dot her one where she won’t like it at all, no.
Where no one likes it.
My true love’s hair was red, red as the dawn,
my one true love. His eyes were brown, he stood
four foot umpteen in his boots. My one two,
three four, who’s counting? Ha ha! I bumped
into him as I was sloshing the floor in the
Gents. He stumbled over my bucket and there we
were on the floor, at it among the Jeyes and
Lysol. He swept me off his feet. I was quite a
young thing then, stout with it, I enjoyed it,
who’d have thought it, in those days?
That Ron has sat down, so
shall I, twitcher or no twitcher, she must give
it him first, if she’s fair, the twitcher, he
sat down first, Ron.
We waved and waved as he went by, King George the
Sixth, they let us off dirty to wave from the
upper windows, it was so exciting, us girls, it
turned me over, truly it did, waiting for hours
we were in the hot sun, it was late December.
And the banners were out, we waved our union
jacks, and cheered and cheered. It was quite
good. That was at the time when I was afraid I
might become Queen myself one day — no
twitcher if she’s going to run a tourney, good.
What’s that? Your breakfast milk? Yes, I’ll bet
you, Ron. All I’ve
got that you’d want, Ron, is a quiet feel in the
toilet before bed.
Shake.
Two lots of breakfast milk for me, yes,
always too many cornflakes and not enough milk,
that’ll be nice, something real nice to look forward
to. There they go.
Silly old fool got himself hit.
And again! Won’t get me two lots. Never mind.
I’ll get a feel.
Three times! Ron certainly backed the right one.
You shall have it, Ron, never fear, you
shall have it. Wonder what he’ll feel? My
twat is favourite, or at least it used to be.
Or perhaps he wants me to hold his horrible.
Or bag of creepy skin? Anyway, it’ll
be short, Ron, I’ll promise you that.
No, shan’t listen! Bung
my ears up!
This big meat pie, so big
you could hardly get yourself round it. So big.
Three of us made it together, for the Club. In
those days they let you, and my friend Edie got
me together with all this lard and flour. It
must come soon. Bought lots and lots of meat,
very expensive. For the upper crust we had sea-
gulls, and this tower like the Eiffel Tower it
was in the middle. It held up the crust very
nicely with just a little point sticking out.
Ooooh, it did taste nice! Wasn’t there none left
over for the curates?
We were good in those days, in spite
of that rationing. You had to be good to get
anything off of grocers and suchlike. They had
a marvellous time of it, having it off in the
back stores.
Where are they now, the martins and perhaps?
All dead. No Edie, Frank, Johnnie, Doug, Maeve,
Dil, no, none of them.
Where do they all go? Where are they now? Where
am I now? How can all these things be here,
and not them? That would be a
curious caper, as he used to say
I asked for a job once, where are
your references, they said You’ve
got to have the right pieces of paper, you see,
at the time you want the
I want a jobbies
It is very confusing, laughing
Laugh! Laugh,
laugh, I nearly died
We went round the halls
one night, lead in his pencil, more like a great
big His blood pressure was high, laugh,
you never saw anything like it! We
were in a box, boxes of chocolates, programmes,
as many cigarettes as you could eat. A very good
show but I know what he was after with his great
purple pen!
Like a lick of my seaside, he would say.
I would
In the first place there were too many
there, in the third it was neither here nor
there but underneath, where we all liked it,
underneath, pass me the deeoyleys, she would say,
just like that, pass — Good! That Ivy’s getting
it! It’s a change, give her the twitcher, House
Mother! Now she’s in trouble, bitch Ivy,
fat slummy greasy Ivy! Fatty Ivy chop, buy them
at the family butcher’s.
So what?
She’s giving us the benefit, again. Lovely,
have it off, let’s all see
Oh, she
threw her clothes over the dog!
Now the other
that’s it
Oh, I always enjoy this
bit, it reminds me of the old days when I was out
working…. How far now?
Oops!
They’re all off, all,
Hoorah!
Never with a dog, we went to the
Dogs’ Home to choose one but came away without one,
I couldn’t have kept it anyway
My new dress is stained with custard.
Who did that, now? It must have been that
Ivy, I know it was that Ivy! Cow!
Custard cow, taking no notice, getting her own back
because my tits are better than hers, custard cow,
cowardy custard cow. True love, blue
eyes, green, six foot if an inch, he was tall as
well with it, scrubber I was, the first, first
Listen to her!
No, doesn’t matter
~ ~ ~
Sioned Bowen age 89 marital status widow sight 50 % hearing 40 % touch 35 % taste 55 % smell 45 % movement 20 % CQ count 8 pathology contractures; diabetes mellitus; colonic diverticulitis; benign renal carcinoma; lesion of alimentary tract; paraplegia; among others.
… tasty
meat then
that house, the kitchen itself could seat
twenty of us, did at Christmas before we served them, it
was warmer than the servants’ hall, that word worries
me still, always hated to think of myself as a servant, he
didn’t, almost revelled in it, he did, knew his place and that
was a servant’s place, indeed this custard,
slop and greens, how can she, in that kitchen
there were great bowls we broke the eggs into for custard,
real custard, the arm you needed to beat that many would fell
an ox, two of us girls would take turn and turn about, some-
times my arm hurt so much that that kitchen
was so big twenty of us could the
mahogany cupboards, sets of drawers with brass handles, how
I hated brass, a waste to have brass to keep clean, but then
he would say it was good
my soul indeed,
what he was interested in was not my soul
the old sod
with his great stomach, the stomach he had on him
Why not, he said,
Because not, I told him
The stomach on him, he’d be round the
kitchen spooning out the leavings in the big oven trays,
laughing if Cook or anyone tried to stop him, dodging round
and knocking things over with his great stomach and fat