The Strife of Brian

Life’s a bitch, when you’re getting on.
Hard to look on the bright side of the thing
when you have to tow that rope, tied
twixt a rock and a hard place. (Twixt –
an outmoded word one doesn’t hear
much these days – means between)

Like being between jobs, and trying to keep
the wolf from, the door, except, at my time
of life you don’t have to bog yourself down
with obscenities like work. You’re pensioned off...
Only the government’s got its grubby mitts
on your pie...

The one you made earlier – piping hot,
and filled to brimming with your pension,
yet now, it’s getting cold, because you’re told
you can’t have a large slice – you must
eek it out...make it last. Whose pie is it,
I ask myself; mine or theirs?

And while we’re on the subject,
what have the government ever
done for us...apart from starting a petrol
free for all, hiking up the students’ fees,
and hosepipe bans?

You have to learn to take the rough
with the smooth – resign yourself
to the fact you can’t move as fast
as you used to...that you’re last
in the queue for that plastic hip
they promised you

except, wouldn’t you know it?
The morning of your op, the trains
decide to strike, and you miss
your slot so they put you
to the bottom of the pile...again.

Erstwhile, needs must, you sell
your house...the family mansion;
even though it’s bequeathed
to your kids in your will. Well,
someone’s got to foot care-home bills.

Unless, of course, you’ve squandered
your hard-earned cash on trips abroad –
dined in fancy hotels, splashed out
on dapper clothes from Savile Row –
languished in a council house.

Dapper’s another has-been word, in this,
blue-jean and trainer-clad age; means
being dressed to kill. A flower, perhaps,
in your button-hole; five centimetres of hanky
bordering your top pocket

and then, when you’re more than ready
to say, ‘Goodbye cruel world’, you’ve got
to charm old Saint Peter at those pearly gates
when he’s on the lookout for losers like you.
Nudge, nudge – wink, wink. Know what I mean?
Life’s a bitch...when you’re getting on.