The Oldie 'The Shop That Isn't There' comp by 20th Sept
 

Now, I'll bet my entire collection of shoes and handbags that no-one's got one already written, and tucked away somewhere, for this comp! ;)

Jayne

COMPETITION No 168
by Tessa Castro

They knocked down one side of a street near my house earlier this year and already I’m having trouble remembering the shops that used to be there. So please write a poem called ‘The Shop That Isn’t There’. Maximum 16 lines.

Entries to ‘Competition No 168’ by post (The Oldie, 65 Newman Street, London W1T 3EG), email (comps@theoldie.co.uk) or fax (020 7436 8804) by 20 September 2013. Don’t forget to include your postal address.

I don't want your shoes and handbags. However...

The Shop That Isn't There

The shop that isn't there isn't there.
It's an evanescence north of Soho Square.
They are selling stuffed raccoons, clockwork plimsolls, macaroons
And a wig that once was worn by Robespierre.

The shop that isn't there isn't there.
It's a vacant lot behind the thoroughfare.
They are selling clarinets, armadillos, marmosets
And ceramic busts of Walter de la Mare.

The shop that isn't there isn't there.
It's an elemental trembling in the air.
They are selling sugar soap, dispensations from the pope
And the mummy of a multibillionaire.

The shop that isn't there isn't there
But you won't get better prices anywhere.
They are selling wicked arts, broken dreams of sundered hearts
And a pungent distillation of despair.

Jayne, everybody who did the Speccie bookshop comp. has the bones of one of these. All who do not win, recycle!

Well actually, truth be told, I'm hot off the blocks because I get my copy of The Oldie three days before Jayne gets hers. It's who you know, see.

What was the Speccie bookshop comp, Ann. Who won it?

The Shop That Isn’t There

The shop that isn’t there could be
a store of possibility
where I might purchase flowing hair,
the perfect petit derrière,
a straighter nose, unwrinkled skin,
long life to foil my next of kin,
a broader bust and thinner waist,
revival of my sense of taste,
my libido, my memory,
my pleasure in tomfoolery.
And, while I’m browsing, I might find
a pill to modify my mind
so it could let me travel where
there is a shop that isn’t there.


Jayne - on sending the poem in by email, I got this reply:

I am out of the office until Tuesday 27th September. I will respond to your email when I'm back.

Best wishes,
Hannah

Since the contest ends on the 20th, I'm wondering if they will receive the poem. Is there another email or do you suggest sending by Fax instead?

Heavens. Even for The Oldie that's a bit much. I suggest she meant to say 27th August which is the Tuesday after the Bank Holiday. Or you could try posting it. Though I have heard the Italian postal service is a bit dodgy. Perhaps that is just a rumour.

I'm suggesting a wee typo-ette.

We do have a bank holiday here, which extends our weekend till Tuesday, 27th AUGUST.

Since the 27th of September is a Friday, I think you should just wait till Wednesday and bung it in with ages to spare.

The Oldie always have a good long submission period, after all.

Right, Whitworth - this is war.

This is now the third time in the last few days that a post of yours has changed with no evidence of its having been edited, making my post, that was subsequent to the original, look stupid.

I know it's no big deal in the great scheme of things, but you could at least own up to doing it. I was actually on the verge of tears, wondering whether it's me that's going mad - but you did change it, didn't you?

Didn't you?

John, please own up. Is it moderator privilege that lets you fiddle retrospectively with things on the QT?

No, it isn't really war; I love you too much for that, dammit - but please...

Have pity on an old friend.

Thanks John and Ann for checking the calendar for me!!! (Sometimes we need the shop that isn't there for buying a little common sense, too)! I'll wait to hear until next week before resubmitting.
Using the mail is really not an option in Italy during the August holiday season (like at Christmas time), with tons of postcards going back and forth and postal workers on vacation. Otherwise the mails work fairly well here.

...or maybe that's just a rumor...:D

What was your post, Ann? I didn't see it. I confess, I did change it, the poem that is. Nothing you wrote could ever be stupid. If you were referring to something I have already changed then we are on the same wavelength.

Or was it the advice to Lois?

Tell all.

Annie,

We mods have a "Cloak of Invisibility!" Didn't you know?
Not only can we edit our own posts imperceptibly, we can pop in to others' posts and tweak/edit/delete as we see fit.

You won't see us when you look at "Who's on line" either, even if we are online!

Oh, the power...!!! ;)

Jayne

Yes, I knew that, Jayne, but it does make one feel a little sick when one responds to a post that's later changed with no evidence of its having been done. It happened twice on the Bookish thread, with one post disappearing altogether, and once on this one.

This is why I introduced the word "zugzwang". It's a situation in chess where one is forced to make a move in a situation where to do so weakens one's position and it seems to me the perfect counter to the customary, polite "nevermind". Which in this case we have not got.

I know I am sounding like a trendy-lefty pseudo-intellectual, envious of privilege, and I'm not for a moment suggesting any malevolent sub-agenda, just saying that retrospective tweaking without acknowledgement is a tad unfair in a forum which is founded on repartee.

That doesn’t mean that I am not now heartily wishing I’d not raised the matter.

And John, dear heart – that bookshop comp is current. At any moment you will be announcing its winners. I was suggesting that its losers could enter this one with the same poems. Thus, I hoped, claiming all those shoes and handbags, which I intended to sell on eBay. Apart, that is, from the pink Crocs…

But, but... they're not Crocs like the usual clog-gy ones, which are truly awful. Mine are sandals.
My kids will be able to retire on the proceeds from my shoes and handbags when I turn up my toes! :D

So it is. I hd quite forgotten. And I entered the bloody thing. Or at least I hope I did. And you have a winner IMHO.

I doubt it. I didn't enter!

Holy moly, Ann, you mean you never submitted 'Between Dryden & Duffy'? That's surely being a fool to yourself. It looked like a strong contender to me.

That would certainly make it difficult.

But, Bazza - it's the title poem of a published collection. I don't think it would have been cricket to submit it; I'd've been unmasked and vilified. They would have ridiculed my truly awful shoes.

Cricket? Only John cares about that. For the rest of us, it's just another insect to be squashed under shoes, whether truly awful or pink crocs.

Quite right, Brian, & I have a 32-year-old pair of Red Wing Pecos boots that do a thoroughly Nietzschean job on moral qualms.

A grandson clock, a football bat,
A doll with pubic hair.
These things are all retailing at
The Shop That Isn’t There.

It sells a brand of cottage cheese
That men go mental for
As well as gangsta rap CDs
Your granny would adore.

It also stocks unusual books
On trolleys at the back.
Were you aware that Bruno Brookes
Translated Pasternak?

(Don’t bother writing up a list
For this imagined store-
It doesn’t actually exist,
So caveat emptor.)

There is nothing in the rules about published poems. Nor about putting in poems that have already won competitions elsewhere. Remember. If it can earn money once then it can earn money twice. And I know at least one (Aussie) winner here who cares deeply about cricket.

Madly. Deeply.

I fired up my MGB
(Its top was down, the weather fair),
To buy an analog TV
From the shop no longer there.

I knew I’d have to journey far
(My mission somewhat like a dare),
To also get a VCR
From the shop no longer there.

And when I found it, I would traipse
Its aisles with a contented air,
And load my cart with movie tapes
From the shop no longer there.

As for these modern - day CD’s;
The tunes I love cannot compare
To 45’s and 33’s
From the shop no longer there.

There used to be a butcher’s shop, there used to be a baker’s,
There used to be a florist’s right beside the undertaker’s.
The patient shoppers chatted as they queued to fill their baskets,
But no one cared to linger near the mortuary caskets.

There used to be a grocery that sold delicious gammon;
A fishmonger’s with stands of herring, halibut and salmon;
A sweetshop where the little kids would splurge their pocket-money,
And parents bought them once a year a chocolate Easter bunny;

A laundry where the shirts were washed and pressed and folded neatly;
A barber’s shop that also sold “weekenders” most discreetly;
A dairy shop with cream and new-laid eggs and massive cheeses;
A joke-shop selling plastic turds and other jolly wheezes.

Now, every shop is boarded up where customers once flowed;
They’ve all been snaffled by the supermarket down the road.
Only the undertaker’s left to gain his daily bread -
He makes a decent living, though his customers are dead.

Nice one, Brian.

Sounds like my high street. The serious underlying truth of it makes this one a bit special.

Variation on a theme for Ann.

Write a poem on 'The post that isn't there'...

A substantial rewrite. I can't do poignancy so I've gone for crass stupidity.


A grandson clock, a football bat,
A doll with pubic hair:
They stock unusual objects at
The Shop That Isn’t There.

A taxidermy fish that drowned,
The Dawkins Book of Prayer:
You’ll see them if you browse around
The Shop That Isn’t There.

A realistic gents’ toupee,
A kids’ electric chair:
You name it and they’ve got it chez
The Shop That Isn’t There.

If you want tools by Piltdown Man
Or reggae by Voltaire,
Don’t forage any further than
The Shop That Isn’t There.

I think that's great. Much better. But then I would. I wonder if there is a doll with pubic hair. Poor Ken, Barbie's boyfriend, doesn't have pubic anything.

Thanks John!

Yes, John, there is. There are many. But they are all considerably bigger than Barbie and most of them require a foot-pump.

(This post is a test to gain material for my response to Peter's challenge.)

At the risk of sounding like I know too much about it, Ann, that is not the case these days. The 'downstairs Kojak' look is all the rage, both with women (at least those under 30 or so) and their vinyl simulacra.

Or so I'm told.

I think I may have to rewrite that line in my poem, though. That ambiguity hadn't occurred to me.

Not THAT kind of doll, Ann. The very idea.

Sorry, but that was the first thing that crossed my mind, along with the fact that the shops that sell them are often called "Private Shops" and have blacked-out windows. Shops that are, from the point of view of polite society "not there".

The shop with blacked-out windows is the place where we all go,
The dirty-mackintosh brigade, in search of stimulation;
We’ll pore for hours over magazines, and yet, you know,
It’s funny how we shy away from actual copulation.

I think Rob's and Brian's are both great, and "The downstairs Kojak look" had me in stitches!! (Who says it's for under-30's? Oops, better stop there...;) )

Good one, Rob, a great improvement on the first version. I particularly like "The Dawkins Book of Prayer" and "reggae by Voltaire".

John, I've only just caught up on most of this thread, including your piece, which is lovely - "...a pungent distillation of despair". I think Jayne should send you at least some of her handbags and shoes.

Young women wear lollipops in their knickers? Weird.

Yes, they do. They carry the remote controls in their handbags. Just trust me and don't ask.

Rob,

I love Dawkin's Book of Prayer in the revision, but deeply mourn the loss of Bruno Brookes' translation of Pasternak.

best,

Matt