It was 1942 and we were exhausted, we'd fought our way to Cairo

While on leave I made friends with Soraya, a local bint

She offered to get a mate to tattoo my chest on the cheap

Which was just as well in the circumstances as I was skint

 

Out of a library of designs I chose the Great Pyramid up the road

In those days my torso was broader than a redwood tree trunk

Time flies and seventy-eight years later I'm in a care home

My mind sharp as a tack but somehow my chest has shrunk

 

The Great Pyramid still lolls near the Sphinx outside the city at Giza

Beggars were a bit of a nuisance, "Baksheesh!" they would wheedle

I'm ashamed to show my tattoo to my young carers on the ward

Eroded by the sands of time its dwindled to the size of Cleopatra's needle

 

As each day dawns I have come to dread even routine medical procedures

For a bed wash exposes my diminished artwork to the curious sisters

One of them reminds me of Soraya in the back streets of Cairo

And that giftt of my tattoo of the Great Pyramid- and a few blisters