Bricked up

Walled up and sealed, looking into the bricked up window. Cemented through daylight and dusk. The ventilator is faulty. Smoke and fumes used to pass this way. Nothing to see now. Ceremony and conversation but the damp would always triumph as we tried to breathe the stale air. It was a social club, a venue, some usable space. There were a few good nights we all recalled. Busy on gala week too. 

The repairs were done, quick and dirty. Like the pies on a Friday evening. Warm beer, cigarettes and crisps. We played bingo some nights, the wives liked that. There was a serious side but I never really looked into it. Charity. We just grew old really, we died off, one by one. Nobody replaced us, it was sad really.

We were too dead even to go to the cemetery, it was full anyway. Full of the dead and no others we recognized. We were later, we came as a new generation, on the boats, in the distillery, down there with the Navy or up on the bridges and the railway. The old dignitaries are fossils now. Plenty of local work then, two good wars. We lived as friends and died too. That's the way it goes.