Cooking Vinyl

Tuesday afternoons after lunch,
the Ma and I used to visit
old Miss Regan round the corner
in New Street. Inside, the house
was brown wood and dark green. I played
on the floor in the front room
while the Ma and Miss Regan talked
about things.

One day, Miss Regan showed Ma
how to make plant pots from old
records - 78's. I stood by the kitchen
door and watched Miss Regan put a
record over a big pot of water and
heat it up. After a while, the record
softened and the middle went down.
The record went hard soon after being
taken off the pot and "There you are,
what do you think of that? There's the
the hole at the bottom to let the
water out."

Miss Regan gave the Ma a few records
to make pots with. We tried, but they
turned out crooked and useless. I put
a record on a bit of Meccano and tried
playing it with a sewing needle -
I could just hear someone singing.

Some years later, it turned out Miss
Regan had a grown up daughter locked
upstairs all that time. I wondered did
she ever shout out, or was her voice
locked into the old records Miss Regan
melted down into plant pots?