In the crime capital of the country

I’m all dressed up like Jimmy Cagney

in a brown pin-striped suit

and black trilby hat

set at a world-weary angle.

 

Vertiginously I seek her out;

my head swims round black beetle gowns,

blazoned epaulettes and edges.

At forty-five quid for afternoon hire

I make uneducated guesses

about assembled subjects.

Antennae touch, shoulders rub,

incoherence intermingles;

then the curtain struggles up

and simmer slowly dwindles.

 

Here comes The Sheriff of Nottingham

preceding Michael Parkinson, 

drawling his way to the podium

in yellow livery and tedium

to joke of football and cricket.

The Sheriff shoulders a spade

which is purely symbolic;

Parkinson quotes an obscure poet.

We paid thirty quid each a ticket.

 

There’s over-representation

of the Chinese population

in the Business and Management section.

I’ve done multicultural studies

and got to know all the names -

now they all look and sound the same.

A posthumous award dispels the monotony;

nobody else wears a hat like me.

I never joined the classless society.

 

Caps are flung to the sound of shots,

colour splashed on corkscrew dots:

insignia mean an awful lot.

She’s stabled in bright livery;

history’s proven no injury

and she wears her mother’s genes.

I never went to university.

I wore two-tone and danced to The Specials:

I’m still living in gangster time.