Broadcasters use my city as a Brexiteer example,
But I’m also from Stoke-on-Trent
My father, mother, grandmothers worked in potbanks
As a child I sat on the knees of decorators as they painted
gorgeous detailed decoration by hand onto bone china,
Learned to lithograph rosebuds onto little ashtrays for my father’s market stall
Grandfathers and uncles worked down pits,
and my uncle died holding up the roof for others to get out from a fall.
Stoke and its minerals are in my blood too.
And yet my father had revelled in his wartime travel
I grew up writing poems on travelling,
Loving everything Japanese and adoring Miyajima
Just as he had done. Aged 7, my Bucknall junior school
Used a TV programme to teach us French.
All about “Lyne” like me, with short dark hair and glasses.
So the class took the piss and I learned French,
then it was always easy for me.
I learned electronics in a Hanley Skillcentre
Became an engineer; started in television.
My husband Brian had made friends in France
Picking grapes in Beaujolais, now our family.
Beaujolais in my blood now as well as china clay.
I moved to the Channel Tunnel when ITV was sold off
As they needed bilingual control engineers.
Still, as a woman, a trade unionist in a man’s world.
I started a railway engineering career that
Has has lasted now 28 years, with four glorious years
Working in Paris for High Speed 1. The first member
Of our family to gain an MSc degree.a Chartered Engineer.
Of course I’m not a Brexiteer. I’ve seen the benefits
We gain from the EU. I have family in France, we love
The food and wine of Italy, too.
I’ve been to Miyajima and loved it to bits.
But this came from my blood, my father
who embraced the travel of WW2 Marines.
It comes from me, as part of Stoke-on-Trent, a potter.
