For no obvious reason I was recalling, the other evening, one of the short poems we read at my mother’s funeral back in June 2015.

As some here will know she was a great nature lover, and unbeknown to anyone some while before she died she had been feeding a small mouse which lived under the bath in the en suite of her care home room. Everyone at the care home loved my mother; however Rosie, the care home’s lovely manager, when she found out about the mouse went fairly ballistic – quite understandably. So when we read this poem at the funeral, Rosie absolutely cracked up.

Here’s the poem …

Mice
By Rose Fyleman

I think mice are rather nice;
Their tails are long, their faces small;
They haven’t any chins at all.
Their ears are pink, their teeth are white,
They run about the house at night;
They nibble things they shouldn’t touch,
and no one seems to like them much,
but I think mice are nice!

Rose Fyleman (1877-1957) is most famous for her poem There are Fairies at the Bottom of Our Garden.