A Strange sort of Snob

In that lost hot metal world of the printWhich survives in my cluttered museumOf a memory, Albert Walker still standsPuffing on his pipe by his composing frame -All five foot something of him, hummingHis favourite hymn: ‘How Great thou Art’.He was known as The Fighting Monk to theLads who suffered his puritanical aggression.He was a Baptist who hated booze, weakness,‘Loud-mouthed Yanks, Eyeties who wereGood for nowt but chasing womenAnd making ice cream for kiddies.’He had fought Rommel in the war it seemsAs he drove a truck across ‘a sand-swept hell.’God help you though if you were bold enoughTo have an opinion about his war:‘The trouble is with thy generation,Tha thinks war is Errol Flynn dive bombing.I’ll tell thee what war is lad, war is watchingA woman take down her britches andDo her business at side o’ road – from fearLad – fear o’ being straffed by Jerry –But you young uns will never know itCause it’s summat you’ll never ever see.’

Sure, the old sod had a point, we knew it,But it wasn’t our fault we said that weCouldn’t chase old Rommel from TobrukOr Benghazi – a word he fired like a gun.And men who didn’t do a man’s job inBlighty, well, they were just like the kites whoSwooped down on their thieving wings and stole theFood from your mess tins – ‘blooming shite hawks lad.’The world for him was like a case of typeHe composed from – he was careful neverTo mix up his p’s and q’s when he setOut just what the world order should be.Women might well make the world go roundBut men could not get round to them beingSkilled workers as they were just – well – women.He had one son: ‘ma lad’, who was clever,On the verge of being a psychiatrist.‘Tha knows lad, his colleagues wouldn’t talk toMe and missus about medical matters‘Cause we really know nowt about such things,We’re not educated ye see now lad.’And then a pause: ‘But if he came in here,Well, you take it from me, he’d speak to theeHe would, or he’d have to answer to me.’

I never did get round to thank him forBestowing such an honour on one such as me –But irony’s not for children or old menQuite unable to think and never ever see.