I haven't got a Mum now. I miss her quite a lot.
I have instead to rummage through the memories I've got.
She had a Morris Traveller, that smelt of wood and leather.
That got quite cold and soggy in cold and soggy weather.
She'd take me to the barbers at the bottom of our street
And if I didn't wriggle I'd earn myself a treat.
I'd climb up on the barber's chair, then higher to the plank.
I'd ask to look like Fonz, and she'd say, "Just a buzz-cut, Frank."
She'd tickle me and tickle me until I'd start to cry,
Then scoop me up in horror and ask me sweetly, why
And I would tell her, sobbing, as to her neck I'd clutch
That I didn't want her stopping cos I loved her very much.
She'd buy us bars of Freddo when we'd visit Nanny Day
Who wasn't really nanny - just something that we'd say.
We didn't really notice when we stopped just popping over.
She saved us from the naked truth that Nanny's day was over.
I had nightmares all the time and more often than not
I'd wake and not go back to sleep and climb out of my cot.
I'd toddle into her room, gripping onto Ted
And walk straight past my Dad, and round to her side of the bed.
I also used to sleepwalk and once fell down the stairs
I woke as I was falling. Plummeting, and scared.
My memory is surely false, the truth is long forgotten, but
I swear my Mum ran down the stairs and caught me at the bottom.
Once when coming back from town I told her that I planned
To leave and "seek my fortune". She said "that's lovely," and
rather than protest or beg, when time came to the crunch,
She buttoned up my duffle coat and packed me up a lunch.
She once entered a contest, for Tampax of all things,
To come up with an ad-line, to help them shift the things.
The winner would be used in all the adverts and brochures.
My mother sent the beautifully simple line, "up yours."
Best of all my Mum liked writing poems - rude, and funny.
Absolutely priceless but never made her money.
Instead of just a birthday card, they'd be her contribution.
She was our very own Pam Ayres... After elocution.
I haven't got a Mum now. I miss her such a lot,
and here's the way I'm treasuring the memories I've got.
I've put them in a poem, in my Mother's sort of verse.
I wish that it could make her smile, though it's not as good as hers.
Were.