Thread by @mattmacedonia

#NationalFishAndChipDay @MichaelRosenYes

The Ballad of Battered Sausage - Prologue & Lament

Up Turtle Hill from Lobster Bay,
down Dog & Bucket Lane,
there was a fish-and-chip shop once
whose owners went insane
and took us with them round the bend
then twice around again.

It looked like a normal chippy—
from outside anyway.
No clue to what those nutters did
to lead our town astray—
no sign that said ‘Abandon Hope
All Ye Who Take Away’.

Just walking past you couldn’t tell
what horrors lurked within.
You’d never guess that it was here
they brewed that Sauce of Sin
that turned our little town into
a giant loony-bin.

Our little town! Our happy home
of normal English folk,
where time stood still some sunny day
before the Empire broke.
Before God copped it in the wars.
Before The Dead awoke.

When people knew where they belonged
from the cradle to the grave—
and where they would be going next
if they did not behave.
Before the place went to the dogs.
Before the Zombie Wave.

Our seaside town of sun and sand
and candy-floss and balloons,
and crazy-golf and donkey-rides
and picnics in the dunes,
and cricket as the tide rolled in
on golden afternoons.

All gone—no more!—the carefree days 
before the guilt and shame.
When people kept their Proper Place
and corpses did the same.
Before the sauce, before the Binge,
before the Voices came.

The Riffraff in their Sunday Best
down Hoi-Polloi Arcade,
the Pooters twiddling parasols
along The Promenade,
the toffs guffawing at the rest
from Precipice Parade…

The deckchairs in the setting sun
along Britannia Pier,
and buttered crumpets for High Tea
at Hotel Belvedere…
No fried remains, no battered brains,
no Saveloys of Fear.

Long shadows on the bowling green,
the bells for Evensong.
The choirboys and the cucumbers…
So long, so long, so long!

Or was that someone else’s life?
Was that the dinner-gong?

‘old on a sec, I’ve gotta get
this fop out of my ‘ead.
It’s ‘im again—the Ponce of Wales—
‘e’s made me lose my thread…
Now where’s Nurse gone ‘n’ put the junk
for piping down the dead?

‘More marmalade’? What’s that you say?
‘Why don’t I shut my gob’?
What for? So you can carry on
your end-of-Empire sob?
Your boring Belle Époque lament,
your Diary of a Nob?

There’s some as can’t accept the fact
that dead means déclassé—
you give an inch, they take a mile…
But it’s my lucky day!
My standby stash—a shot of this
should drive the sod away.

Alright, that’s that, let’s start again,
I’ve got a better plan:
Let’s cut the crap about the Fall
from Great to Also-Ran
and skip back to the chip-shop where
the Road to Hell began.

Its name? Its name was of that quaint
‘Ye Olde Worlde’ sort
(the kind you find so often in
a suicide resort):
Ma Grunstniff’s Pea-Wet, Scraps & Sauce
(we called it Grunts for short).

Established 1958,
the business started slow.
In fact we hardly heard of Grunts
the first two years or so.
Then something changed and Grunts became
the only place to go.

The change was sudden—overnight,
the word was on the street:
‘You gotta try that sauce at Grunts—
it goes down like a treat.
It’s got some sorta lumps in it—
they’ll knock you off your feet!’

A single hit was all it took
and ZAP! your head was gone.
One minute you were inside Grunts,
the next in Babylon.
We didn’t stand a hope in hell—
it hooked us from day one.

Within a week the queues had stretched
From Grunts to Lobster Bay.
Unnatural cravings drove us back
up Turtle Hill each day.
A frenzy for the sauce swept town—
Soon everyone fell prey.

But what began as ecstasy
Soon turned to shock and dread,
As cans of worms were opened up
in everybody’s head—
and every worm contained the thought
of someone who was dead.

That gunk not only wrecked our guts
and turned our stomachs green;
it warped our minds and showed us things
we never should have seen.
It left a stain on all our lives
repulsive and obscene.

This farce of madness, slime and death,
of life relived again—
this tragic tale of battered cod,
of murder, evil, pain—
is not for those of squeamish minds
or those of febrile brain.

Nor would I want to put you off
your local take-away.
Remember such ungodly things
don’t happen every day.
In fact they’ve only happened here—
at least that’s what they say.