RSI

I've just had a free evening. Finished my day's duties at 7.30 p.m. and chilled. Another couple of weeks of this and all will be well again. Trouble is, all the illnesses and diseases and problems related indirectly to stress wait for the first moment of relaxation and start to manifest themselves. I've told them I'm stretched not stressed but nervous system disorders seem quite unable to spell.

So I have a bit of eczema, a touch of RSI and a few muscular aches, none serious and in their honour I'd like to publish for the first time a poem I wrote a few years back when Status Quo's Rick Parfitt got RSI.

RSI

Rick Parfitt’s down with RSI
Excuse me if I laugh not cry
I guess it’s true to say I’m bored
By hearing just one shape of chord
I wonder if I

Might suggest he tried diminished
Left a twelve bar blues unfinished
Maybe used a third augmented
Just to save us going demented
And so I’ve fished

Around for some appropriate ills
To make my heroes reach for pills
Like Townsend’s dodgy, frozen shoulder
Not yet dead although much older
I guess it kills

When Bowie’s skin reacts to make-up
Henry Rollins too stiff to take up
Weights, instead he sometimes sickens
Alice Cooper can’t lift chickens
Better shake up

Mick can’t strut – he lost the knack
Paranoid Ozzie’s done his back
Dylan’s blue and he got tangled
Damned are damned; the Stranglers strangled
Give the sack

To former stars who now can’t bend
Whose youth went into overspend
No life eternal for you punk
Your hop’s not hip; you got no funk
It had to end.