Burton & Daughter

I know one day this house will pass
to someone else, me having no children,
my brother opting out of the family business.
And although it’s not a traditional workshop,
we haven’t lovingly manufactured cuckoo
clocks for centuries, or farmed sheep
for generations, there is industry here.
I have been apprenticed for years,
watching my father work at the lathe,
sanding down the sledge, the rabbit hutch.
I have seen him disappear into the garage
for weeks on end, like Dick Van Dyke
in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, maybe not
emerging with a flying car, but certainly
an ingenious contraption to stop the dog
escaping from the back garden. Yes,
there has been craft, my dad chipping away
at our lives with hammer and chisel,
honing each part, smoothing down sharp
edges, so that like a Michelangelo sculpture,
the details start to step out, a vein of my mother
making jam scones, a cast of my brother
playing Phantom of the Opera on the electric organ,
a frieze of my grandmother and me watching
repeats of Young Doctors, Sons & Daughters.
I have learned the ropes, fully trained up
in the art of laughing at classic British sitcoms,
of stitching together stories, of laying down
banter, stripping back old jokes, restoring
them to their former glory. And it’s ready
for the under new ownership sign, for whoever
takes this on as a going concern, for that
entrepreneur, the one who wants to modernise,
add a lick of paint, who runs a finger along
a dusty memory. Please, I just ask this one thing,
leave the sign above the door, give it a polish:
Burton & Daughter, established 1977.

Jeanette blurb