- Contributed by听
- Jean Cook-Bahrami
- People in story:听
- Some Raper family members
- Location of story:听
- Sunderland moving onto Bishop Aukland
- Article ID:听
- A1288659
- Contributed on:听
- 17 September 2003
Assured by a researcher that poetry is an acceptable form to offer stories in. I offer this for anyone's critique.
My mother was one of seventeen children,
Eleven managed to thrive,
When I was born in '43,
I had 87 relatives alive.
Apart from aunts, uncles and cousins,
I had great aunts and uncles and such,
And one great great aunt Ada
With a donkey who liked beer too much.
We lived in a town house terrace,
Upstairs from my gran in a flat,
But when I was only six months old,
We moved, Hitler saw to that.
With what we could save from the bombing,
We moved in with my auntie Nell,
My gran and grandpa, mum and me,
And aunt Nell's three kids as well.
It was just a bit overcrowded,
But at least I had my own drawer,
The others were sleeping three to a bed,
Grandpa had cushions on the floor.
They applied for emergency housing,
But before bureaucracy could stir,
Hitler found out where we were living,
And bombed us again, the cur.
We then all moved to aunt Ada's,
Who had the drunken donkey called Jen,
And great uncle Billy had been bombed,
So he moved in also and made ten.
The cottage was only two up and two down,
Ten living together was hard,
There was no electric or plumbing,
Just a standpipe and midden in the yard.
Still they managed it somehow,
People slept wherever they could,
Then my aunt Lil upset Herr Hitler,
So he bombed her too, well, he would.
She arrived with young Ray and Harry,
A cat,a dog and pickled pigs feet,
And uncle Henry in a wheelchair,
Well he at least brought his own seat.
Things then became a bit frantic,
Some rations were wearing a bit thin,
Beds were all at a premium,
Someone got out as someone else got in.
Meals were eaten in rota,
The tin bath was always full,
The washing stretched for miles and miles,
Domestic chores never suffered a lull.
The donkey hated the cat and the dog,
To fight she was paratus semper, (always ready)
But when the men stole her Newcastle Brown Ale,
She demolished the midden in her temper.
Then I developed chicken pox,
The whole house started to freak,
Understandable really,
All were covered in spots the next week.
Now I was too young to remember all this,
But each gathering up someone chimes,
About how they all coped despite Hitler,
And how they were the best of times.
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