or I pootle-off to Mr Walkers for a chin wag.

Peggy doesn’t like me gone for long.

I’d like to say it’s quieter now Ellen’s at college,

but it was just as quiet when she was around.

She’s like her father – walks on eggshells.

MY WIFE and my mother can’t stand each other.

It’s not quite knitting needles drawn at dawn,

or rat poison slipped into cups of afternoon tea,

but if I’m caught between their frozen smiles – it’s chilly.

Mother looks inscrutable behind her thick lenses,

like me, I suspect. And hard, which she had to be.

Whereas Peggy finds the Brinkworths too low class,

(like she’s descended from the Royal House of Windsor

she finds Mother’s side, the Wilkenings, a bit too German

I suspect, though she’d never say outright to me

Jacob’s German, but he’s also a doctor and a Jew,

so exempt from starting two world wars then.

When Mother offers her some pickled beef, sauerkraut

or salt potatoes to rile her (I’m sure), Peggy takes a nibble

and leaves the rest, blaming her ‘constitution’.

Won’t even partake of delicious Black Forest Gâteaux

which is adored the whole world over.

Mother blames Peggy for taking me away from her.

I was the first boy and sickest. I was, let’s say, clasped.

Then I went and replaced Mother’s spine with Peggy’s.

On our weekend visits to the folks, Dad and me

slip out for a smoke and have a joke in the garden

about leaving the battle-axes to start World War Three.

It’s all quite ridiculous really because while Mother

is half-German, Peggy herself is half-Irish.

SO WHEN Ellen brought this coloured chap home,

how could I object? He seemed decent enough.

A big, thick-lipped smile like those Negroes have

although the wife tried her hardest to wipe it off him.

Strong white teeth and good health to pass on.

Peggy underestimates our timid little girl, but I don’t.

She’s smitten. She’s stubborn. She’ll marry her love.

All that matters to me is that our child is happy.

I doubt I’ll be around to hand her over, and Peggy

certainly won’t be playing proud mother of the bride.

I’d like to see in my fiftieth year but I doubt it.

Some mornings I can barely make it down the stairs.

When I try to breathe it’s like that Sugar Ray Robinson

is doing press-ups on my chest. When I try to walk

electric shocks run up my legs like I’m doing

that jitterbug jive to that swing music Ellen likes.

I’d have loved grandchildren, even picanniny ones.

I can still manage a smoke now and then, on the sly.

I remind me of my German granddad, Louis.

The wheezes, the shakes, the love of smoking.