Four Yorkshiremen

 

(Adapted from Monty Python)

 

Y1:  Very passable, this, eh?  Very passable.

 

All:  Ay, oh ay.

 

Y2:  Nothing like a good glass of Sparkling Grapefruit Gingerale in classy restaurent, eh Josiah?

 

Y3:  Oh, you're right there, Obadiah.

 

Y2:  Ay.

 

Y1:  Who would have thought, thirty years ago, we'd all be sitting here in Cafe Parkdale drinking Sparkling Grapefruit Gingerale, eh?

 

All:  Ay, ay.

 

Y4:  Them days we were glad to have the price of a cup of tea.

 

Y2:  Ay!  A cup of cold tea!

 

Y4:  Ay!

 

Y1:  Without milk or sugar!

 

Y3:  Or tea!

 

Y4:  In a cracked cup and all.

 

Y1:  Oh, we never had a cup!  We used to have to drink out of a rolled up newspaper.

 

Y2:  The best we could manage was to suck on a piece of damp cloth.

 

Y3:  But you know, we were happy in those days, although we were poor.

 

Y4:  Because we were poor!

 

Y3:  Ay!

 

Y4:  My old dad used to say to me: "Money doesn't bring you happiness, son!"

 

Y1:  He was right!

 

Y4:  Ay!

 

Y1:  I was happier then and I had nothing!  We used to live in this tiny old tumble-down house with great big holes in the roof.

 

Y2:  House!  You were lucky to live in a house!  We used to live in one room, all twenty-six of us, no furniture, half the floor was missing, we were al huddled together in one corner for fear of falling.

 

Y3:  You were lucky to have a room!  We used to have to live in the corridor!

 

Y4:  Oh, we used to dream of living in a corridor!  Would have been a palace to us!  We used to live in an old water tank on a rubbish tip.  We got woke up every morning by having a load of rotting fish dumped all over us!  House, huh!

 

Y1:  Well, when I say "house" it was just a hole in the ground, covered by a sheet of tarpaulin, but it was a house to us!

 

Y2:  We were evicted from our hole in the ground.  We had to go and live in a lake.

 

Y3:  You were lucky to have a lake!  There were 150 of us living in a shoebox in the middle of the road!

 

Y4:  A cardboard box?

 

Y3:  Ay!

 

Y4:  You were lucky!  We lived for three months in a rolled up newspaper in a septic tank!  We used to have to get up every morning at six o'clock and clean the newspaper, go to work down at the mill, fourteen hours a day, week in week out, for sixpence a week, and when we got home we had to stay up all night protecting  the place from burglers.

 

Y2:  Luxury!  We used to have to get out of the lake at three o'clock in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of hot gravel, work twenty hours a day at the mill for twopence a month, come home and stay up all night guarding the lake against packs of wild carnivorous animals.

 

Y3:  Well, of course we had it tough!  We used to have to get up out of the shoebox in the middle of the night and lick the road clean with our tongues!  We had to eat half a handful of freezing cold gravel, work twenty-four hours a day at the mill for fourpence every six years, and when we got home we had to stay up all night to defend the shoebox against nomadic tribes of canibals!

 

Y1:  Right!  I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed, eat a lump of cold poison, work twenty-nine hours a day down at the mill and pay the mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home we had to stay up all night to protect our hole in the ground from reptilian aliens who wanted to perform scientific experiments with our small intestines!

 

Y4:  Oh, ay.  And you try and tell the young people of today that, and they won't believe you!

 

All:  Ay, no the won't.