Entrepreneur (Fun Poem 147) Poem by David Harris

Fifty years ago a friend and I
organized a dance with a live band.
We wrote out the tickets ourselves
and sold them for half-a-crown;
we never made a profit
and never bother to try again.
However, I have a lasting memory
that will live with me until the day I die.

I wrote my tickets out on card
with the help of one of the band.
We spent hours writing them out by hand.
However Mike my partner in this adventure
stuck a roll of hard toilet paper
into his typewriter and away he went.
How many he sold I’m not sure,
but they were unique to say the least.

The night of the dance arrived
and the tickets were handed in.
It was at this point I noticed
the spelling error on Mike’s toilet roll tickets.
The dance was held in a hall on Sixth Avenue.
However on Mike’s tickets it wasn’t Sixth Avenue,
he inadvertently stuck an “E” instead of an “I” in Sixth,
so it read Sexth Avenue.

He even had the cheek
to sell them for half-a-crown.
If anyone can remember the blue jokes
about half-a-crowns will find it amusing.
Hard toilet paper, Sexth Avenue and half-a-crown
must sound like and orgy
and not an unorganized dance,
a lasting memory of my misguided youth.

Such is my life I guess
full of smiles and potholes,
I‘ve fall down quite a few
of them in my life.
It is only afterwards
they make you smile,
but at the moment of impact it makes you wish the ground would open up and swallow you.


3 August 2013

Author’s Note:
For those who don't know what half-a-crown is, the days before decimalization in England there were Pounds, Shilling and Pence. Half-a-crown was two shilling and six pence.