x

Mild as we may appear to be, we Brits are good

At anarchy. Much appreciated are the japes

Perpetrated by St Trinian’s and the training

In revolt offered by that riot-prone establishment.

x

The Pistols got it right, and rough music

Spurs our charivari on – epitomised by Punch

And Judy. Fuck the system. Turn things upside-down.

Beat your pots and pans. Go rampaging

x

Through the streets. Scandalise the magistrates.

Model your role on that “Merry Gang”

Which included Rochester and Sedley.

From a tavern’s balcony in Bow,

x

Sedley and a pair of kindred spirits,

Shocked and delighted a crowd below

With blasphemous and obscene antics.

Sedley “showed his nakedness” – wrote Pepys.

x

As if he were from thence preaching

A mountebank sermon from a pulpit,

Sedley said he was there to sell such triturate

As should cause all the cunts in town

x

To run most hotly after him.

To prove it, Sedley chose to masturbate.

That being done, he took a glass of wine

And washed his prick in it.

x

Then drank it off, took another and drank

The King’s health. Nothing protects

Our emphatic right to be eccentric

More than our juries. They can acquit who they please.

x

And while some Lord Chief Justice

May opine that it is because of wretches

Like Sedley “that God’s anger and judgement

So hangs over us,” me, I don’t give a toss.

x

So hangs over us.” Me, I don’t give a toss.

x