The Oldie Counties Competition 190 by 29 May
 

Hallo Jayne. Are you there? My PC is not connecting with my printer so all I can do is type this up.

There have been heated arguments in the press about which county is best. You are invited to write a poem with the title 'The Best County' or 'The Worst County'. Maximum 16 lines. Send your entries by post (The Oldie 65 Newman Street London W1T 3EG or email (comps@theoldie.co.uk) to Competition No 190 by 29th May. Don't forget to include you postal address

Hard Cheese on you furriners I do see. You could try Yorkshire. Like Texas but even more so and they speak funny. Kent, ah there is nowhere on God's earth like Kent!


The Best County

Kent, Kent, glorious Kent!
Your fare from Saint Pancras is money well spent.
A week in the city
Is very tough titty.
It’s ever so pretty in glorious Kent.

Kent, Kent, glorious Kent!
When Saints spoke of Paradise that’s what they meant.
So hurry on over
To Margate or Dover.
You’re living in clover in glorious Kent.

Kent, Kent, glorious Kent!
It won’t cost a packet to buy or to rent.
Though London is blightful
And perfectly frightful,
It’s always delightful in glorious Kent.


Oh, Bazza won the dictionary and Rob Stuart won too. Congratulations to you both!

'It won't cost a packet to buy or to rent', John? Poetic licence indeed.

Very true Adrian. Keeps out the riff-raff though. My daughter's house cost £190,000. You won't get a lot of house in London for that. Agreed you could get a palace in Yorkshire. But you'd have to live in Yorkshire and you don't want to do that, do you?

Among Yorkshiremen? People like Geoffrey Boycott? Brrrr. I was having breakfast in a Canterbury caff and there was the Kent Cricket Captain (a great man who drinks and smokes like the rest of us) plus charming family. And all for the price of an English Breakfast.

Wiltshire huh. Do you live in Stonehenge? Come on Adrian.

That's a good start, John.

In Norfolk folk are vile and base,
They’re foul of heart and foul of face
And make this unappealing place
A living hell.

Their sordid taste for incest shows
In supernumerary toes.
A local with just two of those
Is doing well.

They spend the damp and dreary days
In philistinic, bumpkin ways
Like using books of Shakespeare’s plays
As toilet roll.

And even though these missing links
May like their county’s country stinks,
The out-of-towner gags and thinks
That it’s a hole.

Rob, perhaps you should have a closer look at line 6. As it stands it suggests to me a spiritual element to the nether digits of these folk. Was that what you intended to convey?

Er, no. 'Super-numenary' just means additional. Is it better without the hyphen, do you think?

Forgive me, I was confusing it with supernumerary, a term with which I am more familiar in relation to extra toes, nipples etc. I was adept at removing the latter from goats, with surgical scissors, so it once formed part of my everyday vocabulary, thus blinding me to your alternative.

Oh dear. That is what I meant, I just misspelled it. Thanks Ann! I'm still not seeing any spiritual element, though.

Because a numen is a divine spirit and I thought if they had supernumenary toes, those toes must be especially possessed of such unworldly qualities.

Look upon this either as a warning against the insidious encroachment of sanserif fonts, wherein burn all too easily becomes bum, or as a divine revelation from your Aunt Jobiska.

Ann, I'm nowhere near clever enough to have meant such a thing! But thank you for the correction.

I was once told that you can't tell lies in Garamond. Since then I have used no other.

Rob, I haven't said how much I like your Norfolk poem. I do.

A county where they wipe their arses on the Bard can't be all bad. Cornwall, on the other hand...

If Scotland is a county it is indeed the dregs. One thinks fondly of Flodden field.

Would I be right in assuming Irish counties are acceptable? We have some beauties here.

It doesn't say not so fire away Peter. Do we suppose the bloody Orkneys are a county?

Bloody Orkney! I remember reading that as a boy. Marvelous stuff. Who wrote it, John?

It was written by Captain Hamish Blair, doubtless posted there, poor fellow.

John (and all you lovely D & A people)

I'm so sorry for my absence of late! I can't think what happened regarding The Oldie comp, and why I didn't post this one up. Maybe I just didn't receive my copy of the magazine? I'm not sure.

It might sound like a pathetic excuse but I've had a lot on recently, family wise, and in addition my friend and U3A Chairman of our town, Mike, died suddenly at the end of Feb, which meant I had to step up into the position, having been Vice Chairman. Ever since I haven't managed to be here much at all... huge apologies.

I'm still struggling to keep up with everything, but will try harder!

Jayne

Jayne, no worries on this score. I feared I had bustled in where I was not wanted. My efforts to cut and paste met with utter failure.

Best, John

More to remind people about this competition than anything else.

I'm leaning towards Offaly over Tipperary?

Offaly

In all my life, I ne’er did see
a county dull as Offaly.
In fact there is so little in it,
you’ll see the sights in half a minute,
unless you really want to stop
at every bricked up house and shop,
or pause to eulogise the scrub
encroaching on each roofless pub.

There is no great historic site
upon this sweep of rural blight;
no woodland glens, no ancient church;
no shrouded lake awash with perch.
The only claim that it can flout
is that it ‘pads the Midlands out’
and makes the now remoter west
a place of increased interest.

Tipperary

It’s a long, long way, so the old folk say,
to the county Tipperary.
Does your heart lie there? I should say ‘Beware,’
for opinions on that vary.
The long car ride isn’t justified
unless you are into dairy.
I was passing through but stopped for the loo
and there I met my Mary.
She was sweet and young with a sharpened tongue
and a chin that verged on hairy
and you may well scoff but she lured me off
with the wiles of a peat-bog fairy.
I was quickly hooked, ensnared and plucked
with a speed that was somewhat scary.
Oh don’t take my lead – you’ll be doomed indeed
if you stop in Tipperary.

I suppose I can reuse this from a similar comp a few years ago:

The Best Country

Macau! Macau! Macau! Macau!
I've never heard of you till now.
Your heraldry contains a star;
I know not where or what you are.

I loved it when you did that thing.
You have a president or king,
I guess. A notable event was when--
What country is this on again?

Macaw? Macaw? Macaw? Macaw?
That's a bird from South America
which might be near that place, or not.
Montenegro? I forgot.

County, Walter, not country!

I sent this in for 2009's "write an anthem for your county" comp, but I doubt it would do any better this time around.


Oh, the rare Torrey pines! Oh, the tourmaline mines!
The artillery booms and the fighter jet whines!
Oh, the tourist attractions’ incredible lines!
San Diego’s the county you'll know by these signs.

Oh, the cool ocean breeze! Oh, the purple-bloomed trees—
jacarandas—whose nectar attracts killer bees!
Oh, the swine flu! The bird flu! West Nile! Lyme disease!
San Diego’s the county that’s blessed with all these.

Oh, the palms’ lovely sway! Oh, June Gloom and May Gray!
Awesome winds blowing annual wildfires my way!
Oh, the real estate "bottom" proclaimed every day!
San Diego’s my county, and here I must stay.


(All this and four species of rattlesnake, too. Paradise!)

Oh dear...

It's a rather Brit-oriented competition. Easier for us to win then.

Yes, and that's as it should be. I'm just enjoying a vicarious thrill.

(Vicars having a proverbial association with thrills, apparently. Which I guess explains the "tarts and vicars" fancy dress party phenomenon.)

By the way, if any of you tarts, vicars, or others will be in London on 27th June, you might swing by Jayne's thread at General Talk.

Middlesex

I sing of rural Middlesex,
A presence ghostly and benign
To raise the hairs along your necks
Along the green Electric Line.

Tall poplars shimmering and trembly,
Tea-time trios at the Grand,
Wet Willesden, melancholy Wembley,
All the dreams of Metroland!

Walk to the West from Hampstead Heath
To Hatch End, Harrow on the Hill.
The fields lie sleeping underneath.
Breathe deeply and you smell them still.

Ah Ruislip Manor, Rayners Lane!
Our world is wearing worse and worse,
Yet Middlesex can live again
In Betjeman’s romantic verse.

Romantic isn't quite right.

Immortal ?

Better, but still not....

In J.B.'s elegiac verse?

In Betjer's elegiac verse.Or is it Betcher's

nostalgic verse? rose-tinted verse?

In Betjeman's allusive verse.

Despite my admiration for him - "In Betjeman's post-Pooter verse."