Sensei Paul and Rach came to visit this weekend and Paul got me thinking about alternate, modern nursery rhymes. He had a few, but one in particular stuck in my memory:

Oh the great old duke of York
He had 10,000 men
But due to government cutbacks now he has just one man
And due to the strain and the stress
Of doing all the work
The Duke of York’s man
Has PTSD

Certainly not all of the nursery rhymes we sing to Emily could make this transition but certainly many of them could. Another one (all of these are paraphrased as my memory isn’t that good):

Twinkle twinkle little star
What a flaming ball of gas
When you get too cool you may explode
But if you’re not you might collapse into a black hole

This one occurred to me today whilst we were singing to Emily:

There were ten in the bed and the little one said
Roll over! Roll over!
We’re in this mess because of poor housing planning
The government’s overspent and now inflations running
So please, remember, to mark a check in your ballot
Single votes they count for me and you

Also:

Little Miss Muffett
Sat on her taffeta sofa
Eating her curds and whey
But lactose intolerance
Increased her flatulence
And scared all the small boys away

And…

Mary had a little lamb
Whose fleece was white as snow
This was due to genetic modification
The EU had yet to approve

And everywhere that Mary went
The lamb was sure to go
Due to sophisticated neural implants, RFID and GPS tracking

The scansion on some of these needs work. Any more for any more? The whole thing puts me in mind of Katie Melua’s response to Simon Singh’s complaints about "9 million bicycles" – well worth watching this.