Sylvia's Sonnets, romance poetry, by R I Heslop

Free on December 25th and 26th
Sylvia's Sonnets all started due to a staff poetry competition when I wrote the first sonnet, Journey to Eden. 

Journey to Eden

This sonnet was written for a staff poetry competition at the school where I taught, Walbottle High School, Newcastle upon Tyne. The theme had to be about holidays so I thought back to an amazing holiday we had when I was 19 and my wife, then my girlfriend, was seventeen.

 

We met when she was fourteen and I was seventeen and we got married when I was 21 and she was 19. We are still together after all this time.

 

Writing the poem also made me think of my friend's girlfriend and the different way her life has been lived.

 

Where did we go? Well, the four of us set off to ride on our motorbikes all the way to Barcelona in Spain. This was in 1962. Unfortunately Sylvia and I had a serious accident on the bike the Easter before we were due to get away. We ended up in hospital for a week but somehow we still managed to persuade her parents that we should still go ahead with the holiday to Spain in the August.

 

In 1962 it was a long, long way to Spain! First of all the M1 had yet to be built and the A1 ran through every town and village from one end of the country to the other. Also the last fifty or so miles into Barcelona were along a dusty dirt track so that when we eventually got to our pension we were all covered in a white dust from head to foot. We broke down on the way, had a couple of minor accidents, a lot of laughs and returned safe and sound.