I

The noble isle of England,
Once famed from village to city,
A land ruled by the good and wise,
Free (more or less) from sleaze and lies,
A model state in many eyes,
But when begins my ditty,
Almost two hundred days ago,
To see the citizens suffering so
From Covid was a pity.

II

It began in Jan in distant Wuhan
And spread from there to Singapore.
Still further afield it started to fan
And soon was knocking on England’s door,
Borne aloft on gentle breezes,
Carried on seemingly harmless sneezes,
Nestled in innocent coughs and wheezes,
Through your lungs it went weaving
Leaving you with trouble breathing
Sparing neither woman nor man.

III

The government at first did little,
Besides its usual bluff and bluster.
“You just need to contain your spittle
And some wartime spirit muster.
Don’t fuss about the death rate mounting,
The exponential growth we’re counting.
No cause to think we’re not surmounting
This pesky nuisance of a virus.
Chin up, people! We’ll survive this.
If some old folk die that’s only natural,
At their age, frankly, its unavoidable,
Some might even say desirable.
So please pipe down and cease your hollering.
Rest assured – the science we’re following.”

IV

At last the people in a body
To social media came flocking.
“Tis clear,” cried they, “our PM’s a noddy,
And as for his senior ministers – shocking!
To think the country chose to elect this
Dolt who’s failing to protect us,
And doing nothing to detect who’s
Got, or not, this dread disease
While lounging in Chequers at his ease.
Rouse yourself, man! Give your brains a racking
To find the remedy we’re lacking,
Or, sure as fate, we’ll call for your sacking!”
At this, the PM and his Tory pack
Saw it was time for a change of tack.

V

With his ministers Johnson sat,
Short and blonde and wondrous fat,
And tanned still from his recent stay
On Mustique with his fiancée
Ms Symmonds, a most ambitious wench
(Lord knows why else she’d find him hench.)
An hour they sat in sombre council.
At length the PM broke the silence:
“For one pound I’d this whole damn town sell
If I could be a decade hence!”
It would appear that herd immunity
Is a tad unpopular in the community,
But how to save face and our impunity
Confronted with this Covid crap?”
Just as he said this, what should hap
But on the chamber door a rap?
“Jeepers!” yelped he.  ‘What was that?”
“I thought it must be Larry the Cat
Scratching on the No 10 mat.
If he’s got the answer, I’ll eat my hat!”

VI

“Come in,” cried the PM, looking bigger,
And in did come the strangest figure -
He looked like he’d come straight from bed!
A beanie hat pulled round his head,
His shirt hung loose about his chest,
Unbuttoned, and below was dressed
In trackies that had seen their best,
And on his feet – was this some jest? –
A pair of trainers!  Not, in short, abreast
Of fashion - or intending to instil unrest?
His lips, a gash; his dark eyes cavernous;
His body so thin it looked cadaverous;
His expression suggested longings ravenous.
“It’s Dom!” yelled Boris, sounding better.
“We’ll do what he says to the letter.”


VII

The SpAd sloped up to the council table.
“Listen up,” he said, “I’m able
To turn this situation round
If you do exactly what I say
And follow my orders all the way,
This vulgar clamour I will confound.
To dodge the bullet for this confusion,
You must enforce nation-wide seclusion.
Lockdown will curtail the blow-back
And prove you’re more than a blithering ball-sack.”
Across his face a sly grin spread
Of the kind you’d find on one not long dead.
“I’m famous, you know, for being a maverick
With envied powers to con and trick.
It was I who led Vote Leave to victory
By divining what makes people tick.
My election strategy next made history
By turning the Red Wall to our cause.
We now have the means to make a mockery
Of civil servants and EU Laws.
I know how, if you’ll let me do it.”
“Spiffing!” cried Johnson.  “Let’s get to it!”

VIII

The news was announced on terrestrial TV:
“We’re in the grip of a global pandemic
And, regrettably, as a matter of urgency,
If we want to prevent it becoming endemic,
We have to declare a state of emergency.
It won’t be easy,” said the PM,
“But tempus fugit et carpe diem!
Lockdown commences any day now -
Details to follow on what and how.”
The Premier’s words sparked national panic.
From Waitrose to Aldis the scenes were manic,
Young and old, alike, were frantic,
Buying up loo roll, pasta and beans,
Desperate to stockpile sufficient means
To last a month of siege, or longer!
Covid, twas certain, was moving faster
Than they’d been told and fear now was stronger,
But would lockdown suffice to avert a disaster?
While most folk were grateful, others were surlier:
“Why did the government not do this much earlier?
If things are really as bad as they’re saying,
What’s their excuse for the weeks of delaying?
Why think lockdown will be effective
When we’re led by people so defective
They say one thing and then deny
It, or claim on experts they rely
Yet seldom do as they’re advising,
And are perpetually revising
The rules to suit their own devising?
And how are we meant to pay the bills
When this with one blow our livelihood kills?
Restrictions like these are really not funny
Unless, like them, you’re loaded with money
Or in receipt of a trust-fund from granny!”
But as seeds on stony ground may fall,
These fears were ignored by nearly all.
Instead, the majority meekly assented
To do as the government recommended.

IX

Thus began the strangest time - To step outside was all but a crime, City centres, once sites of plenty,
Were shut down, deserted, eerily empty.
Concert halls, cinemas, theatres fell dark;
Football, rugby, racing – all stopped.
Even Henley and Wimbledon had to be dropped.
Nothing and no-one escaped lockdown’s mark.
Notwithstanding the gorgeous weather
(Merseyside felt more like Umbria)
From Wiltshire to Yorkshire to deepest Northumbria,
A torpor descended.  The nation seemed numb with a
Dread lest the virus might else last forever.

X

Bereft of an office or workplace to go to
Parents (viz mothers) struggled to see to
Home-schooling and cooking and keeping things clean
While their offspring sat idle or stared at a screen;
Trying to do your lessons by Zoom
Was tough when the classroom was now in your bedroom.
The resourced and resourceful took up macramé,
Crochet, patchwork and origami.
Those over 40 went mad for pub quizzes,
Those under 20 turned TikTok whizzes,
The more intellectual were keen to seize
The chance to master Taiwanese
And replaced the hours spent earning salaries
With online tours of museums and galleries.
But the stress of not knowing when this would end
Was soon driving many a bit round the bend.
Cooped up with only the closely related,
The pleasure of loved ones was rapidly sated.
Lost holiday bookings were sadly lamented
And people with gardens were deeply resented
By people in flats, who were going demented.
Not so easy to be cheery and gay
When life’s a perpetual groundhog day.

XI

If lockdown was bad for human psychology,
It was working wonders for natural ecology:
Relieved of cars, the air was glittering,
Treetops with birdsong were brimming and bristling,
Rivers ran limpid, streams were tinkling,
And by night you could see a million stars twinkling.

XII

Nature’s gain was small compensation
For the horror befalling NHS workers
(Whom You Know Who called ‘slackers’ and ‘shirkers’).
On hospital wards the grim situation
Exposed how many the virus was killing.
With ICU beds now rapidly filling,
The stats and the stories grew ever more chilling.
Hollow assurance from Minister Hancock,
A man whose appearance resembled a wind-sock
With one blank eye fixed on posterity,
Failed to whitewash the dire reality.
“Essential workers need PPE,
Not speeches from Messers Vallance and Whitty.
Why do our medics lack basic equipment?
And where is the government’s promised mask shipment?”

XIII

In daily news briefings, top ministers vied
To persuade the public they had not lied,
But more often succeeded in sounding like crooks
With their combo of fake facts and shifty looks
And proof on top they were cooking the books,
Doling out contracts to all their old mates
At highly preferential rates.
As the outcry grew louder
They doubled down harder,
Hiring Dyson to make ventilators.
(“That will enrage the Brexit haters!”)
Yet a still greater scandal was even now looming
In care homes, where Covid was budding and blooming
And frail inhabitants tenderly grooming
For death’s cold embrace, while anguished and fuming,
Their relations cried out, ‘Are these muttons for chop?
Though old in years they aren’t ready to drop.
This immoral culling has got to stop!
These are our uncles, our fathers, our brothers
Our sisters and aunts, our dearly loved mothers!
How can you sit by while they die in agony
Scared and alone? It’s an outright travesty
Of a basic value that ought to define us:
Care for the weakest, both seniors and minors.”
For almost ten days there’d been no sign of Bojo
And word leaked out he’d fallen ill.
The virus had got him, making mince of his mojo.
In fact, it transpired, he’d been taken to hospital
And was there being treated
By nurses he’d cheated
Of settled status and income raises -
Not that this stopped him from singing their praises.
By early May, tens of thousands were dead
(Inflated stats, the government said.)
The deceased interred with indecent speed
At funerals meagre and wretched indeed
With only five mourners whatever their creed.
No concessions for vigil or shiva or wake,
Those time-honoured rituals that soften heartbreak.
More bitter their tears since their dear ones had died
Without one relative at their side
To stroke their hand or caress their cheek,
Or a final ‘I love you’ able to speak,
The distress made acuter by the discovery
Their loved ones caught Covid from those still in recovery
Yet sent back to care homes on official instruction
Knowing full well it would speed their destruction.

XIV

Before there was time the Press to debrief
A furore broke out over Chancer-in-Chief
Who’d been spotted six hundred miles from home.
An indignant public proceeded to foam,
“Why is it ok for him to roam?
Why’s he allowed to stroll round Barnard Castle?”
And united for once, they pronounced him an arsehole.
Said the angel in white from the No 10 garden,
Offering nothing approaching a pardon:
“I was simply testing my eyesight,
As was permitted and my perfect right.”
The PM, like Tammy, by his man loyally stood.
“He was using his instinct as a good parent should.”
But the top SpAd by no means was out of the wood.
“We love our children as much as he
And if he can go wandering, why can’t we?’
They retorted, and headed en masse for the sea.
The sight of Britain’s beaches heaving
With day-trippers got the scientists seething:
“How are we meant to convey the message
This conduct will a second wave presage
With the government yakking about common sense,
Ignoring the fact that it’s criminally dense?”
Experts weren’t the only ones grumbling:
The government’s ratings were now tumbling
And throughout the land was heard a mumbling
And the mumbling grew to an angry rumbling.
“We’re out here clapping the NHS
But there’s still no procedure in place for tests
Or functioning app for track and trace,
Without which what hope of winning this race?
You claim you’re putting your arms around us
But so far all you’ve done is ground us.
This wiffle and waffle about the R rate
Is just doublespeak for ‘too little, too late’!”
The PM paled and looked distraught.
“Being leader’s not such fun as I thought.
My popularity’s slowed to a trickle,
Buck up, chaps! Get me out of this pickle!”
His ministers sat there as if turned to stone,
Struck dumb by the call for ideas of their own,
But then from the corner, a soft monotone:
“Since the people are growing restive,
Let’s give them something to make them feel festive.’

XV

The speaker continued, “Sod these predictions,
The time is ripe to ease restrictions
And let people follow their own convictions.
On learning they’re allowed out for a piss-up,
They’ll quickly forget about my little slip-up.
Tell them that as of the fifteenth of June
Normal life will resume – not a moment too soon
For restaurateurs, who’ll sing to our song-sheet
And when gloomsters and doomsters start to bleat
This policy will infections double,
Spin some line about forming a bubble
And say we’re rebuilding from Covid’s rubble.
Sunak can spend his way out of this trouble.
Woo them with vouchers for cheap dinners -
‘Eat out to help out! Come saints, come sinners!’
That’ll make everyone feel like winners.
Urge them all to book vacations,
And who’s to object if they bring some relations.
Don’t worry your noddies about relaxation,
You can offset costs later by hiking taxation.”
Those inclined to magical thinking
Raced to the boozer to resume social drinking
And thanks to half-hearted official insistence
Seemed to forget all about social distance.
Leicester, Blackburn, Kirklees and Bolton
Soon were seeing new spikes in the death toll.
“Local surges! What larks!’ gibbered Johnson
“Anyone up for a game of whack-a-mole?”
(An old euphemism, someone unveils,
For ‘a silly solution that usually fails’.)
As the newly liberated duly celebrated,
The more cautious and wary agitated.
“We cannot put it any plainer:
This approach to Covid’s a world-beating failure!
Is the government mad or simply moronic?
One wonders with recklessness this Byronic.
For pity’s sake! Is it too much to ask
To make it mandatory to wear a mask?
The stats all show our excess mortality’s
Considerably higher than Spain’s or Italy’s,
So why slap quarantine on us,
When they’re in need of protection from us?
And last but not least on the subject of clarity,
What’s happening with our national security
Now Sedwill’s been sacked and at what a cost
With none now to save us but David Frost?’”
But any hope of good governance had long since been lost.

XVI

Alas, alas for England!
There came into many a citizen’s head
A line that in church was once heard said
"The poor shall inherit the earth" it read,
A cherished dream now at an end.
Ten long years of Tory cuts
Had gouged great holes in the country’s guts
And Covid, hard on austerity’s tail,
Had left a still more deadly trail.
The incurable crisis in public health,
The catastrophe for the country’s wealth,
These were just the iceberg’s tip,
Far scarier what lay under it -
A nation sabotaged by stealth.
At last as if from a long sleep woke,
The people saw they were pigs in a poke,
The hapless butts of a dismal joke,
For those entrusted with their destiny
Were naught but gamblers in duplicity.
Scared and forlorn, one voice expressed
The ugly truth so long suppressed:
“We’ve danced to the tune of a little-known piper
Whose vision, akin to the bite of a viper,
Has plunged the land into deep depression,
Ensured a future scarred by recession,
Smashed our lives like a wrecking ball
And from our children stolen all.
What’s to become now of our poor darlings
With their years of schooling crumbs for starlings,
And prospects worthless as two farthings?
Too late we see that dreams for our progeny
Were cheap coin for vilest larceny.
The slogans fatuous, the guidelines vacuous,
The failure to do the blindingly obvious,
The endless u-turns, confusion and muddle
Were useful foils for plans to dismantle
The media, judiciary and, most of all, Whitehall.
We thought we’d elected parliamentarians,
Not a bunch of lethal libertarians.
Undercover of Covid’s spread,
They all along were forging ahead
With the no deal exit from Europe they said
Would not happen.  (How else to explain
Nine hundred grand on a Union Jack plane?)
We now have no choice but to lump
Whatever pacts they whip up with Trump,
And can add to the thrills of a Russian vaccine
The delights of dining on chicken-in-chlorine.
They’ve stacked the Lords and seized our data
And God alone knows what’s in store for us later,
But beyond any doubt their self-serving endgame
Has brought upon this land great shame
And will our young ones’ futures maim,
Whilst they on Covid everything blame.”

XVII

So Brits, beware of grand disrupters
Whose prime intention’s to corrupt us;
Whatever befalls the economy,
Their true target is democracy.

Copyright Rebecca Abrams, 2020