wrenched out of my arms by blood-sucking bats?

I’d inherited something in my genes:

send a herd of elephants to stampede all over me

and I’ll not be crushed. Maureen McCarthy

kindly took me in – St Ann’s alumni,

cashier at Haycroft’s Ironmongers,

in town while I looked after her kid and mine.

Once a month we went to the Mecca Ballroom

to hear Jimmy Saville spin the decks.

Then I discovered Ella Fitzgerald and started to mime.

Hate memories, me, they won’t let you alone.

Didn’t even own a pair of knickers till I was sixteen,

clothes doled out by laundry according to size.

Saturdays, when normal people, when families

went on picnics to the countryside, after

our breakfast of bread, porridge and cocoa,

the dirty laundry came out. I’d have to light

the fire underneath the old stone copper, being the

eldest, chuck in the clothes, pull them out,

run them through the mangle, starch them, hang

them up to dry in time for a dull dinner of spam

and hot vegetables from the kitchen garden,

mustard pickles and dried bananas for dessert,

left over from the war stockpiles, unluckily for us. If

you were naughty, you got condensed milk scraped

on bread all weekend. Saturday afternoons we

spent black-leading, polishing the kitchen range,

white-stoning the hearth, mopping floors.

Tried aborting with the vacuum-cleaner hose,

preferable to a coat hanger, which was all the rage

in those days, but what was I thinking?

God forbid and thank God it didn’t work, aye.

Once a month I was given two bob

to go to Mrs Fox’s Toffee Shop at end of road,

buy a bag for everyone to share.

At Christmas, half a crown each to choose

from F. W. Woolworth & Co. Ltd in town –

courtesy of the Good Charitable Ladies of Leeds.

Now that was our heaven,

our paradise, our

Communion with God, our

short-lived happiness.

Café des Fantômes, Paris

Bronzed Art Deco floor circa – 1920s.

Indian-red armchairs circa – 1940s.

Frosted-glass counter on mahogany-panelled bar,

fresh yellow rose in a twisted clay vase,

starched waiter hovered, with a greased handlebar.

After a night rocking Jessie as her dutiful amour,

pouring childhood’s misery into me, her one and only,

saying au revoir to her trusty welded armour,

she was softer, trusting, somewhat melancholy.

But I wasn’t the one in need of stuffing up.

I didn’t need no petit déjeuner.

O God! Crêpe flambé, steak in bilberry sauce,

waffles, pâté de foie gras, truffles,

I’m starving, Stanley, starving!

Simple breakfast will do: it’s only 8 a.m., Jessie.

If you say so – her lovely, opened face, closing down.

She flipped the menu over. Mein Führer.

Deux croissants et deux cafés, s’il vous plaît,

I instructed in punctilious schoolboy French.

Posters in the alcoves were fake – Renoir.

70s cigarette vendor displayed – Gauloises.

60s juke box droned – Charles Aznavour.