SLEEPY HORROR. (circa 2001)

Free parking with toilets, and market pit stops,
Amongst the town’s older facilities;
Masonic lodge lay-bys, and charity shops,
And uninsured weather liabilities.

Chemists and doctors and avid drug takers,
And publicans peeled by the clock;
The bitcher, the faker, the pandered teenager
Removing the faith of the flock.

Foot in mouth teachers and their stunted shrubs,
Affected new labour at rest;
Turn out well up at the weekend fight clubs,
People employed under duress.

House prices increasing as immigrants grown
In teenage sardine bed-sit land;
Lone parents leaving their children at home
As they pick up a new one night stand.

Amenities failing, and overused bridges,
Streets lumbered by aldermen green,
Expenditure falling, abandoned old fridges,
Bankruptcy increasingly seen.

Above average taxes, and TB reported,
New business unable to get work;
A shipping line’s sleeping director resorted
To assailing the local road network.

Cheap contraband and latent new vices
Nightly shipped overboard to the quays;
Customs removed by cutback exercises,
Increasing the speed of disease.

Bobbies on bicycles down the back lanes,
Or two at a time in a car;
Precinct thirteen fire bombed once again
As the rats board the ships for afar.

Still the climate is fine and the sun shines in May,
Though flaming June smoulders in rain,
Igniting once more all the people who say
They love it here, but not as much as Spain.