The Brigadier

Up where we live we've got everything
We've got a cuckoo and a nightingale
We've got a shop and chapel and a boozer
And a little jail
We've got a brain-sick witch and a cricket pitch
We've got a pump and a duck pond here
A vicar and a blacksmith and a local idiot
And a brigadier, a frigging brigadier

Let the caravans come, let the charabancs roll
Tripping our hills, picking our daffodils
Getting stuck in our holes, we don't care

We don't mind trippers and scouts and ramblers
They can come and stand in the rain all day
They give us money and beer and a right good belly laugh
Then they go away
But who pins medals on the chests of our children?
Who pins a rose on our biggest pig's ear?
Who pins a little red poppy on our cenotaph?
The brigadier, the frigging brigadier

Let the bearded wonders come, whether we like or not
They squat in the cottages of our ancestors
Making bloody pottery, we don't care

We get drunk, we get rowdy
We get nicked when the flatfeet come
How are we judged, by whose almighty
Finger and thumb?
Not by Bacchus's, not by Jupiter's
Not by Solomon's, we're summonsed to appear
Underneath the beak of his week-a-day worship
The brigadier, the frigging brigadier

Let the rain-god come, spitter and spat and spout
At least he's a god who is impartial
He waggles it about, we don’t care

On a Sunday when the vicar admonishes our wickedness
Whose amen resounds down the aisle?
Who reads the Sermon on the Mount with a Holy
Ghost of a smile?
Who takes the wine, who takes the biscuit
Who brings the plate, who bends the ear
Singing of his hopes for a new Jerusalem
The brigadier,the frigging brigadier

Let God's pale archangel the Grim Reaper come
He can hack my bones, he can step upon my gravestone
He can kiss my bum, I don't care

If he wants my chimneys, if he wants my acres
If he wants my trout, if he wants my grouse
If he wants gold and silver titbits
He's got the wrong house
He can rattle my latch, bang my knocker
There's not one whit of a titbit here
Go tap with his dainty sickle on the windowpane
Of the brigadier, the frigging brigadier