Even wider than it was before

I walk past a teenager eating a cooked breakfast

on his own in a brightly coloured café

and immediately remember a holiday

when I was about fifteen, the first time

I made a cooked breakfast for everyone,

getting up while my parents were snoring

a griddle pan of sausages and mushrooms,

my headphones on, Discman in my bumbag,

which sounds like I’m trying too hard

to reference the eighties but it’s where I kept

my Discman, a Puma bumbag I bought

the only time I went to London, a city

I had seen on TV for years and genuinely believed

Was the way life should be. For years

I wanted to be someone I had no ability

or disposition to be. I decided to make a pot of tea.

I had seen one in the big cupboard when we arrived.

The same gite in Brittany for six years in a row.

That gite got me through puberty, via Southampton

and St Malo, from primary school children bewildered

by the concept of languages, making breakfast for everyone

remember an extra bag for the pot. I cooked every item

on each plate to perfection. I don’t know if anyone wanted

a big breakfast but I was so excited for them to wake up.

I had even done clever thing with the tomatoes.