Grimbeau

Lopsided head, dead on the sloping strand.

Smooth, sea polished shingle sizzles around

The victim of a mindless, callous hunt.

Transparently, he was born a mutant runt

Misfortune dogged him from his strangled birth

Until annihilation put an end to Bert

When it came the blow was random

His assailants worked in tandem

And cornered him beneath the pier

And despatched him swift without a care

The denounement was not so smooth

As they kicked him in the ocean crude

Tefal sank but not to the bottom

His killers thought he was forgotten

But he was borne by longshore and by rip

And in Pevensey he rested in deep silt

That is until a passing fisher digging for lug

His preserved remains out he dug

‘What’s up’ said Tefal examining his head

‘You’ with saline brevity the fisher said

‘These twenty years I have been there

Dead and happy without fear or care.

Why do you give me such a stare?’

‘A hermit crab is crawling from your nose,

And there is distinct molusculation of your toes.

My name is Fred and if I might

Let’s go and show you to my wife

She is a fan of oddity

That is why she married me.’

So, from the strand they did repair

Tefal picking worms from ear and hair

And went to Fred’s house and went right in

And Fred’s wife gasped ‘Well, look at him!’

Fred explained the circumstances of his discovery

And Mrs Fred decided on Tefal’s recovery

Was plovers eggs and strawberry jam

And slices of her homemade ham

That she had cured with her own fair hand

With the leg Fred found last year

washed up upon the strand.