Kevin Pyne :: On Gig Cushions

On Gig cushions 

It’s how you tell a gig rower in many ways

Because the first thing new rowers do

Is buy a gig cushions

With their initials embroidered on nearly always

With cushions from “Rat Bags isles of Scillie

Being the most prestigious one

Especially if they came from the original

Little shed near where all leaving

Of the islands and arriving is begun

They make a nice one to in Dartmouth town

From shiny PVC that lets the bum

No mater what shape “cheekily slide” around

After which comes the question of foam

And does one have it soft or hard?

So it comforts or leaves an impression

Of ones be seated bones

All whilst others in their search for speed

Let pretty colours and comfort escape 

And use plastic dustbin liners instead

Sealed up with gaffer tape

The Salcombe ladies mind you used 

No gig cushions at all

And went out rowing for the sake

Of their calendar 

Entirely naked one and all

After which comes the “dizzy gigger”

With so much on their mind

That weekly from all over the south west

Their cousin gets returned “once again”

After it had been left it behind

So if you are not to be a “blistered MR”

Or indeed a “sore bummed Mrs or Miss”

Then tiss best you pay attention

To soothing articles such as this

Then let us remember that once

 It was not all “sports shorts and kit”

Turned inside out to keep the chafing away

But tuff folk dressed in hard black oilskins

Rowing out “what ever the weather” to make a living

“Cushions or not” in desperately hard old days   

(C) Kevin Pyne 2010