[Jayne Osborn]

I’ve already got an underground extension called a cellar, which has been there for 160 years. (Perhaps they didn’t originally build cellars in London because of the water table? Modern methods and materials alleviate that problem, I think.)

Jayne


The Oldie Competition
by Tessa Castro

Competition no 197

In London builders are adding underground extensions to houses. Once upon a time it was conservatories or lofts. In any case, please write a poem called ‘The Builders’. Maximum 16 lines.

Entries by post (The Oldie, 65 Newman Street, London W1T 3EG) or email comps@theoldie.co.uk
to ‘Competition No 197’ by 11th December. Don’t forget to include your postal address.

[John Whitworth]

It doesn't have to be yer ackshul builders does it?

We thought we were too feeble to resist them.
They came with promises and civil speeches.
Like wolves they raven and they suck like leeches,
Like viruses they paralyse the system.
We thought we were too feeble to resist them.

We were the architects of our calamity.
We sold our children and our children's children,
And grovelled in the temples of the heathen,
Prostrate in our pusillanimity,
The willing architects of our calamity.

If we must die then let it be for Freedom,
With all the benison of blood can give us,
The rolling wheatfields and the tumbling rivers,
The silver sands about our golden kingdom.
For Freedom. Die for Freedom. Die for Freedom.

[Ann Drysdale]

Barratt zealot, here I stand
Hardhat on and tool in hand
Building houses quick and cheap
Half aware and half asleep
Bricking, clicking, right and wrong
Two across and one along
Dollop mortar, plonk and tap
Spirit level, that one’s crap
Board on top and whack it flatter
Still not right but that won’t matter
Boss might cuss and mates berate yer
But there’s no straight lines in Nature
I’m her child and she’s my mother
Fuckit, chuck us up another!

[John Whitworth]

Ah. That's what I should be doing. Except that you've done it . Damn!

On the Empire-building theme then and all true. My father told me that nothing subsquently, even being secretary to two Archbishops of Canterbury, ever came up to it. His game was tennis not polo but you have to take liberties sometimes.


The Builders

The Empire builders in their khaki shorts
Who painted every continent with red,
Through English Common Law and English sports,
They made the British great and now they’re dead.

All of them dead as doornails, dead as earth.
My father in Bombay was such a one,
Selected by no accident of birth,
Cambridge mad dog who braved the midday sun,

Ruling from his Collector’s bungalow
Under his sola topee very pukka,
Relaxing now and then to see a show
Or take his pony out and play a chukka.

A sahib and his memsahib, proud and free,
Both young when being young was very Heaven,
And out on the veranda, baby me.
All of this stopped in 1947.

[Ann Drysdale]

Psst. "solar" topee, John. (Rather moving, this. There are echoes here of my own family, too.)

[Jerome Betts]

Pssst, Ann, sola is a pithy-stemmed East Indian swamp plant, so as they were also called 'pith helmets' I imagine the Hindi sola topi simply meant 'pith hat' .Topee seems to be an Anglo-Indianism.

I've always wondered whether there shouldn't have been a scene in Carry On Up The Khyber in which an erring soldier is marched up to be reprimanded by an officer and the sergeant barks at him, Left , right, left right! Halt! Pith off!

[Ann Drysdale]

Ah, yes, Jerome. My Grandfather, a cavalryman, always referred to his "pith helmet". My source for the "solar" was actually The Master (Noel Coward, that is) and I bow to your superior knowledge/research.

[Roger Slater]

THE BUILDERS

Throughout my life I've often thrilled,
And will until my heart is stilled,
To watch the building builders build.

I watch the building builders, skilled,
As nails get hammered, screws get drilled,
As every crack and gap gets filled,

As not a drop of paint gets spilled,
As every pane gets window-silled,
As entropy itself gets killed,
As hands create what dreams have willed,
And thrill to watch the builders build.

[Charlie Southerland]

The Builders

One day when we were young and tired of fishing,
we cut some cane poles down along the creek
and lashed them to two saplings with some string
at angle there to shed the rain and seek

the sun in morning from the east back from the bank.
We laid the cross-poles thick across the top
and back and forth the verticals each flank.
We crawled inside and downed a soda pop

and went to sleep exhausted from the toil.
When we awoke we covered it with leaves
and ivy vines and dug a bed in soil
there neath the roof and tidied up the eaves.

We slept there many nights before a fire
and cooked the things we'd caught and shot for food.
When we grew up and left the farm, the buyer
bulldozed the hut. He was a city dude.

[Erik Olson]

The Builders

I would break records first, then more than match ‘em;
Employee of the year, no force could stall
Me till those builders moved next door: like bedlam,
Jumping-jacks clacking, clacking, drill a wall.
No sooner do I start to punch in stats
Kaboom—I hear some massive structure cave in.
My river view shows aerial hardhats,
Not azure sky. Hydraulic giants raven
Huge bricks to ruin rooms. I mind the mail
In vain, as builder's voices bluster: Turn,
Turn it up Bob! My focus starts to fail;
A forklift monster beeps. I press return
Key and sneer: Brutes! They’ll ruin everything!
My boss says: Chill. They're building our new wing.

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