Take Uncle John
text © Nicola Field 2007 soundscape © Steven Brown 2007
voice: Clare Cameron
Fifty-seven and in computers.
He’s got two meals he can cook:
Three-Onion Spaghetti, and
Chicken With Twigs.
A visitor would get the good plate,
Uncle John the one that snapped,
in an eclipse.
The cutlery drawer has been held together with string since
Tony Blair first got in;
Stickers from beer bottles and bananas decorate stains on tiles
around the fossilled hob, and
Uncle John waves vinegar that’s five years out of date.
‘It’s a preservative!’ he insists.
There’s a chair by the window, where,
on days off and summer nights,
he turns his head slowly from street to dying plant.
He is an authority on how the Nazis used IBM punch-cards.
Every evening, one more newspaper slots flat into a
yellowing catalogue creeping paleolithic up the walls.
And now he’s bald,
the hairbrush holds the soap.
Once, long ago, Uncle John got down on his knees,
cried, begged and held onto the door
when Auntie Paula took up with the man at number six.
Now what matters is piling spoons straight in stacks,
lining up milk in order of date,
and catching The Archers,
to remember what humans are like.
