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When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me,
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I'm tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick the flowers in other people's gardens
And learn to spit.
You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and a pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.
But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We will have friends to dinner and read the papers.
But maybe I ought to practise a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old and start to wear purple.
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When I'm an old man,
I shall wear false teeth, and wear hearing-aids.
- Pardon? I didn't get where I am today, you know!
With bedpans, (or colostomy bags),
As full of shit as me.
Seems we shan't have pensions then,
- My National Insurance Contributions,
Will sure be plundered by successive governments,
To pay for all the darn single mothers,
To populate the country with their bastard new offspring,
Whilst spending dole and milk tokens,
As normal, on cigarettes and alcohol,
And acting like they do us all such a darn favour.
I'll probably die hard-up, near-desperate,
Ignored, lost and alone, ashamed,
A grey-haired, wrinkled, grumpy, warped, bothersome old man,
Trapped in harsh old people's prisons... erm, I mean homes,
Past it, an unwashed tramp, staring out windows,
Spoon-fed morsels in an unkempt shoebox of a room,
And probably won't know any other people to be surprised,
When I next, drained, sapped and spent, weak and wasted,
Suddenly start to turn purple, then blue.
And death, then, was a heaven-sent dead certainty.
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