It is the season

of the £1 supermarket daffodils

It is the season of the one pound supermarket daffodils. I walk home from M&S with three bunches for three pounds like a madman, holding them out in front of me. They are my talisman, my evil eye, and I think of that Grace Nichols poem we learned in sixth-form college, where she walks through London looking for the warmth of the Caribbean, “swinging my bag like a beacon against the cold.” The sun is shining today but I’m clutching my one pound daffs like a beacon against the news, the news that asks me to read it many times a day.

In the poem, though, the voice is in London longing for plantains and saltfish and sweet potatoes, while I see plenty on the African food stalls near my house. Ridley Road Market is also offering gold jewellery, herbal remedies, lycra leggings and braided wigs. I want the dollar sign necklace that Neneh Cherry had on Raw Like Sushi; a pink pleated skirt to look like Miyake. I want the arse for those leggings as shown on the arse mannequin. The knowledge and the nerve for that fishmonger with slippery heads on display.

Some Rastas stand on the corner with their soundsystem and they see me and smile, we dance together for a moment, they know I’m game. A tourist dynamic / some people moving their bodies in the light / the long winter banished / the start of the one pound daffodils.

You don’t get this in Primrose Hill.

Oh look, my daughter texts from school to say she has forged my signature on a forgotten permission slip. I look at the photo of swiggles drawn too politely for my hand and I laugh, she is my girl, my million dollar bunch. She was once my beacon against the cold, as a little thing, but now the world has begun to pour its cold into her. My job is to keep tipping it out, draining an overloaded washing machine.

But it is the season of the one pound supermarket daffodils! Take them home, put them in water and watch them bloom? What could one bunch cure? And I have three!

At home I read the newspaper and the King has been to see cancer patients, he is still having treatment too and he says to them, “you just have to keep buggering on, don’t you,” the words now thumping through their minds like a soundtrack called hope. I want to say to him, but how can you keep on when you can’t afford to - and the government are cutting the - and who owns Cornwall anyway - but in this moment he is a kind man, also, and this can also be true.

I see my mum for one hour and she has painted her nails bright orange, like neon fruit, like food for the eyes, what a feast of a thing!

It is the season of the one pound supermarket daffodils, as beautiful as anything is ugly, as important as anything is sad. So keep buggering on. I carry them like a beacon into the warmth.

LIKE A BEACON by Grace Nichols, from ‘The Fat Black Woman’s Poems.’

(A book taught to us by our teacher Ms Celia Hilton after I complained that the authors we were studying for A-Level English Lit were all men.)

In London
every now and then
I get this craving
for my mother’s food
I leave art galleries
in search of plantains
saltfish/sweet potatoes

I need this link

I need this touch
of home
swinging my bag
like a beacon
against the cold