That Handbag

I don’t want to go on shop­ping,
I don’t want to go to stores.
They only want your dough,
Every­where you go
There must be a bet­ter way to spend the weekend!

I don’t need anoth­er hand­bag,
I have six or more at home.
But it real­ly is a bar­gain,
A super, super bar­gain
So I’d bet­ter get it while it’s going so cheap, cor blimey.

On Mon­day I bought myself an iPad,
On Tues­day a glossy mag­a­zine,
On Wednes­day, suc­cess! I found a love­ly dress,
On Thurs­day it was late night shop­ping.
Fri­day was Bogoff day at Tesco’s,
On Sat­ur­day I shopped until I dropped,
But on Sun­day after sup­per, I knew that I was scup­pered
I’d gone and spent every­thing I’d got, cor blimey

 I don’t want to go on shop­ping,
I don’t want to go to stores.
They only want your dough,
Every­where you go;
There must be a bet­ter way to spend the weekend.

I don’t need anoth­er hand­bag,
I have six or more at home.
And what if it’s a bar­gain,
A super, super bar­gain?
I’ll be bet­ter off with­out it in the end!

Notes

The tune is ‘I don’t want to be a sol­dier’, a First World War song, used in Oh! What a Love­ly War. Here is a YouTube clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24ChyqT1t6Q. The writ­ers of the song are unknown, and there are var­i­ous ver­sions, some of them very rude! See this dis­cus­sion on Mud­cat Cafe.

I don’t want to be a sol­dier’ in turn appears to have orig­i­nat­ed as a par­o­dy of ‘I’ll make a man of you’, a music hall recruit­ing song from 1914 with words by Arthur Wim­peris and music by Her­man Fink. Sheet music can be found here: http://www.nla.gov.au/apps/cdview/?pi=nla.mus-an6054303-s3‑v (the cho­rus is more or less the same tune).

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