CHIPS - Flash fiction with a difference

You know how a train of thought develops out of the blue and you can't get your mind to leave that track? Well, that's what this week's photo prompt did to me. I didn't see the snow, though in the summer heat here some snow would be bliss - I zoomed right in on the little stalls, which reminded me of a poem I wrote a while ago for the Queen's Jubilee.
So please bear with me, enjoy my poem, and forgive the fact that I've outstripped the word count by A LOT!
In my defence, I am in the throes of packing up to relocate from Tenerife to England after fifteen years, and my head's up my ****!
Thanks as always to https://rochellewisofffields.wordpress.com/  for the photo prompt -

CHIP  STALL

My Dad has a chip stall right outside the Tower

– of London, you dolt, not Blackpool –

and now I can actually see over the counter

I help out sometimes after school.

The tourists will stop for two quids-worth of chips

 – “London prices,” Dad says if they moan –

and some of them want them wrapped up in The Times

instead of a grease-paper cone.

Mum’s batter is made with the very best beer

and is famous throughout London town –

a few TV chefs have offered a fortune

but Mum won’t write anything down.

Some weekends the queue to see the Crown Jewels

can stretch for a very long way –

Dad turns on a fan to waft out the smell

and we turn a good profit those days.

Last Sunday I wanted to watch the procession,

but Dad said the Queen’s Jubilee

would bring in the cash and he needed my help –

I could watch it that night on TV.

So there I was, serving the ketchup and salt,

when the whole queue went quiet and still,

and That Voice said, “Those chips smell delicious – We really

must have some - please send Us the bill.”

Mum curtsied and Dad took his cap off and bowed;

“On the house, Ma’am – I couldn’t charge You.”

So I salted Her Majesty’s chips - and took a quick

photo to prove it was true.

                                       ...............................................................

EYESIGHT and a POEM

A couple of years after this photo was taken I was wearing glasses and have worn them ever since. I spent my teenage years bemoaning the fact that I had to spoil any outfit with my National Health glasses - my parents couldn't afford private ones. Each time I had new glasses I had to choose frames without being able to see them, and each new pair reduced me to tears when I realized once again that they hadn't transformed me into a beauty! After an unsuccessful flirtation with lenses it is only now, in my later years, that I have learned to accept them.

Eyesight is something most of us take for granted, but if, like me, you had to take early retirement due to eyestrain, you tend to be a tad paranoid. Every new floater might be Retinal Detachment and each blurred moment Macular Degeneration. Other people enthuse about laser surgery – me, I’m terrified I’d be one of the failures. How could I write or read if I couldn’t see? I couldn't admire the photo of my grandsons playing with the neighbours' dogs in an English meadow, or see the growth of a cactus flower.

This is this morning's photo - it won't be long before the flower is fully open.

The flame trees in our complex are just bursting into leaf, though they still have last year's seed pods. In a few weeks they will be aflame with orange blossom - what a shame not to be able to see that.

The reason for all this introspection is the book I am reading - Nicholas Evans' The Smoke Jumper - in which a young man is blinded by an accident, and I wondered how I would cope.

Some years ago I worked for the RNIB and wrote a poem about being blind. I shall put it on My Writing page if you want to read it.

Oh yes - and Happy Diamond Jubilee to you all, Congratulations to Her Majesty, and I wish I was in England to join in the festivities, rain and all!