‘A right piece of work’, so the story goes

that’s what Mum said or the truth she chose

about Mrs Jeffreys of Tunbridge Wells 

Mum’s great aunty, her Aunty Rose

 

Despite her rather dowdy clothes

and crooked teeth and her wonky nose

My great great aunty, Aunty Rose

looked rather sweet in old photos

 

Like parents, both tight so and so’s

My great great aunty, Aunty Rose

hid her wages deep down belows

in depths of her silk pantyhose

 

My great great aunty, Aunty Rose

She loved French film, Francois Truffaut’s

Quatre Cent Coups (400 Blows)

And a poem or two she did compose

 

Behind her mask being morose 

A dare devil was Aunty Rose

On husband’s bike, on Uncle Joes

His motorbike, look, there she goes!

 

Go back and forwards, to’s and fro’s,

she loved to dance did Aunty Rose

Her Charleston step in stilettos

kept all the boys firm on their toes

 

In Nevill Park lived Aunty Rose

The street where tree, money tree grows

That part of town, no terrace rows

two up two down, like Aunty Flo’s

 

My great great aunty, Aunty Rose

How afford live there, do you suppose?

She kept it quiet to not expose

In case her friends turned up on their nose

A live-in maid was Aunty Rose

 

For a wealthy Lord worked Aunty Rose

At a time when gay meant prison goes

One time whilst peeling potatoes

she caught Lord reading gay men’s prose 

 

Young teenage boys with feather bows

would go upstairs to his studios

‘They come’, Lord said ‘to play dominos’

as his nose grew like Pinocchios

 

Hamlet cigars puffed Aunty Rose

Killed by the smoke, her gravestone shows 

Though with many folk, she came to blows

Did she mean good just misunderstood?

It’s a shame now no one really knows.