The Reduced Chiller
At the corner of the aisle,
where dairy meets gluten free,
we feel the pull of
the reduced chiller.
Trolleys congregate
by the past their sell by date
goodies.
A frigid draught shocks
and goosepimples arms
that compete to pluck
in the fresh food
prize fight.
Middle Shelf
Mottled quails’ eggs
showing signs of aging
sit in sixes
shoulder to shoulder
with a stack of
greying pizzas
breathing their last.
Bottom Shelf
No one fingers a lonely squished trifle
that puts on a brave face
with a smile of sallow chocolate curls.
Top Shelf
I am tempted by the radiant sushi
And two low tubs,
high in fat
And bad fat at that,
Of Organic clotted cream
Mmmmm, fresh - ish from Cornwall,
But I leave a forgotten egg and cress.
not tempted by its price.
I take raw fish and the homogenised heaven
to the car park
for a swift snack.
But
Be warned.
These reductions are increases.
Never shop
on an empty stomach
or
the chiller will pull you in.
A poem published in Raw Edge
The Bathroom at 38 Barclay Road
Snaps.
Negatives.
Black and white contacts.
Dipped and clipped
Onto the makeshift washing line.
Tiny reflected remembrances
held for the family albums.
All caught by the box Brownie.
The bathroom studio
shimmers
lit by the glow of red light.
But it’s time for a soak.
Dad blows on his fingertips
replacing the bulb
and removes the fablon
bath top
to make way
for me.
He sits, supervising,
enthroned on the shut down seat,
talking about teddy boys.
The door springs open.
Mum attacks with flannel
and Imperial Leather.
I recoil from her,
and the tail of glowing ash
from her Players’ Weight,
dangling
from her Max Factored mouth.
Articles for OneUp magazine (for lone parents) - here's one
One Car, Three Daughters, 5 ½ Weeks, Eleven States
and the Road to Realisation
Dad’s sister gave our single parent family, a life changing experience. Aunty Paddy wore ‘business’ suits with black patent shoes and went on exotic holidays, when others didn’t. She brought me back foreign dolls. As an adult, I learnt her real name was Gladys and not Paddy, her nickname, for being short tempered.
Claimed by Alzheimer’s, she left me some money. I needed cash, being newly divorced, to keep me and my three girls afloat. I paid off red bills, but splunged the rest on a trip to the United States of America. Aunty Pad always approved of travel.
I needed to talk to Sergia. We married two brothers within a month of each other; her in New York and I in London. Sergia had made a new life in Hoosick Falls, up state New York with her new husband Tom and their baby Tommy Misha.
Our first marriages to the brothers had both been abusive. I needed to talk to her, to help puzzle out the past.
Abusive relationships don’t usually start that way. Life’s fine, but bit by bit, things change. Until, you find yourself living a bizarre life of fear, being someone else for your partner, someone who doesn’t exist. Because the changes take time to develop, walking a tightrope becomes normal.
With the long summer holidays and the money from Aunty, I figured that the girls and I could, if we were careful, manage five and a half weeks away in America. We could see Sergia and have a well-earned break.
From the safe place I’m in now, I think I might have planned the crazy trip, because I was used to living high on adrenalin. The abuse had stopped, but I was used to living on a high wire.
I booked tickets to Newark, New Jersey, and another flight to Albany, the closest airport to Hoosick Falls, returning the same route. We planned to stay with Sergia and travel around New England.
Two weeks before leaving, I had a ‘phone call from Jean in Florida. It was twenty three years, since I last spoke to Jean. I went with her to buy her wedding dress in Cardiff, before she flew to Florida to marry a US sailor called Gerald. Our Dads were friends, so I had news of the births of her three sons, but no direct contact.
‘If you are coming to the States, you must visit,’ she said.
Why not travel over 4,000 miles, down the Eastern side of the States, cross Florida, stay with Jean in Dunedin, near Tampa Bay and then drive back again to Sergia to get our plane back to England? This was a truly barmy thing to do, but that’s what we did.
Amtrak train or Greyhound bus, like in the films? Both too expensive for four of us. We’d make a road movie then, travelling by the cheapest hire car.
Safety was my first priority. Alice was fifteen, Katy was thirteen and Jess just eight. We made sticky labels of our passport, travellers’ cheque and insurance numbers and stuck them inside our shoes. If everything went wrong, maybe the last thing to go would be our shoes. We pledged to lock ourselves into our hired car. Flying over Greenland, I felt close to Aunty Paddy. I knew she would have approved.
The runway at Newark, took us past Ikea. It was strangely comforting. Something familiar. We changed terminals for a flight to Albany, where we were met by Sergia, Tom and little Tommy Misha.
We woke on our first morning to bagels. Tom travelled over the state line into Vermont to get special fresh bagels from Bennington – onion, poppy seed and pumpernickel with cream cheese and cinnamon and raison with cream cheese with maple syrup, raison and walnuts.
We spent a glorious week, travelling around Hoosick Falls (Grandma Moses’ Country), Vermont and Massachusetts in Sergia’s 1966 Buick Wildcat.
On our journey to Florida and back again, we sang in the hired car. We sang our hearts out. Looking back our favourite tunes were ‘Riders of the storm’ (the girls were going through a Doors phase) and, prophetically, ‘I can see clearly now’.
We paid full price for a room in “The Bates Motel” (Psycho?) on the first night. We showered together and tried not to mind the grey cat that followed us. It was the worse place we stayed in on the whole trip and the most expensive.
Motels like their rooms occupied, rather than empty. We soon learnt that the price is always negotiable. Looking poor and naïve got us great rates.
Surviving the New Jersey Turnpike, I drove the Interstate 95 for much of the way, taking detours, when we were bored. Delaware, Maryland and Virginia. Then North and South Carolina and into Georgia. Down and across Florida to the Gulf of Mexico coast to Jean in Dunedin. And more talking. A week with Jean, then East to Disney World and up to Jacksonville. On reaching Georgia, inland and onto the Blue Ridge Parkway, along the Appalachians in the Carolinas and onto West Virginia. Washington DC, then Manhattan, New York city. Finally, back to Sergia’s Hoosick home.
In my diary of the journey, there’s so much, but some of the highlights were
· hot pastrami on rye in Manchester, Massachusetts.
· Amish in their traditional dress and white Velcro trainers.
· hominy grits in Georgia.
‘I just luvvvvvvv your accent.’ Says the server. ‘Well, we quite like yours, too’ I answer. ‘What me? I just talk country.’
§ sailing in the Gulf of Mexico with Jean’s sister-in-law. Her poodle, Cricket complete with sun visor and life jacket.
· the Dali Museum in St Petersburg.
· the Contemporary Hotel in Disney World (cheap offer). The monorail goes through the centre of the building. Manhole covers have Mickey Mouse ears.
· the St Francis Inn (the oldest in the US?) in St Augustine. The woman offered us a good deal for one night, we wanted that price to cover three nights. She agreed.
· driving slowly and not stopping through Washington, to see the White House.
· finding, by mistake, a motel in New Jersey, close to the Giants’ Stadium and the park and ride into Manhattan.
· stopping yellow cabs in Manhattan.
· tea in Macey’s with the waitress in a Lucille Ball apron who sashayed across the room. (I didn’t know what ‘sashayed’ meant before).
Was I frightened at any time? Before boarding the plane home, Jess was standing next to a policeman in a diner. Her head was about level with his gun holster. It was an innocent scene, but I knew that the gun had been used.
It was a tremendous adventure. We always looked on ourselves as a team, but we found we had strengths we didn’t realise we had. We share an appreciation of each other as discoverers of America. Images of the States are everywhere here, but it’s different when you are there. Things are not like they seem, through the eyes of the media – good lessons to learn, not just for the girls, but also for me. We speak the same language – but no, we don’t. Sergia had lived in England for some years, but did not realise that ‘fanny’ means something quite different in English English, rather than American English.
I asked Alice what she felt we learnt from the trip. She said that we became aware that we love each other very much and enjoy spending time together. We love, like and trust each other and not just in crisis.
Our confidence had been rock bottom, but on our return we were more self-assured. We had learnt that you can do anything you want to do. Thank you Aunty Paddy.
