Gather round and have a sample

Don’t be shy friends have a few

Of this drink that I’ve invented

That I simply call Home Brew,

It’s a wine that I’ve concocted

From a grape that’s hardly known

I found lurking at the bottom

Of my garden overgrown,

So I mixed it up with Sunflower seeds

An onion and a leak

Diluted it with water

And a tiny drop of bleach,

Then I thickened it with cornflower

And I brought it to the boil

Sieved it through an old sock

And topped it up with castor oil,

Then I called my cousin Thomas

And he came round on his bike

He’s a scruffy looking urchin

And a dirty little tyke,

But he knows about fermenting

Well at least that’s what he said

When he helped me build a little still

Inside my garden shed,

With a little copper kettle

And a length of garden hose

That we bolted to the hotplate

Of a broken camping stove,

Then we added our concoction

And distilled it overnight

And by the morning it was flowing

Like a river from the pipe,

Which we tried saving in a saucepan

But that turned out hard to do

Because each time some hit the bottom

The liquid seemed to burn right through,

Giving off a nauseous vapour

Well a gas I aught to say

But it cured the cockroach problem

We’d been having anyway,

So we stored it in a petrol can

That once held kerosene

Of course washed it out with turpentine

To make sure it was clean,

Then we gave some to our neighbour

But last week he passed away

The doctor said food poisoning

But no one can really say,

What made him turn that colour

And his eyebrows to ignite

Illuminating miles around

With a strange fluorescent light,

Which they thought was radiation

And sealed off the whole estate

While the British and Americans

Tried to investigate,

There was a fellow from the C.I.A

Or was it the F.B.I?

Another from the ministry

And two from M.I.5,

That seemed to think that somehow

I might be involved

Because they tracked it to my garden shed

And that little camping stove,

So we took the still to pieces

Then we mowed the grass down flat

Found a car I thought was stolen

A bit of a bonus that,

Because it meant that I could use it

When I made my great escape

But would you believe beneath that car

I found another of those grapes?

(“Well, it seemed a shame to waste it”)

By S. E. Ralph

 
31-5-2007