Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

To understand the past, you need to inhabit it for a while

John Betjeman (Getty Images) 
issue 04 July 2020
‘It’s no go my honey love, it’s no go my poppet;
Work your hands from day to day, the winds will blow the profit.
The glass is falling by the hour, the glass will fall forever,
But if you break the bloody glass, you won’t hold up the weather.’


The first poem I ever heard was ‘Eenie, meenie, minie moe, catch a tiger by the toe. If he hollers, let him go’, etc. I found it mystifying. How would one catch a tiger by its toe? And do tigers ‘holler’? ‘There is something about this poem they’re not telling me,’ I thought, full of worry, my nappy beginning to chafe. This was last week, by the way. (Ha. Only kidding.)

‘When you start seeing a second wave, it’s time to go home.’

The second poem concerned the rather humdrum and repetitive activities of a spider attempting to climb up some sort of drain, and its setbacks occasioned by inclement weather.

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