Rogue Trader

Roll up ! Roll up. Get your mischievous old man here ! Watch out ladies, this one’s got the principles of a horny rabbit and the twinkle of the devil in his eye. Everybody loves him. And I’m not asking four hundred pounds, I’m not asking three hundred. For you madam, because I love you and you’ve got eyes so deep I want to curl up inside them and float away to heaven, I am selling this loveable old monster for only one hundred pounds. No wait. I’m killing myself here, but I can’t sell him for a price like that. For only ninety nine pounds ladies ! SOLD to the old queen at the rear – nice one Quentin – you can pick him up round the back.

Swindon

Swindon, drab splodge on Wiltshire’s plains
Trains pass from field to bland brick without warning
Corporate cubes, each in the fashion of their decade
Clump together like architectural bindweed
A scan of the skyline and nothing draws the eye
No wrinkle or mole to make the plain face captivate
Stadium spotlights and Mini ads
The best you can do to flirt with a stranger
Pigtown you are a woman too fat and old
For short skirts and high heels
But too young for pensioner brown and Scholls
Give me a spark of mischief and knowing
As if you once had lived

Sign on the goods train we just passed:
“Not to be loose or hump shunted”
If I had a teenage daughter …

Young spring green leaves

Young spring green leaves
Leading the charge to the sun
Hauling wood up branches
Sucking sap from underground
Clustered thrusting skyward
Green fingered branchlings
Building trees with not
so much a ‘by your leave’
Whole hillsides of relatives
As old as any man living
Standing naked together
Feigning death all winter
Before budding cheekily
Delicate explosions to herald
Young spring green leaves

Bojo

Bojo was a man who thought he was a mayor
But he was a total arse
Bojo was adulterous, thought he was a player
Maritally what a farce.

Get whacked, get whacked,
Get whacked on your Etonian bum
Get whacked, get whacked,
Get whacked for beating Livingstone.

Herpetology was more than just a hobby
For one Lambeth boy called Ken
Practically a wizard with a newt or lizard
or politicians (slimy men)

(At this point I have run out of steam … I’ll finish this later …)

The Ego

Vera, 5: “Mummy. Do you know about the ego?”
Oh. My. Lord. Here we go. How the…?
“You know. The bird.”
Phew. Close call.

The Ego is a plump bird, about four or five inches tall, that preens its feathers almost constantly in support of its belief that it is the prettiest of all the birds.
As a result of this belief, the Ego particularly hates peacocks, hummingbirds and Claudia Schiffer.

The Ego however, has a larger cousin, the Super-Ego. Looking vaguely like its smaller cousin in a pair of red underpants, the Super-Ego does not suffer from the same vanity, but imagines that it knows what everyone else ought to be doing.
Quite commonplace, these can be found anywhere where the habitat supports such a beast : near married men, at other parents’ houses or at your daughter-in-law’s.

Both Ego and Super-Ego are commonly mispronounced: the word has a short ‘E’ as in ‘bed’ not a long ‘e’ as in ‘weed’. The name comes from the appalling lack of reproductive self-awareness of the female and is said to sound like the call she makes when first laying.

 

Inspired by the musings of a minor groskoparian.