The lumpy blanket
threatens shipwreck
to our overloaded plates.

Ruptured packets
spill their contents
in a sea of pink and green,

while on the shoreline
hungry cutlery unlimbers,
circles for the kill.

The air is filled with shrieks
as children clutch
at drifting thistledown.

'It's sink or swim —
that's life, I say,'
an uncle comments,

hunkered in a deckchair,
flagrantly afloat amid the debris
of the barbecued blue cod.