Marbella's the spot for mooring your yacht

To ostentatiously show what you've got;

But a sight more evocative ploughing the foam

Much nearer the heart and closer to home

Was never a craft you'd look good in;

I refer to the Ponty Tom Pudding.

 

A cross between a barge and a train

With a tug at the bow taking the strain;

Everyday making 2 or 3 runs,

Every trip hauling 800 tons

Of limestone or coal or with wood in;

It's Goole not Cannes for Tom Pudding.

 

The roads might be blocked or the trains were on strike

But Tom would chug on just as slow as you like;

Never no more than 3 miles an hour,

Ensuring continued electrical power,

Unhindered even by flooding;

Earning its corn was Tom Pudding.

 

Along the canal to Ferrybridge “C”

To generate your electricity,

Or onwards to Goole to ship overseas

For developing nations' industries

Or start their economies budding,

Pump-primed by Ponty Tom Puddings.

 

Manning the rig would be Skipper and me

From 14 years old to age 23;

The pay was appalling, conditions as bad -

The best job of work though that I'd ever had

Despite the muck you were stood in,

Fighting a snake in Tom Puddings.

 

Dust up your nostrils, your ears, in your nails,

Grafting in rain and in frost and in hail;

And Skipper made sure they were clean 'fore a load;

I'd be shovelling out muck as even it snowed;

They'd have slurry and sludge and with mud in;

I've cursed them Bastard Tom Puddings.

 

But sad to relate their days are long past;

The Aire and Calder has witnessed their last;

Consigned to memory and history since

The closures of Fryston and old Ponty Prince,

Two pits my brothers sweat blood in -

So Farewell to the Ponty Tom Pudding.