Speccie Lost by 19th June
 

Ah, this is more like it. Give us some more of the old.

No. 2803: Lost

You are invited to supply a nostalgic poem about a product that is no longer available (16 lines maximum). Please email entries, wherever possible, to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 19 June.

And of course here is a golden oldie I have had here before. If at first, don't you know.

Lost

This was a very small backward-pointing periscope marketed in the 1950s.

Throw out my fangs, my stick-on boils,
My stink bombs, my potato-gun,
My fornicator’s unguent oils,
My exploding rat (just see him run!),
My itching powder by the ton,
My pubic wig, my black face soap,
My cornucopias of fun …
Just bring my old Seebakrascope.

Desires as sweet as chocolate mice,
Desires that nothing else can reach,
Need just this submarine device;
It offers more than books can teach:
Young girls undressing on the beach,
Breasts that would tempt the very Pope,
And bottoms downy as a peach …
Yes, bring my old Seebakrascope.

Ah, what a compendious bottom drawer you must have, John. I don't know if you were ever a Boy Scout, but you appear to have adopted their motto: "Be prepared!"

I was a boy scout, Brian, but I didn't like it much. I much preferred being wolf cub with a green jersey covered in badges. In was a senior sixer and our cub pack sat on a tiger skin donated by my father.

'Fornicator's unguent oils', John? What manner of child had those?

Probably it was all the the sitting on the tiger-skin that started it. (Aphrodisiac body parts, 'tis said...)

No, Adrian, these were just the ads. Actually I rather think I made up the unguent oils. What could they have been? Patchouli is a scent which was supposed to make eastern men irresistible to women What's patchouli, then.

Butter seemed to do it for Marlon Brando.

Time has become a shoddy imitation;
They try to make us think it’s just the same,
A product built to last for the duration,
But I’ve caught on; I know their little game.

No doubt for reasons of expedience,
They make the stuff much thinner, shorter, meaner;
They’re skimping on the old ingredients,
And time, once plentiful, is growing leaner.

As days and weeks and months and years all dwindle,
And birthdays now come once or twice a quarter,
We’ve been the victims of a monstrous swindle:
The time we’ve bought is running out like water.

The wretched stuff is going ever faster,
Accelerating even as I speak.
We’re heading straight for temporal disaster,
And Christmas will be every bloody week.

Brilliant stuff , Brian. Hope it fits the rubric.

I hope so too, Jerome. But with a competition title like 'Lost', what could be more appropriate than temps perdu?

Brian, I love your poem but respectfully suggest it does not fit the rubric, time not being a product. I'm sure it will be, when the wretched Tories win the next election, but not yet.

Well, you never can tell with rubrics, can you? Do you really think the Tories will win the next election, Adrian? Surely it's Labour's turn to cock it up.

You may be right, Adrian, although Lucy (unlike the NS) is usually good at evaluating the results with a view more to the spirit than the letter. And it could be said that the concept of time is a 'product' of our own consciousness.

Time will tell, if there's any of it left by then.

The Silver Dollar
 

(Since 1923, the American “dollar bill” has borne the portrait of George Washington. Originally these were "Silver Certificates"; redeemable on demand in silver dollar coins, and later in silver bullion. In 1963, these Silver Certificates were replaced by "Federal Reserve Notes". All redemption of remaining Silver Certificates in silver ceased on June 24, 1968.)

The President on the dollar
(George Washington, by name);
If he could speak, would holler,
“My dollar ain’t the same!”

The gentlemen and scholars
Who Washington extolled
Believed in silver dollars
Convertible to gold.

But now our dollar’s paper
Propped up by public trust.
Who knows what Wall Street caper
Might turn ’em all to dust?

And when the big-time bankers
Get into fiscal messes;
How quick those feckless wankers
Crank up the printing presses.

I am confident this one fits the rubric though it will mean nothing to those whose memory of the product and whose love of cricket's most famous poem are less intense than mine.
But will Lucy accept the idea of parody? Or is it pastiche? And can someone explain the difference to me in really simple terms? I thought I knew but find knowledge declining with advancing years -- though opinions become more didactic by the day!

It is little I repair to the sweetshops of the modern folk
Though my inclinations there may blow.
It is little I repair to the sweetshops of the modern folk
Since they lack the unwrapped toffee blocks by Sharps which used to show
Just how dentistry for first teeth could reach sweetly painful heights.
Now what I see are user-friendly, neatly packaged flights
Of regimented wrappers holding pre-ordained-sized bites
As my childhood memories flicker to and fro,
To and fro:
O my hammered shards of stickjaw long ago.

Now I peer through sweetshop windows with a sense of sharp dismay
At the lack of dental challenge of the products on display.
And I stand there salivating for a too-long-bygone day
As my childhood memories flicker to and fro,
To and fro:
O my “Sharps The Word For Toffee” long ago.

I think the idea is that a parody pokes fun at what is parodied whereas a pastiche does not. I write pastiches I think. Lucy ought to know the poem whether or not she thinks rightly about cricket. I find too many woman come up short here, as with P G Wodehouse.

Martin, I remember “Sharps The Word For Toffee” . But I have no idea what cricket's most famous poem might be.

O my Hornby and my Barlow long ago! Brian, the Parisian fleshpots have clearly lured you away from the Great Game and stopped Martin's vehicle in its tracks in your case. At Lord's by no less than Francis 'Hound of Heaven' Thompson. The link below will give you the text. Have it by heart by tomorrow morning and in the meantime report to Mr Whitworth for nets if you're to stand any chance of a place in his eleven

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cricket_poetry#At_Lord.27s

Brian, you can be long stop. Martin will open the batting.

Jerome and John,

When I was at school, I was obliged to play both cricket and rugger. (I use the word "play" in its loosest possible sense.) The advantage of the former was that, unlike rugger, it took place in dry weather. The drawback was that it went on much longer.

Perceiving my total ineptitude for the sport, they tried me out at scoring, but abandoned the idea when they realized that I was recording anything between 4 and 9 balls per over.

After that, they put me on the field somewhere that they thought I could do the least harm. I've forgotten the names of the positions, but they were usually rather deep and extremely silly.

My fingertip taps on the glass
And numbers appear iPhone style.
It works very well, but alas,
How I miss my old rotary dial!

I loved how my fingertip fit
In the dent of each well-defined hole
And I never regretted one bit
All the time that the spinning wheel stole

As each number got spun to the top
And returned, though it did take a while.
Oh why did those glory days stop?
How I miss my old rotary dial!

Washday was on Mondays in the 50s; women did
the laundry with some wooden tongs, a boiler and a tub.
I always loved the smell of Mondays when I was a kid,
not knowing how much work it was. I’d watch my mother scrub
Dad’s collars, cuffs; she’d starch the whites, the whole load done by hand.
I loved the mangle best of all, which squeezed out tons of water.
“Please mind your fingers!” Mum would warn. I didn’t understand
that one day roles would be reversed: I’d say that to my daughter
(but not about a mangle). Heavens, they’ve long vanished now.
When I say “Mind your fingers” it’s the car door that I mean;
I can’t imagine many children these days knowing how
that charming old contraption served, instead of a machine!
The family washing took all day to do, and life was hard,
but simple little pleasures compensated, I suppose.
I feel a warm nostalgia for that thing in our back yard
and smile to think: A mangle? What on earth was one of those?

Lovely, Jayne. My Mum used to have a mangle. I'd even forgotten the word.

I think "she’s" in line 5 should be "she’d".

(See? I've been paying attention. People who say that my attention span these days is that of a goldfish should wash their mouths out with soap and wossname.)

Thank you Brian. I've corrected that typo.

My attention span is good too. In fact...

...what was I saying just then?

Drat. I've sent it to Lucy with the typo in it. John, what should I do? Completely re-submit it? Or send her an email? I'm sure she'd realise I meant she'd!!

Jayne, in similar situations, I've just resubmitted the entire poem with a brief note explaining that there was a mistake in the original submission.

Thanks, Chris. I've done that.

Jayne, I think that's lovely. It's serious, which perhaps will prevent it winning the prize. It's a fine poem.
Martin, when you mentioned the most famous cricketing poem I immediately thought of this:
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/vita-lampada/

I like your mangle poem, Jayne.

Lovely mangle, Jayne. Cricket poems. Here's my favourite.

I wish you'd speak to Mary, Nurse,
She's really getting worse and worse.
Just now, when Tommy gave her out
She cried, and then began to pout.
And then she tried to take the ball
Although she cannot bowl at all.
And now she's standing on the pitch,
The miserable little bitch.

Hilaire Belloc

Thank you David, Martin and John.

(David, I've always loved that Newbolt poem. Thanks for reminding me of it.)

My 'mangle' poem, if it fails to win a Speccie place, will at least be one that I can pull out for readings, so it's a useful addition to my repertoire. I reckon that 99% of the people I read to will have used a mangle, or will know what it was!

Jayne, I too love your mangle poem - my now elderly mother is always talking about the 'joys' of bygone washday. And I have just read, in a book by Dr Michael O'Donnell - about a company that commercially produces evocative nostalgic aromas which apparently help stimulate the memories of dementia patients. The washday smell is their top seller.

Interesting--as an aside--how changing technology changes the language. When I was young there was a saying, "I haven't laughed so much since Mother caught her titties in the mangle", but you never hear it nowadays.

Nowadays, you'd have to say "I haven't laughed so much since Mother put her dachshund in the washing machine."

Never let your braces dangle. dingle, dingle, dangle
Poor old sport, he got caught, and dragged right through the mangle
Over the roller then he went, by gum
Flat as the lin-o-le-um
Now you've wiped your feet on his rum-tum-tum
So never let your braces dangle

Sung by Harry Champion in the days of my old Granny

And now, to make yer flesh creep.

Mother's Washing Copper

What's that cooking in the copper?
What's that bubbling in the broth?
Who's that chopping with a chopper
Something cooking in the copper?
Someone's come an awful cropper
Knotted in a bloody cloth,
Steaming, smoking in the copper,
Bobbing, broiling in the broth.

Bloody murder slowly stewing.
Never. Nohow. Mum's the word.
Nothing done and nothing doing,
Nothing in the copper stewing,
Hubble-bubble, trouble brewing,
Whispers scarcely overheard.
Bloody murder slowly stewing.
Deaf and dumb now Mum's the word.

I think that could be Jayne's Squirrel Casserole.

Today's the day for Squirrel Eviction. The roofer chappie, Keith, is going to block the chimney with chicken wire. We should have bought a trap, I suppose, if we're ever to try squirrel stew. (But there's always my husband's air rifle.)

We could do with Tim Murphy being here.

Adrian,
I'm glad you like my mangle poem, and that's very interesting about the dementia treatment. There really is no smell quite like that of a soapy boil wash (no one boils whites any more. Stuff would fall to pieces or shrink beyond recognition.) My mum always boiled cotton sheets, towels, tea towels, handkerchiefs etc, to keep them snowy white.

Ah, nostalgia is a nice feeling! (Sigh)

I was drinking with some buddies – we all work in Social Studies –
Reminiscing about better times we’d seen
When there’d been amazing theories, trenchant essays, urgent queries
Every week in New Society magazine.

Dewy eyed, we listed writers who would week by week excite us –
Eric Hobsbawm, Laurie Taylor, Asa Briggs –
All their intellects were hefty and their leanings, like ours, Lefty
As they socked it to the Londoncentric prigs.

Articles on social housing and how dockers went carousing
Or Ray Gosling on the Rockers and the Mods;
We learned society was riven by those ologies and isms
That would soon become our livings and our gods.

New Society’s abatement, swallowed up by the New Statesman
Robbed us of a much loved strain of thinking.
Now we get maudlin or aggressive when we start waxing progressive
Which is why we only do so when we’re drinking.

When the coconut snout we rejoiced in went out
Of production three decades ago,
Could the PC brigade really claim their crusade
Against smoking had worked? Frankly no.

Oh they highlighted threats in the sweet cigarettes
We enjoyed in the playground all right,
And made serious gripes about liquorice pipes,
Which they sought to abolish outright,

But the craze simply died. Though the do-gooders tried
To take credit we’d just had enough.
Childish appetites jade; kids’ affections were swayed
By the coming of much harder stuff.

Now its marzipan smack, rocks of butterscotch crack
And amphetamine toffees in bags.
I’m not saying a bong made of chocolate is wrong,
But I do find I miss candy fags.

Most amusing, Rob.
(I went for the sweet cigarettes and liquorice pipes too, and they haven't made me a smoker).


Bombay Duck! oh fish, not fowl,
My past repasts adorning!
For you I pine, and long I howl
Since that benighted morning

When EC jobsworths’ rule forbade
Your continued importing
Since ‘in no factory’ you’re made,
But dried, in sun disporting,

As fish-catch of small village trade!
Why penalise the humble? Oh,
Odour, taste, lost! I, dismayed,
Wept for my vanished Bummalo.

Permitted though at last, you’re still
Not sold where once I found you;
I’ll sing your praise and count the days
Till hindrance no more hound you.