The Oldie Comp no 147 'New Shoes' by 10th Feb
 

Here's the next competition. I don't know who the 'Glynn' was in Glynnese here, and couldn't find out from a quick Google search. I'm sure someone will enlighten me. I might be one of those who can't get enough of trying on new footwear (Ah, but 'trying on' isn't the same as buying lots of shoes, with the fervour of Imelda Marcos, is it?)

Jayne

COMPETITION No 147
by Tessa Castro

An ‘old shoe’ was the Glynnese term for a friend with whom one is comfortable. But some people I know can’t get enough of trying on new footwear. A poem, please, then, called ‘New Shoes’. Maximum 16 lines.

Entries to ‘Competition 147’ by post
(The Oldie, 65 Newman Street, London W1T
3EG), fax (020 7436 8804), or email
(comps@theoldie.co.uk) by 10th February.
Don’t forget to include your postal address.

Try this, Jayne
 

Brilliant. Thanks, Bazza. I knew someone would quickly come to the rescue! I shall enjoy reading that.

(I'd failed to do the bleedin' obvious, as your namesake would have said, and Google simply 'Glynnese'.)

Jayne, you have missed that Yorkshire Tea is no longer on offer, alas, but only a Chambers Biographical Dictionary. Not bad of course, but I just enjoyed my last cup of Yorkshire.

Damn, you're right, John. I forgot to mention that. And I SO wanted one of those tea-sets. Boohoo.

But now I want a Chambers Biographical Dictionary! (You can't say 'only'.) I'm crazy about dictionaries.

Here's my stab at it.


New Shoes

Old friends are dead. Nothing can fill their spaces.
What are they like? Like missing teeth perhaps?
We grin into the mirror, taste the gaps.
So is it with dead friends. We see the faces.
We see them with our eyes tight shut, the places
Where once we got to know them, all the maps
We populate with steady, sturdy chaps,
And girls so beautiful, their airs and graces.

Old friends, old shoes. It's time for us to part.
If we should meet again as more and more
I think, or rather know, that we shall not,
If we should meet we can unlock the door,
Remembering what now is best forgot.
But now, new shoes, new friends, a change of heart.

Have you missed a bit off the end, John, or should there be a full stop - only it ends with a comma,

No, there's no more, Jayne The comma is a mistake. Thank you for spotting it.

Ouch - I cut myself on that turn, John. Very nicely done.

Frank

A sly touch of Auden at the finish, John. Steal from the best, I say.

He wanted new styles of architecture. Except that, as he confessed later, he didn't. New shoes is less problematic. Actually, though I knew I had pinched the phrase, I had forgotten it was from Wystan. As you say, Bazza, steal only the best. I'm of to shoplift a fifteen-year-old malt from Waitrose.

Shamelessly trading on your passing similarity to Anthony Worrall Thompson?

He did cheese and other people's wives. I don't do either. And, hell, I' m MUCH better looking than the culinary dwarf.

Of course you are - but an upturned collar and a quick scuttle past the cctv would convince all but the fellow's immediate family. I'm only trying to be helpful...

You are always helpful, Ann.

...It's time for us to part.
If we should meet again as more and more
I think, or rather know, that we shall not,


To die for, John!

And I mean that in the way of praise.

Hi, I’m Vi, this is Guy and that’s George and Lorraine,
We've some words of advice you might heed to your gain;
We're the Fissures of Soles, and we think you could do
With some polishing up and become our New Shoe.

We would so like to help you get up on your toes,
Lose that crud at your heels and those moth-eaten hose.
If New Shoes hold their tongues and sport showier laces,
They'll soon find they're taken to all the right places.

And New Shoes, once they're burnished and thoroughly shined,
May discover they're paired off with something refined.
A New Shoe who can take some hard use and bad weather,
Mind its uppers, not squeak, why, that's our kind of leather.

But a shoe that won't fit or be comfortably broken
Or coordinate well with the better bespoken,
That New Shoe will soon find that it's out of our set—
And that we haven't trod on it properly yet.

(A piece of autobiog. from circa 1949. Sadly, the highly radioactive machines referred to were banned years ago -- even before the days of Health and Safety! But they may explain why a friend of mine claims to have webbed feet and hair between his toes.)

New Shoes

New shoes for school, at least four pairs a year
of stout black lace-ups; and extremely dear
at seventeen-and-six my mother thought
for feet which grew much faster than feet ought.
Shoes bought so large they scarcely touched most places
no matter quite how hard she yanked the laces
and packed each gap uncomfortably full
with insoles, thicker socks and cotton wool.

At last, to prove my point, we’d peer at those
small, wriggling skeletons inside my toes,
cavorting with at least an inch to spare
in shoes near large enough for two to share,
beneath us on the green, fluorescent screen
of Harrod’s X-ray “Check-Your-Fit” machine --
which left my mother with the false but firm
belief the shoes would last me one whole Term.

Thank you, Martin. Only in occasional four o'clock in the morning moments had I recalled until now those apparently helpful devices, not just in Harrod's but deep in the sticks, so casually accepted at the time but probably leaking untold mischief all over the shop. There must be a medical thesis there for somebody.

My mum used to buy all my school shoes and sandals from a posh shop called 'Lotus' (were they a chain?) and I always delighted in standing on the 'X-ray machine' to see how much room there was, to grow into.

Heck! It's a miracle I'm still here! Mind you, I do glow in the dark... ;)

And you probably had a watch that glowed in the dark and asbestos underpants. Children were TOUGH in them days.

Please take away those trendy trainers,
That loathsome pair of pocket-drainers!
I’m still a fan of breathing leather,
The best for any wind or weather.

I hate the feel of foam-lined rubber
Like sinking toes in boiling blubber
As, man in street or John Paul Getty,
They make your feet all hot and sweaty

Your soles are left as soft as jelly
And also, to be blunt, quite smelly,
Which leads to toxic ‘trainer-odour’
Unmaskable by spray or soda.

Despite the fashionistas’ booing,
I spit on such new-fangled shoeing.
I‘d rather stroll my village starkers
Than go without my good old Barkers!


(Barkers of Earls Barton, as Jayne will know. The N.)

Barker's is but 5.7 miles away, Jerome!