The Harridan's Great Great Grandmamma

Cupcakes and jiggery piggy-wiggly said the harridan, knees cupped into the folds of her skirt, the sky a monger’s blood-apron, feet plaited into arthritic briar-wood, wood. If only I had a copper to buy a quid of Quaker’s-chew, brown biscuit and a jawful of brown stench, such a sumptuous delicacy. Her great, great grandmamma married a Quaker, a stodgy man with iron gray hair and a palp lip that curled round the chisel of his teeth like a millipede. He sold tinker’s castoffs and snuff and wore burlap trousers with a belt knotted to one side like a tract of intestine or a hookworm. Her great, great grandmamma told her that her great, great granddad like mouton-bird stew with onions and fennel, and wedges of farmer’s cheese ripened in Port barrels that he ate with a wooden spoon and a silver knife. She said that he wouldn’t allow two sliver things to touch, as it was a slight to God, or the sun in through the bedroom window until he’d said his morning prayers. The dimwitted child that she was, she asked her great, great grandmamma if they ate Quaker’s Oats for breakfast, to which her great, great grandmamma replied, sternly, her apron corseted round the wade of her hips, my child, this world is not what it appears to be, so stop asking stupid questions.