We Were Poor

 
Four well-dressed men sitting together at a vacation resort.  "Farewell
to Thee" being played in the background on Hawaiian guitar.
 
Michael Palin:  Ahh.. Very passable, that, very passable.

Graham Chapman: Nothing like a good glass of Chateau de Chassilier wine,
    ay Gessiah?

Terry Gilliam:  You're right there Obediah.

Eric Idle: Who'd a thought thirty years ago we'd all be sittin' here
    drinking Chateau de Chassilier wine?

MP: Aye.  In them days, we were glad to have the price of a cup o' tea.

GC: A cup ' COLD tea.

EI: Without milk or sugar.

TG: Or tea!

MP: In a cracked cup 'n all.

EI: We never used to have a cup.  We used to have to drink out of a
    rolled up newspaper.

GC: The best WE could manage was to suck on a piece of damp cloth.

TG: But you know, we were happy in those days, though we were poor.

MP: Aye.  BECAUSE we were poor.  My old Dad used to say to me, "Money
    doesn't buy you happiness."

EI: 'E was right.  I was happier then and I had NOTHIN'.  We used to
    live in this tiiiny old house, with greaaaaat big holes in the roof.

GC: House?  You were lucky to have a HOUSE!  We used to live in one
    room, all twenty-six of us, no furniture.  Half the floor was
    missing; we were all huddled together in one corner for fear of
    FALLING!

TG: You were lucky to have a ROOM!  *We* used to have to live in a
    corridor!

MP: Ohhhh we used to DREAM of livin' in a corridor!  Woulda' been a
    palace to us.  We used to live in an old water tank on a rubbish
    tip.  We got woke up every morning by having a load of rotting fish
    dumped all over us!  House!?  Hmph.

EI: Well when I say "house" it was only a hole in the ground covered by
    a sheet of tarpolin, but it was a house to US.

GC: We were evicted from *our* hole in the ground; we had to go and live
    in a lake!

TG: You were lucky to have a LAKE!  There were a hundred and fifty of us
    living in shoebox in middle of the road.

MP: Cardboard box?

TG: Aye.

MP: You were lucky.  We lived for three months in a paper bag in a
    septic tank.  We used to have to get up at six in the morning, clean
    the paper bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down mill for
    fourteen hours a day week in-week out.  For sixpence a week.  When
    we got home, our Dad would thrash us to sleep with his belt!

GC: Luxury.  We used to have to get out of the lake at six o'clock in
    the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of hot gravel, work
    twenty hour day at mill every day for tuppence a month, come home,
    and Dad would beat us around the head and neck with a broken bottle,
    if we were LUCKY!

TG: Well we had it tough.  We used to have to get up out of the shoebox
    at twelve o'clock at night, and LICK the road clean with our
    tongues.  We had two bits of cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a
    day at the mill for six and twenty four years for fourpence every
    six years, and when we got home, our Dad would slice us in two with
    a bread knife.

EI: Right.  I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night, half
    an hour before I went to bed, (pause for laughter), drink a cup of
    sulphuric acid, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill
    owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad
    and our Mother would kill us, and dance about on our graves singing
    "Hallelujah."

MP: But you try and tell the young people today that... and they won't
    believe ya'.

ALL: Nope, nope..
 


John Hamer