The Tagareen Shop Poem by Pete Crowther

Down by the dockside
Round the corner past the pub
The tagareen man
Has a tagareen shop
Where just about anything goes.

Hats and scarves
And rubber boots,
Sou’wester hats,
Second-hand clothes,
Fishermen’s jerseys,
Dungarees,
And waterproofs,
You’ll find them all
In the tagareen shop
Where nobody goes.

There’s bargains galore
Both at sea and ashore
To be had at the tagareen shop.
You can rummage about
In the piles on the floor
Like a pig with his snout,
Rooting about in the straw.
Somewhere in that lumber
You’ll find any number
For everything’s there
In the tagareen shop —
Even if nobody knows.

The tagareen man
Has a broad range of stock —
A bit of old rope?
A nice pair of shoes?
Dreams of a distant shore?
He’ll sell you his soul
For the price of a beer,
He’ll sell you his daughter for less
And chuck in the mother,
Her sister and brother,
You can have the whole caboodle
If you want, for
Eventually everything goes.

His mother-in-law
Sits at the back
Of the shop, like a queen
On top of a pile of clothes.
She looks down her nose
At the customers’ woes
But their money’s a different thing!
It’s put in the till to be spent
In the pub on whisky and gin,
Fast women and sin,
And that is where all of it goes.

Some folk, they say, wouldn’t recognize
A tagareen shop in front of their eyes.
Well all I can say is this:
If you find your living room
Is all bestrewn
With boots, and bags, odd socks
And mags, and yesterday’s newspapers,
With bits of junk and kelterment
All scattered across the table’s top
Then I think I can say
That what you’ve got
Is very like a tagareen shop
As far as anyone knows