HAVING IT LARGE

16-10-2006

West Midlands women are the tubbiest in the country, and Britain is the most blubbery nation in Europe according to a new league tabloe of obesity. At last! Something we can win at. The Stirrer's resident poet Brendan Hawthorne celebrates with a new rhyme...and a deep-fried Mars Bar washed down with pop.

From Dieticians to Morticians

We're leading the way in Europe

The obesity trials prove it

Our shift from dieticians to morticians

cannot relieve a constipated society

living off the fat of the land and

requiring lipo-suction enemas

spoonfed by nanny politicians

who don't mind a bit of roughage

in the stodge and thin gruel

of English taste and appetite

And what a state to be in

Sustained on five portions of convenience

sugar, salt, fat, starch,

and too numerous other additives to give

processed packaged pulp flavour

for couch potatoes to vegetate upon

Drip-feed diets of commercialism

pour through omni-present screens

that flicker incessantly with

rest phase cholesterol reliability

dictating our likes and must haves

setting trends for our

elasticated waistlines to expand

and surpass moments of depression

and absolute gluttony

Cat walk bulimics provide

tight shot seduction before

returning the goods partially digested

to cyber aisle supermarkets with

home delivery options

Meanwhile in a parallel reality

we bathe in the suds of overblown

product placement soaps

before suffering from repeats

and hard to digest fly-on-the-walls

the place where dumbed down TV

equates to burgers for the brain

all neatly packaged and re-constituted

softening minds to blubber

turning muscle to lard

Our food like politics is pale and lethargic

our questioning intellect dulled by

poor education policy and nutrition

Still the rest of Europe is catching us up

so that we don't feel too alone

on our wobbling pedestal

Shouldn't be difficult as two-thirds

of us are said to be obese and nicotine starved

But at least we can say to the French

when they take the moral high ground

that pommes frites have had their chips

Copyright 2006 Brendan Hawthorne

Check out more from Brendan at www.wednesburypoets.co.uk