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End of the Close Season

Stuart Butler

Saturday, August 9th, 2003

1 Leave a comment on verse 1 0 You know what holidays are like,
They’re just like a new football season,
The expectation nearly always exceeds the actuality,
And appearances are so very often deceptive;
And so it was this year, on the Cornish Riviera,
And whilst I’ve never believed that old GWR poster,
The one that displayed the similarities ‘twixt Cornwall and Italy,
Similarities of shape, temperature and scenery,
Cornwall’s not all it’s cracked up to be is it?
Campsites with curfews and postcards of pasties,
Wind, rain and November time fog in July,
Bay after bay of ribbon development housing,
Big bellied men in footie shirts, sponsored by Ginster’s pies,
A bloke in the campsite washroom with an MUFC tattoo down his back,
Who when I asked him about the transfer of Veron said,
“I haven’t followed football for 25 years mate,
Not since United were in the old second division”;
Rick Stein restaurants with exploitative menus,
Cultivated snobbery and minimum wages,
Posh visitors from Rock:
“I’ve got to go to Constantine Bay to Tescos.
They haven’t got a Waitrose. I hope no one sees me.”
So as Andy from Salisbury sagely observed,
The median accent shifts
As you pass from Newquay to Padstow,
And then Padstow to Rock;
The totality of England is here
From footie shirts in Newquay to rugger tops in Rock,
And as George Harrison equally sagely observed,
As we travelled in the car
Back from getting lost in the Maize Maze,
“The farther one travels the less one knows.”

© Stuart Butler

Notes

With thanks to our holiday friends for giving us shelter from the storm.

Source: http://footballpoets.org/poems/end-of-the-close-season/