How My Mother Made Her Life Work

From 1975 onward, when I was an touchy teenager,
she worked at the cheap end of the black economy,
staffing a junk shop owned by a rumoured millionaire.

When there were no customers in this warehouse
for goods, that aspired to be a proper shop
she filled in her time cleaning the ovens and greasy tops
of the cookers that the secret millionaire brought in
from local house clearances. He never stopped. 

The cookers came in filthy and had to be cleaned,
for them to be saleable to the claimants on benefits,
who got grants from the Dep't of Social Security,
to pay for them, including their delivery,
only for the claimants to get the ovens dirty again.

This upcycling of goods with government money
and Mothers elbow grease, was a win-win for the boss
and the claimant, but for Mother it was a loss,
beyond how it justified her being away for longer
from the house she and we lived in
that it was her duty to manage, unpaid and unthanked.