WITH APOLOGIES TO HIS LORDSHIP

One of the peculiar side-effects of reading Byron's Don Juan is that one begins to think in Byronic style. Here is the refined version of one such example. You're most welcome to send me your own, and we can have a mass cod-Byron festival. I am aware, by the way, and deeply ashamed, that my last line has eleven syllables, and that I have taken poetic liberty with singles and plurals.

Commuting is to voyage twice, for we

Not only take our body but our heart

From one place to another. We may be

The tranquillest of persons when we start,

But, bludgeoned by the rude stupidity

Of blind and selfish drones, our better part

Will, I fear, in every instance shirk us,

Especially when we change at Oxford Circus.

David