My dad, Stanley Joseph Martin (5/6/1924 – 8/4/2008), worked at Stone Magnese Marine, later becoming Stone Vickers, for thirty-three years. He left at the age of sixty-two and became a security guard, mostly doing nights at many establishments (including the Ritz Hotel), until he reached sixty-five years of age. Despite my mum wishing for him to continue, not only to keep bringing in the money but also to keep him from getting under her feet, he finally retired in 1989; ironically the same year that my mum passed away.
During the odd thirty years of his working life, Stanley managed to compose a large selection of ‘poems’. These poems are mostly on the insides of Batchelor's Cup-a-Soup packets; (I had no idea he liked soup so much!).
They are reprinted here (off their packets at last). Unfortunately not in their chronological order, but in the order of how I take them from the old envelope my dad decided to keep most of them in, a typical Stanley trait –use of envelopes as storage devices. They reflect, I believe, many aspects of his nature, and his shifting, adaptive, analytical yet strangely romantic perception of life around him and its effects. Like many of his paintings and sayings, they probably deserve better attention and treatment, however, trying to get a clear understanding of some of them from dad is often impossible!
David A. Martin 27/11/1997
(Revised 21/02/2004)