Colin Shaddick

Sleeping With Grandma (Micro-Pofiction)

If someone had told me,

long, long ago

when I was beatnik-young;

with a head stuffed

full of lofty ideas

and a dog-eared copy

of The Dharma Bums

sticking out

of my corduroy jacket pocket –

that in the blink

of a metaphorical eye,

I’d be going to bed

with a grandmother

night after night,

l’d have been horror-struck

to say the least ...

I would have told them straight

that I’d rather be hung.

I’d have told them

that us jeaned-up

and sandaled poets,

us Monk inspired musicians,

us adventurers

and free-thinkers:

the enlightened ones who’d follow

a winding road to anywhere

just to gain

a little more understanding,

would always attract young

and feisty women

to our beds at night –

and would go crazy

with all the demanding.

I would have been wrong –

He or she would have been right.

I am, these days,

sleeping with a Gran.

And do you know...

It feels quite natural

and I don’t feel like a pervert

for owning up to it.

It is, after all,

part of the bigger plan.

All the fears I once had

have now moved out:

there’s no false teeth

grinning menacingly from a jar,

no heavy cotton nightdress

to get your nails hooked up in,

no maze of deep creases

to get me confused...

No bits that unscrew;

no curlers,

no profound,

or even selective deafness –

Nothing out of the ordinary

to make me bemused.

No obstinacy.

No hoists or slings

to get things to the right height

and no unattractive chrome commode

parked menacingly close:

there to remind one of the possibility

of leakage,

if one had to walk

across the bedroom to the toilet,

(once imagined to take place

half-way through the act of lovemaking) –

No, nothing remotely like it.

Nothing that is displeasing

to the thought processes, or eye.

My mate has not been so lucky

with his partner, though.

He told me she’s lost

her sense of direction

and will sometimes get herself

into some quite embarrassing situations,

and that she’s also lost it

with regard to any notion

of appropriate time or place.

That’s why she has no contact

with many of her close relatives.

Very few come and show their face.

They once went

on an organised bus trip,

and they’d hardly travelled half a mile

when she accidentally dropped

her bag of bacon sandwiches.

They were seated

at the front end of the bus.

They were perched,

like a couple of budgies,

on the long seat that faces

the other passengers;

the seat that everyone

tries to avoid like the plague –

especially if you’re wearing

an uncomfortable truss.

Apparently, she had insisted that she knew

a quick way to the bus station.

She had run on ahead and quickly

got lost, and as a consequence

they were late in getting to the bus

and had to take the only seating left.

The embarrassing seat that faces

the rest of the peering passengers –

They felt totally bereft.

The neatly wrapped slices of bread

ended up between my mate’s feet.

His partner, without too much thought,

immediately bent forward to retrieve it –

Well, it must have been the sudden rush of blood,

because it was at this particular point

that she obviously became totally confused.

My mate was heard to shout something like,

‘What the hell are you doing, Jean?’

Because in a flash,

she was grabbing frantically

at the front his trousers and ‘talking dirty’:

something that he’d encouraged her to do,

when they first met

and were pushing thirty.

After he’d poured

his Thermos of tea over her head

to save further humiliation,

she came to her senses once again

and picked up her sandwiches.

She sat there as bold as you like

asking what the rest of the passengers

were laughing at –

Well, the driver asked them to get off

at the next service station

and they were told not to attempt to use

his bus company in the future.

She now takes trips in her brain;

much like my mate did, back in the 60s.

‘She can be gone for hours’, he said.

Isn’t it funny how situations can change?

He said she’d never smoke anything,

back then, but now,

after a fresh bacon sandwich

and a helping hand to the seat

next to the old Dansette record player,

she’ll be on a trip in no time:

carried along by psychedelic sound waves.

‘Well, it isn’t so bad’, he said.

‘At least it gives me the opportunity

to play my old vinyl again’.

I suppose every cloud has its silver lining.