Welcome to dinner!
With chipped plates,
Place-mats shaped liked pebbles,
Plastic glasses,
Kitchen towel serviettes,
Ketchup instead of gravy boats,
Squash instead of mash.
Hunting the shelves of convenient cartels to find a sausage which contains at least 30% meat I find frozen “Pois”.
Smaller than any pea, petite doesn’t really cut it.
Makes a baked bean look obese.
Surely to count as a five a day there must be a minimum circumference?
The children eat chunky, chopped cabbage with melting, peppery butter,
Because the children think it isn’t cabbage if it’s not the dark, green, gloppy mush shown in the cartoons they watch.
The children eat with forks and put their untouched knives into the dishwasher.
Water to drink.
Filtered water to drink.
Filtered, chilled water from the “American” fridge.
Filtered, chilled water from the “American fridge” with crushed ice.
Filtered, chilled water from the “American fridge” which,
Only took the removal of a concrete-set, tiled sideboard, an “English fridge”, a washing machine, a boiler and a cupboard before it would fit into the kitchen.
We eat the chilled, filtered water from the “American fridge” with crushed ice with teaspoons like a sorbet and leave the clouded water alone without drinking it.
Pudding depends on behaviour.
Prodding a sister with a fork will result in the cruel, semantic disappointment of a rice “cake”.
Kicking a brother under the table might result in suspension of “Jammie Dodger” privileges.
However, polite enquiries about another’s day might get “Hundreds and Thousands” in a egg cup with the additional reward of no cutlery and the rarest of permissions;
A licked, dipped finger.
On weekends there might be thick, slabs of Angel cake,
Its slices broken into three rectangles,
The double-sided cream of the pink slice left, always left to last.
Summer brings dripping ice cream with chocolate snowflakes and dewy honeycomb that clings to retainers.
We finish with fair-trade coffee or unfair tea.
And calorie-seeped, hyper children with the volume tuned to maximum.
Sleepy adults wonder if the report can wait.
Crumbs left in the half light.
Laughter tripping down hallways.
Sugar dissolving in warm arteries.
The dog licking the floor.
