My grandad (on my mum’s side):
1. puked on my grandma,
sat beside him on The Speedway,
rising and falling
in stomach-churning circles,
on their first day together
at the Winterton Show
2. sent her a love letter
to tell her that he missed her
when she went to Bridlington without him
(just the one letter - long and carefully written)
3. bought his girls a bike for Christmas
(ever generous with his winnings)
4. in diabetic defiance,
was caught eating Mr Whippy
on the roof of Barry Collins
5. on April Fool’s Day,
(thinking his wife would find it funny)
he faked a sugar-coma -
laying corpse-still and pallid
until she came upon him
6. found a letter on the table
to tell him that she’d left him
but, hiding in the pantry
and proving that she’d moved him,
(when he started crying)
she decided to forgive him
7. saved loose change in his jackpot
to buy us sweets and chocolate
8. had two tales he told us
every Christmas Eve and August -
one of hanging stockings
and one, the story of a journey
of a roof-rack piled with cases
and us children on the M18,
flagging down the ice-cream van
from the central reservation
9. donned a Margaret Thatcher rosette
to provoke a revolution
10. sat in his flat cap,
in his armchair,
watching Grandstand on the tele,
when we’d run in from the garden
to the dead-red heat
of a two-bar fire
and the the soothing booming voices of
Dave Davies and Des Lynam -
their ardent football commentary
a knotted thread attaching me
to that sitting room in Scunthorpe
on any eighties Saturday
