We don't eat our peas with honey

Thank you for this.

I knew it would be a difficult poem for some to get to grips with so would need to be clear. Obviously work is still needed. Suggestions appreciated...

The stanza you comment needs to be understood in the light of the context of the whole poem ie it comes from a colection of poems about my father's dementia and how both he and we experience it. What I WANTED to imply was that when I was a child he taught me the proper way to eat. Now in his dementia he fails to notice (or care) that I eat the 'american' way, and he is unable to use cutlery at all for such awkward food so eats with his fingers.

The nursery rhymes allude both to both my own childhood and his growing more childlike as the days progress. I imagine them as a background theme track with the verses over the top.

Regarding the proper, if you will formal way to eat peas is dying out I suspect even here in UK. Though at a truely formal meal many people will still dip the far side of the spoon in soup to eat it, and eat peas with a knife and fork, with the fork the right way up. I doubt the the children of today will think any of this matters when they are my age.