Wardrobes full of dancing frocks
Creaking doors and rusted locks
“Make yourself a cuppa dear”
(Note, the milk expired last year)
Godly books beside the bed
Tattered drapes and dusty spread
Taps fall off, the water’s mean
Coronations snaps of Queen
Share the walls with safety drills
And living on the window sills
Are china dogs and upright plates
And magazines with heirloom dates.
Waiting for your praise, the host
Says “what time for your eggs on toast?”
Most politely you retort
“House is charming, when was bought?
Really? Carpets lasted well,
Fifty years, it’s hard to tell!
No, no, no, why have you fussed
We neither mind a little dust
From what we’ve seen when looking round
You’re reasonable at Thirty Pound
No, we live largely clutter-free
For when our forebears went to sea
They’re couldn’t take their antique clocks
As convicts, from Southampton docks
Its not just bed and lodge we seek
But chance to have a stickybeak.
We like it most, we do, because
It shows us Britain as she was
Your enterprise of course we praise
Why, saving stuff for rainy days
And only since the Tudor kings?
Wow, just how many useful things
Must dwell within those bulging drawers
Last used sometime between the Wars?”
(I ponder if Titanic sunk
From overload of grandma’s junk)
“Ah, sorry Cat, is that YOUR chair
I didn’t mean to squash you there.
And yes, I can believe its true
You havent moved since ’62!”
Pudsey, England 1996
THE CRYPTIC LIMPET 