Bloaters And Mayonnaise

A Brechtian sea-shanty, once sung in music halls:

There’s a blighter eating bloaters. He won’t have no mayonnaise. He hates Continental sauces and Continental ways. He never wears a beret, nor strings onions round his neck. He’s a bloater-eating blighter dancing a hornpipe on the deck. For he’s a sailing blighter on the good ship Marmaduke. He eats so many bloaters that soon he starts to puke. He vomits on the orlop deck and again upon the poop. The other sailors pick him up and chuck him in the soup. By soup of course I mean the sea, the churning broiling sea. And the blighter eating bloaters, well in truth that man was me. I puked some more and then I swam until I reached the shore. It was a Continental shore o lumme guv, o lor’. Now I must eat mayonnaise and Continental sauces. But now at last I’m mindful of globalising forces. So give me sauce and condiments to accompany my bloaters, and I will explain all about socioeconomic motors, the engines of commerce and exchange and of all sorts of trades. Give me my breakfast bloaters and don’t stint on mayonnaise!

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