Les Chocolats Belges, a tourist shop on the Woodbridge thoroughfare with other blue and white cockerels like the one at home looking out over neatly stacked packages of gold and silver boxed chocolates.

They have labels tied around their necks, which whisper to me of my mother.

They are "Les Coqs du Bonheure," rosters of good luck and happiness, glazed Alcobaca blue from sunny Portugal where my mother and stepfather must have stayed.

An impulse present probably given by him to my mother for better times as she poured herself another drink just before she died.

They buried her in the peppered chalks of Sussex.

An upbeat funeral before we cleared the flat where I placed her china rooster in a cardboard box along with other assorted bric-a-brac and glass.

A strange creature with a contorted crop and tail, found snuggled in dust next to empty gin bottles.

"He'll guard the house," my wife said.

We placed him on the kitchen sill, forgave his occasional slips like my mother's and put him back together with super glue.

John Greeves - Magor - 2002

Read G.I. Joe - also by John Greeves.