The fields of childhood glowed the gold
of cornflakes ripening in the sun.
Cows built nests like big brown dinner plates
or piled up empty milk crates,
so a father told his credulous son.
I used to shake a blob of monkey blood
instead of sauce onto my chips.
I used to savour the exotic flavour
of elephant and cucumber
or peas and bunion crisps.
Beneath every bridge there lived a troll
we must be careful not to wake.
There were looneys living in the loo
who would bite your bum when you did a poo,
if your wind should happen to break.
For every nattle rash or sting
there was a dock leaf cure nearby.
I could tell the time with a dandelion,
though its milk was a deadly poison
and just to touch it was to die.
The women next door were both witches
and their house stank of boiling toad.
By hurling taunts and throwing stones
we proved they had neither hearts nor bones
as they chased us off down the road.
"Look; a gin shop, mum. You like gin",
I cried, set up by my father.
With a Britvic and arrowroot biscuit,
I would wait outside on the street
and wonder at all the palaver.
What I knew of sex was smutty whispers
about belly buttons, or some such dirt.
I fell in love with my cousin Maureen
when I was seven and she was nineteen,
dressed in her micro mini skirt.
My father fell like Tommy Cooper,
clutching his chest as he hit the floor.
"Get up, dad. It's not a joke.
The table's tipped and mum's best vase broke."
What once was comic is no more.
