Monday 25 April 2016

Parcel Guilt

From the technical adjectival meaning - partial
Plus guilt, the feeling one has when you bid for and win
A regency, rosewood and gilt mirror, on eBay.
And only some of what you say,
To yourself, can justify your having bid on it,
As you already have several.
Because you're just rather partial
To that Empire look, 
It goes so well with the Neo Colonial, Anglo Indian
Chairs, and contrasts with the martial
Simplicity of campaign secretaires,
And is a perfect match for the one you already have,
Half way up the stairs,
And its always good to have pairs,
Except you're broke
And so is it, a bit,
Like all your so called bargains,
Like that priceless (worthless) Chinese vase, with no lid on it.

Friday 22 April 2016

Barack Obama Makes An Official Visit To Britain On The Day After The Queen's 90th Birthday, To Lecture Us about Staying In The EU.


It is ironic that one who represents a republic should wish to champion the cause  of distant, unelected philosopher kings.

The day after the birthday of our Queen,
You marked by wishing sovereignty was dead,
Inferring nation states and what has been,
Were relics of no worth, and that, instead
We should aspire to something better, new.

Democracy is dead, long live elites,
Who govern from afar and seem to view
Their fellow men as rats who plague the streets
And must be dealt with harshly and en masse.

For ideology must always trump
Reality, and so the ruling class
Must subjugate.  The propaganda pump
Works on, nonstop, and pours out endless lies,
And issues threats and hints at cutting ties.

Saturday 16 April 2016

A Period Property - Rightmove

How Lovely, a lavatory,
With a fat, golden pine seat,
Beneath a pair of net curtains,
Draped to suggest Victorian elegance.
What a picture, how graceful.
And two reproduction, four poster beds,
With chintzy pelmets.
And the factory next door makes no noise,
In those endless, steel sheds.
And a knotty pine fitted kitchen,
A knotty, fitted-pine knitted, spotty kitchen,
A snotty, spitty, pitted pine kitchen,
Just the fashion, once,
But not sufficiently long ago to be tasteful.
Just the thing, for a Georgian house,
And a plethora of fat leather sofas, turquoise.
And a conservatory, uPVC,
For conserving cane and wickerwork and glass topped bamboo tables.
And all for a million pounds,
Because it has stables.

Friday 8 April 2016

Vintage Ear (Or A Strange Question In My Inbox.)






Are you still considering vintage ear?
Does this item still catch your eye,
As it flaps in the wind, perhaps,
Having grown a little larger each year?
What is there still to consider?
Click the link, you could still be the highest bidder.
I'm sure you could make up your mind, 
If only you would try.
Let me help.  Firstly a vintage ear
Has the advantage of allowing you to hear,
Subjectively.  No need to tune in to everything.
Birds won't bother you, or your wife.
You will find
That life
Is much more peaceful, but never fear,
You will still discern
The absence of any faint click
Denoting the failure to switch off the light
When some other member of the household
Leaves a room.  You'll still be up to that trick.
And any whispering of curses under breath,
Will be absolutely loud and clear.
Vintage ear is not a disadvantage,
Unlike vintage sight.
Don't get left behind.
Vintage ear is very much the in thing
Amongst people of your age.
It vies with baldness, grey hair turning white,
Wrinkles and extra freckles
For the feature most likely to make you appear
Like a sage.


(When I opened the email so that the full title of the subject was revealed it turned out to be   "Are You still considering Vintage Early Twentieth Century Gilt Framed Mirror?")

Monday 4 April 2016

You Know The Type

You know the type:
You met them first, quite a while ago, now,
In some orange Penguin paperback.
You had fallen for the hype,
And really thought that critics ought to know
A good writer when they came across one.

You believed, had faith.
Or did you just prefer to show
You knew the fashionable names to drop?
Anyhow, you were taken in.
It was the age of innocence.

And, although you thought the characters tiresome,
You felt you ought to appreciate them,
Even emulate them, in their endless sophistication,
With their great minds, and Oxford education,
And their fashionable ways,
And their dinner parties, and their bed hopping.
Because they possessed the one, single qualification
Guaranteed to give them status:
They lived in London.
They were not rural,
They were not Northern
And somehow you forgot the one thing they were:
Pure fiction.