The Wrong Side
By Noami Hutchinson

In Derry I did dwell
Till the ripe old age of nineteen
Yes lads
Tis true I was often seen
Trippin around my maiden city
In the pubs and coffee houses
And many’s an eve
I ambled down Ship Quay street
At that narrow angle
And I went to Derry Tech
(Although they have a fancier
name for the place now)
Plodded through A levels
On Autumnal Evenings
Through the Winter
When attendance tailed off
And studied to the sound
Of grass being cut
In the early summer
When my eyes would stream
With hay fever
My father too
had tears
In his eyes
When my exam results came
A daft notion took me off
To Oxford for an interview
And a dafter one must have
Taken hold of them
For the fools they took me
In
When I got their letter
It was my mother’s turn to cry
And then mine as I left her
One Afternoon at the airport
And now
The only sharp Northern Twang
I ever hear is my own
So I study Joyce and Yeats
Old Seamus like a warbling Bard
Flann O Brien like a garbling eejit
Mangan Ferguson Allingham
Clough
But there’s no Ship Quay Street
In Oxford
And they can’t pull pints of Guinness
Properly
I read my essay out in tutorial today
A girl from the wrong side of Derry
They weren’t going to let me do my
Eleven Plus in Primary school
I wonder what that old duffer Thompson
Would say now
He patronised my father
But he wouldn’t listen
I would do the exam
My father said in his upperlands accent
She’ll do the thing
And so I did
But ‘tis ever so early in the morning
I can find no slumber
I’m the girl from the wrong side of Derry
In an oxford college
Tis true boys
The fella I love’s a fool
And I’m not the wisest myself
Twenty years old this year
I cant puzzle out that well
How on yonder God I
Ended up here.

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