Flitt & Folio's Family Favourites

By Peppy Scott and David Smith

A collection of (mostly) humorous verse for and about family and other curious creatures...

Pam Flitt and Ivor Folio are award-winning performance poets from the Kent and Sussex borders, where they also occasionally appear under their real names, Peppy Scott and David Smith. Their poems, songs and skits have been featured on BBC radio and online in various forms, including animation. Peppy and David are the creative team behind 2Fs Design and two-thirds of The Gluten-free Trio. They host regular open mics showcasing spoken word, original song and comedy, these "Voices" events featuring regularly in local festivals and entertainments.

Family Favourites offers over 100 pages of their most popular poems covering aspects of family life and the frustrations and joys those ties can bring. Illustrated throughout with original drawings by "Peppy", who is the resident cartoonist for The Times of Tunbridge Wells.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Peppy Scott
• Release date: Mar 26, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005185190

Book preview

ON MOTHERHOOD

Birthing blood. Primal pain.

I’m never doing that again!

For you alone I paid that price,

Made the selfless sacrifice.

The start of you. The end of me,

My liberty, identity,

My body battered to become

That more important thing – your mum.

Mother’s milk to start you right,

I pureed every veg in sight,

Weeping as my nipples cracked,

I persevered. That was our pact –

The best for you at any cost,

My will and independence lost,

Enslaved devotion day on day,

It’s unconditional, they say.

Out with bars and cinema.

In with cot and nursing bra,

Sucked into a deep black hole

Of sleepless nights in my new role.

I packed away my pretty things,

Flattering frocks and earrings.

I put down Proust and Jo Nesbo.

Instead I read The Gruffalo.

No longer being wined and dined

(Forgotten life I’d left behind)

I signed up for the PTA –

Had seven years to rue that day...

I bore all your spoilt, whining friends,

And (worse!) their mums. It never ends –

Birthday parties, school sports days,

Endured, immersed in a Merlot haze.

Of course, I don’t need to explain,

You’re worth the blood, the tears, the pain.

You’re worth it all, my precious child,

My one pure love. I’m reconciled

To giving all you need of me.

It was my wish that you should be,

And I’m repaid in full, it’s true,

Each time that I embarrass you.

GRANDDAD’S THINGUMMYJIG

My granddad made a thingummyjig,

he built it in his shed,

he didn’t draw a blueprint

he just kept it in his head.

He only ever made the one

and then he dropped down dead.

He left it in his will to me

to care for in his stead...

There’s a bobbin on the nerdling spring

that bounces up and down

when the grundle on the spocklerod

is spinning round and round,

there’s a baffle on the terdstick

where it strikes against the ground,

and a damper on the hamstring

so it hardly makes a sound.

There’s a giblet on the wobblestack

to lubricate the spleen,

and once a year at Christmas

it’ll flash from red to green,

but just one drop of oil

or a blob of Vaseline

will prime it for another year

and keep its dumper clean.

The wiffler’s automatic

with a grumble-gusset grip

that fixes on the chuffer

with a double-whammy clip

the grunion rings are puckled

so they never, ever slip

and they’re double surge-protected

with a sparrabolic trip.

There’s a clapper on the boilerplate

that rings a little bell

to vent the gobble-grommet

when the bladder starts to swell,

the steam that leaves the spigot

has a lovely fruity smell -

we don’t know how it does it

but it does it very well!

My granddad made a thingummyjig,

the only one there’ll be,

I’d love to share it with the world

but fear they’d never see

the wonder and the beauty

of the gift he left to me,

so I keep it safely in my shed

and hide the only key.

LITTLE GIRL IN A RED DRESS

She set aside the dolls and sweets,

Discarded piles of tinselled treats;

Instead, clutched in her dimpled hands,

A simple pack of pink hair bands.

Teasing strands of first-growth hair

To punky spikes, yet soft and fair,

Bound in bunches, wild but neat

As slender sheaves of summer wheat:

A tufted little oddity

Of infant eccentricity,

Concerted creativity,

Determined in her destiny.

Absorbed all day and never bored

While grown-ups ate and drank and snored,

In their midst yet set apart,

Buzzing round her new-found art:

A parcel of calm industry,

Self-contained activity,

Focused firm but dreamily,

Contented little busy bee.

Swathed in swishing velvet, red,

Majestic as her gold-crowned head,

A quaintness in old-fashioned looks

Like princesses in story books:

A picture of life’s happiness

Wrapped up in a party dress.

Innocence of childhoods past,

Future memories forged to last,

Present perfect, fleetingly,

A gift in perpetuity.

MR HUMOURVERSE

I dreamed the other night I was a Marvel™ super-hero;

my name was ‘Mr Humourverse’