An Estate Agent Dreams Of His Ideal Client

 

The vendor’s getting on, the house is tired,

She thinks things are alright,

Because she had the place rewired,

Thirty years ago, you can tell she’s tight.

The house is sound, structurally maintained,

But nobody seems to have explained,

You need a bathroom for every bedroom,

To bring things up to the modern age,

A bog of one’s own is all the rage,

A big fat Yorkshire businessman,

Can’t be expected to rise in the gloom,

And walk down a corridor to move his bowels.

If it wasn’t for his wife, he’d use a bed pan,

Can’t really be arsed to go to the bog at all,

Let alone go wandering down the hall.

His wife loves an ensuite, with fluffy white towels,

In piles,

And she says she doesn’t mind hearing him straining,

Giving himself piles, as long as she’s certain

The toilet’s draining,

And the shower has a modern glass door,

And no curtain,

And a wet room floor.

So, the ornamental plasterwork, newly restored

Is going to have to go,

People are bored,

With that kind of look,

Out of a history book.

The conservation people won’t mind,

I’ll make sure of that, it’s who you know,

Been in the business 40 years or so.

 

 

 

 

 

In The Tedium of a Metric Afternoon

 

I had the leisure,

To measure for pleasure,

The nature of an afternoon,

Of warm and scented, honeyed June,

When all was peace, yet nothing still,

To calculate the sublime,

In time and also in ‘mil’.

 

I felt the need, when I heard

The song of a garden bird,

There was nothing to gain

By use of the word,

And so reduced it to the absurd,

And measured it’s voice

And the thrill of its trill

With great precision and pain.

 

And afterwards knew,

That nothing was true,

Which existed in fragments alone,

But on a hunch

After eating lunch,

It occurred,

That I understood,

At the level of instinct and bone,

A truth that pertained in both garden and wood:

Beauty and flowers and finches,

Should always be measured in inches.

 

Trust the Psychopaths

Trust the Psychopaths

Trust the science, trust the psychopathology,

The two go hand in hand,

Commit yourself, to what we declare is biology.

Place your faith in something you cannot understand,

You know we materialists would never demand

You should place your faith in an ideology,

We only approve of the concrete, mixed with shifting sand.

Trust the science, trust the psychopathology

Do as you’re told in obedience to our psychology.

Do not make any enquiry, do as we command.

We’ve considered economics and epidemiology,

The two go hand in hand

When weighing up what’s best, and so we’ve planned.

And what he have concluded, bearing in mind sociology,

Is you must all shut up and be shut up, this is the law of the land.

Commit yourself, to what we declare is biology.

We have your best interests at heart, and therefore make no apology

For any negative effects, we have to take a stand.

Caring bullying is not contradiction, self evidently not tautology.

Place your faith in something you cannot understand.

We intend to grab power and expand

The hold we have granted ourselves. Don’t cling to Psephology

All parties think alike, our Covid coalition is beautifully grand.

We know of what we speak, we’re experts in scatology

Trust The Science. 

A Chorus of Twittering

 

Everything is bollocks,

Everything is wrong,

Everything is worse

Than described in your song.

Everything is dreadful,

Here’s chapter and verse,

Go from here and read it 

Then come back and rehearse

The new exciting arguments,

To show that you belong,

Amongst us true extremists,

Then come and sing along:

Everything is bollocks,

Everything is wrong,

Everything you thought before,

Was rudimentary stuff,

And everything the plebs think,

Is silly, mindless guff,

Come over here and join us,

If you’re hard enough. 

Jackdaw Dance

I was finding sticks beneath ancient trees,

In the shady copse at the edge of the lawn,

To mark the dahlias, still in bloom,

But whose death by frost, would come quite soon, 

Though they blasted out peach and tropical coral,

Mexican vibrancy midst the gloom,

Orange and Barbie and bubble gum heat,

And greenish whites and pale primrose yellows, 

Ill fitting October’s afternoon,

In an English garden nine hundred years old,

Scented with compost and old leaf mould,

When I saw in the deep, azure sky above

A crowd of corvids speaking of love.

And I had a sensation I’d had before,

Of ancient peace and resistless calm,

And an overwhelming hippyish sense,

Almost embarrassing, hard to ignore,

Of oneness with the world around,

And a sense of a time before I was born.

And the jackdaws circling over head,

Neither cawed, nor carped, but crooned instead,

Like purring doves, or cats making greeting

And they gossiped and nattered, but seemed quite moral

In judgements they passed on their corvid fellows,
As they swirled in the air and floated and played,

Though they lazily mobbed a buzzard above them.

And the noise which they made was a gentle sound,

And the gentleness of it filled my head

And entered my soul and there remained,

Though the moment in relative terms was fleeting,

I knew the birds’ language and felt I loved them,

And that this pure love was greater by far,

Than the height of the sky as I lay on the ground,
Was greater than ever could be contained,
Or described or by poetry be conveyed,

So I listened to pure, cerulean blue,

Which danced with the birds, 

To a lost tune I knew.  

conservative Longings

If only there were something new to think,

it’s not just current thought is simply stale,

but novelty itself can’t satiate.

Ten thousand snowdrops spread beneath the trees.

A deer in the reedy moat has stopped to drink.

The still huge, waning moon is turning pale,

but beauty somehow can’t elucidate.

I must rely on what has gone before

and comprehend that all things interlink.

And all the ancient wisdom must prevail.

And yet I crave some new scent on the breeze,

that might intrigue before it irritate,

and might enthuse before it starts to bore,

might sweep me to the edge and on the brink

of some great breakthrough let me there exhale

and feel the peace of knowing it’s my fate

and duty not to plough ahead, but wait.

On hearing the 77th Brigade Were Involved in Monitoring On Line Chat

A sad sequel to Tom Lehrer's 'So Long, Mom'

(I think you have to sing it to get the metre)

 

So long ma,

the truth is so bizarre,

You won’t think much of me.

Although I’m a soldier,

The loonies all told ya’

Speech is not free,

And that’s down to me.

 

We can’t attack ‘em frontally,

when they get all disgruntley

And spell out in their punditry,

The freedoms we have lost,

No need for you to read descriptions,

Of the agony and human cost.

Little Johnny Jones

He was a British Tommy

And no loser Commie

Was he. He was mighty scared

When he heard lockdown declared

He wouldn’t have dared

To be free

 

And yet he did admit that

He monitored online chat:

So long Ma,

The truth is so bizarre,

You won’t think much of me,

Though I clean the web

I protect every pleb,

Or else they might be,

Confused, don’t you see?

Remember Mater,

The truth will come out later,

I worked for a dictator,

But try to smile somehow,

The truth’s so weird

'Twill be disappeared

An hour and a half from now

 

On a Quote from RH Tawney

 ‘Clever men are impressed by their differences from their fellows. Wise men are conscious of their resemblance to them.'

I differ from my fellows, I’m unique,

you know it is my mind sets me apart,

I’m separate, not one to fit a clique,

so well informed in science and in art.

I’m simply not like other men I know,

I hesitate to stress superiority

but other chaps are rather dull and slow.

No, I’m not at all like the majority.

I stress my individuality

because my education and my wit

are obviously finer in their quality

well, viewed from here, that is, from where I sit.

There’s no one else at all whom I resemble

and so why should I disguise, dissemble?

I may not always see things as they do,

but other men have so much more to teach 

than in one lifetime I could judge as true

by use of intellect. And so I reach

the old, foxed mirror down from off the wall

and view the man within the glass portrayed

and see my fellow men reflected, small

within my eyes or soul and slightly greyed,

but unmistakable within that space.

And know that if my instinct can mistrust

the wisdom of my kind and of my race,

then naught remains when I am turned to dust,

for what’s the worth of being educated

if there are none to whom one feels related?