Pat-a- Cake Pat-a-cake
Pat-a-cake Pat-a-cake
Dancing down the street oblivious to the flak
Scorning gas mask and tin hat
High on life
Pat-a-cake Pat-a-cake
Reading for hours with me on her lap
Nursery rhymes on tap
Mother and wife
Pat-a-cake Pat-a-cake
Cycling to market with me on the back
Ice-cream and sweets never any lack
Giver of life
Pat-a-cake Pat-a-cake
Rummaging round all the jumble sales
Finding bargains never fails
Planning the afterlife
Pat-a-cake Pat-a-cake
Pat-a-cake Pat-a-cake
Pat-a-cake Pat-a-cake
Opher 7.10.23
Thinking back to my mum a series of memories came flooding through. I can remember sitting on her lap as a little toddler and her playing Pat-a-cake Pat-a-cake baker’s man.
Fond fond memories
As a teenager in the war she danced back down the street, going home from the dances, no tin hat, as the bombers flew overhead and Big Bertha, the antiaircraft gun on the railway fired up at them. In the morning the road she’s danced along was covered in shards of metal from the exploding shells.
She’d play with me all day with nursery rhymes and actions. She’d take me to the market six miles away, in the seat on the back of her bike, so I could see the sheep, pigs and cattle. She’d buy me an ice-cream and a bag of sweets.
Her hobby was jumble sales. She collected clothes and useful things to give to poverty-stricken families.
Her other interest was the spiritualist church.
She was my mother.