Three New and Topical Verses by Andrew Bamji

 

A New Fuel

 Collect them?  But I don’t know how!

The eructations of a cow?

The fermentation in the beasts

Is like the froth of brewer’s yeasts

And from the front (if not the back)

There pours out methane by the sack

Litres of it, warmly forming,

Helping fuel global warming.

So what if we collect it all?

Mask the beasts up in their stall,

Tubes – or something of that ilk

Applied as we collect their milk

And stored in vats of giant size

(though these we’d have to pressurise)

Try it – and I think you’ll see

It’s cheaper, far, than LPG.

Forget the chick, or ewe, or sow,

We’ll power Britain from the cow.

 

A Cultural Tour

 

The Ashcroft-Stones are seething, and at reception loiter

To moan that all the damp and mould is no good for her goitre;

Mr Ackers always chatters though with not a lot to say,

Mrs Badger bores you rigid, for the coach trip lasts a day;

The guide is trying to pacify an angry Mr Burke

Whose suite has got no power, so his CPAP will not work;

Mrs Charlton's chuntering, demands they have a shift

For their room is much too noisy, it's adjacent to the lift;

And the gossip is infectious, but it’s not an urban myth

That Widow Carey’s had it off with Mr Porton-Smith;

While the Curwens keep their counsel, and they seem to be quite shy;

Mrs Drake describes her ailments, though it puzzles me quite why –

Mr Ecks you want to flatten, for he always is so rude

(though it helps to keep one’s temper by imagining him nude);

Mr Forbes has hit the bottle, and is easily amused

Mr Gant though’s incoherent, and aggressive, and confused;

Mr Gordon is a nuisance for he hasn’t yet deduced

That although the driver’s gay he doesn’t wish to be seduced;

Mrs Hanson hogs the guide, and is constantly a-querying,

Which many of the party find particularly wearying;

Mr Ibson lags for photographs, and so delays the tour,

And gets back on the coach and then falls fast asleep to snore;

Mr Johnson’s first for dinner and can pile his plate so high

That those arriving later find the dishes have run dry;

Mr Kingston orders litres of Rioja, chardonnay

And gets so tiddled he forgets, refuses then to pay;

Mr Medlar wants to make “adjustments”, change the whole damn tour

To fit in some ruined castle that he thinks would suit us more;

Mrs Milsom goes off shopping, Mr Nixon posts a letter,

As they vanish with the little gang who think that they know better

As they have a guide book, large-scale map and ideas from the Net

So they reckon their self-guided tour is much the better bet;

Mrs Oliver’s addicted to espresso, maybe two

While Mr Potter’s wonky prostate keeps him ages in the loo;

Mrs Pycroft’s taking downers, so is sleeping like a log

While Mr P collects the fatty scraps to feed the dog;

Quelch dawdles to the meeting point where tempers are soon rising,

But never says he’s sorry, which I find somewhat surprising;

Then there’s tiny Mrs Rogers, who shows off the whole day long

But it’s usually the case that she is absolutely wrong;

And poor old Mrs Sextaby has fallen in the bath,

But she is quite a stoic and decides it’s quite a laugh,

Though the party has to slow down, and so prolong the trip

For Mr Tapley-Fanshawe’s having trouble with his hip;

And Mrs Uglow’s face begins alarmingly to swell –

She’s allergic to the shellfish, and to aubergines as well –

Mr Victor and Miss Waterlow are camera-mad, and natter

Over whose is more expensive and whose telephoto’s fatter

But Miss Xerxes’ pics are better, with a camera that’s on loan,

(Mr Young forgot to bring his, and can’t work his mobile phone);

Mrs Yoxon took a bike ride to the church with Mrs Fitch

And encountered a pantechnicon, and ended in a ditch;

Mr Zen is quite belligerent – he’s had far too much Asti

And wants to know why he cannot attack the antipasti…

But although we are quite certain that we cannot stand the pain,

Why- next year we’ll be queueing up to do it all again!

 

 

 

The Pandemic cometh

(with apologies to Flanders and Swann)

 

 It was on the Monday morning that the government took fright

There was a new pandemic; it kept them up all night

They held a big press briefing to explain the plans they had;

It was going to be a lockdown, which would be pretty bad.

Oh it all makes work for the government to do…

 

 On Tuesday morn the CMO was sensibly wheeled out;

Explaining virus R numbers, and what they were about,

He said intensive care bed numbers needed to inflate

To take the sickest patients we would need to ventilate.

Oh it all makes work for the government to do…

 

On Wednesday Matt Hancock said new hospitals would come,

He’d called the army engineers, and soon the job was done;

The Nightingale facilities were splendid don’t you know,

But ICU’s weren’t overwhelmed, so soon they had to go…

Oh it all makes work for the government to do…

 

On Thursday Rishi Sunak furloughed all the locked-down staff,

Told bosses not to sack them, for the nation would pay half,

Production hit rock bottom, but he was pleased he could announce

That the problem would not last long, the economy would bounce…

Oh it all makes work for the government to do…

 

On Friday Gavin Williamson played down the teachers’ fuss,

(He sounds just like Frank Spencer, but what is that to us);

All schools would shut, and parents anyway were all off work

So they could do the teaching! That drove them quite berserk.

Oh it all makes work for the government to do…

 

On Saturday it seemed quite clear the crisis was to end,

 So people started partying with family and a friend

But then a spike of cases came, In Leicester and near Crewe

The government took fright again, so guess what they might do…

On Sunday ‘twas decided that relaxing was insane,

So come the Monday morning… lockdowns started up again!