and I was thrown back to Dover the morning

they strip-searched both me and my motor,

yes, my clothes and my holes and poor Matilda’s

winter coat, thermals and mechanical undergarments,

when every other sod, native and foreign,

sailed through; yet I, a law-abiding Englishwoman,

was prohibited from entering my own country

for four hours before they let me go.

If I were a drug baron, I’d wanted to spit out,

I’d send my stash with the doddery blue-rinses

and the 2.5 blue-eyed picture-perfect families,

so look to them, you blinking wallies!

4

When the Black Power Movement jetted

across the Atlantic, made an emergency

landing outside my council flat in Chapeltown,

when I were in my twenties and desperate

to swing with the Sixties, it brought a shipment

of unprocessed hair in the shape of an Afro,

the shocking slogan Black is Beautiful

and a longing for ‘Our African Culture’,

which my BPM mates from the Caribbean,

with their kente cloth headscarves and stick-insect

Masai-goat-herder-sculptures-on-the-sideboard,

said was my authentic one. But the only culture I knew

wrapped greasy chips in dirty old newspaper

with battered fish and squashed peas,

and better the devil you know anyway.

Africa’s a continent, not a country,

so which of its cultures, thousands of tribes

and languages is mine, exactly?

I told them to cut the crap and go emigrate there,

‘cos it’s cheaper and warmer than Blighty,

then you’ll not have to endure such longing for it.

Whereupon they cussed me off as a sad case

of coconut-itis and angrily broke off all contact.

Look, I may have a cantankerous obeah woman

buried not so deeply in my genetic code,

but I’m a Yorkshire woman, and reet proud of it.

So when this customs man said,

‘Günaydin, do you have anything to declare?’

I caged my carnivorous, throat-ripping beasts

that’d land me in prison should I let them out,

stopped myself replying, ‘Ten kilos of heroin,

stolen Roman antiquities and a crate full of AK47S’

and mouthed ‘NO’, smiling lasciviously,

thrusting my breasts and fluttering, yes, fluttering.

(Had to shoot Stanley a look when I heard

him almost fail to suppress a fit of giggles.)

What is the purpose of your visit?

‘We’re on an extended motoring holiday, sweetheart.’

Whipped off his wraparounds at that, exposing

blood-veined eye-whites, stroked his mussie slowly

and asked my cleavage, quite brazenly,

You born 1941? ‘Yes, love.’ No, really?

‘A woman would never add years to her age.’

You must born America. Chicken George!

Cosby Show! Michael Jackson! Have a nice day-ay!

‘Guess again,’ I purred.

You Jamaican? Bob Marley? I shot the sheriff,

Get up, stand up. No woman no …

‘No Jamaican.’ Moroccan? ‘No Moroccan.’

Ah, Brazilian! Pele best footballer in the world –

one thousand two hundred goals – not out!

Eng-lish,’ I said, as if proffering a kiss. Really?

‘York-shire to be precise.’ I kissed up my shire

as I’d done my lish, lusciously, tempted to suggest