PIG

 

 

Yes,I know that they are adventurous , inquisitive

Clean and kind and clever

But

They are also delicious

A happy marriage of DNA and decades of selective breeding

And maybe on another earth they have decided that dogs are just as good

So,

It’s all hashtag pigs of Instagram

Hashtag look at my piglet in her onesie

Smiley face smiley face heart heart smiley face

But here

You are the scented siren temptress for fledgling vegetarians

The best wake up call of all for even the most determined sunday morning sleepy head

You’re better than sliced bread

You’re better in sliced bread

No need for artifice

Mug of builders tea

3 sugars

And a blob of sauce

And if I could I’d raise you myself

Name and nurture you

And at the end provide a death that’s clean and kind and dignified

Use up every scrap of you

Thank you for your sacrifice

But I can’t because pigs are bloody big

It would be the chickens all over again

Bought for eggs and pot

But named

So lived out lives of barren bone idleness

Who knew that hens can live for seven years

And in one case eight

So instead

I won’t hide behind euphemisms

You are not ham or gammon

Chop or pork

You are pig

And I thank you.

 

Ruth @ number 80

Ruth first tasted freedom during world war 2

Found she liked it, never looked back,

Except perhaps, just at the end.

Sharp as a pin,

Should have gone to grammer school,

But didn’t

Worked in the hosiery,

but quick to tell me on first meeting,

Not on the factory floor,

No head down hemming for her,

In the offices,

A cut above the other girls.

Somehow, unimaginably , bought her house alone in 1950 something.

Ruth, never courted, never married

But,

On hungover Sumer Sundays when boys lolled in my garden drinking pints of tea,

She had a scoring system based solely on how they looked sans shirts.

Ruth is proof, if I needed more, that I am not a good person,

Too busy to see she came out less,

Too busy to see the empty washing line,

Too busy to see the uncollected pints of milk.

Another neighbour,

Better person, did,

So, knocked and got no answer,

Broke in and found her upright on the sofa,

Dead,

A dog each side.

And in the telling, it was hinted that the dogs had started nibbling

And that might have been the case.

Ruth,

Payed a heavy price for early emancipation.

 

Mr Harrison

My street puts the O in Harrison

Not some complex metaphor or cryptic crossword clue

But, simple fact

Mr Harrison, Victorian builder of the 8 parallel lines of palisaded terraces sought immortality in brick

So, chose street names to spell out his own

H A R R I S O N

Like many things, the sum was greater than it’s parts

Names chosen without rhyme or rhythm, the only reason that all important first letter

H A R R I S O N

Mr Harrison built well

2 step front gardens, and at the back, a coal shed, outside lavvy, a washing line and room for some sturdy soot proof shrubs and maybe a rabbit for the pot

Houses built for the better sort of working man

Able to afford to keep his wife at home

Able to afford to send his children to the new board school on Ingle St ( confusingly, not the I in Harrison)

At weekends the braver youth would trespass on a local farmers field, until he, exasperated into charity, donated land to build a city park

Still there

Its trees the oldest things around

Both they and Mr Harrison achieving some sort of immortality.