Laughing along with a Limerick

As often as not, in fact far too often, you sit yourself before your computer screen, in complete command, hoping to finish that play you’ve been writing, or complete the book you are working on. 

You write a line, and then nothing. You stare at the screen, but nothing happens.   You procrastinate.  Perhaps write another sentence, and then nothing.  Procrastination is the evil that haunts so many of us.

They say you should only write what you know about.   Perhaps I should write a book on Procrastination!     Somehow, I don’t think I’d finish it.

During periods of procrastination, you might well search the net for inspiration.  There are a few exceptional talents out there that seek to help you get over it.

One such is Ester Chilton, a talented children’s author who gives a substantial proportion of her time trying to encourage other writers or would-be writers. 

She offers an editing service and runs courses on different genres of writing skills

And each week, she runs several writing challenges, including her “Laugh along with a Limerick” challenge.   She suggests a prompt and asks her readers, including me, to write a limerick using her prompt.

The poor woman has no concept of procrastination. If it was me, I’d have given it all up years ago.   Sure, it can be rewarding, but the work involved must in the end, become something of a chore, what with having to read a hundred or so limericks of varying quality and continuing to respond positively to each and every submission.

God bless her!

What follows is some of my offerings to her limerick challenge.   Most of it is doggerel, but it’s quite good fun and keeps your mind ticking over!

They are not, my offerings, in any particular order, be it date or otherwise, but if I’m not writing my play then at least I’m writing something even if it’s doggerel

I somewhat doubt that I will be nominated for the Nobel limerick prize, although I may be in the running for the Nobel procrastination prize.  

My recurring fear is that Ester might propose, as a prompt, the word procrastination.   If she does that, then I’m finished.  I’ll never complete it.

Prompt:  sneez

The Seven crackhead dwarves

Dopey sold dope that he got

 From the Doc

It’s what made Happy happy,

and let Sleepy sleep

It turned Bashful quite brazen

And Grumpy nice to meet

 Sneezy stopped his sneezing

And as for snow white

The seven crackhead dwarves

Just couldn’t give a Shiite.

Prompt:   Bread.

Bread and Roses sang the mill girls

As they left the factory gates

We march for Bread and Roses

And an increased hourly rate

Bread for our hunger

Roses for our souls

Wages for our labour

Flowers for our toil.

Prompt:  spell

For a Dyslexic in Poland

It is the right place to be

For they abuse the alphabet

all the way from a to zee

Unpronounceable place names

Impossible to spell

Gdansk to Szczecin

The spellings are piekto

And piekto means hell

Prompt:   rich

A kilted Scotsman called Jock

Had a  wee fish and chip shop

His batter was crispy and rich

Be it on Haddock or cod

Saveloys or hake

Mars bars and Snickers

Pizza or kippers

Even on Cadbury’s flakes

Prompt:  Bread

From Hadrian’s Wall to Yorkshire

It’s bacon butties yer’ll get

After that

It’s cobs and baps

All the way to the Watford Gap

And then

It’s bacon rolls

Bagels and Baguettes

But what we have in common

Is the love of bacon and bread.

Prompt:  Rich

For Wales, Rich?

For Wales?

Cunning and devious

you’ll make

a skillful minister of State

How well you betray

But from my cell here I say

For Wales, Rich

Really?

For Wales?

Prompt:  funny

Woger, the colonel of the wegiment

Had an embarrassing speech impediment

On the King’s parade

He was required to say

The woyal wegiment of wifles, wight turn!

From the King we learn

From subsequent testimony

He thought it odd and widiculosly  funny.

Prompt:  Shower

A titled lady from the shires

was overcome

with erotic desires

She wished to dance in the pouring rain

To shower naked with her chosen flame

He of course, was up for it

and his gamekeeper’s suit he quickly stripped

pale and naked without a suit

But still wearing his Wellington boots

Prompt:  Fell

There was a chap called William

Whose second name was Tell

He fell for a comely maiden

Selling apples near the well

He put an apple on her head

And shot his bolt

and instead

of hitting the apple on the maiden’s head

He shot the maiden and she fell down dead.

Prompt:   Just

It just is not just

That my sister has such an enormous bust

While mine are flat

No valleys, peaks, or undulations

And I must stuff my bra with augmentations

My lack of bust is just not just

Prompt:  Weigh

Weigh the anchor

Trim the sails

We’re bound for the high seas

hunting for whales

There’ll be barrels of whale oil

and blubber to boil

There’ll be liver for breakfast

And whale steaks for tea

set sail for the ocean

to harvest the sea

Prompt:   Bread

The Noble Marie Antoinette,

before she lost her head,

was famous not for the things she did,

But for the things she said.

Oh, she exclaimed, for goodness’ sake,

If there’s no more bread to eat,

Then let the mob eat cake.

Prompt:  Built

There was a chap called Hadrian

who built himself a wall

80 miles from coast to coast

And over 10 feet tall

He built it for protection

to keep the Scottish clans at bay

It didn’t work in Roman times

And it doesn’t work today.

Prompt:  Crazy

There’s no crazy paving in the gardens of Broadmoor

Despite the inmates’ cravings

The paths are straight and sure.

The paths they lead to nowhere

And double back again

They’re designed to stop the inmates

from discovering they’re insane.

Prompt:  cells

She sells seashells on the seashore

It’s illegal said the beadle

To sell seashells on the shore

They’re dangerous and bacterial

And from my cells you’ll sell no more

No more seashells on the seashore.

Prompt:  Rock

An old retired seadog called Adrian

Who was by birth a Gibraltarian

retired and resided on the Rock

He was once a seafaring man

Who enjoyed a bar of marzipan

But daily missed most, in fact a lot

 His Royal Navy tot.

Prompt: follow

He hired a private detective

To track and follow his spouse

He caught her in flagrante

inside another man’s house

Oh! the hurt and the trauma

Oh! the trouble and strife

It was made much worse to discover

that the detective ran off with his wife.

Prompt: Dust

Being dyslectic means often that I dust cannot spell
But dust because of thet
does not mean I am a pratt
I can express myself quite well
As long as I don’t have to writ it down and spell.
Those teachers that mock me and call me thick
The bastards
They mek mi sic.

Prompt: Litter

A South African exile in London got a litter

It was to tell him his cat was getting better

Six delightful kittens had been born into her litter

And that’s why his South African mother wrote the litter

Prompt: Snacks

Hollywood has rejected my script

They have suggested I must be insane

who? They mocked

would watch a movie

entitled “Snacks on a Plane”

Prompt: Scale

The descending scale of the notes that he wrote,

 da da da dum

da da da dum

Would eventually become 

Via  the BBC

notes for Europe’s oppressed

to arise and resist

Their darkest days of tyranny.

Prompt: sliegh

The children will not see me

But they’ll know that I passed by

 For I drank that glass of sherry, gave their carrots to my reindeer, and scoffed that nice mince pie

They might hear my sleigh bells ringing and think it’s all a dream

But when they wake and see the toys

I leave for all the girls and boys

They’ll know that I have been

I drank a little sherry, in fact, quite a few

And at the next house, another one too

There was brandy at the big house

And lots of mince pies

I got a little tipsy as I rode across the skies

I got stopped

by the snow cops

It only took a minute

I’m in jail now

for driving my sleigh

while well above the limit.

Prompt: Boring

Is it rue

Your heart’s not moved

By Poetry

That you cannot raise a smile

For the wit

Of a Limerick

That you yawn at the sweet words

Of a song you may have heard?

How absurd

It makes you very vey boring.

Prompt: Shopping

Ah! The joy of Christmas shopping

Fortnum and Mason

Selfridges

John Lewis

Harrods

And Liberty

with all the Christmas lights to see

If only I had the money

But for me

It’s Aldi and the pound shop

And home on the bus for tea.

Prompt: holly

Molly and Polly

requested of Holly

she get them a brolly

to shelter their trolley

laden with mince pies in their prime

the brooly was faulyt

and Molly and Polly and Holly

realised the folly

of relying on repetative rhymes

Prompt:  Door

Down beside the river Thames

There lived a door mouse whose name was James

A peripatetic nomadic mouse

He moved around from house to house

He carried with him his entire hoard

Of cheddar and  stilton

On a mouse cheese board