Weston Super Mare 1976

A summer’s day with the family minus Dad

To visit our grandma in hospital. 

She used to work in a cigarette factory

And her pension included an allowance 

Of three hundred fags a month

But now she had cancer

Only a year into her retirement. 

 

I can still see her there in bed

Almost lifeless but for the propping

Of tired pillows and undying pride. 

 

I sit there with my mum and 

My three older sisters

And realise that something is going on

But I have only one thing on my mind - 

The Penny Falls. 

 

I have been a pathological gambler

For fifty-one of my fifty-eight years

Just a milk bottle bobbing and drifting

In a windless empty ocean

Always enough air to keep me afloat

For one more go at the arcade. 

 

We’re sat around the bed 

But I’m already there with the flashing lights

I can hear the urgent alarms and the noises

The clinking of coins in collection trays. 

 

Nan always used to give me a couple of quid 

When I visited her with Mum

And I loved her, can still see her face, 

But as I sat there looking all sad

All I could have about was the machine.

I still remember her flat 

You could see the arcade from her window-

It was always there with me. 

 

Back in the car there’s a silence

All four of them are crying quietly

And there’s me, stroking three quid 

Notes in my pocket. 

‘It’ll be ok,’ I say to snap them out of it

But that’s their cue to cry harder

So I just have to sit out

Not a care in the world but for the arcade. 

 

Now I’m an old poisoned git

I see how my feelings were stolen

By misdirected thoughts or

Maybe it was the PTSD I caught 

When I was in Mum’s womb. 

 

When she turned the key and 

The engine spluttered into life

I knew I was on my way.