Matthew, Who Only Texted

This is a short extract from a poem in Chris Addison's new book Cautionary Tales for Grown Ups.

Chris Addison is best known (to me) for his part as Ollie Reeder, the Junior Policy Advisor to Chris Langham's Minister, Hugh Abbot, in the TV comedy The Thick of It. This book is his first, and is an excellent update on Hilaire Belloc's Cautionary Tales for Children from 1907.

Anyway, this one is very relevant to this blog, and here are the first and last verses:

See this chap? He's Matthew Dawling.
Matthew Dawling loves to text.
This he does instead of calling,
Leaving friends and family vexed.
Call it lazy, call it shrewd,
They all call it bloody rude.



Set upon by local yobbos,
Matthew tries to call for 'Hlp!'
Not a chance - nobody near knows
What it means, this vowelless yelp.
Thus he draws his final breath,
Thn thy kick pr Mtt 2 dth.

As I say, this is just the first and last verse - buy the book to read the whole thing, and 23 others.