A Cautionary Tale: Mr Thomas Meddle Senior Who Did
My tale begins with Junior Tom
Who made his own Atomic Bomb:
He built it with a clockwork spring,
A photographic flashlight thing,
A detonator found at Chatham,
And a slightly bent uranium atom.
Alas, one day, with son at school,
His father, prowling round the tool
Shed in a bored and idle manner,
Straightened the Atom with a spanner!
Six miles away, in the dusty gloom
Of a dismal desk-encumbered room,
The boys abruptly ceased to think
Of Magna Carta, canes and ink,
But ducked their tuppennies at the flash,
Felt all the building rock and crash,
Then, crawling from beneah the rubble,
Bewildered by the hubble-bubble,
And sitting up in startled crowd,
Beheld a monstrous mushroom cloud
Fantastically broad and high,
Surge blackly up into the sky...
Said Junior Tom, "How like the Pater!
Bang goes my only detonator!"
J.A Lindon