To Mag and Fred, just to share some of the many fond memories of visiting you. 1 always was (and still am) impressed by your compelling combination of exotic adventurousness and calm companionship.

Pipe Elm

So many of my young memories
Form as cine-film flickers of your home,
Pipe Elm.

1 close my eyes and feel
The warm, hypnotic welcome of the kitchen,
The excitement of exploration
And a wall lined top-to-toe with books.

I'm smiling at the memory
Of a feasting table, strewn with food -
Great, ceramic, earthy bowls
Brimful with potato salad;

And the eyebrow-raising shock and sheer delight
That anyone could scrawl height charts on a wall!

And other memories surface...

Sticky summer afternoons
Running riot in a garden fresh and green,
A background hum of adult chatter
And the tinkling chink of bottle to glass.

As the sun went down,
We'd gather up to hug farewell,
And sigh in tired contentment
As we'd trundle back from your happy home

Usually, I'd sleep,
Dribbling carelessly on my brothers' laps -
But if 1"d been conscious to contemplate, I'd have realised

It's neither the setting nor the house,
But the rather the souls within that make the home.

By Liza Edwards

The Little People

If you look beyond the grass and the bush
All covered in spines,
Through the forest, through the jungle
Swinging on the vines,
Little men with little shoes, little hands
And hats,
Owning little goats, little dogs
And little cats,
Little old women trudging along
Across the drying leaves,
Little children in little houses
Swinging in the eaves.
A little land, a little church
A tiny little steeple,
If you find these wonderful things
You will know they're the little people.

By Caitlin McVitie (age 11)

Macbeth Spell

Witches cauldron froth and steam,
Make true the evil of which we dream!
We have no God we hold esteem,
May on us fall the full moon’s gleam.

Into this pot goes dreadful sin,
The entrails from our kitchen bin.
After that two lemons sour,
Those will only increase our power.
Eye of Bush and toe of Blair,
And from a greasy MacDonald’s worker,
Pluck a dandruff covered hair!

Witches cauldron froth and steam,
Make true the evil of which we dream!
We have no God we hold esteem,
May on us fall the full moon’s gleam.

By Caitlin McVitie

The King's Watch

I found it deep in the garden,
The watch that belonged to the King,
It didn’t have a second hand
And it didn’t have a spring.

Its face was covered in dirty mud,
And a stone at the back caused a dent,
It had obviously been there for many a year
'Cos a link in the chain had been bent.

I asked my aunt Maude how much it was worth,
She’s an antiques dealer, you know,
She said it would be a rough estimate
But it could be ten thousand or so.

So I took it home and hid it
In a handkerchief in a drawer,
And I left it there for a long, long time,
Fifty years or more.

Then at last I found it
And had it worthed again,
They said it could be millions
Three, four, five or ten.

But I kept it by my bedside
Although it had no spring.
You know, the watch with no second hand
Belonging to the King.

By Daisy Beevers (age 11)

Forget It

Dear Mother if I could tell you
All the sights I have seen
My once clear sky coloured blue
My once fields of grass coloured green
Is now black and red
Full of blood and hate
The haunting images trapped inside my head
Having to say goodbye to my now dead best mate

Dear father if I could show you
The horrific sights of war
Knowing all the lies they tell you will never come true
And yet still I wait for more
More bodies to leave in the rotting mud
More limbs to be lost
More innocent spilt blood
And now I fear the cost
The cost of the lives I have ended
The dead bodies I have buried
The cost of my bloody boots that need to be mended
The hope of me coming home, FORGET IT!

By Cassie Screti (age 13)
Princess Diana Award - Cassie Screti