Georges Simenon

A crooked log delivers a straight flame Belgian's pipe-smoking spectacled writer Bedded 10,000 women With the sexual drive of a dozen Errol Flynns The Netherlands Casanova in all but name This human powerhouse wrote near 400 novels Took 10 days to finish a book Always wearing his lucky shirt, in his chosen nook An Abercrombie and Fitch sports top Always after cleaning and plugging 12 of his 300 pipes Tobacco, fuelled his thoughts Ever augmenting his cash, with a string of noughts Always having fed the typewriter a fresh new ribbon Always having 48 pencils, and paper ready to write on Wrote his Maigret novels in a trance Names, characters, descriptions Scribbled on an outsize envelope, nothing left to chance Then off like an Aintree runner of verve and polish Surmounting ciphers, murders, corpses, motives Fingertips and forensics, blazing round the bends For a furious finish! Such quirky rituals! Awake from a dreamy fog Coffee pot filled, cup waiting Then up at dawn.90 words per minute Rat-at-at like machine gun fire The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog 850 million sales around the world Not bad for an altar-boy, a bed-jumping Belgian wanderer Like a flea, like a grasshopper, leaping round 33 homes, Chewing up continents, crashing time zones Who else would ride a pure white stallion to market And keep pet wolves, which ate up one pet cat? Monsieur Simenon, of course, the man in the hat!