Winter’s dry, and Summer’s wet,
and they laughed at you and I,
in a pop-up tent in Somerset,

but they didn’t sit
on a pink mat, drinking pink wine,
wearing thin macks, under thick pines,
and didn’t visit
the Bishop’s Palace, where we saw swans,
– and kindly Bishop Ken writing arias and hymns,
– and Roundhead cannon kicking up the croquet lawn.

We watched ducklings on the moat with their mothers,
and you imagined alligators lounging by the weir,
– you just don’t love ducklings like I do, dear.

We kissed on a bridge underneath a Willow tree,
near a wartime statue of Adam and Eve,
(Till Bishop Ken kindly asked us to leave.)

We were wet in Wells, and wet at Wookey Hole,
where the witch ran down the steps to hell
and into the cathedral.
In a shallow grave they found her bones,
(but in the second chamber she was turned to stone…)

Penny arcades and a boring cow jaw,
King Kong beat his chest
in the Fairy Garden
for the dinosaurs,

and Yeti sat in a carriage
with a pink-bulb bandolier,
overseeing the marriage
of a monkey’s head
to a turkey’s rear,

– Biblical signs that a flood was nigh.
(We were forced to abandon camp.)
We swung the damn tent from the sky
to the floor, – Flamenco dancers in the damp.

We made it to an inn, with coffee bar and cable,
and a kindly inn-keeper who spared us the stable.
He told pilgrims, who listened, or cared,
that they would find heaven in Weston-Super-Mare.

By Mattias Thomas