LADY OF SHALOTT DAY

Don’t you hate it when it’s Lady of Shalott Day,
don’t you, don’t you?

Tirra lira, tirra lira,
goes the alarm on my bedside cabinet
and here’s one problem that won’t be solved
by reaching out and grabbing it.
Because today is Lady of Shalott Day –
only once a year, when you have to go into work
in all your Lady of Shalott gear,
and if you forget and wear your cardigan and your pop-socks,
you have to put some money in the Lady of Shalott box.
And there’s Derek from Wages
in his armour and his stupid plume,
making a tapestry of the time-sheets in the next-door room,
and it’s rosemary for remembrance,
a pomegranate in your sandwich-box,
when all you want’s a Penguin biscuit,
but you daren’t risk it, not at all.
And meanwhile in the typing-pool,
we’re not allowed to look directly at our typewriter keys –
the Qs, the Ws, the Es, the Rs, the Ts –
we have to look at them in a mirror.
And it’s rosemary for remembrance, Tippex for typing-errors.
And we’re not allowed to look directly at the window-cleaner,
cleaning windows, leaning on a major supporting pillar,
with his little ukulele, singing “Tirra lirra”,
and his Lonsdale sweatshirt reading Eladsnol.

But it’s nice when you go home for a shower,
where a shower-curtain hangs aslant the bath,
and the eight-hour Shalottathon is on,
with Philip Schofield as King Arth.