THE FAT OF THE LAND

Prince Charles was overheard on Tuesday suggesting that McDonalds should be banned. It later came out that his Duchy Original Cornish Pasties were fattier, saltier and generally less healthy than a Big Mac. The Borkowski poet in residence considers what Charles might be thinking.

I don’t want blubbery subjects
enslaved to some burger chain.
It would put a terrible dampener
on my eventual reign.

I don’t want a nation of fatties,
unable to sink to their knees,
who can’t genuflect, bow or scrape
because of oncoming heart disease.

I want people to buy organic
from my farms or possibly elsewhere
who’ll avoid diabetic disasters
and not be ruled by the latest health scare.

I want McDonalds and Burger King banned
they’re disgraceful and tatty; a malaise.
Perhaps Duchy Farms should set up
a healthy fast food chain of cafés?

My pasties may be fattier than burgers,
they may be more loaded with salt
but they’re organic and pesticide-free
and McDonalds are still at fault

because their food is so cheap people buy it
without a second thought.
A Duchy pasty’s terribly expensive
and thus far less regularly bought.

I want to live off the fat of the land
not rule a land of the fat.
It may be an old fashioned approach
but I don’t see anything wrong with that.

If I’m seen as a reactionary fossil
or just an interfering old nutter
I don’t mind as at least I still know
on which side my pasties are buttered.