Alison Brackenbury

All Change

Based on a handwritten notebook of recipes from Dorothy Eliza Barnes, my grandmother, a shepherd’s wife, who had worked as an Edwardian cook With girl’s fine nib, in blackest black you scratched down with your steel pen ‘Puzzle Pudding’, ‘Feather Cake’, script tiny, taught, as you were then. Next, sky’s blue strays into the mix,

My Grandmother Said

It was the First World War. Her husband was away. So she knew fear, but also found new freedom in the day. On Thursdays, with the farmer’s wife, old basket in her lap, by butter slabs, she rode to Brigg, shawled, in the pony trap. Oh how I envied her! I whined to Brigg by