The Diet

The diet

Lettuce
Lettuce and tomato
Lettuce and tomato and cucumber
OOO, will I go all exotic and have a bit of couscous?
Do I want salad cream with that?
Mmmmm cream
Screw the salad bit
BUT I am beginning to look like
a giant marshmallow on steroids
With my belly that touches my knees
and my butt that says “OH PURLEEEEASE!”
SO

Lettuce
Lettuce and tomato
Lettuce and tomato and cucumber
OOO, shall I splash out and have some dressing with that?
Dressing
Depressing
Squeezing myself into death-wish dresses
Like a Zeppelin in a condom
Like a blamanche in clingfilm
Suffocating asthmatics
to a plus sized death
SO

Lettuce
Lettuce and tomato
Lettuce and tomato and cucumber
OOO, Will I live dangerously and have a bit of beetroot?
OOO, beetroot
The colour of my cheeks when I
get on the scales
Or the gang of teenage girls
snigger in their size 10 knock off Nike trackies
And I want to scream
“I was a skinny tart too, once!”
Or the tsunami when I dive into the pool
and cause a few fatalities
SO

Lettuce
Lettuce and tomato
Lettuce and tomato and cucumber
OOO that cake looks tempting
the chocolate is moist
and so am I
God, I’m bloody starving!
Just one bite…
Just another slice…
Oh, I’ve stuffed the whole cake!

Lettuce
Lettuce and tomato
Lettuce and tomato and cucumber
And KFC
And McDonald’s
And Pizza Hut
And Mandarin Palace
And Bombay delights
And

Big knickers
Big tits
Big me
Again

©2020 Sarah Drury

Bake Off

well I know it’s half a year away, but I was inspired to write a send up of the Great British Bake Off

WARNING: the odd swear word

Bake Off

It’s getting to that time of year again
When our screens are invaded by a farm load of corn fed, field raised, free range eggs
A flamboyant flurry of organic, gluten free flour
A gaggle of garish, gluten intolerant gastronomes
A marquee of muddling men and worrisome women, coyly craving culinary competitiveness
And an alert audience of deluded Mary Berry wannabees
Planning their abysmal attempts at:
Pavlova perfection when they hate the sight of strawberries
New York Cheesecake when they haven’t even been to Cleethorpes, let alone the USA
And those delicate little macaroons when they’re 6ft tall and built like a brick sh*thouse!

I’m not by far the world’s best cook
I can’t even follow the recipes in a pre school child’s cook book
Without burning the brulee beyond acceptable boundaries
(I got offered a job at the crematorium with that one)
Massacring the merengue and associating salmonera with scone

I can’t whisk an egg white till its stiff and peaky
I can’t nurture rice pudding until it’s thick and creamy
I can’t cook suet pudding whilst its hot and steamy
I’m about as much use as a chocolate fireguard and if there was such a thing I’d probably eat it.

The cooks on the TV mesmerise me
How can they be so creative?
How can they bake a cake the size of an Oompah Loompah native?
They sweat under pressure, with falling Tiramisu tears and tempestuous tantrums.
My three year old could whip up a trifle with more emotional stability
But these prodigies onscreen are making me doubt my ability
With their creative prowess and supernatural culinary agility.

They never cook chocolate sponge and pink custard, like at school, do they?
Or cornflake tart with custard as lumpy as a teenager with raging acne?
They never cook rice pudding with skin so thick you could wear it as a raincoat when you were a kid cos it’s all you could afford
Or Hot Cross Buns you scoffed at Easter and offered up to the good Lord.

I want to switch off the telly in abject disgust
I want to knock off the smarmy presenter’s crown and his teeth with my fist to adjust
I want to throw away my cookbooks or burn them on an enormous fire
I want my cakes to caress hearts, I want my scones to inspire
But they’re dire, my toffee like a tyre, my meringues like barbed wire
All they are good for is a funeral pyre

So I’ll stick with my cake mix and add my eggs and flour
And leave the creative, innovative, stimulative contestants
To their magnificent, macaroon, f*cking towers.

©2020 Sarah Drury

Primani

Primani

Let’s hear it for Primark!
That cut price clothing behemoth
Where people flock and shop with shock
At ridiculous bargains, eyes agog.
Fill yer baskets, fill yer baskets,
Baskets like plus sized body bags
Shove it in, yer jeans, yer shoes,
Yer jim jams, yer panties, yer bags of rags.
Come along to the glittering golden
Universal Credit shopping paradise
Clothe your family of ten and your neighbour’s kids
For less than a McDonald’s, a bargain price!

The tired mums, red blood eyes,
suffocating their pushchair kids.
With three sleepsuits, a batman suit
and a bra with cups like jam jar lids.
The well toned teens, with their Adidas shoes
Strutting their stuff like like a pack of hyenas
Preening and posing and prancing and dancing
Like a bunch of pricks at Manchester arena.
Lairy with the arrogance that they will not
Have to take back panties that are not looking hot
For they are parachutes at a plus size twenty
Yet still don’t cover your whole lady spot.
Thinking they are James Dean or Marilyn Monroe
Hanging round the fire doors, smoking dodgy fags
Thinking they own that gangsta shit
With their £5 jeans in their cheap paper bags.

Bags, bags, let’s hear it for the paper bags!

Be careful when you step outside
With your Primani bags in the pissing down rain
A satin camisole and six pairs of silk stockings
Will go stumbling and a-tumbling down the stinking council drain.
At least you have the satisfaction of knowing that
You have a paper bag as big as a tent
Which will come in handy when you’re made homeless
From the ludicrous amount you’ve overspent!

Shoplifters looking innocent while they secretly gloat
As they stuff cans of Lynx down their rip of Nike pants
Until 20 tubes of mascara fall from their coat.
And the guards they come a running, the fucking pedants
And they leg it out the doorways like Sonic on speed
They won’t even make enough to score a joint.
And the police are coming quickly to arrest the dodgy fuckers
No bang for their buck, that’s not the point!

Security guards too busy singing poor renditions
While the dodgy folk make off with pickings of all kinds.
As another karaoke king ignores the exhibition
Of the policemen nicking wankers and slapping on big fines.
And the guards turn a blind eye and drink their pissy cuppa
Cos they’re busy watching YouTube on CCTV
Ordering Chinese takeouts on their work walkie talkies
Slavering at the thought of their Friday night tea.

While the queues are ten times bigger than the crowd for Take That
Kids screaming, posers preening, lads in gangs of rip off Nike
Folk stampeding wildly and they’re squashing shoppers flat,
Posting shit on facebook and then checking for the likes.
Photos of them shopping and their eyebrows are on fleek
Lynching other women if you see things in your size
Premeditating prospects of a cheap lacy thong
And keeping out your eye on the government funded prize!
Anaesthetized men being dragged on leashes
Following their primani-drugged women like dogs
With ferocious spending habits like blood-letting leeches.
Buying lacy bra sets and kitting out their sprogs.

And the posing, pimping Primani Queens
Resplendent with their golden hair extensions
Pride in their appearance, nails on fleek
High maintenance women with film star pretensions.
Hitting the shop for their Friday night cash splash
£20 budget just to buy their shoddy rags
For their boozy, shmoozy weekend Bacardi bash
Buying wisely, cheap, hoping for a Friday shag.
For when they’re pissed up in the street and a fit young lad they meet
Then throw it all away when the fallout’s underway
From your binge-pissed, gin kissed, night on the tiles
And your greasy chicken kebab is coming right back up to play.

Label’s with names like ‘Rebel’ for kids
Should really say ‘designed for little naughty shits’.
Fashion straight off the streets of a gangland paradise
Complete with Gangsta attitude and parental advice
Though I don’t think the imitation knuckledusters
Are particularly nice.
‘Atmosphere’ for our princess eligibility
The oppressive atmosphere at your local boozer
After ten pints of Stella and the drama of infidelity
And coming worse for wear with the mountainous bruiser,

Clothes that last as long as a box of chocolates
At a Weight Watchers’ failures’ anonymous meeting
Where the pounds have piled on and the poor duration of
the chocolates in the box is momentary, fleeting.

And I hear that Birmingham they have built a Primark paradise
With cafes and Disney, spread over 5 floors
I see spending sprees, I see solicitors’ fees. I see financial wars on couples
I see women kicking husbands out the council house doors
A beauty salon with the logo – ‘Duck and Dry’,
Should really be renamed to ‘fuck it up and cry’
Buy yourself a painted face for under a measly fiver
Look like a slap faced whore, gang banged by Crayola
Eyebrows painted like two copulating slugs
Foundation thick and moist like sticky marzipan
Lashes like you’re trapped in a spider’s web
Is it worth it just to look like a drag queen man.
Glam in a can, beauty down the pan.

So goodbye to Versace
Ditch Dolce and Gabanna
Shove it, Chanel, in a rough and ready manner
Get down to Primark
Be the next Primani Queen
Bollocks to Vivienne Westwood
Her prices are obscene!
Primark! Primark! Retailer of our hearts
Its only cash
But its cash we splash
With our hard earned pounds we part.
Let’s hear it for
PRIMARK!

© Sarah Drury 2019