Rainy Friday Nights

My school week was over it was Friday night again
I didn’t need the weather man to tell me if it was going to rain.
It always did in winter when it was time to do my round
selling postal saving stamps to customers for a pound

Encouraged by the Post Office to save for a rainy day
any extra coins that would sometimes go astray.
Squirrelled away in mattresses or in cookie jars
by a public who’d lost confidence in banks in pre and post world wars

Collected to pay household bills
or buy interest building savings bonds
releasing funds into the economy
for investments locally and beyond

While I knocked at every door
and waited in the pouring rain
I was met with the scent of fish and furniture polish
each house practically smelled the same

A fifty year old memory from my school days
a tale that’s great to share
from the mid sixties
when entrepreneurial opportunities were everywhere

Those few hours I helped my nan each rainy Friday night
are cherished kodak moments of my girlhood past
streamed in from my internal album
of my life in east Belfast

Written by Irene Kerr (c) 25/11/2016