My schnozle is not well, due to the hot weather it oozes green liquid,
enough, in a desert of spare scrub, to fill a little well.

Lizards run away from it, suspicious of its effluence,
but the Texas scrub remains hard and prickly.

Then I watch what the Americans call ‘football’,
and cry ‘You call that a game!
I know where to go when I can’t sleep.’

On my return to England I’m told that I need to ‘fit in’,
so I agree to go and watch ‘rugby’,
at a place called Twickenham,
and am wined and dined in the hospitality suite.

But my schnozle is not amused,
when commentators talk of winning the aerial battle and metres gained.

These muscly chaps produce such a confusing spectacle,
speedy players running quickly with great skill,
but its scrums and offside laws produce a right debacle.

Now watching this, my schnozle longs for that sport of
athletics its owner once did well in,
down by the stream of unending solitude,
over a distance which seems to last for ever,
on top of a body moaning with pain,
or a track unyielding in its discipline.

Now it watches as over-trained fellows strive to find the try line,
oh, they really love to wrestle each other,
in what the experts call a maul.

Gosh, I am bored.

But by this time I’ve stopped listening,
to an explanation from a well-meaning gent,
chairman of my company’s board,
of this complicated game of the oval ball.

So my schnozle says ‘Why don’t you go back to that sport of athletics?

'Yes, I could, It was pure and simple, and I ‘nosed’ where I belonged.’

‘But as some clever chap said,
what’s in the past is forever gone, or something like that.’

‘Besides, I’m too old and struggling with fatigue.

‘Why, I’m told by my ex I’m soon to be a gran daddy.’

‘Oh,’ my nasally pal responded, ‘you are a twit.
When you were a kid you watched another code of rugby.’

Then I saw the light, crying, ‘You mean rugby league!’