Vasco Pyjamas

Words – June 2010.

Cheese and Vasco Da Gama


‘Tis said that Vasco de Gama
As well as sailing on the seas
Was a great success at making cheese.
An Architect of cheese was he
Formulating cheese with glee.

As a lad he eschewed toys
And unlike all the other boys
Watched the farmer plough his plough
Sought out the milk-maid and her cow
And unlike his sisters and his brudders
Became obsessed with milk and udders,
So that his feet were always turning
Towards the sea and cheese a-churning;

He studied cheese from near and far
All shapes and sizes, triangular
Rounds and oblongs, spheres and cubes
Stretched out to cylinders and tubes
A technique took from Eric Thrower
A neighbour and a great glassblower.

For years the two worked as a team
Towards the glass and cheeseman’s dream
Fashioning, with greatest ease,
Shakespeare - out of glass and cheese –
And next to him they did John Bunyan –
Then ate them both, with a pickled onion!