Chelsea Floor Show

Christine McLintock - a nursery nurse,

keeps billets anglaises in a velveteen purse.

Despite the holes in her worsted stockings,

she's always prepared for opportunity's knocking.

Pushing her charge, in loco parentis,

She'll wink at any passing apprentice.

The mother, a quondam Joan Hunter Dunne,

has long-abandoned any tennis-court fun:

she's married a Horace, something-in-the-city,

(with a pied-a-terre - oh, what a pity!)

but our Hunter Dunne is no longer a Miss,

but, still, is enjoying non-conjugal bliss

in Chelsea, on Tuesdays, at a discreet address,

Algy - her husband - expects nothing less.

Christine McLintock mutters a curse,

in nine months time, things will be worse;

unfriendly bombs, blackouts and Blitz,

the loss of a diamond as big as the Ritz.

Algy rides a horse on the money-go-round,

in for a penny, out for a pound,

kisses the girls and makes them cry,

spends half-a-crown on a boy called Guy.

Pinstripes, bowlers, valet-whitened spats,

Algy is luckier than ten black cats.

Femi pushes a second-hand pram

a hand-me-down gift from her sister Sam.

Amidst the mould in her tenth-floor flat,

she lives on her own - and thank goodness for that.

It's all over London, in headline news:

'King's Distant Cousin Found Dead In The Mews'

Femi smiles, another one gone -

a courtier, a toady, a hanger-on

to tailcoats and sailboats and luxury yachts,

with silver-spooned, plum-mouthed, entitled twots.

This is London, this is The Wen.

This is the kingdom of much-moneyed men.