Sitting on a deckchair

Sitting on a deckchair

Watching the clouds,

Pretty as a picture

Captured in fine art

Little girls in pigtails

Boys in ragged trousers

Lounging on a broken

Wooden groyne

Waiting for the rain

To come down.

Crazy English Summers

Wanting to be more

Than a disappointing story

Shared over a pint

In a workingman’s pub

In a forgotten town

Where time has stood still

For decades.

An old dear sits in a headscarf

That covers her blow-dry

Freshly coiffured

For Friday night bingo

With a fish and chip supper

Over a glass of vin ordinaire.

Sometimes she will add

Gravy and mushy peas.

Curry sauce is an option

For the adventurous throwback

Who still sports a mullet

And loves karaoke

When he sings with gusto

As a tribute to Springsteen

And tells all who would listen

He had lived out of a shoebox

On the streets of London

Trying to break into music

Building a catalogue

Of old English folk songs

That never caught on

Even with a mandolin.

He needed better advice

On how to broaden his appeal

When he lost his resolve

To a big-bosomed girl

And fathered a child

Before he knew what was what.

He is still paying the cost

But nothing is lost

The boy is big in the city

And slips him a few quid

To put in the kitty

Every once in a while

For the drinks

With his old friends from

The village school,

Now repurposed as apartments

For seniors

Who never left town at all.

The big club

Is a haven of sorts

Where the world is put right

Over the course of a night

And nothing has changed

Since their parents

Took them all to the beach

In a charabanc

And they spent a god given Sunday

Away from the village

In a circle of deckchairs.

When the clouds formed

Pretty pictures

And they raised umbrellas

In an impression of Monet

As the rain came down.

Sometimes it blew sideways

But nothing would ruin the day.

If truth be told,

It was ever that way.