John Wilkins

John Wilkins

John Wilkins is an elderly man,
he lives in a big house at the corner of our street,
a run down place which isn’t very neat.

His wife poor soul is dead.
A daughter and a son he’s got,
he doesn’t see them all that much,
one lives abroad the other out of town,
detached house, mock Tudor style
with oh such nice surrounds.

John Wilkins is a bad tempered man.
He comes in for his pension reg’lar every other week
and buys a thing or two in the shop.
He never chats or stops,
he just grumps and goes away,
Never ever stays, to pass the time of day.

Dad is such a very independent man.
He just won’t come down to see us
and he doesn’t understand.
It’s not that we don’t care,
I suppose we could invite him but he’d just say no,
what ever can we do, with such little time to spare.

Old man Wilkins is not a bad bloke.
A window was broke when we played football in the street,
he gave me and Scott a fiver, said he’d never laughed so much.
Mrs Porter was so mad, He told her a big lie,
said it was Billy Mills wot done it
so for that rotten sod, that’s one in the eye.

Number 1 has such potential though it’s in an awful state.
It’d make a million pounds to sell or renovate,
for a man like me, a man in real estate.
Turned into posh apartments we would profit even more,
if we could get that old fool out.
We must see what we can do.

John Wilkins will get no older now.
He wasn’t very well and only just got home,
and sat down in his chair, felt a little better then.
But that was a week ago,
the pension’s uncollected and the blinds are drawn right down.
The flies will soon be buzzing, all be buzzing round.



I originally wrote this as a poem years ago then converted into a folk song and it was recorded. I have converted it back from my memory but cannot get the music out of my head, so will be interested in comment by those who read it without the music. It has a special place in my memory as producing the smallest royalty cheque that was ever written!