I have heard the bagpipes played at the Edinburgh

Tattoo, I have heard the Orangemen blow their flutes

On the twelfth of July, I have watched

Military funerals roll by to the beat of

A drum, I have heard the hunter’s horn sounded

In Mahler’s First Symphony, a gong beat at

Dinnertime, a buzzer ring when my pizza’s ready,

But I never heard a fanfare quite as strange

As the bugling of these Kitchen Devils.

We moseyed along with the ten chefs by

Our side, we were in bad company, but

As the old saying has it: ‘With saints in

The church, with boozers in the tavern.’

As we went I kept my eyes glued to the

Soup vat, to see what the deal was in this pit.

As dolphins arch their backs leaping through the

Waves in the Bay of Biscay, as they come out

To greet the latest ferry from Portsmouth,

So now and then, to ease the pain, some student

Stuck in the broth poked his back above the surface,

Then dived under again as quick as lightning.

And as frogs sit with their muzzles poking out

Round the edge of a pond or a ditch,

So the students here gathered at the vat’s rim,

But as Mothballs drew near they dunked their heads

In the soup. One of them was a bit slower

Than the rest, just as often one frog lingers

A little longer at the pond’s edge, and I

Saw – it still makes me sick thinking about it –

Itchy, who was standing level with him,