Lament for a fading moon
The British Royal family have gone, 
and reality TV has died a death,
my charity-shop clothes are too dusty 
even for a misanthropic moth, 
who flickers as the moon is set to rise,
while that well-travelled Monty Python,
whose surname rhymes with fading,
wonders what will become of Planet Earth.

Meanwhile, two lovers under a fading moon 
annoy the romantics by not looking particularly lovestruck,
cats waking to a rising sun in Spain’s twin city of Blackpool, Benidorm,
say, in a mournful meow, ‘Sod this for a game of soldiers,
I’m off to a hot island with a Canary.

‘I’ll slip onto a CheapAsChips Flight,
that new airline bringing all these drunks 
who keep me awake every night.’

Then my Irish mother sets out to haggle at a market stall,
in perfect Spanish, amazing Señor Aficionado with her fluency, 
saying, ‘Ah, the Irish, they really do love the English.’

These are the memories which in my dotage I strive to recall, 
in the midst of yet another cost-of-living storm.

Then my PA looks annoyed, as yet again I kick the waste bin,
full of failed attempts to communicate with a Twittering world.

Dash it, I’ll have to pack in this latest attempt 
at my auto-biography, Don’t Go There!

I only started it on the advice of my publicity agent,
Edward Partyonunaware, whom I’ve just learned was an
adviser to an ex-prime minister called Johnson.

I should have known better.
Why, his hobbies include running the Flat Earth Society
and rearing Peckish Polly, a nearly extinct bird.

It’s too depressing, so I’ll go and look at the moon, 
and give the young lovers my blessing.