Celebrating, if that is the right word, an incident on New Year’s Eve 2021. To be delivered in either the biting manner of John Cooper Clarke or, if you prefer, more reflective Stanley Holloway as per Albert and the Lion.
24th December 2022, recalling 31st December 2021
The culprit’s name is Simon,
He is the one to blame:
It were his Grand Idea to greet the New Year
With a pudding all aflame.
We warned, ‘Don’t use much brandy
When we celebrate on Friday night!’
Because, better sense to drink it
Than set the stuff alight.
But Simon thought he knew better,
When New Year’s Eve came around –
Hence, both his hands in bandages
And no eyebrows to be found.
We knew spirits need no encouragement
When it comes to getting lit;
When you learn what that there Simon did,
You’ll have a ruddy fit!
He slopped a lot of Cog-Knack
(That’s the name as posh folk use)
Into a pan on a red hotplate –
Blue touch paper, very short fuse!
Simon’s idea was that Cog-Knack
Needed heat to help it light…
I hope he’s learned his lesson
From what then occurred that night.
With really quite a modest ‘Pop!’
A great balloon of flame
Erupted from the cooking pot,
And Simon gasped in pain.
His hand, with which he held the pan
Was engulfed in beautiful blue;
And as, with surprise, he leaped in ‘t’ air,
He’d no clue what to do.
Right then, it was, the pan took charge
And sprang free of his grasp;
And thus that flaming Cog-Knack
Reached the steaming pudding at last.
But the Cog-Knack, evidently,
Was fired with ambition:
Never mind a pudding Flam-Bee –
It would Flam-Bee all the kitchen!
Out from the pudding platter,
Off across the worktop too:
Licking leaping greedy flames
In such a fetching range of hues.
No stopping at ‘t’ worktop edge:
Off it poured down the cupboard side –
And bent on conquering more, across the floor
All a-seethe with igneous pride.
I could go on about that incendiary bomb
Which the Cog-Knack had become,
Relating how alcohol reacting with air
Created a sapphire son et lumière…
But I’m sure your imaginations
Can fill in any gaps,
Replace all the asterisks I’d have to use
To relate Simon’s verbals all through these mishaps.
So – suffice it to say that he’s not, to this day,
Forgotten at all what occurred
When he thought that the idea of not lighting brandy
Was a concept completely absurd.
Thus we’re hoping that, should he ever again
Be trusted with a Christmas pud,
He’ll resist the temptation to effect conflagration
And accept that our advice is good:
If you’re going to uncork the Cog-Knack,
Don’t set light to it, don’t be an arse –
Swamp the pudding with cream or with custard,
And pour the booze into a glass!
© Christopher Jessop 2022