Definitely Limericks by Rory Ewins

I wrote these for the Omnificent English Dictionary in Limerick Form, a magnificent, ambitious, and slightly insane attempt to write a limerick for every word in the English language, one letter group at a time. You can see my additions and revisions there, but I like to keep them here as well; the menu below leads to permanent pages for each letter group. You can also see some miscellaneous and co-written pieces, an area especially aimed at OEDILFers, a page for mature readers, and pages of limericks about fine artists, Australian rock bands, Africa, the Americas and the Pacific. One of these limericks, and a video of me reading it, featured in an AP article about the OEDILF at the end of 2017, and briefly on the Washington Post and New York Times sites. Two featured in The RSPB Anthology of Wildlife Poetry, edited by Celia Warren (A&C Black, 2011).

An honours list’s made by the Queen
(Or the King now—you know what I mean)
To bestow on the good
An award—or it should
Be. Some knighthoods are, frankly, obscene.

Every new year the reigning monarch of the U.K. issues an honours list of recipients of CBEs, OBEs, knighthoods and so forth. Members of the public are able to nominate people for awards, and decisions are made by a committee of civil servants and people independent of government before going to the prime minister for approval and then on to the palace.

So far, so uncontroversial. Another kind of honours list, however, isn’t. When a prime minister resigns, he or she is able to draw up a “resignation” honours list of personal recommendations for awards. In recent years, prime ministers who have been removed by their (cough, Conservative) party have used their resignation lists to reward scores of political allies, bringing the whole system into disrepute.

If you’re looking for something to watch, go
And look up a show by Steve Bochco.
You’ll adore Hill Street Blues!
I’m afraid that the news
Is that Cop Rock goes down quite a notch, tho’.

American TV writer and producer Steven Ronald Bochco (1943–2018) was renowned for the beloved Emmy-winning series Hill Street Blues, L.A. Law, NYPD Blue and Doogie Howser, M.D.—and notorious for Cop Rock, which has appeared on many lists of the worst television series of all time.

It’s a shame that it’s been a fair while
Since a wave with an affable “Heil!”
Left a neutral impression.
This liberal obsession
With words is so woke. Such a trial!

Ja, a Nuremberg trial.

When the kids in the playground regale ya
With tales of Cook’s chook-catching failure
And of losing his pants
In the middle of France,
There’s a chance that their chant’s in Australia.

Captain Cook Chased a Chook is an Australian children’s rhyme with many variations. One has Cook chasing the chicken in question “round and round the history book”, but most set the scene in Australia:

Captain Cook
Chased a chook
All around Australia.
Lost his pants
In the middle of France,
And found them in [rhyme failure].

(The last word is often Tasmania.) Other variants tell of the renowned English explorer losing his hat in Ballarat, of “never coming back to find them” (either hat or pants), and the frankly terrifying tale of how he “rode a chook down the Murray River, hit a rock, split his cock and left his balls to shiver”. Historians have failed to corroborate any of these accounts.

“Take a Captain’s at this!” Holds a book
Right in front o’ me face, silly chook.
“What’s all this? How to Chase
Fowl All Over the Place?”
“Yeah, y’know—like that English bloke. Cook.”

Having been settled involuntarily by half of the London underworld, Australia incorporated a lot of Cockney rhyming slang into its vernacular, such as butcher’s (hook) for “look”. This local equivalent is short for Captain Cook, after the Englishman who explored Australia’s east coast in pursuit of an elusive chicken.

Foreign visitors suffer the shakes
At the thought of our spiders and snakes,
Our sharks and our crocs,
But the biggest of shocks
Is when drop bears attack: “Fer Chrissakes!”

Thylarctos plummetus, one of the most elusive but terrifying examples of Australian fauna, is the country’s heaviest arborial marsupial. Some days he just can’t be buggered sitting up a gum tree, and launches himself at passing prey—particularly non-native animals and tourists.

We were down at the battle an’ cruiser,
Me an’ Dad, gettin’ Britneys in. “Choose a
Poison: Gary, or Nelson?”
“Pint of Paul, ta. As well, son,
Get one or two Veras.” The boozer.

A few of the tiddlies (tiddly winks, drinks) you’ll find down at an East End battle cruiser (boozer, pub; a boozer is also someone who drinks a lot) have their own Cockney rhyming slang: Britney (Spears) for beers, Gary (Glitter) for bitter, Nelson (Mandela) and Paul Weller for Stella (Stella Artois, the Belgian beer), and Vera Lynn for gin.

Me bruvver is pissed, the big lunk:
Off ’is face, Chevy Chase—now ’e’s sunk.
Yeah, ’e’s tiddly—I think
’ad too much tiddly (wink).
Mate, ’e’s totally elephants. Drunk.

The Cockney rhyming slang for drink, tiddly wink, got shortened over time and then came to mean being drunk, like the other terms here. Elephants, sometimes written with an apostrophe, is short for elephant’s trunk.

There’s someone still trapped in that wreck—
Has he broken his neck? Better check.
His shirt’s bloody and ripped...
“You okay? Your car flipped.”
“I’m all right,” the bloke says. “Flippin’ ’eck.”

Flipping heck, like blooming heck, is a euphemism for something a bit stronger. Flipping and even flip can also appear on their own.

Reputations are easy to wreck—
One’s bad language it’s better to check.
So, although bloody ’ell
To an Aussie sounds swell,
Polite Pommies prefer bloomin’ ’eck.

If they really want to ramp things up, they might say flippin’ ’eck.

“What’s all this, then? It really ain’t proper,
Half-inchin’ a bundle of copper
From a scrap yard, my son!”
Flippin’ ’eck—better run:
I’ve been clocked by a bottle an’ stopper.

Half-inch (for pinch, steal) is Cockney rhyming slang, as is bottle and stopper.

Flash Harry’s mood crashed when his Danny
Got smashed as he drove to see Granny.
“I’ll just grab an Andy.
Oh, ’ere’s one—that’s ’andy.”
The man’s Donald Duck is uncanny.

Hang on, we’ve got a Harry, a Danny, an Andy and a Donald—what’s going on? Well, a Danny, short for Danny Marr (who he? who knows), is a car, especially a flash one, while an Andy McNab is a cab (which is also a Danny, see). Donald Duck is luck, but if you don’t give a Donald Duck it’s... something else. And if your name is Flash Harry, you could well live in the East End of London, like this Cockney geezer.

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