(A re-post from a couple of years ago)

 

Marbella's the spot for mooring your yacht

 

To ostentatiously show what you've got

 

But a sight more evocative ploughing the foam

 

Much nearer the heart and closer to home

 

Was never a craft you'd look good in

 

I refer to the Ponty Tom Pudding.

 

 

 

A cross between a barge and a train

 

With a tug at the bow taking the strain

 

Everyday making 2 or 3 runs

 

Every trip hauling 800 tons

 

Of limestone or coal or with wood in

 

It's Goole not Cannes for Tom Pudding.

 

 

 

Along the canal to Ferrybridge “C”

 

To generate your electricity

 

Or onwards to Goole to ship overseas

 

For developing nations industries

 

Or start their economies budding,

 

Pump-primed by Ponty Tom Puddings.

 

 

 

The roads might be blocked or the trains were on strike

 

But Tom would chug on just as slow as you like

 

Never no more than 3 miles an hour

 

Ensuring continued electrical power

 

Unhindered even by flooding

 

Earning its corn was Tom Pudding.

 

 

 

Manning the rig would be Skipper and me

 

From 14 years old to age 23

 

The pay was appalling, conditions as bad

 

The best job of work that I'd ever had

 

Despite the muck you were stood in

 

Fighting a snake in Tom Puddings.

 

 

 

Dust up your nostrils, your ears, in your nails

 

Grafting in rain and in frost and in hail

 

And Skipper made sure they were clean 'fore a load

 

I'd be shovelling out muck as even it snowed

 

They'd have slurry and sludge and with mud in

 

I've cursed them bastard Tom Puddings.

 

 

 

But sad to relate their days are long past

 

The Aire and Calder has witnessed their last

 

Consigned to mem'ry and history since

 

The closures of Fryston and old Ponty Prince

 

Two pits my brothers sweat blood in

 

So Farewell to the Ponty Tom Pudding.