About the Poem

A tiresome child misbehaves outrageously in a restaurant, until a fellow diner extracts a most fitting revenge.

Style

Nonsense Poem

Length

22 lines

Key Stage

KS2, KS3

Author

Max Scratchmann

The Awful Story of Peedie Angus and the Soup Bowl

I was sitting rather quietly in the Mustard Seed one day,
When a mother and her off-spring claimed a table down my way,
And clambered, a tad eagerly, to scan the bill of fare,
So each ghastly child could visualise the dishes listed there.

But at last they made their choices and the board was spread with food,
They set to work with fork and spoon declaring "This is good!"
Except the smallest urchin, Peedie Angus was his name,
Who wouldn't eat his bowl of soup and wailed loudly to his dame:

"I cannot sup this watery broth, it really tastes quite vile,
My bread rolls are the awful-ist shape, and the butter tastes like bile".
In vain his mother offered solace, but the child just wailed the louder,
While the waitress proffered tasty bites from jelly to clam-chowder.

But nothing could the irksome brat appease or quell the din,
And each suggestion met with howls and tant-er-ums quite grim.
His mother begged, the waitress bribed, his siblings tore their hair,
But nothing would the howling lad placate or silence there.

Until an angry diner, who’d plugged his ears with bread,
Wrench'd up the urchin’s soup plate and up-turned it o'er his head.
The mother gasped, the sisters stared, the waitress ran for cover,
But every other lunch-partaker embracéd one another,
And with a cheer they did proclaim, in accents strong and fine,
"Three cheers for direct action, it triumphs every time!"