My granddaughter in oblivious present is making a wonderful mud bath in the garden.
Memories surface, a black wind-up gramophone in my grandfather’s study.
Sixty years ago in shady respectable Horsham, an old Victorian house, lunch is done.
Lying on the floor listening to Flanders & Swann song about something muddy.
The girl chatters, her spade busy, something comes back unbidden from this garden mud.
“Mud, mud glorious mud, nothing quite like it for cooling the blood, so follow me follow,
Down to the hollow and there shall we wallow in glorious mud.”
Suddenly, for the first time in years this buried past , my mind allow me to follow.
Always in jacket and tie, black hat, the old man, Big Da, no older than I am now.
His fishing tackle, Great War MC in the case, golf clubs and handicap of just four.
His sherry before Sunday lunch, outside the wisteria gives his wit a bow.
A film show memory of me on the toy tractor in the garden, and falling off happy and sore.
Walking home from Sunday church, ancient Robinson Crusoe prints on the kitchen wall.
One day will she of this recall, but for me brief echoes of faintly sepia happy memories call.