The Bank Holiday Crush!

Posted on May 6, 2014 by The Baldock Bard.

Bank Holiday scene 1929

Yesterday was a Bank Holiday here in the UK. Not many years ago this meant that you couldn’t even buy a pint of milk on this day (it was delivered to the door anyway!). Nowadays there would be panic and civil unrest if you were unable to buy a car, plumbing tools, a fluffy toy or do the weeks shopping…

We had a Bank Holiday Monday
The banks were closed yesterday
But all the stores
opened their doors
And welcome shoppers to pay!

It used to be a chance to visit the sea,
No work for 24 hours you see!
A picnic would be made
(With lemonade!)
Content and happy they’d be!

Now it’s all rush rush rush
Afraid we’ll all miss the bus
We’ve not enough time
To notice sublime
As we’re borne along with the crush!

© Baldock Bard 2014
For more verse click on ‘Home’ above
Facebook: Baldock Bard
Twitter: @baldockbard
E-mail: baldockbard@www.baldockbard.co.uk
The Baldock Boot Sale
Every Saturday until October!
With more FREE parking and billions of bargains!
www.u-boot.co.uk

Paper, Paper, Everywhere!

Posted on April 7, 2014 by The Baldock Bard.

Back in the Eighties when I bought my first computer I was advised to buy a printer ‘before they become obsolete!’ The salesman suggested that ‘in the near future’ offices would be paper-free environments. How I wish I could meet him now. There seems to be more paper than ever and in most cases companies are reluctant to E-mail bills. This leads to an Everest in my office, complete with avalanche warnings…

Paperless office? Unfortunately not here!
Print has used a few trees I fear,
All your bills you must store,
Seven years boxed up (sometimes more!)
Then at last you can get shot,
Although with fire you may not!
So let’s hear it for the office shredder,
It’s a great noisy cutting hamster-bedder!
Lists of rules from the Environment A-gen-cy,
Regularly get soaked by hamster pee!
Ejected, unwanted and disgraced,
It ought to be simply: cut and paste!

© Baldock Bard 2014
For more verse click on ‘Home’ above
Facebook: Baldock Bard
Twitter: @baldockbard
E-mail: baldockbard@www.baldockbard.co.uk
The Baldock Boot Sale  returns for the twenty-second season on April 26th 2014
With more FREE parking and billions of bargains!
www.u-boot.co.uk

Remembering my Mother on Mother’s Day…

Posted on March 31, 2014 by The Baldock Bard.

Yesterday was Mother’s Day here in the UK…

I was thinking about how many people no longer had mothers to thank on ‘Mothers Day’.
I suddenly remembered with great clarity, the last time I saw my mother.
I was spending three months in County Cork while my wife did a cookery course at the world-famous Ballymaloe Cookery School.
My mother and father flew over for a week to visit. I showed them all around County Cork sharing the places I’d discovered. The week was soon over and it was time to see them off at the airport.
The departure gate at Cork Airport is upstairs in the terminal and I carried their case on the escalator. Then we parted at the gate.
On my way down the escalator I suddenly had this very clear vision that I’d never see my mother again. In vain I tried to climb the down escalator, having to resort to continuing to the bottom and then running up the one going up. When I reached the top needless to say they had disappeared from view.
Four weeks later my mother suffered a fatal stroke while tidying up her grandson’s grave. Although I saw her in the hospital back home just before she died, I still consider that my ‘true goodbye’ was at Cork Airport.

Happy Mother’s Day, Mum.

Your Son,

Baldock Bard.

The Gibbet – Now a Curio at Caxton!

Posted on March 21, 2014 by The Baldock Bard.

Yesterday I drove a road that used to be so familiar. I knew that the historically-important pub next to the gibbet at Caxton, on the road to Cambridge, had become a Chinese restaurant. Then some years ago it unfortunately burnt to the ground. The pub had been the haunt of highway robbers since the 1700s. The land may have changed identity but the gibbet still stands…

At the crossroads stands the gibbet.

It’s use forgotten
or unknown by the illiterate
and historically stupid
motorists that pass.

They ignore its foreboding,
yet simple structure,
that used to stand,
for death by hanging.

It now stands,
as a curio at the entrance,
of a service area.

McDonalds,
Costco,
Subway,
Twenty-first Century
Highway Robbery!

Delights the masses!

© Baldock Bard 2014
For more verse click on ‘Home’ above
Facebook: Baldock Bard
Twitter: @baldockbard
E-mail: baldockbard@www.baldockbard.co.uk

The Baldock Boot Sale  returns
for the twenty-second season
on April 26th 2014
With more FREE parking and billions of bargains!
www.u-boot.co.uk

The Long Walk to Recovery!

Posted on March 14, 2014 by The Baldock Bard.

While sitting in a showroom having just signed my life away for a shiny all-singing all dancing automobile, my mind wandered. I remembered how my first car used to breakdown at most inopportune moments. Without the luxury of mobile phone or recovery it would always be an interesting experience…

I shall never forget,
my first breakdown,
and the lonely walk,
from the edge of town,
To the farm,
to get a tow,
from the muck-covered tractor,
that did stink so!
And realising,
as I steered,
that my car’s seat,
was now cow-muck smeared!

Facebook: Baldock Bard
Twitter: @baldockbard
E-mail: baldockbard@www.baldockbard.co.uk
The Baldock Boot Sale is now closed for the winter
returning for the twenty-second season on April 26^th 2014
With more FREE parking and billions of bargains!
www.u-boot.co.uk

Zen and the Art of Ploughing!

Posted on March 12, 2014 by The Baldock Bard.

Many years ago I worked on a farm alongside an old man called ‘Tidley’. Despite being a rogue, he was an excellent ploughman. He’d sit on his beloved Caterpillar ploughing all day. You could hear the engine singing: “Dunk, Dunk, Dunk, Dunk, Dunk!” as constant as a metronome, for miles around. He hated seagulls, young students (me!) and hard work. Often, I would have to work twice as hard, while he slept in the shade of a tree on a warm spring day! He now has the rest of eternity to doze, in a quiet country churchyard…

“You get more spuds in a bent row!”
Tidley Wilkins used to say.
If you don’t mow in a straight line,
You’ll get more bales of hay!

If you half-fill the muck spreader,
You get more loads of muck.
If you put in half the hours,
You’ll need twice the luck!

And if things go wrong,
Be careful when you take aim!
There’ll always be a youngster,
Who’s around to take the blame!

It has been pointed out to me by fellow farmers that the picture has been reversed as the furrows face the wrong way (it’s a farmer thing). The picture came from an American site on the internet. I use 99% of own-taken photographs. I apologise to all who may be offended by this and promise to take more care in future. I should possibly enrol on a course to teach me about farming!
I think it may just be Tidley, teaching me a lesson from beyond the grave, as he did all those years ago!

March 1st – St David’s Day

Posted on March 1, 2014 by The Baldock Bard.

Today is St David’s Day, the national day of Wales. It’s also the day when Welshmen all over the world wear a daffodil. There is also another symbol of Wales – the humble leek. Its origins as an emblem for the country go back to the time of St David himself…

St David was fighting Anglo Saxons,
Know as English plus other factions,
When suddenly he thought, right!
How can we identify who we fight?
So he gathered his army all around,
And said to them, “look what I’ve found!
Wear a leek from this allotment,
We’ll know who to spare and who is garrote-meant!”
As so up to this very day,
The Welsh have worn leaks on St David’s Day!

Dydd Gwyl Dewi Hapus!
or
Happy St David’s Day!

The Never-Ending Lift!

Posted on February 27, 2014 by The Baldock Bard.

The other day I was in a lift at a hospital. I left my car so high in the multi-storey car park that I was expecting to look down on the International Space Station. I normally take the stairs (to make up for the time spent sack-like at my desk!), however I decided to take the lift. As I travelled down using up zero calories I remembered a lift at another hospital…

Mrs Bard and I had been to see,
Old Bill, who used to work for me.
His ward was near the very top floor,
We could see the car-park from near the door.
“Look there’s Jane,” said Mrs Bard from the window,
She was visiting Bill (his close friend, a widow).
“I can see her getting out of her car,
It looks like a Matchbox toy from afar!”
We went to await her arrival by lift,
It came up full, if you get my drift!
Every time the lift did appear,
We saw her waving from the rear.
The doors would screech under the strain,
And she’d go back to the ground again!
Three times we heard her politely cough,
At the fourth she finally got off.
Thereafter she used to use the stairs,
To save herself from ill-tempered glares!

Percy – The Problematic Pensioner Pirate!

Posted on February 25, 2014 by The Baldock Bard.

I was in a local supermarket recently when a pensioner on a mobility scooter wouldn’t let anyone pass in the aisle. I overheard a bystander call him an ‘effin pirate! The thought of a retired pirate riding an invalid scooter around his local supermarket had me enthralled…

Percy was a pirate,
Once sailed the Seven seas.
He now suffers tennis elbow,
And rheumatic knees!
When supermarket shopping,
Astride his faithful scooter,
If landlubbers blocked his path,
Be deafened by his hooter!

With a cry of oooooh and a shout of aaaaagh!
He rampaged around the aisles,
The oooooh came from his elbow,
The aaaaah came from his piles!
Now he has been banished,
Forced to ‘walk the plank’,
The supermarket’s now peaceful,
But there’s hell down at the bank!

Blockbuster – (Consigned to history)

Posted on February 19, 2014 by The Baldock Bard.

Recently I passed Blockbuster’s empty store in Letchworth. The last time I had been in there it was full of people all looking for something to entertain them on a Saturday night. Thinking about it, I hadn’t been into the store for at least fifteen years, possibly more, as I preferred our local corner shops that had a less mind-boggling selection. I suddenly realised that my granddaughter might possibly ask ‘What was a Blockbuster card?’ or ‘What was a video?’ at some point in the future and I’d be hard pressed to explain…

“Grandpa, what is this?
I found it in a drawer,
It looks very old,
I haven’t seen it there before!”
“The card was proof of membership,
For a video store in town,
Just next to the shopping centre,
But in 2013 it closed down”.

“What was video rental?
Never heard of that before,
Was it like a download app,
Available from online store?”
“It simply was a place to go,
It had movies there to rent.
A video cassette was very large,
The tape sometimes was bent!”

I went up into the attic,
To a box all covered in dust.
Pulled out a video cassette,
The tape was covered in rust.
Further back a video player,
A vast aluminium non-ruster.
I plugged the lead into the mains,
It had gone the same way as Blockbuster!
© Baldock Bard 2014
For more verse click on ‘Home’ above  

Baldock Bard

Verse and Worse from the Baldock Versemonger

Category Archives: Past Times