Sausages are wonderful things.
They're not wonderful in the way that, say, the planet earth is, or human life is - but they're pretty damn fine nonetheless.
So fine, in fact, that someone has been inspired to write a poem about them. My friend David Cousins told me this yesterday when we were chatting about making them.
Now to the best of my knowledge, bangers are a subject woefully neglected by our great poets (although it's precisely the sort of thing you could imagine Betjeman writing on) so a poem like this fills a big hole in our poetry canon as far as I'm concerned!
Hope you enjoy it. The poet is A P Herbert.
Sausage and Mash
If there’s a dish
For which I wish
More frequent than the rest,
If there’s a food
On which I brood
When starving or depressed,
If there’s a thing that life can give
Which makes it worth our while to live
If there’s an end
On which I’d spend
My last remaining cash,
It’s a sausage, friend,
It’s a sausage, friend,
It’s a sausage, friend, and mash.
When Love is dead,
Ambition fled,
And pleasure, Lad, and Pash,
You’ll still enjoy,
A sausage, boy,
A sausage, boy and mash.’
Sausages are great, but you need to use them or they go off.