In many ways this has been inspired by Spike Milligan as I heard a spoofed mashup version of Rudyard Kipling’s ‘If’ and ‘Gunga Din’ that may have been on the Goon show.
It ended…
If you can walk through a sausage
Without splitting it’s skin
You are a thinner man than me, Gunga Din
This is my Christmas version of ‘If’
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are pulling crackers, screaming in your ear;
If you can roast a bird so massive that you
Can’t fit the roasties in the bottom tier;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting
For teenage kids to drag themselves from bed,
Or hearing Nan, who’s prone to over-stating,
Complain the sprouts are “cold as lead”;
If you can drink—and not make drink your master
(Or fall asleep before the King comes on);
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat a pair of socks and Pelaton
As just the same; if you can bear to listen
To stories that you’ve heard since you were nine,
And watch the gravy that you made to glisten
Be drowned in gallons of cheap table wine;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To smile at gifts you’ll bin on Boxing Day,
And hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the urge to run quite far away;
If you can find the batteries needed
To power up the toys that screech and beep,
And clear the floor of Lego (often heeded
By stepping on a brick when half-asleep);
If you can talk with crowds of drunk relations
And keep your virtue (and your sanity),
If neither burning turkey nor frustrations
Can kill the spirit of the family;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of washing up well done,
Yours is the Sofa and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be Broke, my son!
