When I met, and married my wife,
I opened a secret door,
I knew that her mother, Grace, was strange
But I didn’t know what for.
They spoke so low that I couldn’t hear
In a mother/daughter pact,
But Ellen, she was my holy grail
Til I found it was an act.

I’d been brought up in the English way
Of roast beef, fruit and veg,
The mint that grew and the rhubarb too
By our garden’s privet hedge,
I didn’t know there were other things
That were quite beyond my ken,
But she’d come up through a different school
Though I didn’t know it then.

They say you should check the mother out
If you want to save your tears,
For what the mother is like right now
Is your wife in thirty years,
And Grace was skinny and pastie-faced
With a rock-hard, gimlet eye,
While Ellen was soft and curvy then
And just a trifle shy.

Grace was running a cuisine club
For the village ladies all,
Every Wednesday they’d go en masse
Down to the village hall,
Ellen said there were treats in store
But I didn’t really see,
Not til she brought it home with her
That she’d try it out on me.

The first of the treats she brought on home
Almost knocked me through a loop,
I said, ‘What’s that in the steaming bowl,’
And she answered ‘Batwing soup.
You might need a knife and fork for it,
The wings have a leathery feel,
It won’t take long to get used to it
It tastes a little like eel.’

After I’d gagged and choked a bit
I managed to keep some down,
I said, ‘I’d rather have beef, my love,’
But she stood awhile, and frowned,
‘I’ve made you a special omelette,
Of turtle legs and bees,
Bound together by turkey eggs
And just a little cheese.’

I couldn’t say what I thought of it,
She would be dismayed, my wife,
I knew the love she’d put into it
It would only cause us strife,
But every Wednesday she’d bring one home
A treat for me to try,
Her casserole was a lucky dip
And snake in her cottage pie.

I suffered it for a month or more
Then I put my case to her,
‘I draw the line at toadskin wine,
And a pie with rodent fur,
I love you, Ellen, I really do
But your mother gives me the creeps,
Her witches recipes just won’t do,
I hate ragwort and leeks.’

We came to a final arrangement,
She could do what she’d always done,
The whisk broom under the stairs, she said
Was her idea of fun,
I try to ignore the pointy hat
That she wears when the moon is high,
But she never feeds me toads and rats
Though her mother asks her, ‘Why?’

David Lewis Paget