When I Am Sixty I Shall Wear A Hat

When I Am Sixty I Shall Wear A Hat

When I am sixty I shall wear a hat

Whether it be cold or not

I’m not sure what you think about the idea

The weather notwithstanding

I feel the time has come to adopt a little style

To assume a certain persona

A characteristic feature by which I am known

And seen about the town

I haven’t yet made a decision about the gloves and scarf

Although I think both are highly unlikely

For I do not want to be too encumbered

In my daily perambulations

But a modest titfer perched aloft

Covering what remains of my thin hair

May be that thing which is missing from my life

And makes a certain statement

And although it may slow me down

Owing to wind resistance

Its shape being unlikely to be streamlined

Perhaps I might appear a little taller

And people will recognise me from a distance

As I go about my daily business

And say to one another ‘there he goes –

That man who wears a hat because he’s sixty.’

Copyright Andy Fawthrop 2015

News From Bromham - Dateline Sunday 29th November 2015

Bulletin From Bromham: Dateline – Sunday 29^th November 2015

                                             

Here is our weekly round-up of events from Bromham:

1.       The Parish Council has been thrown into political turmoil over the debate on whether to begin saturation bombing of Heddington.  Parish Councillors are split down the middle.  The Bromham Air Force is already carrying out selective drone raids against Seend Separatists, and the latest intention is to carry the fight over the border, in order to root out terrorist elements in their homelands.  Bromham’s Defence Threat Warning Level is now set to fairly dark orange (very miffed & quite afraid).

2.       Meanwhile villagers have begun their preparations for excessive spending in the lead-up to Christmas.  Following “Black Friday” (although every day is fairly black in Bromham), the village shop has run other promotions, such as “Spending Saturday” and “Sod It All Sunday”.  Next week it plans to run “Moron Monday”, “Twatface Tuesday”  and “Woeful Wednesday”.  However must shoppers are expected to stay indoors, do all their shopping online, and to spend the savings made on cheap cider in the pub.

3.       For details of these and all other Bromham stories, don’t forget to listen to local radio station Carrot FM.

Copyright Andy Fawthrop 2015

Nativity

Nativity

Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be,

But I can’t help thinking of that day,

Right at the back end of the Fifties,

When I did my first Nativity Play.

We were in the first class of the Infants,

Young and innocent, no more than five or six,

When our teacher announced the production,

And we’d all be thrown into the mix.

There were to be parts for everyone,

Of that fact there should be no doubt,

For the school couldn’t cope with the aggro,

If any of the class were to be left out.

For parents would want to see their darlings,

Deep in the Christmas story engage,

Showing off to their friends and relatives,

Of their first public performance on stage.

None of us knew what to expect,

Because none of us had ever done it before,

But if we couldn’t have a major role,

We decided we didn’t want to play any more.

I didn’t get to play Joseph,

And the role of inn-keeper to me was denied,

I finally ended up as fifth shepherd,

I was so upset that I cried.

My mum thought my skill had been ignored,

And my talent not allowed to shine through,

Which just added to the misery,

But I was only five – what could I do?

Rehearsals were more than chaotic,

The teachers didn’t know how to lead,

And scripts were a complete waste of time,

Since not one of us could read.

So we did it by practising quite hard,

Repeating scenes over and over again,

Learning lines was a complete nightmare,

We were children trying to play men.

There was no proper stage to speak of,

You could see it was heading for a great fall,

So they just draped a large pair of curtains,

Right across one end of the hall.

Costumes were left up to the parents,

For each to interpret as they chose,

With no attempt to co-ordinate,

We ended with an array of odd clothes.

  

The shepherds used sheets and tea-towels,

There were cardboard gold crowns for the kings,

The Angel Gabriel was a fantastic sight,

Dwarfed by a pair of white paper wings.

Moustaches were drawn with burnt cork,

And false beards stuck on that were itchy,

Nobody could really see what they were doing,

And the inn-keeper’s wife turned a touch bitchy.

Joseph wore specs and a belted tunic,

Mary appeared in virginal white,

As they stumbled into Bethlehem,

And inaudibly asked for a room for the night.

The innkeeper, over-awed by the audience,

Forgot his lines and burst into tears.

Lots of shuffling at the edge of the stage,

Then the fulfilment of our worst fears.

The baby donkey, hired for the occasion,

Peed on stage, as we’d all hoped that he would:

A large pool spread between his feet,

And surrounded the cast where they stood.

You couldn’t get away from the squelching,

Though the actors were never in danger,

But most of the dialogue was lost,

As ox and ass waded into the manger.

The gold, the frankincense and myrrh,

Were dropped on to the swaddled-up child,

But the rising smell of fresh urine,

Was driving the audience wild.

At this point, the star fell from its perch,

And knocked the Angel Gabriel out cold.

The girls and boys started wailing,

And mayhem ensued, it has to be told.

The head teacher appeared with bucket and mop,

Halting proceedings with a bilious wince.

That brought an end to my acting career,

And I’ve hated Christmas ever since!

Copyright Andy Fawthrop 2015

Black Friday

Black Friday

We had Black Friday when I was a child:

It was a warning issued every year -

A plea to be careful on icy roads,

To protect all that you ever held dear.

But now it’s about something different -

There’s been a big shift in the detail,

An American marketing trick,

A push to drive up shopping and retail.

A pre-Christmas discounting trick,

Post-Thanksgiving from across the Atlantic,

With bargains and prices knocked down,

Stimulating buying that’s frantic.

They build up the excitement on TV,

Encouraging you to snatch a cheap gift,

As if it’s in your best interest,

Instead of the old stock they want to shift.

Don’t think that they’re doing you a favour,

Don’t believe that one little bit,

You’re just clearing their shelves for them,

So they can sell you even more shit.

Strong elbows are the weapons you need,

To fight your way in for the best,

To get that sixty-inch screen in your bag,

Whilst shoving and pushing over the rest.

You can’t afford to take any prisoners,

If you want a bargain that’s fantastic,

It’s the devil-take-the-hindmost,

When you’re trying to load up your plastic.

The whole nation shows its frustration,

Scenes of fighting that are heart-rending,

There’s grabbing and jabbing and nabbing,

In pursuit of conspicuous spending.

Voices raised high with much shouting,

Like pack animals with their growling,

And the disappointed licking their wounds,

Crying with bitterness and howling.

Their behaviour becomes shameful,

The dominant males are beating their chest,

The women pouting and shouting,

The police move in to make an arrest.

  

It brings out the worst in human nature,

A vicious competitive streak,

Where only the strong are the winners,

As they rampantly trample the weak.

It’s a long way from the season of goodwill,

Bargain-hunters obsessed and gone manic,

A great bun-fight in the superstores,

With scenes of hysterical panic.

Perhaps we’ve lost sight of the bigger picture,

Of gift selection, or having a fun day.

Now it’s all credit and saving money,

So we can spend it on Cyber Monday.

Copyright Andy Fawthrop 2015

Half-way There

Half-way There

I confess it brought me up short

When I was forced to stop

And think hard about it

But I suppose I should not have been surprised

That even at my modest middle age

I was more than half-way along

Beyond some unnoticed landmark

Some signpost in the fog

Already past the highest peak

And The Great Divide

How many more heartbeats

To pump the blood along?

How many more times to fill the lungs

Or exhale once again?

To blink, to dream, to sleep?

And is the onward journey

The steps that still remain

On a gentle downhill slope

Towards a comfortable night

Where I can take my rest?

Or more a rapid tumble downwards

A sudden undignified descent

Of a craggy hillside full of stones

Falling, tumbling ever-faster

Towards a sudden painful end?

Copyright Andy Fawthrop 2015

Chicken Noodle Soup

Recipe for: (Leftover) Chicken & Noodle Soup

Ingredients:

·         Leftover chicken carcass

·         2 small onions, peeled & diced

·         2 carrots, peeled & cut into batons

·         2 sticks celery, sliced duagonally

·         1 leek

·         1 parsnip (optional), peeled & diced

·         1 potato (optional), peeled & diced

·         Leftover chicken gravy (if any)

·         Small bunch parsley

·         6 peppercorns

·         Bay leaf

·         1 tblsp olive oil

·         2 cloves garlic, peeled & crushed

·         1 chicken stock cube (or one pint fresh chicken or vegetable stock)

·         100g rice or egg noodles

Method:

1.        Strip meat from carcass & set aside. Cut into bit-size pieces.

2.        Put chicken bones in large pan with veg trimmings, parsley stalks, peppercorns, leftover gravy & bay leaf

3.        Cover with water or stock, bring to the boil, the simmer gently for one hour

4.        Meanwhile, in another pan, heat the olive oil.  Add onions & sauté gently for 5 minutes.

5.        Add crushed garlic & chopped vegetables. Stir well to coat in oil & cook gently for 10-15 minutes

6.        When the chicken carcass is done, tip all the juices through a sieve into the vegetables.  Add more water or stock if needed, then bring to boil & simmer gently.

7.        Taste & season, adding stock cube if needed.

8.        Add the cooked, reserved chicken & continue to heat gently for five minutes.

9.        Meanwhile, in another clean pan, cook the noodles in boiling water for a few minutes.

10.     Drain and add to the chicken/ veg soup.

11.     Add the chopped parsley & serve.

What else you need to know:

1.        Most forms of pasta work well in this soup e.g. macaroni, broken spaghetti etc.

2.        You can also throw in any leftover veggies from the day before (cut the outside off any roast potatoes)

3.        You can also do the same with leftover beef, lamb, gammon joints.  Any bones should go into the stock-making part, as they enhance the flavour, texture & depth of the stock

4.        This should be a substantial soup.  You only need some thick, crusty bread with it.

The Impossible Dream

The Impossible Dream

What a joy it is to be rational,

To only believe what’s in front of your eyes,

Yet look at the evidence all around us,

You’d be in for quite a surprise!

Man’s capacity to imagine

The weird, the oddball and the bizarre,

Can take you to a whole new planet

Of experience that’s stranger by far.

Perhaps it came from man’s superstition,

His attempt to explain the universe,

Perhaps it just came out of old folklore,

To explain bad fortune and worse.

Mythical creatures come to the fore:

The Yeti, or Bigfoot or Unicorns,

Ghosts and griffins, werewolves and wyverns,

Pixies, sphinxes, sylphs and leprechauns.

The bogey-man, the sand-man, Santa Claus,

Flying pigs, Pegasus the winged horse,

Fauns and fairies, angels, devils and demons,

And the Loch Ness Monster of course.

Frankenstein’s monster, and Count Dracula,

Vampires and zombies, the walking dead,

Hobbits and hydras, warlocks and witches,

And for chimeras there’s a lot to be said.

Goblins and dragons, and doppelgangers,

Satyrs and sirens, mermaids and mer-men,

Cerberus and cyclops, and the Phoenix,

And shape-shifters far beyond our ken.

But beyond the three-humped camels,

What’s the point in this day and age?

Isn’t it Elf and Safety gone mad?

Isn’t it time to turn a new page?

Haven’t we yet finished with orcs and with trolls?

Do we still need imps, ogres, the manticore?

Wraiths, The Grim Reaper and Santa Cluas?

Shouldn’t we ask what it’s all for?

It’s the twenty-first century now!

We know how things work, covered every angle -

Shouldn’t we bundle up all of this nonsense,

And lose it in the Bermuda Triangle?

  

Or perhaps someone has an interest

In keeping this in front of our eyes?

The franchises, the branding, the products,

And a chance to sell us more merchandise?

Or maybe a need for some fantasy,

To forget that life can be a bit gritty,

To indulge our imaginations,

To escape from a reality that’s shitty?

Anyway, I’ve bent your ears for long enough,

I need to run along, I’ve got plenty to do -

I’ve got an appointment later night –

It’s the new series of Doctor Who!

Copyright Andy Fawthrop 2015

Being English

Being English

I hear you claim that you’re English,

English through and through -

You wrap yourself up in the flag,

Proud of the red, white and blue.

You want people to know where you stand,

Not sitting on the rickety fence,

Descended from a long line of the English -

Well let’s examine the hard evidence.

Your heritage is a complex mixtures of genes:

Normans, Angles, and Saxons are all in the mix,

As are Romans and Moors and the Jutes,

That’s not forgetting the Celts and the Picts.

An Englishman’s home is his castle,

Living elsewhere would be such a wrench  -

There’s just one fly in this ointment -

All the great English castles are French!

Saint George is your national symbol,

A dragon-slaying heroic saint,

But he’s from the Levant, that’s Turkey to you,

So English he certainly ain’t!

And your great institutions of state?

English? Surely that’s what is meant?

The monarchy?  The Royal Family?

Nah – you’re ruled by a Queen of German descent!

There’s very little to find that’s true English,

No matter how deeply you seek -

Even Parliament’s an imported idea,

And your democracy is Greek!

Fish and chips are your national dish,

Eaten with gusto across your great land,

But the spuds were brought back from America,

And the cod’s imported from Iceland!

Your favourite car is German

Your vodka is Russian, your pasta Italian

Kebabs are from Turkey, curry from India

Coffee from Brazil, tea from India

Your shirts are sewn in Indonesia

Even your numbers are Arabic, and letters are Latin

Your oil is Arabian, your software is American

And on top of all these,

To add insult to injury,

Your electronics are Chinese!

  

For it’s waves and waves of immigration,

Other races coming to England to stay,

A continuous genetic melting-pot

That carries on up to this day.

Inter-marriage and natural selection

Have created a strong, heady brew.

We’re all multi-racial mongrels now -

Yes - English through and through!

Copyright Andy Fawthrop 2015

What Are The Chances?

What Are The Chances?

What are the chances of you being here today?

What are the odds against you ever being born?

It’s not easy seeing, how you might have come into being

The statistics are staggering, the numbers mind-boggling

So let’s check there’s no deception regarding your conception

Let’s not be defective, but get some perspective

The first obstacle to your birth, is the pre-existence of Earth

Which pre-supposes the creation of the whole Universe,

The evolution of its galaxies and solar systems and all of that gang

The planets and even life on this world – all the way back to The Big Bang

The conditions had to be right, there had to be sun-light

So that single-celled organisms might, and primeval life able to fight

Its way out of the primordial soup -  indeed out of that gloop

Came all forms of life as we know it

Natural selection of life, in years measured over four billions

And humanoids spanned out in the merest two millions

And every one of your ancestors had to last until reproductive age

For a hundred and fifty thousand generations in an unbroken lineage

And if each one had not happened in the right combination

Each person would have been a different creation

And so on, and so on, back to beginning of time, so count yourself lucky

If you want to know how it’s done

The odds are 400 trillion to one

That’s four times ten to the power of fourteen, that you might never have been

Which makes the odds on football pools, the lottery and bingo look exceedingly keen

So just a single slip, a connection that didn’t quite meet

And you’d have possibly been your own sibling or cousin, which is quite sweet

Although you never really liked them, which is quite neat

The next part of this string, is the whole boy meets girl thing,

And the possibility of your specific parents meeting at all

The chances of talking to each other, dating and mating

The relationship developing, having a ball

And having sex with a suitable exchange of…. bodily fluids…

Did you know - a fertile female has a hundred thousand eggs

And a fertile man produces twelve trillion sperm

Over their respective lifetimes….that’s quite a long term

And whilst those are figures are relatively firm,

He’d have had to have been very firm (don’t squirm)….on the nights they made love

Including Saturday nights, after the pub,

For her to get in the club…

Now into the workings of reproduction we’ll peek

For each egg and each sperm is genetically unique

And you are the result of the fusion of one egg with one sperm

One exact unique meeting and fertilisation coming to term

And so was each of your parents, and each of their parents -

That’s your grandparents - going all the way back into history

It’s therein, that lies all of the mystery…

Now if only one of these combinations had been different you see

Or not happened, you wouldn’t be here listening to me!

The chances against you existing are greater than the number of particles in the universe

Which is a very, VERY big number, and what is much worse,

Thinking about it could make your head explode, which would be even worse

The mathematical pinnacle of a sequence

The frequence of which is almost infinitesimally small

It’s nothing short of a wonder that you’ve made it here at all…

So the chances are basically infinite… or maybe they’re zero

Which may mean that none of us ought to exist, and here is the gist…

Perhaps we’re figments of our own fertile imaginations

Just pigments in paint, a permutation that’s faint

But, either way, it’s almost a miracle

So you are something special, or even a hero

And it means you’re unique, almost a zero

You’re an “only”… doesn’t that make you feel lonely?

Except for doppelgangers of course

And triplets and twins…but I’m not going there

In case it does all of our heads in…

So what are the chances, what are the odds?

So many forks in the road never taken

Let’s hope that you’re suitably shaken

So many alternative paths

Well – you do the maths!

On the other hand – and here is the fun -

The fact that you’re here shows we’re virtually done

The probability of your existence is actually one hundred percent

Which in mathematical terms… is equal to one

Copyright Andy Fawthrop 2015

When I'm Running Windows

When I’m Running Windows

Now I go runnin’ Windows

To earn an honest bob
For a home-based worker

It helps me in my job

Now it's a job that just suits me
But you’d be just as mad as me
If you could see what I can see
When I'm runnin’ Windows

The software runs at quite a dash
And it costs me lots of cash
But it always seems to crash
When I'm runnin' Windows

In my profession I'll work hard
And I'll never stop
I'll beat this blinkin’ system
Even if I have to drop

I’ve got my office up in the loft
It’s not the dust that makes me cough
It’s just me cursin’ Microsoft
When I'm runnin Windows

There’s some functions that I lack
Seems I need an upgrade pack
Think I’ll get myself a Mac
When I'm runnin’ Windows

The Operatin’ System’s poor
I’d like to show it to the door
Stop me rollin’ on the floor
When I'm runnin’ Windows

In my profession I'll work hard
And I'll never stop
I'll beat this blinkin’ system
Even if I have to drop

These programs I simply hates
And now I’ve lost all my mates
It’s all because of that Bill Gates
When I'm runnin' Windows

Outlook is built to tire us
No-one would ever hire us
Best way to spread a virus
When I'm runnin' Windows

Excel’s a bugger to run
It takes away all the fun
And the sums are never done
When I'm runnin' Windows

In my profession I'll work hard
And I'll never stop
I'll beat this blinkin’ system
Even if I have to drop

The software’s slow and not brisk
Why would I want to take the risk?
It might mangle my hard disk
When I'm runnin’ Windows

Now they’re sellin’ Windows Eight

It’s put me into quite a state

It’s the version I love to hate

When I’m runnin’ Windows!

When I'm runnin’ Windows

News From Bromham - Sunday 1st November 2015

Bulletin From Bromham: Dateline – Sunday 1^st November 2015

                                             

Here is our weekly round-up of events from Bromham:

1.       Relief was expressed in the village when a timetable for the publication of the next Parish Magazine was finally agreed.  It now appears that the next edition of the Bromham Briefing will be sent out next June or July.  Probably. Or maybe August.  We’ll have to see. September – definitely September.  The delay is thought to have been caused by the need to check with every contributor that their articles have been spelled correctly.  Others who are merely mentioned in passing are also being given the chance to put their side of the story.  This process, well-known in publication circles, is known as “Bromhamisation”.  So it might be next October then.  In plenty of time for Christmas. Honestly.

2.       Services are being held today in front of the cenotaph on Bromham High Street.  Apart from the traditional wreaths of root vegetables and brassicas, members of the local royal family (from the Big House on the hill), leaders of all political parties (FLOP, CRAP and WHO) and local vegetable dignitaries, will also observe a minute’s silence in honour of those who fell in all the bean-field conflicts of the past hundred years.  Baler-twine trousers will be at half-mast, and a 21-parsnip salute will be fired.

3.       For details of these and all other Bromham stories, don’t forget to listen to local radio station Carrot FM.

Copyright Andy Fawthrop 2015