A Fete Worse Than Death?

or:
“How, one afternoon in the middle of June, the local
Hospital Friends let several thousand people have it,
and soaked them for everything they could get.”

-----------------

The day of the hospital shindig
Dawned overcast, cloudy & grey,
But we put up the stalls 'twixt the showers,
And when we’d done, started to pray.

We thought that our prayers had been answered
When we saw at a quarter past one,
Some blue, through the clouds, where they’d parted,
But the sun, though it came, was soon gone.

Not so the townsfolk who live near,
They came to our show like a horde.
They rushed to be first at the bargains:
Both they (and the rain) simply poured.

The citizens flocked in their thousands,
All spending their money like mad:
Some purchased the things we were selling,
Others gambled away all they had.

At one stall we sold you wet sponges:
To hit a man’s face you must try.
At times there was so much rain-water,
The sponges were mopping him dry.

The field was becoming quite soggy,
The sun having gone for a rest,
So the ice-cream van got in a quagmire,
And it slowly sank in the west.

Obedient dogs were paraded.
At showing their skill they’d no luck.
One small one, told “Sit”, by his master,
Was forced to swim round like a duck.

While inside a tent, in a wheel-chair,
A skeleton sat all alone.
The rain must have washed all his skin off,
For nothing was left but the bone.

It gave us a terrible feeling,
To look at the poor starving wretch,
But think of the state he’d have been in,
If someone had told the dogs "Fetch".

The steel band was quite an attraction,
Their playing was joyful and lusty.
We thought that they all were Red Indians,
But found, in the rain, they’d gone rusty.

At last all the folk started homewards,
To find their cars stuck in the mud.
The local school boys who were helping
Heaved ‘em out, best as they could,

Then watched them go, slipping & sliding,
Now and then spinning around,
Trying to get out of the car-park
Before they got sucked in & drowned.

(This all actually happened, though I may
have exaggerated a bit in places.)