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There is no real need to introduce this poem, save to say that it describes one of the most ridiculous things that ever happened to me. I would love to know what the person who sewed the suit together was smoking when they did it. This really did happen.

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There was to be a big parade
I had to look my best
So I broke out my service dress
Sam brown and all the rest.

I only had temperate kit
Tropical would be needed
So I went to the quarter master
And for a cool suit pleaded.

He told that me they were ‘dues out’
They'd have to make to measure
This was very good news to me
for it would look a pleasure

I waited through the summer hot
and then the winter too
I chased them up regularly
as my impatience grew

Two whole years later my phone rang
The store man had good news
My tailor made service dress
At last I could peruse

I jumped on to my bicycle
and pedalled to the store
The apologetic store man
greeted me at the door.

He showed me to the fitting room
Where the suit was in a box
I stripped and took the trousers out
and then I got a shock

Quickly I took the jacket out
to check it was the same
T’was over twice the size of me;
and I'm not slight of frame.

Now Nine foot two’s a mighty chest
for any human being
and a six foot five inside leg
The tailor must be dreaming

‘Have you lost weight’, the tailor asked
as I stepped through the door
‘and eight foot eight in height’, I said
as he went red and swore.

In UK they use feet and inches
in Cyprus it’s not the same
They use little centimetres
The difference is to blame

Surely the person who made it
Must have thought it too long
For a fourteen foot tall soldier
Well…… it’s just wrong.

John Carré Buchanan
19 January 2013