Coffee Morning in Hades

 

It's another coffee morning in Hades.
All of these old crone's souls
have long departed their bodies.
It hath been decreed that they meet weekly
(but by no manner of means meekly)
in one of the lesser known
Ladies' Circles of Hell.
In my mother's front room,
it's closer than close to home.
The venues may alternate
but the programme stays the same.

Feel the Mellow Bird's in full flow
 - it's the cup that depresses -
but there's no Joanna Lumleys here,
wearing floaty dresses
while cycling through the Cotswolds.
Instead, a phalanx of harridans,
all waspish and sarcastic.
After you, Sue, with the larks' tongues in aspic!

There's petits fours galore, for sure.
Is something rotting neath the floor?
Someone holds a finger of shortbread
like a pistol to my head,
before making me partake
of exquisite Dundee cake.
Soon, it's macaroons of doom.
I get tooled up with a teaspoon.

While all this is going on,
our dads hide in their greenhouses,
pretending to be tomatoes.
No light at the end of this polytunnel.
If I wasn't four years old,
I think I'd run away.
I might do it anyway,
take off down the rocky road.

B.R. 03/06/2017