes.  In other words I more or less got one book a year.  Children in those days used to go to Sunday School each Sunday morning, and we had little cards which were stamped with a star showing our attendance.  Then, at the end of the year if we had enough stars, we were given a book as a prize.  

But although I only had a few books I did a great deal of reading.  I simply read the same books over and over again.  My favourite book in those years was The Bear Nobody Wanted, which was a little picture story, about forty pages long.  Later on, when I was grown up, I tried to find a copy of this book but couldn't, so I ended up writing the whole thing all over again in my own way, and gave my book the same title.

Is it hard to select the poems to go into a book?

It's not too hard, but making a book like this does fall into two parts: the first part is to write lots of poems, and the second is to throw quite a few of them away because they're not good enough.  And, of course, if you get it wrong, you end up with a book full of bad poems and a waste paper basket full of good ones.

If you had not become a poet, which job do you think you would be doing now?

Television Newsreader, Prime Minister, King.  It's difficult to say.  Before I became a writer I had lots of jobs: postman, soldier, plumber's mate.  I was a teacher before I became a writer, and a grave-digger before that.  The digging I do now is with a pen.  It is a trade I am better suited for; finding stuff, not burying it.  No dog with a bone, but a treasure hunter...maybe.