Talking Newcastle Nuclear Nightmare
Driving west of Newcastle,
straight towards Haltwhistle
What should I happen to spy
but army vehicles in convoy
Wonder what these unmarked trucks might be carrying
Turn the car to follow on
I’ve always found procession’s fun
Police car just behind the queue
asks me where I’m going to
While might I ask these army trucks the same question
Copper gets out of his car
asks me if I’m going far
“Visiting friends in Faslane,” I say
“Albemarle is on the way”
The police officers don’t seem to
have come across the word “coincidence” before
Losing sight of that convoy
I press a button on my daughter’s toy
“Pigs go ‘oink, oink, oink'” it says
Policeman shoots a look of death
Sheesh officer, I’m just keeping the
little one entertained
Having failed to find a crime
PC makes do with wasting my time
Hands me a nice piece of paper,
not an award, instead a producer
And here’s me just taking a Sunday
evening drive in the countryside
Grab my wife’s mobile phone,
not a device I’ve ever owned
Phoned a friend from Stop the War
Any idea what this convoy’s for?
He says it’s carrying an American-owened
nuclear warhead capable of blowing up
most of Newcastle,Gateshead and Sunderland
in one fell swoop
Gee, thinks I, the football league
would never be the same again
So I decides I’d like to know
exactly which route this warhead goes
By driving fast, I rejoin the line
where the A1 meets the 69
Hey, ten years ago I lived 100 yards
from this Newcastle roundabout
in a densely populated council estate
If only I’d known then what I know now
I could have built myself a nuclear shelter
But driving fast is not ideal
I think, as I lose control of the wheel
My car goes right in front of the truck
and Tyneside just ran out of luck
Goodbye, Sage, Baltic, and the
population of hundreds of thousands
but it was worth it all to deter
North Korea from getting nuclear weapons, right?