Harry

Prodding the sweet-scented tobacco into his pipe

he looked across the wooden table to me and smiled,

crooked yellow teeth showed past wrinkled pink lips.

His rough gruff voice grumbled,

“Want a beer? Should be ready to try.”

“I’m only eleven!”

“I know”.

Grandad knew everything, had been everywhere.

A lumberjack in Australia – that’s how he lost his finger.

A sheep farmer in Ireland – that’s where he trained the dog.

But most exciting of all, or so I’d been told,

he’d been in the war,

captured by Germans

and escaped,

Five times!

Grandad never talked about the war, only about how to grow things,

how to train dogs, how eating only grapes for a week cleaned your system.

And how, last month, he had stopped them building the nuclear power plant,

by lying in the mud

in front of a bulldozer

singing.

He had a rough gruff dog, as grey and grizzled as Grandad,

the dog also knew everything, had been everywhere.

He knew how to round up baa-ing and panicking sheep, 

how to come when called, to sit, and stay, and lay down flat on the wet grass.

When Grandad had moved to another farm the dog wanted to go home.

He walked two hundred miles to his old house,

arriving days later,

skinny from starvation,

coat muddy and matted,

paws bleeding.

“This beer is made from the hops that grow on the back wall.

To make a brew this good the plant needs lots of compost.

Do you know how to make the best compost?” He asked.

I shook my head. “You piss on it!” he said.

I nodded wisely,

pretended

 to sip my beer.

He puffed

on his pipe.