This came to me shaped in a traumatic but nostalgic moment from the 70s, when I was heading towards my teens. I had an ever so brief period of being a Morton fan and invented fantasy football league (another time for that full story) to deal with my anxieties which grew as my parents toxic relationship imploded.

I repurposed old school jotters to ‘manage’ a football team, sign players, win and lose games and focussed my mind on it during my parents intense arguments. I was always Benny Rooney in those moments when I was cutting out the noise, which clearly, I witnessed through the ears and eyes of a child. If you are reading or watching the Poetcast, it helps if you are 50 plus and understand the brief success that Morton had with Benny and Andy Ritchie for a few years. Football nostalgia, rolled up in 70s issues and wrapped up in pain.

Hopefully you didn’t witness the psychological trauma that many did. It took my mother 20 plus attempts to leave my father in a period when you made your bed and were often advised to lie in it. It took me a further 25 years to realise its impact on me as a person.

If you are going through a break up of a relationship, remember the others who will be impacted longer term.

Being Benny Rooney

I just remembered being Benny Rooney, through a recess in my mind, at a time of 2 bar fires and cardboard used as blinds.

Thought he’d be drinking with Andy Ritchie, toasting with wee John McNeil, like men did in the 70s, to be manly and real.

Now Ritchie he had style, when fashions changed overnight, mothers changing v necks into crew necks to stop the bullying and the fright.

Working 2 or 3 jobs to make ends meet, but it’d be easier to hope the Jonesie’s moved to another street.

The miner, he would finish his weekly shift and be on the hawf and hawfs, only be a matter of time, before the fireworks kick off.

I’m dreaming of being Benny Rooney when awakened from my sleep, siblings at the top of the stairs, wondering who’s side to keep.

Keep staring at the woodchip wallpaper, I’d tell myself each night, shake my head from side to side, try to block out the light.

Now I can just see Andy Ritchie through the ice on the window pane, just needs to lift it over my imaginary purple chopper, which I never got again.

When I awake in the morning, linoleum underfoot, I hear nicotine stained excuses, over my copy of the Shoot.

Later a bowl of mince and tatties, will get us all back on track, a new ashtray or a week in Butlins, was the normal make up soundtrack.

I’d think, now if the maestro Ritchie, can bend a ball around a wall, surely you can escape the neanderthal.

But yep its never easy, as our neighbours might testify, but there’s a better place and a future out there, where you surely thrive.

So dream on Benny Rooney, from that recess in my mind, dream on Benny Rooney, towards a simpler time.

Check out other videos at the Poetcast video

R G Robb © 2021