The Crash

My dad sat at that very table

in this pub. Yeh, it was just there.

He told me there were no carpets.

Everything was like, salvaged.

Nothing matched. The walls were cracked.

They were poor. They barely managed.

Inside, it was all brown or grey.

Colour had become a rarity.

Made in a local brewery

their beer was always cloudy.

Meat, he said, was a scarce commodity.
Sometimes there was no wi-fi.

They though that it was ironic

their old school, shabby chic décor.

It seems weird to us, but they were too proud
to admit that that they poor. 

Jobs were as hard to find, dad said 
in those days, as a smooth chin. 

They would sit for hours in the dark 
scanning their iPhone screens. 

They were always foraging or searching 
for some work, a leaf in a hedge, anything.