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So beautiful it makes me whisper
Dec. 12th, 2007 07:54 amuntitled, by Michael Rosen
There was a typhoid outbreak in South America and they told us that we shouldn't eat corned beef. Don't eat corned beef. Don't eat Fray Bentos. My mother went to the cupboard and it was stacked up with corned beef cans. We always had cupboardsful of supplies. We must never be short of food. Ever. Families of friends might walk in. She took one of the cans down and looked at it. 'Better not open that til the typhoid outbreak is over,' she said. This went into the family anthology: this is the way Connie thinks upside down. But when I re-run her taking the can down from the cupboard I catch sight of her looking sideways. She looks at us sideways before she says her line. And one of her eyebrows is up. And it was her, wasn't it, who used to say, 'Ask your father what he's doing and tell him to stop it.' When I was seventeen, I come home late after circuit training- chin-ups, bench-presses- and the house is dark. No one in. That means it'll be down to me to make myself a pile of honey and raisin doorsteps which I'll eat on my own listening to Big Bill Broonzy. But she's sitting there. Sitting in the sitting room with her elbows on the table, her hands under he chin, looking at a space just below the curtain rail. She hadn't bothered with the lights.
There was a typhoid outbreak in South America and they told us that we shouldn't eat corned beef. Don't eat corned beef. Don't eat Fray Bentos. My mother went to the cupboard and it was stacked up with corned beef cans. We always had cupboardsful of supplies. We must never be short of food. Ever. Families of friends might walk in. She took one of the cans down and looked at it. 'Better not open that til the typhoid outbreak is over,' she said. This went into the family anthology: this is the way Connie thinks upside down. But when I re-run her taking the can down from the cupboard I catch sight of her looking sideways. She looks at us sideways before she says her line. And one of her eyebrows is up. And it was her, wasn't it, who used to say, 'Ask your father what he's doing and tell him to stop it.' When I was seventeen, I come home late after circuit training- chin-ups, bench-presses- and the house is dark. No one in. That means it'll be down to me to make myself a pile of honey and raisin doorsteps which I'll eat on my own listening to Big Bill Broonzy. But she's sitting there. Sitting in the sitting room with her elbows on the table, her hands under he chin, looking at a space just below the curtain rail. She hadn't bothered with the lights.
