Before you get all punchy & patriotic / sceptred isle psychotic / hymn singingly hypnotic / sentimentally aquatic

Before you get all knees up / knees up / c’mon dress the trees up / singalong a booze up / pull the ladder up Jack / mind your language & your back

Before you get all remember remember / the tuppenny trembler / a swift one in the dog n’ duck / sneaking out back for a spot of how’s ya father and an ounce of ready rub

Before you get all roll me over in the clover / jitterbuggin’ about on the White Cliffs of Dover / with Sir Vera Lynn and her orchestra / dropping your cacks,  cocking a leg over

Before you send us all back to the Blitz / to wave our flags at her Maj and our arse to Fritz / with my dear ol’ gran getting blown to bits / the night Queen Liz come on a visit / to finger her pearls and ask how is it / the cockneys manage to stay so chipper / with everything in flames along the river

Before you get well and truly started / before your brass band’s got its strapons and departed / and everything’s draped in bunting and shit / and the boys brigade step up to do their banner-waving bit

Before the planes strafe the sky / with union jack stripes a mile wide

Before you start banging on and on / about heroic times long gone / who did what to who and where / who won the victory fair and square / with a brave Churchillian cigar / a bridge too far / a plucky royal back of a car / with a grateful huzzah / and an atom bomb on hiroshima

Before you get in a right ol’ two and eight
I just wanted to set the record straight
okay?

I love my country
I love les dawson & david bowie
I love darts, parks
public works
the fens, the cornish coast
poached egg & beans on toast
I love lidos, lilos, windows
I love vic n’bob & matt lucas
I love swimming pools and verrucas
I love bag o’chips
mr whippy / punk rock / roses & space hoppers
I love padlocks and bolt croppers

and

I love the fact there are old bones in the ground
that if you had a genetic rummage around
you’d see quite clearly
they were related to me
distantly
like a ton of other organic stuff
if you looked hard enough
through a variety of funereal matter
from Limerick to Parramatta

so many choices
but essentially I suppose my point is

I love my country but I love my planet
we’re all just pips in a pomegranate