FOLK-SONG GIRLS

My mother used to say:

“Rachel, don’t mix with the folk-song girls,
the folk-song girls from the Folk Estate,
staying out, going out in their calico dresses,
irrespective of the season.
They hang around the parade of cowsheds
at weekends for no discernible reason.
I’ve seen them in the park, in the dark,
sniffing nosegays on the park benches.

And Rachel, stop drinking out of my vase,
it isn’t a wassail bowl.
Turn out your pockets –
what’s that you’ve got, another piece of coal?
Have you been listening to that song
About the Durham pit lockouts of 1861 again?

No, I’m not interested in your so-called new friends,
Nancy, Polly, Betty;
That awful music they listen to,
that horrible group The Yetties –
using language on the Bill Grundy programme,
Dorset dialect words and everything.
Being bucolic isn’t clever, neither is it big.

And what do you want a pet skylark for?
You’ve already got a guinea-pig
that you never clean out.”