(A plaintive moan from the time when my wife decided the perfectly good kitchen needed re-fitting and the bleeding of my income into the bank balances of the electricians)

 

A recent experience made my mouth foam

When battalions of tradesmen invaded my home.

Brickies and plumbers and plasterers too

I dutifully paid up to each one his due.

But the hardest to take and worst to evade

Was the Charge of The Light Brigade.

 

The wife needed sparkies the idea had struck her

For wiring the lighting, the sockets, the cooker;

But citing old statute and new regulation

Their cost insidiously breached their quotation,

As a rod for our own backs we made

By the Charge of The Light Brigade.

 

On paper they wrote a reasonable quote,

Around (or possibly under)

an estimate of Six Hundred.

I regret to lament this soon overspent

The quote was soon torn asunder;

accountants started to wonder.

 

The house wasn’t old and the wiring was good

Installed by a craftsman in all likelihood

But several improvements and later extensions

Revealed contraventions of building conventions.

Such that this – once they’d surveyed -

Encouraged the Light Brigade.

 

“We can’t wire in that and not rectify this”

“I hope that you’re kidding – you’re taking the piss”

“Regulations” he said, smiling but callous

Calculating afresh his healthy bank balance

(He’d be spreading best butter, not marge)

As up went The Light Brigade’s Charge.

 

There was no hiding secondary wiring

New laws meant we were encumbered,

As I realised we’d blundered.

With every socket the quote would rocket

 (Every task costed and numbered)

The price stretched up to Nine Hundred.

 

Onwards and upwards to nearly a Grand

Exceeding by far the project as planned.

I said to the wife with a face black as thunder

“You know the bank account’s been good and plundered;

Do you see what fools we’ve been made

By the Charge of the Light Brigade?”

 

Regulation right of them

Legislation left of them

Compliance behind them

Pedantic, encumbered;

Mine was not to reason why

Mine was simply to comply

And mutter soft a plaintive cry

“Farewell The Lost Six Hundred”.