Ian McMillan provided the evening’s entertainment at the conference dinner. He wrote a poem specially for the conference entitled, fittingly, Your Place or Mine?

 

 

 

 

Your Place or Mine?

See the grey army in their little grey cars

Looking at the kids like they’ve come from Mars

See the frowns rolling over their faces

At the thought of those people in their nice places;

 

Your Place or Mine?

Your place or mine!

Heritage is so hard to define

But it boils down to

Your Place or Mine!

 

Too big Too Posh

I don’t need a wash

It’s a bit of a squash

In the minibus!

 

Too far too slow

Didn’t wanna go

To a stately home

In this minibus!

Too hot You what

That’s it? It’s not?

It’s that? That ruin

Does this community worker know what they’re

Doin?

I don’t care that it’s been on Restoration

BBC2’s not my kind of station!

 

Your Place or Mine?

Your place or mine!

Heritage is so hard to define

But it boils down to

Your Place or Mine!

 

The thing is the definition shouldn’t be narrow

Could be an old pit. Could be a barrow

Could be a place where they used to grow marrows

Could be a place where they used to make arrows

Could be any place where history grabs us

Takes us to a place where the memory shakes us

That breaks us pushed us then remakes us

And makes us click that past present and future

Belonging to us all well that’s human nature

And my house and your house are all a stage

To be played on in the name of

Heritage!