How Now, Brown Slough (Poetry)

Why pick on inoffensive Slough
When there is Workington or Crewe
Or Middlesborough? — to name a few
Unlovely towns who can’t claim half
The charm of Crescent-boasting Bath
And Oxford’s spires dream, snobbish now.

For planners work in starts and fits —
The architecturally sublime
Stand venerated for all time
While plain utility’s designs —
Those highrise bricks and mortar crimes —
Are targets for poetic blitz.

The narrowing of greenbelt gaps
And loss of farms to urban sprawl
Provokes tut-tutting in us all.
The eco-friendly voter hates
Developers outside his gates —
That browning-in of country maps.

But what of Slough — the much-maligned? —
Its bounder-populated pubs,
And chrome bar-stooled, cad-crowded clubs,
No worse than countless fucked-up towns
With which Blair’s Britain now abounds.
Blame Progress — bungling and blind.