Everyman’s Hut

Camp News, Volume 2, Issue 77, 13 June 1941, Page 8

Everyman’s Hut

It was early in September, nigh to Framlingham-on-Sea, It was Fair day come to-morrow, and the time was after tea; I met a painted caravan adown a dusty lane, A Pharaoh with his waggon, coming jolt and creak and strain. A cheery cove and sunburnt, wise o’ eye and wrinkled up, And beside him on the splashboard rode a brindled terrier pup; And a lurcher, wise as Solomon, and lean as fiddlestrings,

Was jogging in the dust along with roundabouts and swings.

“Good-day,” says he, “Good-day,” says I, “and how d’yer finds things go,

And what’s the chance o’ millions when yer runs ar travelling show?

“I find,” says he, “things werry much as how I’ve always found

For mostly they goes up an’ down, or else goes round an’ round.”

Says he, “The game’s the werry spit of what it always were —

Its bread an’ bacon mostly if the ’ound don’t catch a ’are.

But looking at it broad, and while it ain’t no merchant king’s

What’s lost upon the roundabouts we makes up on the swings.”

“Good-day” says he “Good-day” says

I “You’ve put it past a doubt

An’ keep that lurcher on the road—

the game-keepers is out.” ' He thumped upon the splashboard an’ he rumbled on again To meet a gold dust sunset in the .■ owl-light down the lane. An’ the moon she f climbed the hazels an’ a night jar seemed to spin That Pharaoh’s wisdom o’er again his sooth of lose or win— For up an’ down an’ round says ’e goes all appointed things An’ losses on the roundabouts means ‘profits on the swings.