Love Handbags for life...

This is a lovely and very moving handbag related poem I found on the bbc website. WW2 People's War is an online archive of wartime memories contributed by members of the public and gathered by the BBC. The archive can be found at bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar.

Old Imitation Leather Handbag

'It sat through time, on top of the wardrobe in their bedroom
Always there, brown shabby bag

She kept her memories in it, birth certificates and such, a few faded photographs, old earings, used ration books

Seemed old fashioned to me, as a child
I suppose it was forties in style
With a broken clasp, worn out from past use

I was loved as a child, I just knew, as you do
Safe and steady at the centre of my universe

That my parents loved each other I believed,
Mum and Dad, rock solid, sound
But I never saw them kissing, or any of that stuff when I was around

She died first, gone before I was ready to meet her through adult eyes
And he had carried on, as people do
making the best of, muddled through the years alone

After he'd passed, clearing, sorting to do
I took the bag down and spilled open inside,
old imitation leather handbag, such secrets to hide

So many letters they'd written, love letters throughout the war, teaching, showing me just who they were

My parents, who never kissed before me, were Romeo and Juliet, a Cathy and Heathcliff, passionate
briefly encountering in their time

Pretty endearments whispered intimately over the page
Young wartime lovers, strangers to me
I read their letters, lovingly

Then put them away, inside the bag
that now sits through time, on top of the
wardrobe in my bedroom
Always there, brown shabby bag'

© Hilary Walker, WW2 People's War

Hilary Walker: "After finding some love letters that my parents had written to each other during the 2nd World War (whilst Dad was with the Durham Light Infantry) I wrote this poem which is self-explanatory. The poem and myself were featured last month on our local BBC News, Northwest Tonight."

Contributed by: Hilary Walker
People in story: Marion and Alec Jones (My parents)
Location of story: Heywood, Lancashire
Background to story: Army
Article ID: A8071724
Contributed on: 27 December 2005

More info about handbags in the time of WW2