My five-bedroom home overlooking the green
on some land that my husband acquired,
for a knock down price so cheap its obscene
when the field was no longer required
 
has been ‘Chez Nous’ for many a year
and we’re very well-known hereabouts,
but a note in ‘The Bugle’ has filled me with fear
and replaced what was certain with doubt.
 
Because - horror of horrors - a plan’s been submitted
for cheap terraced homes for the young,
which, in the unlikely event is permitted,
would mean all our dreams are undone.
 
Those feckless young couples who still live at home
too idle to find themselves jobs somewhere else,
and expect to still live where they’ve been born and grown
just cannot conceive of ‘disposable wealth’
 
The houses proposed are simply too small
with just two or three beds I suspect,
so, inevitably local house prices will fall -
will Aldi and Lidl be next?!!
 
We’re not criticising new housing per se -
indeed, we applaud such well-meaning intentions.
Just as long as they build them a long way away
where they won’t interrupt our bucolic pretentions.
 
They can find somewhere else that’s more socially suited
and that won’t spoil my view of the church and its steeple.
I’ll insist that the village pond’s Great Crested Newted
and enlist the support of all ‘right-thinking’ people
 
Thank God for the bats and the Natterjack Toad
which, before in my large Japanese 4x4,
I regularly used to squash flat in the road
but, the ‘threat’ to which I now deplore!
  
Jeremy Wainthrop who’s standing for Mayor
assured the ‘Say No’ group he’ll speak
to the planning committee (he’s pals with the Chair)
at our cheese and wine party last week.
 
We’ve printed the placards – ‘Greed over Need!!’
(I expect we’ll be needing some more)
and I’ve rounded up middle class urban protesters
to trample the hopes of the poor
 
We’ve hired the finest top planning consultant
whose take on our problem’s astute,
he’ll prove that the roads and the drainage can’t cope
like a latter-day planning Canute.