To cease upon the midnight with no pain

[mockney piers]

William McGonagall

When the moon is fair and roon the fishes swim fae Ayr tae Troon

But when the moon is roon and fair the fishes swim fae Troon tae Ayr

[Ted Max]

Brendan, this is for you. Heartbreaking stuff from the home front during that war. We certainly don't write them like this any more.

The Boers Have Got My Daddy

Written and composed by Mills and Castling

This morning in a busy street,

A tiny lad I spied,

With paper hat, and little wooden

Sword slung by his side;

Said I, 'Good morning, Gen'ral!'

In a playful sort of way,

'I see by your appearance you're

Preparing for the fray.'

He stood up to attention,

Looked at me with flashing eye,

Then gripped his little wooden sword

As he made this reply -

'The Boers have got my Daddy

My soldier Dad;

I don't like to hear my Mammy sigh,

I don't like to see my Mammy cry;

So I'm going in a big ship

Across the raging main,

And I'm going to fight the Boers, I am,

And bring my Daddy home again!'

I smiled down at the youngster, though

A lump came in my throat,

And marvell'd at the pluck beneath

That little ragged coat.

To hear the way that kiddy talked

It really was sublime,

But there you are! The old, old tale

A Briton all the time!

Said he, 'I've wrote to Gen'ral Bobs,

To join his gallant band

I'll pay the naughty Boers for keeping Daddy when I land!'

(Chorus)

I learnt his father was a private

In an Irish corps,

But when I heard the name I knew

He'd never see him more;

For in the list of casualties

I'd only read that day,

Beneath the scorching veldt that youngster's

Gallant father lay.

The nipper left me standing there,

And marched away with pride,

But turned his little curly head

Again to me and cried -

'The Boers have got my Daddy

My soldier Dad;

I don't like to hear my Mammy sigh,

I don't like to see my Mammy cry;

So I'm going in a big ship

Across the raging main,

And I'm going to fight the Boers, I am,

And bring my Daddy home again!'

[Mikecg]

Kung Fu International

By John Cooper Clarke

Outside the take-away, Saturday night

a bald adolescent, asks me out for a fight

He was no bigger than a two-penny fart

he was a deft exponent of the martial art

He gave me three warnings:

Trod on me toes, stuck his fingers in my eyes

and kicked me in the nose

A rabbit punch made me eyes explode

My head went dead, I fell in the road

I pleaded for mercy

I wriggled on the ground

he kicked me in the balls

and said something profound

Gave my face the millimetre tread

Stole me chop suey and left me for dead

Through rivers of blood and splintered bones

I crawled half a mile to the public telephone

pulled the corpse out the call box, held back the bile

and with a broken index finger, I proceeded to dial

I couldn?t get an ambulance

the phone was screwed

The receiver fell in half

it had been kung fu?d

A black belt karate cop opened up the door

demanding information about the stiff on the floor

he looked like an extra from Yang Shang Po

he said ?What?s all this then

ah so, ah so, ah so.?

he wore a bamboo mask

he was gen?ned on zen

He finished his devotions and he beat me up again

Thanks to that embryonic Bruce Lee

I?m a shadow of the person that I used to be

I can?t go back to Salford

the cops have got me marked

Enter the Dragon

Exit Johnny Clarke

[Mick Mac]

Keats wrote in a letter (to his brother, I think) that he'd got a black eye playing cricket on the Heath. This is good going considering they'd have been bowling underarm.

Actually Ted - I read he got punched in the eye for refusing to leave the crease when plum LBW.

[bigbadwolf]

Back the day it was sweeter than toffee and King Henry VIII sold weed to make coffee

Good high grade though not everyones got it exept it was only his wives who shot it

Most men have a medium grade, easily weighed, homegrown but it's not high grade

Back in the days an eigth was buff, but now there aint enough, to go right round London town

Now I was cruisin the street on my jacks and who should I come across but Keef and Jah

Hello Mr Wolf have you got any gear? Course I have lads just step right here.

Whilst Jah reached into pocket I caught sight of the cuffs, "what the f... you sweeney todd"

That'll teach ya you mouthy sod, "but keef, you don't understand" shut yer snout wolf and get in van

Well if all truth be told I was not impressed but the fact remained that I was under arrest

When I got to the station a demanded my call "DM I need just one last favour thats all"

"Well Mr Wolf you are in a jam but don't fret dearheart I'll do all what I can"

By the time my brief arrived I dun got bail and started pushing highgrade via the email

I did that all by myself unlike you copycats.

[bigbadwolf]

Time to go to bed now, sweet dreams.

[Moos]

Ted, an answer to yours and David's earlier thoughts from Mr. Larkin

Side by side, their faces blurred,

The earl and countess lie in stone,

Their proper habits vaguely shown

As jointed armour, stiffened pleat,

And that faint hint of the absurd -

The little dogs under their feet.

Such plainness of the pre-baroque

Hardly involves the eye, until

It meets his left-hand gauntlet, still

Clasped empty in the other; and

One sees, with a sharp tender shock,

His hand withdrawn, holding her hand.

They would not think to lie so long.

Such faithfulness in effigy

Was just a detail friends would see:

A sculptor's sweet commissioned grace

Thrown off in helping to prolong

The Latin names around the base.

They would not guess how early in

Their supine stationary voyage

The air would change to soundless damage,

Turn the old tenantry away;

How soon succeeding eyes begin

To look, not read. Rigidly, they

Persisted, linked, through lengths and breadths

Of time. Snow fell, undated. Light

Each summer thronged the glass. A bright

Litter of birdcalls strewed the same

Bone-riddled ground. And up the paths

The endless altered people came,

Washing at their identity.

Now, helpless in the hollow of

An unarmorial age, a trough

Of smoke in slow suspended skeins

Above their scrap of history,

Only an attitude remains:

Time has transfigured them into

Untruth. The stone fidelity

They hardly meant has come to be

Their final blazon, and to prove

Our almost-instinct almost true:

What will survive of us is love.

[Brendan]

Here's one for the anticipation of escaping into the sun drenched weekend.

Bursting out and forth for all that needs to scream and hate and floating contents itself on movement stretched from outstretched fingertip to outstretched fingertip as it flies into impossibility and screams a song of sinking teeth into bleeding sunlit warmth that fills my eyes and holds me close as freedom

[Ted Max]

What on earth is that? It's not a patch on The Boers Have Got My Daddy.

[Brendan]

Yes I see what you mean, in no way shape or form does it try to humanise genocidal, colonial conquest by exploiting the innocent point of view of children.

[Ted Max]

I'm not sure I should have to say this, but I wasn't exactly endorsing the sentiments of the song. More sadness/ amazement at a society in which such things could be written and performed as popular numbers.

What is your post from, please? I'm not getting very far with the googling.

[Brendan]

My apologies I was a bit strong there perhaps Ted. Pay no heed I wasn?t implying anything.

P.s. I made it up.

[Ted Max]

I like it. It's got a nice beat.

[Brendan]

?tis beat.

I was reading Tank Girl yesterday. Go figure.

[Ted Max]

I think this hits the right note. Afternoons by Larkin (again). "Their beauty has thickened. Something is pushing them To the side of their own lives".

Summer is fading:

The leaves fall in ones and twos

From trees bordering

The new recreation ground.

In the hollows of afternoons

Young mothers assemble

At swing and sandpit

Setting free their children.

Behind them, at intervals,

Stand husbands in skilled trades,

An estateful of washing,

And the albums, lettered

Our Wedding, lying

Near the television:

Before them, the wind

Is ruining their courting-places

That are still courting-places

(But the lovers are all in school),

And their children, so intent on

Finding more unripe acorns,

Expect to be taken home.

Their beauty has thickened.

Something is pushing them

To the side of their own lives.

[Ted Max]

Kathleen Jamie - a short poem about being very tired, but also about that escape back to the familiar we promise ourselves. You don't even have to make the journey, you just have to know there's somewhere like this waiting for you - even if it's only in your imagination.

Lochan

When all this is over I mean

to travel north, by the high

drove roads and cart tracks

probably in June,

with the gentle dog-roses

flourishing beside me. I mean

to find among the thousands

scattered in that land

a certain quiet lochan,

where water lilies rise

like small fat moons,

and tied among the reeds,

underneath a rowan,

a white boat waits.

[Ted Max]

"Grief wrongs us so."

This breaches my sweet sorrow rule, coming as it does from the eviscerating emotional rawness end of things. But what the hell. If I had to read it, you have to as well. By Douglas Dunn: who's Scottish but once of Hull and with Larkin connections, so in that regard it's in keeping with the presiding spirit of this thread.

The Kaleidoscope

To climb these stairs again, bearing a tray,

Might be to find you pillowed with your books,

Your inventories listing gowns and frocks

As if preparing for a holiday.

Or, turning from the landing, I might find

My presence watched through your kaleidoscope,

A symmetry of husbands, each redesigned

In lovely forms of foresight, prayer and hope.

I climb these stairs a dozen times a day

And, by the open door, wait, looking in

At where you died. My hands become a tray

Offering me, my flesh, my soul, my skin.

Grief wrongs us so. I stand, and wait, and cry

For the absurd forgiveness, not knowing why.

[Ted Max]

A thread title from the Family Room.

Monday again at the Horniman sandpit?

Perfect

[katie1997]

Ted Max Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> A thread title from the Family Room.

>

> Monday again at the Horniman sandpit?

>

> Perfect

The sequel from the Lounge...'Plans for Saturday night/Sunday'

[Alec John Moore]

The riposte from the Wanted in East Dulwich section:

'Crochet'

[SteveT]

To deT and sooM

get a room

Geddit?

[Ted Max]

Oh my. This story has me staring out the window and brought me to this thread, or it could even have provided an alternative ending to the long-gone CPT thread. It's all in the detail - the two Buds a day, the Celine Dion, the work breaks speant staring at a bridge to nowhere, the restaurant manager who never gave him a raise or a card in 10 years yet considers him part of the "family".

Think I need to go for a walk...

"Then she hopes to go to New Hampshire and put the rest of his remains at his parents' graves ? if she can find them.

She will call Rogers, who will then drink the remaining beer in the refrigerator.

They will toast the memory of a solitary man who knew his likes and lived within his means, a man who could be counted upon."

http://www.tampabay.com/news/obituaries/hit-and-run-victim-was-quiet-and-dependable-co-workers-say/1124721

[david_carnell]

Bloody hell Ted, I'm crying into my breakfast muffin. That's the epitome of poignant.

RIP Mr Neil Smith.

[SeanMacGabhann]

what - as if eating a breakfast muffin at 10:30 wasn't poignant enough?

[Ted Max]

david-carnell helps himself to a free breakfast muffin every morning - an acknowledged but unofficial gratuity.