My surrogate mother-in-law
Is becoming a bit of a bore
By declaiming my rhymes
At inapposite times
And then yelling ‘Bravo!’ and ‘Encore!’

In a way it’s nice to have a relative’s company during Christmas, even though she mainly comes round to fetch off her departed daughter’s possessions, a pram-load at a time. But she wanted to change ‘inapposite’ (‘Nobody knows that word’) to ‘embarrassing’. I told her it’s not embarrassing to hear one’s doggerel bellowed on the front porch in the small hours – everyone likes a fan, after all, and it’s quite flattering that she has them all by rote. It’s just that this is a decent neighborhood and anybody interested will have read the bulletins online anyway.