![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/76bedd65ef841f621cf3983161bda4bd.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
To George, from Sunny Wigan<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n by Christopher Norris<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\n At the back of one of the houses a young woman was kneeling on the stones, poking a stick up the leaden waste-pipe which ran from the sink inside and which I suppose was blocked . . . . She looked up as the train passed, and I was almost near enough to catch her eye . . . . [Her face] wore, for the second in which I saw it, the most desolate, hopeless expression I have ever seen.<\/em> His eyes caught mine, him on the morning train, I know, I know, all part of his campaign What grates when they go slumming to maintain We get it constantly: \u2018you live in vain, It\u2019s what we hate, that old class-hopper\u2019s bane One fantasy I like to entertain Give him this tip from me: next time you deign Please know your nitty-gritty leaves a stain To George, from Sunny Wigan by Christopher Norris\u00a0 At the back of one of the houses a young woman was kneeling on the stones, poking a stick…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14011,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1660],"tags":[1915,2473],"class_list":["post-14012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry-2","tag-george-orwell","tag-road-to-wigan-pier"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14012"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14012\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
– George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier<\/p>\n
Northbound, next station Wigan, me
Up early, jobs to do,
Clothes slung on, hair not fit to see,
And kneeling, stick in hand, with that blocked drain
To clear, the kind of stuff that he,
Scoop-ready, took as cue
To tell the outside world that we
Poor plebs were padlocked to our ball-and-chain.<\/p>\n
To shock the shameless bourgeoisie,
To give a close-up view
Of how we live, a woman\u2019s knee
On cold, hard stones as just the thing to gain
A bit of extra sympathy
For us hell-dwellers who
Seem so far gone in misery
That, somehow, we\u2019ve no reason to complain.<\/p>\n
Their street cred and their pedigree
As our brains-retinue
Is just how often that esprit
De parti prol\u00e9taire sounds like disdain
For working-class identity,
Or what they take as true
Marks of it, like my making free
To meet his gaze with gestures so profane.<\/p>\n
Waste lives in routine labour, flee
The troubling thought that you,
So long downtrodden, might yet be
The very class best placed to ease the pain
Of age-old servitude, the cri
De coeur of your sad crew,
If only you\u2019d promote your plea
With works and days less brutally mundane\u2019.<\/p>\n
Of thinking they\u2019ve a special key
To others\u2019 life-worlds through
Their reading, thinking, Ph.D.
In urban politics, enormous brain,
Or all the myths that guarantee
The many and the few
Won\u2019t gel, the few on their quick spree
Up North, the many on their darkling plain.<\/p>\n
Is how they might get uppity
When gawped at in their zoo,
Those Wigan folk \u2013 give him a flea
In his left ear, and then proceed to cane
That book\u2019s dyspeptic parti pris,
The doleful tale it drew
From sifting through our life-debris,
Like me outside in curlers, stick up drain.<\/p>\n
To come, do meet the family,
Spare us an hour or two,
And let the lived reality
Sink in, the squalor but, as well, the strain
Of stoic humour that can see
The joke yet still say \u2018screw
Your Wigan Pier stuff\u2019 when the glee
Proclaims \u2018down south\u2019 the jester\u2019s home domain.<\/p>\n
Of patronage on all that we
Drain-pokers might accrue
Of self-respect, autonomy,
Or books, books, books as our road to attain
The kind of knowledge you would-be
D\u00e9class\u00e9 types won\u2019t do
Much good with till your family tree
Sprouts new red leaves: then head up North again!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"