Granny’s toast
was grilled face-down
over the ring of an electric cooker
and was sometimes scraped
with a knife over the washing-up bowl,
releasing the singed smell of scorched crusts.
The slices that survived this
not only tasted better than other toast,
they belonged to a different league.
The champions of toast’s division one
were left cooling in a proper chrome rack;
thin, white, curled triangles of memory:
The smell of Granny’s toast
filled the living room
of 12 Railway Cottages, Newby Bridge
and the never-quite-long-enough
school holidays of my youth
as a pre-pubescent flower child.
Perhaps wearing my blue paisley shirt
(with matching cravat and imitation gold cravat-ring)
I would spread Granny’s toast
with salted, melting butter
and eat it,
blissful and oblivious
of an older generation growing its hair,
losing its innocence,
dropping out,
going to war,
and dying in jungles
far from the comforts of home.
—0O0—
