Olympian rents

Hotel prices soar by 300% for Games

The Sunday Times, 15 January 2012

Dust off Vaughn Williams,

Handel, Elgar and Holst;

what need for a German

Ode to Joy, we grow our own;

it’s the Dunkirk spirit,

don’t you know?

Over meadowed hilltop

sways the circus caravan;

gypsies spill from tenements

like pig tripe from a bucket

lured to a pied piping melody:

easy money! easy money!

Mrs Dodd has let her

beechwood garden chalet

to the Samoan relay squad;

the Council says it’s a shed,

but with the tools removed

who are they to say?

Liam and Amy set

a wedding date

several years ago.

They’d have hoped by now

to save and squander the price

of a wedding breakfast,

but there is no room

at any inn. They’ll keep their cash

and marry in Vegas:

a Parisian paid in advance

a white wedding sum for a week

in their Council flat.

Doctor Downs put in

for thirty thousand pounds

of prime Olympiad.

How galling must it be

for his family to receive

but one tenth their need?

The prayers of Reverend Meek

must have raised a smile

up there. Tickets drip-dripped

through the leaky church roof

for the opening, the closing

and all in between.

He could rightly sit

beside the Parisian, watch

Samoa steel to victory

in the crucible of truth.

Or sell the tickets on e-bay

for black market lead.

(c) 2012 Slush Poet