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Tame as we may appear to be, 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.

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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

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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,

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Sedley and a pair of kindred spirits,

Shocked and delighted a crowd below

With blasphemous and obscene antics.

Sedley “showed his nakedness” – wrote Pepys.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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

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