The Class Game

Question 1

What is the name of the poem?

Answer 1

The Class Game

Question 2

Who is the poet?

Answer 2

Mary Casey

Question 3

What does “How can you tell what class I’m from?” suggest?

Answer 3

People of the same social or economic level

Question 4

What quote is repeated?

Answer 4

How can you tell what class I’m from?

Question 5

What is an “‘Olly”?

Answer 5

A marble

Question 6

What does “wince” mean?

Answer 6

Adopt expression or pain

Question 7

“my hand are stained with toil?…”

Answer 7

“Instead of soft lily-white with perfume and oil?”

Question 8

Can you recite the poem?

Answer 8

How can you tell what class I’m from?

I can talk posh like some

With an ’Olly in me mouth

Down me nose, wear an ’at not a scarf

With me second-hand clothes.

So why do you always wince when you hear

Me say ‘Tara’ to me ‘Ma’ instead of ‘Bye Mummy

dear’?

How can you tell what class I’m from?

’Cos we live in a corpy, not like some

In a pretty little semi, out Wirral way

And commute into Liverpool by train each day?

Or did I drop my unemployment card

Sitting on your patio (We have a yard)?

How can you tell what class I’m from?

Have I a label on me head, and another on me bum?

Or is it because my hands are stained with toil?

Instead of soft lily-white with perfume and oil?

Don’t I crook me little ­ finger when I drink me tea

Say toilet instead of bog when I want to pee?

Why do you care what class I’m from?

Does it stick in your gullet like a sour plum?

Well, mate! A cleaner is me mother

A docker is me brother

Bread pudding is wet nelly

And me stomach is me belly

And I’m proud of the class that I come from