The Oldie Comp No 146 'Am I Alone in Thinking?' by 13 January
 

Here's the next competition to keep you busy over Christmas and New Year, when you've had enough of eating, drinking and watching TV!

Jayne


The Oldie Competition No 146

From Tessa Castro:

The Daily Telegraph published a collection of letters not selected for publication in the paper, under the title: Am I Alone in Thinking?
A letter to the editor in verse with that title, please. Maximum 16 lines.

Entries to ‘Competition 146’ by post (The Oldie, 65 Newman Street, London W1T 3EG), fax (020 7436 8804) or email (comps@theoldie.co.uk) by 13 January.
Don’t forget to include your postal address.

Am I Alone in Thinking

Am I alone in thinking
Our Nation is a stinking
Morass of sex and drinking?
Vile convicts, fetters clinking,
Child rapists, slyly slinking,
Then gone, as fast as blinking,
Immoral danseuses prinking
In musquash or in mink, in
Their limousines of pink, in
Their strings of jewels winking,
Dear God, we're sinking, sinking,
Perhaps our minds are shrinking,
So many miles of ink, in
Green Waterman's or Quink, in
So many letters linking.

Am I alone in thinking?

If ever one called for a monorhyme, this is it. Good one, John.

Tnak you, Frank. I don't think there are many more available rhymes (he said smugly).

I could name some, but that would be finking.

Thre is also yinking, but I haven't yet decided what it means. Car engines used to do something called pinking, but I've no idea wat it was except that BP had the answer. Of course I've got 'pink in' anyway. Gin king?

Spin king (as in A. Campbell)?

Ann, of course, you meant 'spinking' i.e. what spinks (chaffinches) do.

Or, of course, 'dinking' or 'jinking' which is what footballers do, I believe.

What about when you make something bendy that was formerly straight? Isn't that 'kinking'?

Not to mention 'rinking', an early 20th century fad as indulged in by Agatha Christie.

I used jinking in a poem and lots of people said I made it up. It's a Scots word, I believe, for dodging and weaving...

Who is to say there aren't partsof the world where they go 'skinking', i.e. looking for skinks?

cue piano plinking.

Exactly. And why has no-one mentioned 'zincing', the process of lining something or covering something with zinc?

Equally, I can't believe you're not all drinking champagne and 'clinking' your glasses!

Although we're all on the same wavelength here and 'syncing'.

(Oh, pants, John had 'clinking' - forget that one.)

Now I'm thinking, is everyone else but John shrinking from this blinking comp?

I'll give you jinking, Ann. In my youth I went to Murrayfield where a little man called Dickie Jeeps was well known for his jinking. He was English though, the swine.

planking, plinking. plonking, plunking - plenking anybody. Plenking is a posh person's planking perhaps?

What, if anything, is shanking?

I don't think one zincs - surely one galvanises?

That zinking feeling
 

Have at you, Ann. If one possesses Cassell's New French-English Dictionary (1968) one discovers that zincage n.m. is 'Covering with zinc; zinking, zinc-plating.' Ze French know about zeze things, I tell you.

To show there are no hard feelings, I will now furnish you with that rhyme for gorilla you always wanted, viz zorilla, 'a flesh-eating African mammal, Ictonyx striatus, of the skunk and the weasel family'.

Zinc you, and good morning.

Touchée - though it looks remarkably like a ferret to me...

Weasels stoats, polecats, ferrets . . . Zorilla apparently comes from Spanish zorro, fox, so 'little fox', just to confuse things.


Am I alone in thinking
Of heroes dead and gone
Like batsman Herbert Hinking
Who coolly kept his lid on
And specialised in dinking
The ball past off or mid on?

Or am I thinking of Federer and co doing little drop shots that just skim the net?

I think this one will fail to trouble the scorer.

I think it has a very good chance if you can get another verse out of it.

They don't make something heroes
Like those of long ago.
Just something something zeros
Like Stevie soandso....

Thanks, John. I'll have to think or tink about that, as it was just to convince myself that 'dinking' exists, at least in sports commentators' jargon.

Meanwhile a seasonal stab at the challenge, avoiding your rhymes.

Dear Editor, am I alone
In thinking Christmas overblown,
A festival now so extended
Its power to charm has plainly ended?

The ads kick in when leaves are green
Then flash for months from every screen,
Gross, OTT, faux-empathetic,
To make the day itself bathetic.

What brainpower spent on snaring tots
Or grandmas, gluttons, geeks and sots!
Far better swinish influenza
Than tills’ long seasonal cadenza !

So out with salesmen’s bogus Yule,
This winter fraud, this business-tool!
Oh, come back Cromwell, good old Ollie,
And ban all turkeys, mince and holly!

Nice one, feller

Am I alone in thinking that planet earth is shrinking?
As people grow yet taller, the planet seems much smaller.
We grow heavier and fatter, making space an urgent matter.
Each quarter-second yields a birth; heaps of newborns bloat the earth.
The mega-cities strain and groan, requiring more than can be grown.
As our numbers grow apace, where shall we find saving grace?
In a sea Nautilus encased or in a colony in space?
I honk and curse in yet another queue. I pledge my troth anew--
I make a solemn, binding oath to “Zero Population Growth.”
Although sorry to let go my five young children, and my libido,
The world’s profligacy I shall atone, and in thinking this, am quite alone.

I think this one's along the right lines.
They expect/require Colonel Blimp, I believe.

Khaki suit an ting
 

Carribean binge skaters goin out tip rinkin(g)
Thank you
You heard it here first

Am I alone in thinking
That the world has gone to pot?
The air we breathe is stinking
And the oceans are too hot?

The polar icecap's shrinking
And the ozone layer's shot?
The water that we're drinking
Carries chemicals and rot?

Oh people, stop your winking!
What I'm asking's not a lot.
Am I alone in thinking
That this world is all we've got?

David, you're right, I'm sure. about what is expected. But the problem is it's almost impossible to be so Blimpish that Speccie readers realise you are joking. Many of them think that David Cameron is a dangerous leftie, a Che Guavera in a suit. Not US of course. Have I spelt that beardy freak right? You see how catching it is.

Who are more conservative, Speccies or Oldies?

Galvanizing discussion! I offer you Peking, Nanking, and in the name of the U.S., Burger King. The last doesn't rhyme exactly, but it does have possibilities.

And "skanking": dancing in a rhythmic, loose-limbed manner. That should shake things up.

Am I alone in thinking
Of banning Burger King?
Brits are getting fatter,
A health-related matter.
McDonald’s Bigger Mac
Can cause a heart attack.
Mounds of fish and chips
Settle on the hips.
The humble baked bean
Is the enemy of lean.
White buttered toast,
A very English Roast,
Jam roly poly!
The stones! Holy moly!
Go Vegan, I am thinking,
For thin is always king.

Am I alone in thinking
That g.s.m.s are blinking,
At every hour ringing,
Emitting beeps or pinging?
An hourly sms,
You wouldn’t dream of less.
Grammar fails in texting,
Or, when dating, “sexting.”
Oh, for the days of peaceful trains
And waiting rooms without refrains,
No declamations decibels loud,
No satellites or wireless cloud.
No “u”s and “lol”s and “smiley faces,”
No wireless trail to track our traces.
What I am thinking, after all…
“Excuse me! Have to take this call.”

Speccies are conservative. Oldies are old.

Are others apprehending
Codes within the news?
Am I alone contending
That cats require shoes?

Where are the votes for lending
Handguns to the old?
Why are none commending
The benefits of mould?

Sir, when are we suspending
Changing of the times?
Is no one recommending
The poor be trained as mimes?

I’m not alone; perusing
Letters and Op-Eds,
I see a lot of musing
By others off their meds.

Frank

Request of Brits: Is the term "Op-Ed" used and/or understood over there?

hope this helps
 

Yes, I think so, at least among the fairly sophisticated people who are likely to read the comps, though the more usual term over here is 'comment' as in 'facts are sacred, comment is free'.

Am I alone in thinking
That bananas are illusions,
That kumquats are fictitious
And that kiwis are delusions?
There's no such thing as tangerines?
The biggest hoax is melons?
That pears are just the latest fraud
Of lying grocer felons?
I grant you apples do exist,
Thank goodness, and are valid,
But sadly apples by themselves
Produce a dull fruit salad.

In U.S. slang, a shank is a prisoner's homemade knife -- a sharpened toothbrush handle or some such -- and shanking is stabbing someone with same.

Think I've heard 'he shanked it' here in football commentaries meaning a mis-kick.

I had forgotten that shank is a term for a mishit in golf. I think it is to be found in the works of P G Wodehouse, that great and good man.