HER TRADEMARK COSTUME OF JUST BEADS – A verse of lunacy!

From the native girls I sought comfort

After having sailed the seven seas

Yet when I first cast my eyes on Matilda

Her beauty brought me to my knees

 

Of course that was so long ago now

The year 1925

But my time with the lovely Matilda

Was the only time that I felt alive

 

I courted, wined and dined her

From Saigon to old Mandalay

On horseback across the Silk Road

Returning to Famagusta Bay

 

From there we headed to Paris

By Orient Express that is plain

And a garret we shared overlooking

That river of romance, The Seine

 

While I took to writing and drinking

She made for herself a career

Singing the blues in Montmartre nightclubs

1925 what a year

 

My lifestyle was a downhill slalom

Not fulfilling my lovers needs

Matilda was out singing the blues all hours

In her trademark costume of just beads

 

That is when I became rather jealous

Of the gentlemen friends she acquired

With me in my cups most times

And as a writer no longer inspired

 

She left me of course for another

A diplomat from Washington DC

Together they crossed the Atlantic

Matilda was thus free of me

 

Over time the wound never healed

Although I still remained a man of deeds

So I traced the path that she had travelled

And strangled her with her own beads

 

I made haste for the Tropic of Cancer

Crossed the Arabian Sea

Carved out a new life in Chittagong

But of Matilda I was never free

 

But hey I’m not complaining

For the last sixty years I’ve been blessed

With a cast of much younger lovers

Prepared to shag an old man in a string vest!