The boy stood on the burning decking
Till all but he had fled
As flames consumed the rustic fence
And engulfed the potting shed
Alas, he thought, I am undone
Alone without a friend
A night at next door’s barbecue
Has brought me to this end
He wished he’d listened to his mum
She’d told him not to go
She’d said, No good will come of it
You’ll reap just what you sow
He’d paid no heed to these wise words
He never did think twice
The girl of his dreams would be there
So he ignored the kind advice
Her name it was Shaz Smurthwaite
A nubile bottle-blonde
He’d seen her sunbathing topless
Beside the garden pond
He’d even bought a telescope
To admire her tanned physique
And when he spied her new tattoo
His knees had gone all weak
He bought some high-strength lager
From the local corner shop
Some sausages and beefburgers
An out-of-date pork chop
With his brand new two-tone hairdo
And a piercing through his lip
He felt like a streetwise sophisticate
Surburban, chic and hip
He saw her in the garden
His suntanned, bleached–blonde prize
He grabbed her between the gazebos
And stared into her eyes
Hello, he said, I live next door
I thought this might be fun
I’ve got a Cumberland sausage
Just right for your sesame bun
But Shaz just stared right through him
As though he were a louse
Chatting instead to a bloke called Ned
Inside the summer house
So he sat and drank his lager
Beneath a rose-laced trellis
And as the ale flowed through his veins
His head was filled with malice
The music pounded louder
The garden came alive
And when they heard Chuck Berry
Some folks began to jive
The drunk boy spilled his lager
Till his clothes were wringing wet
Different sounds could soon be heard
As the sun began to set
Ned and Shaz then re-emerged
To the sound of Miles Davis’s trumpet
Ha, smirked the lager-loosened lad,
The rake is with his strumpet
They began to dance the jitterbug
Inappropriately and out of order
Inevitably crashing headlong
Into the herbaceous border
The lager lad leapt to his feet
His aled-up blood was hot
Some people dance quite well, said he
But you, of course, can…not
Aggravation then was in the air
Fisticuffs did soon ensue
An open-jawed big woman roared
Please mind the barbecue
They heeded not her warning
Crashing both left and right
Half-cooked kebabs went flying
And flames lit up the night
The boy stood on the burning decking
His shell suit all aglow
But though he staggered back and forth
There was no place to go
The moral of this story is
When you go to a barbecue
You should try to be quite circumspect
In all the things you do
Beware of tanked-up jealous lads
And blonde bombshells called Shaz
And if there must be music
Avoid all types of jazz