SPLICING

A poem with a very short sell-by date...

SPLICING

I’ve never watched a Royal Wedding

I’ve not seen a Royal Splicing me

Though one may have been on next door’s telly

When she made me lunch in seventy-three

I always try to be out somewhere

Away from the maddening crowds

Trying to track down birds to watch

Or photographing the clouds

In eighty-one my sister and I

To open fields and countryside

Headed out in her dark blue Mazda

To avoid any blushing brides

The rest I’ve never seen at all

The gushing nonsense makes me switch off

I can never really understand why

There’s such interest in a bunch of toffs

The whole shebang kind of passes over me

Throughout even the planning stages

Although all those media fixations

Can trigger my occasional rages

Because it does get rather tiresome

Hearing pundits without remorse

Assess a smiling walking uterus

As if she’s a brood mare clotheshorse

When big brother married what’s-her-face

Probably now several years ago

We had other birthday celebrations that day

So we really didn’t want to know

I’ve never watched a Royal Wedding

I’ve not seen a Royal Splicing me

It’s really not the sort of thing

That would be likely to interest me

There’s always stuff on the telly afterwards

That becomes more difficult to ignore

Although the “Off” switch proves rather handy

I find I’m using it more and more

The whole darn thing gets much ignored

Despite being sort of vaguely aware

That this whole nonsense will be going on

No doubt sometime soon somewhere

I get so out of the nonsense loop

Until it got mentioned at work yesterday

This time round I hadn’t realised

That this splicing gig was on Saturday

So I won’t be glued to the telly

Or found outside waving little cheap flags

I’m more likely to put a box set on

Or be in Tesco filling shopping bags

I’ve never watched a Royal Wedding

I’ve not seen a Royal Splicing me

You can bet a grape to a gooseberry

That I won’t be starting with Harry

MAWH, May 2018