My Mate's Dad had a Flymo

My mate’s dad had the best thing: a Flymo. 

My dad’s petrol machine was heavy, slow, 

Dragged, kicking to a bright orange future. 

Nineteen eighty four. We waited for a 

time of magic: personal hovercrafts, 

jetpacks, space elevators on bright shafts, 

Mag-lev trains and whooshing transporter tubes, 

Dining on pills, gliding on floating shoes. 

Clean electric, easy levitation, 

Not dirty, no internal combustion. 

We weren't going to need cars, vans, lorries. 

No hate, no living with all those sorries. 

There would be no need for that old labour, 

No rattling of that old British sabre. 

We’d all be poets, riding on Flymos, 

skimming the wide world, sharing highs and lows. 

Worries were to be a thing of the past 

In a future bright as fresh plaster-cast. 

But my mate’s lawn was nicer than ours. 

They had glossed windowsills, plinths for flowers. 

They had Soda Stream with countless flavours. 

My mate’s dad had friends doing him favours. 

My dad was honest, read the Guardian, 

ev’ry day a new laboured opinion. 

He always had a harder way to think, 

always the dissonance at friendly drinks. 

His head was in cars and mathematics, 

Not dreaming or wondering about tricks 

From a far future never to arrive. 

It was obvious what keeps us alive. 

Ev’ry day a new way to think ahead. 

Look out for each other, he sometimes said -  

thinking only on columnists’ say-so? 

I just wanted us to have a Flymo.