Favourite verse (humorous)

[Pete]

I love this one.

Warning - When I Am an Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple

When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple
with a red hat that doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
and satin candles, and say we've no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I am tired
and gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
and run my stick along the public railings
and make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
and pick the flowers in other people's gardens
and learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
and eat three pounds of sausages at a go
or only bread and pickles for a week
and hoard pens and pencils and beer nuts and things in boxes.

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
and pay our rent and not swear in the street
and set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.
But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

By Jenny Joseph

[Pete]

My wife and I were once lunching at a favourite restaurant when a group of twelve ladies arrived, all of them wearing purple dresses and red hats. They told us they were all fans of this poem and that they were celebrating it by dressing accordingly!

[Dr Mildr]

One of my favourites - if only I were that brave. One day ...

[Verbivore]

Pete: Thanks for that piece of verse. When I read it, it immediately gave rise to a mental picture of a friend (my German tutor, amongst other things): a 60-year-old individualist/nonconformist, she does in fact wear quite a lot of purple and not infrequently a red (or otherwise outrageous) hat.

She came to lunch yesterday so I read her the poem.

She readily admitted to picking flowers from others' gardens, but hasn't yet cultivated public expectorating.

She enjoyed the poem.

[amanda]

Oh dear, I am alone in finding that piece rather irritating?
I first came across it printed on a tea-towel on a wall in a cafe, and it annoyed me then. I suppose it's the contrived eccentricity and the expectation of benign indulgence because of advancing age that winds me up.

Imagine if a teenager wrote the verse? "Because I'm young I'm going to spit and pick other people's flowers and set alarms off, and people will smile indulgently at me because it's my age, you see?"

Wouldn't be on a tea-towel then, would it?!

Harumph.

[Paul Doherty]

Aug 27, 2008 23:27:19 GMT amanda said:

Oh dear, I am alone in finding that piece rather irritating?

You are not.

[Vadim]

Aug 27, 2008 23:27:19 GMT amanda said:

Oh dear, I am alone in finding that piece rather irritating?

No, Amanda, I'm with you, but I reserved my comments as if I post a humorous verse it's likely to be slated.

Aug 27, 2008 23:27:19 GMT amanda said:

Wouldn't be on a tea-towel then, would it?!

Maybe that's the best place for it - to dry the dishes and eventually get binned?!

[Pete]

Aug 27, 2008 23:27:19 GMT amanda said:

Oh dear, I am alone in finding that piece rather irritating?
I first came across it printed on a tea-towel on a wall in a cafe, and it annoyed me then. I suppose it's the contrived eccentricity and the expectation of benign indulgence because of advancing age that winds me up.

Imagine if a teenager wrote the verse? "Because I'm young I'm going to spit and pick other people's flowers and set alarms off, and people will smile indulgently at me because it's my age, you see?"

Wouldn't be on a tea-towel then, would it?!

Harumph.

Chacun a son gout, as they say in France. ;D

I am pretty certain the first time I saw Desiderata it was on a tea towel. Not to mention If. Maybe we should have a thread for tea towel verse?

[Verbivore]

Aug 28, 2008 7:33:01 GMT Pete said:

[...] Maybe we should have a thread for tea towel verse?

I once had a tea towel bearing the following message:

What a great day it will be when education gets all the funding it needs and the military has to hold a cake stall to raise money for another bomber.

[Twoddle]

"Not to mention If"

I'm glad you didn't, Pete. "If" is one of the British public's favourite poems, but it leaves me cold. If one could do all of those impossible things it lists, one would be a Superman, my son, not merely a man.

[Alan Palmer]

The Bowler's If tea towel looks like fun. It's a shame the words aren't legible in the picture.