Speccie: New Year Letter
 

Bill was the biggest humbugger and won the fiver. Bazza was back on form with a splendid atrabilious effort. I won again - am I on a roll, or is it too early to say? And Chris O'Carroll just missed out. Bad luck Chris. Now for the New Year.

After all that bah-humbuggery, how about an acrostic poem of which the first letter of each line spells HAPPY NEW YEAR. Please email entries, where possible, to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 5 January.

This is a tough one. I hope to do better before the deadline, but for now this is all I could come up with:


HAPPY NEW YEAR

How can it be?
Another year gone?
Plainly somebody is
Putting me on!

Yesterday, wasn't
Next Saturday June?
Ending the year now
Would be way too soon!

Yet if we must end it,
End it with grace:
At midnight exactly,
Rejoice, kiss, embrace.

i dunno about this
 

Hope is the thing with feathers, Emily wrote,
And I would add, to amplify the quote,
Perhaps Hope flies, but does Hope ever think?
Plans that are launched on Hope are prone to sink.
Your local Pangloss, blissfully insane,
Numbers his blessings with an addled brain,
Expecting each routine New Year to bring
World peace by magic. What a dingaling.
Yet leave out Hope, and what have you got left
Except a lonely ego – chill, bereft?
A tribute, therefore, to Pandora's box:
Reason may shape our judgement, but Hope rocks.




Yes, this is bloody difficult - oh well . . .
 

Have you ever had that feeling
As you rise to toast the telly,
Perhaps watching Scotsmen reeling,
Possibly Jools’ Hootenanny:
You’re the only one whose plight is

Never planned by party planners
Even when the special night is
Welcoming a whole new annus?

Yes, it’s certainly a bummer
Every year leaves as it came.
And you’re dusting off your glummer
Resolutions all the same.

From Emily:

How happy is the little stone!
Anemone and bell
Propounded but a single term--
Pink, small and punctual.

You cannot put a fire out--
New periods of pain.
Earth would have been too much, I see--
With badinage divine

Yet never, in extremity
Enacted upon Earth--
A precious, mould’ring pleasure ‘tis.
Remain thou as thou art!

I hope that is not TOO GOOD for Lucy. It appears that Tessa of The Oldie (I will put this up tomorrow) does not know who William Dunbar was. But perhaps Lucy is better read!

I laughed however.

Bloody difficult to know what to do now.

I sent my entry to Lucy. Should I post it here? I hope I am not behaving like the uninitiated uninvited guest (who grabs a beer and flicks on the TV), being new around here.

I am partial to that happy stone. :)

No, Alison, you don't have to post it here. Two stalwarts of the comps, Bill Greenwell and Chris O'Carroll, don't post. They just win. And the best of luck.

"they just win" :)


And best to them, both!

(my last line needs to be/has been
altered, at home. If not, I have not
a rope in "bell")


sim-subs, then?

Here's my version, but maybe it's turned out too dismal for Lucy's purposes.

Hardy once heard an aged thrush whose song
At the dreary end of one more uphill year
Persuaded him not everything was wrong.
Pessimist Tom half-raised an almost-cheer,
Yet we today can't follow him in that;
Now turdus philomelos is under threat
(Efficient farming's junked his habitat -
Wild and protective hedgerows, thickly set).
Yesterday's common songbird's now so rare,
Experts predict that he might disappear;
And only a heart of stone, I think, would dare
Request him to proclaim a blithe new year.

Nicely, George. I've got thrushes in my garden. It's skylarks that are difficult to find. But I know where to find them. Happy is he who lives in East Kent. We've even got Buzzards and bitterns, which we didn't have before.

This one went off in the wrong direction, since the rhymes were less cheerful than I am:

Hangover

Having had
a merry Christmas,
people hear my
plaintive cry:
yesterday
no longer matters,
every moment
waves good-bye;
young turns old,
endurance falters;
all God's children
race to die.

bravo!
 

Reads good to me, & I doubt if many in the UK are expecting a good new year, given Tory plans.

Thanks, Bazza. And congratulations. In case you haven't checked, you're in the winner's circle again for new year's resolutions.

Really? Best news I've had all day. Thanks for that, & a merry Xmas & good New Year to you & yours.

I'm too lazy to post it up the way John always does, but heres the link:

http://www.spectator.co.uk/wit-and-w...petition.thtml

I'm piggy backing George's thrush. Different take.

Hardy was too morose at times, but once
an aged thrush did manage to engage
poor Tom's extended yen for penitence,
pardon and a painfully gloomy page.
You'll probably never see a single sky,
not in a life time, with broken lyre strings.
(Enthusiast of nether thoughts Tom brings
worse than mere chamber music gone awry);
yet the small thrush appears to realize
exactly what's at stake and cheers the man
and coaxes out a deep, Dorcet elan
right before the reader's worried eyes.

Nice one, Lance, but don't those three middle lines (4,5,6) each have one syllable too many. Of course yu might say 'probly'. I think I do.

Meanwhile.. I can't see this winning any money but I enjoyed doing it.


New Year Letters

Heron, hippopotamus,
Aardvark, aye-aye, anaconda,
Pterodactyl, platypus,
Penguin, python, potto, panda,

Yaffle, yellowhammer, yak
Nightjar, narwhal, natterjack,
Earwig, eagle, emu, eel,
Willow-warbler, whippoorwill,

Yeti… that’s enough of that shit:
Elephants are going batshit,
Alligators, off their trolleys,
Raving at the New Year jollies.

nice jest, Roger
 

That comp was 2008.

John – I enjoyed your nonsense piece too. Was it the Shepherd Neame or are you on acid these days?

Xmas greetings to all.

bazza

John,

Thanks, John. I am swallowing a lot of air there, aren't I? BTW is Lucy hostile to substitutions?

Great fun
Lance

My niece's boyfriend, an excellent man, brought round a bottle of vintage port. We hit the port and I wrote the verse. He was going to play football for Newcastle, but then he went to uni instead. More port. We discuss cricket in depth. He envies me because I saw the great Viv in the flesh scoring a pile of runs at Folkestone. More port.

Lance, I don't think Lucy cares about substitutions. I don't know if she knows the expression 'batshit' though.

Will Lucy take two entries or do I have to choose?

Crosby, Rosetti, to Poe (triple play)

Happy chimes mean happy times!
After Bleak Midwinter--bells,
pealing out recession Hells.
Profits sprout like lousy rhymes.
You will hear no winds make moan.
Now the coffers and the banks
effortlessly show you thanks,
while they scribble you a loan.
You'll hear coppers clinking loud
every time you check your stocks
and you'll shout: Obama rocks!
roistering with his cozy crowd.

Lance, Lucy will take two entries. What I do (and others too perhaps) is to put one of them in under a pseudonym, but of course make it clear who the chap REALLY is, so that when the time comes to collect your winnings, then the cheque is made out to the right guy and sent to the right address. Then you have the fun of choosing a new name for yourself. Fer-de-Lance. Lancelot Pratt. Everybody should have a ghostly poet, as it were. I have tow. What are they? Ah, that would be telling. I once won a crossword prize under the name of Emmeline de Courcy.

Bazza won £5000 under a pseudonym.

John,

Thanks for the supernatural counsel. I like Fer-de-Lance but I worry somebody might mistake me for some critter's skin. I'll ponder.

Pity you can't put Cameron in your penultimate line, Lance, but it doesn't scan.
On pseudonyms: Sir Lance-a-bit? OK, pehaps not :rolleyes:

So, is the idea to be acerbic? Is humour the thing?
What is the request? if there is one, implicit or not. (For those who haven't grasped it quite yet, like the I in yeti)



Yeti… that’s enough of that shit:
Elephants are going batshit,
Alligators, off their trolleys,
Raving at the New Year jollies.


mm. (as in nodding yes.) I think this is pretty much top drawer. Plus or minus the gloves.

I think humour is pretty well always the thing in these competitions. I think it ought to be the thing more often in any poetry than it is. SOME PEOPLE don't think that Larkin's 'They fuck you up, your mum and dad ' is a funny poem. But it is, you know. It is.

Sorry, Cally.
 

How times have changed! The past is dead!
Almighty Oz still lacks the urn!
Poor baggy greens, your faces red,
Prepare to listen, look and learn!

YouTube will ceaselessly replay
No-balls, like one which saved our Matt,
Enjoyed by Poms that palmy day
When Ponting had his little spat.

Your Siddle’s not yet Warne or Lee –
England deserved their sprinkler dance
All pundits everywhere agree.
Regain the Ashes soon? No chance!

Query
 

John, or anybody, what is the number (and title if not New Year Letter) of the acrostic competition? Seems to have been omitted in John's original post.

The number is 2680 and the title New Year Letters. And if Lucy doesn't give you a prize she will show herself up as a Rooney-loving LOSER!

douro water
 

That port really got your comic muse going, John. I once won a bottle of it from Captain Midnight (Charles Nevin) in the IoS, for pointing out that people generally use the Shakes quote 'more honour'd in the breach than the observance' ignorantly, thinking it means 'more breached than observed'. It doesn't.

So there.

Many thanks, John. Can't wait for Sydney!

Oops! I didn't mean to be messing with you. I just googled up the results and didn't happen to notice the year. I'm glad you won anyway so I wasn't setting you up for a disappointment.

No worries. Lucy called the entries 'lacklustre' & mine was rather insipid, but then it turned out to be a less interesting comp than it seemed.

Happy New Year.


bazza

Post numbering
 

Something seems to have gone wrong with the post numbering on this thread? That is to say, you make a new post but the number on the right doesn't change so progress towards a new star is blocked?

Ignore previous post! Must have been half asleep.

Jerome, you could have my stars, if I could transfer them to you.

Have you done your Christmas shopping for ’11?
Already? Don’t be daft, it’s Hogmanay.
PLAN AHEAD like me, my friend; I have all my
Presents gift-wrapped, tagged and stored away.
You mean to say you’ve got yourself a year ahead?
No wonder you look smug! I found it so
Easy and I never even left the house.
What? You bought the gifts online, then? No.
You haven’t ‘got’ it, have you? I recycled them,
Each naff, unwanted present that I got,
And swapped the lot around; I dished them out again –
Remembering, of course, WHO gave me WHAT.

these stars...
 

what do they actually signify?

You get one whenever you do a good job. Apparently, you've only done a good job once, while I have done a good job twice.