General Discussion
an ode
Twas in the year of Our Lord two thousand and three
When a middle aged couple decided to go and live close to the sea
They weren’t quite sure exactly where to settle down
But eventually settled on Old Dawlish town
It looked pretty enough on the postcards they thought
And peace and tranquility it was that they sought
So one day in October a big van arrived
With all their wordly goods stowed safely inside
They set up their home near to Old Town Street
And they paid no heed to the rain, hail and sleet
Because Dawlish was beautiful all the year round
With a bonus of having no frost on the ground.
A few months went by and they both found work
And each morning out of their sleep they did jerk
Twas the sound of the seagulls that brought them awake
But that wasn’t the biggest problem that the seagulls did make
As they found when they went for an afternoon nap
On the patio and found it was covered in crap.
A mop and a bucket soon sorted that out
But what did they find when they went walkabout
More crap, but not done by the seagulls this time
But dogs whose owners did not think it a crime
To let their dog do its business and just leave it there
They really could not see that this was unfair
Or perhaps didn’t want to as they were lazy gits
Who just really didn’t give much of a sh*t
About anybody else living around
The streets of quaint old Dawlish Town.
A year went by and the summer too
The streets were thronging with people who
Had come from the Midlands and other places
Who would have thought there could be so many strange faces
With puzzled looks some of them stared around
And said is this all there is to Dawlish town?
Where are the nice cafes and shops that we expect to see
In lovely Devon towns nestling by the sea
All we can see is charity shops and fish and chips
We want to see lovely paintings of boats and ships
And take our kids to a family pub for a pleasant meal
The ones round here seem to have rather a rough feel
One even says ‘children not allowed’ on the front door
Oh dear, they said, this is rather poor
These pubs don’t look very nice inside
And not one is mentioned in the Good Pub Guide.
The couple noticed too as time went by
That life was VERY quiet – so much that they wondered why
It felt that no one else was alive at all
In Dawlish. ‘And the words Gods waiting room’ began
To make more sense to them – now they could understand
And so they vowed, as things would never change
To move elsewhere as quickly as they could arrange
It. Because it seemed to them that money talks
Even louder than the seagull squawks
And the moneyed people of Dawlish do say
‘We don’t want Dawlish to be any other way
We make good profits from the summer tourists
Lots of them buy up the crap we sell and get p**sed
We don’t want people here with better taste
People like that should depart with haste.’
These people could not see
That these tourists also have money
And would like to spend it on better things
Than seaside trinkets and deep fried chicken wings.
Twas easier to keep things as they were
And keep providing cheap stuff for the poor.
And so in the end our couple became certain
That Dawlish was not for them and they moved to Ashburton.
