You said we should look out further,
I guess it wouldn’t hurt us.
We don’t have to be around all these coffee shops.
Now we’ve got that percolator,
never made a latte greater.
I’m saving twenty-three dollars a week.
We drive to a house in Preston,
we see police arresting
a man with his hand in a bag.
How’s that for first impressions?
This place seems depressing.
It’s a “Californian bungalow in a cul-de-sacâ€.
It’s got a lovely garden,
a garage for two cars to park in
(“or a lot of room for storage if you’ve just got oneâ€).
And it’s going pretty cheap you say?
“Well it’s a deceased estate…
aren’t the pressed metal ceilings great?â€
Then I see the handrails in the shower,
a collection of those canisters for coffee, tea and flour,
and a photo of a young man in a van in Vietnam.
And I can’t think of floorboards anymore,
whether the front room faces south or north,
and I wonder what she bought it for.
(If you’ve got a spare half a million, you could knock it down and start rebuilding)