Roads to Joy

Whether it’s just a case of schadenfreude, or relief that a particularly excruciating period of politics is over, sometimes the demise of a charlatan is a good enough excuse to indulge in a bit of spontaneous joy.

In one of our writing group tasks, this week, we’re charged to investigate the clerihew, so-called because of the form’s inventor. Fortuitously, I’d already chosen to compose one about the party guy, as follows:

BORIS JOHNSON
devoted fan of the chanson
the one that goes no, there’s nothing I know
of the promises made, nor regrets that I might deign to show.

The funny, or as some would say, not really so funny, thing about the clerihew is that it should over four lines (rhyme scheme AABB) include some salient biographical detail, while indulging in forced rhyme and desperately awkward meter. As Stephen Fry opined, a clerihew that scans is very bad form. It is, however, rather good if the clerihew can simultaneously reference another approach to the subject, as I’ve tried to do by implying Edith Piaf’s great hit, Non, je ne regrette rien.

In another challenge, this one on the limerick form, as presented by Wildfire-Words.com throughout the month of June, I’ve been wondering if I might could create a useful five line effort based on the actual family name of our erstwhile lying, cheating and blustering prime minister: Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson.

de Pfeffel
A false, lying toad called de Pfeffel
fell out between frites and felafel
it was such a palaver
he decided baclava
to eat and to have, was less awf-[EU]-l.

This attempt references Boris’s dictum of ‘cake-ism’ in which he suggested that the UK could both have, and eat, the cake of EU benefits, without needing to pay for the privilege by being a member of the union. Absurd, as always.

So, at least for now, and more’s the rejoicing regardless, for now the charlatan is out. And I’ve got two incidental poetic efforts which were rather fun to create.

Now if I can only get our new-to-us shed sorted a bit today, I’ll be that much happier too!