{"id":12250,"date":"2023-01-18T11:50:56","date_gmt":"2023-01-18T11:50:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.co.uk\/?p=12250"},"modified":"2023-01-18T11:50:56","modified_gmt":"2023-01-18T11:50:56","slug":"the-finest-city-high-time-crashed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/2023\/01\/18\/the-finest-city-high-time-crashed\/","title":{"rendered":"The Finest City High Time Crashed<\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Oh Dreams Oh Dreams <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was in a German camp <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where atrocities had taken place <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I was a guard on the gate <\/p>\n\n\n\n

An innocent guard <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A wooden gate <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Painted red and white <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Occasionally soldiers came down for a smoke <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Or to wash their hands <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the wooden bucket on the path to the latrines <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The water although clear was blood red tinged <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I knew that some of my visitors loved me <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And from time to time I received letters <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Expressing their admiration and longing  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I answered each of them noting that I was straight <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And liked girls especially the raven bakers daughter in the village<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But still the letters came with an alarming frequency <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Officers came to see and invited me to the cinema in the camp <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I declined their kindness ensuring no insult <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then it ended when the hostilities ceased <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I married my raven girl and moved to a town one thousand miles away <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where I might not be recognised or approached <\/p>\n\n\n\n

All went well until I was arrested for war crimes at the camp <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I explained that I was the gatekeeper and sometimes cleaned the latrines <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That was all I was not complicit in anything awful <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was an innocent sparrow caught up in a shit storm <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That was on my charge sheet <\/p>\n\n\n\n

An innocent sparrow caught up in a shit storm <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If I had not known why was the clear water lightly stained <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why did ordinary men frequently vomit in the latrines <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The gatekeeper was guilty by association as I was a well oiled cog<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was offered a cyanide pill by one of my grey guards <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I fed it to the rats who had been nibbling at my blackened feet <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was after I was found guilty of being the keeper of the gate <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That my raven girl visited my prison cell and offered me a new dream <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A dream free of the horrors of my previous dreams <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would not longer receive letters or be invited to the cinema <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A stationmaster at a rural station where the sleeve trains pass <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Was the option that we settled on so we closed our eyes <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And found ourselves on the main platform of a rural station <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking up into the distant hills where near the summit<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A child was catching the reflection of the sun in a small mirror <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ans sharing it with us both in the valley below  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Oh Dreams Oh Dreams  I was in a German camp  Where atrocities had taken place  But I was a guard on the gate  An innocent guard  A wooden gate  Painted red and white  Occasionally soldiers came down for a smoke  Or to wash their hands  In the wooden bucket on the path to the latrines  The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12250"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12250\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12251,"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12250\/revisions\/12251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}