The Oldie 'First Time in the Country' competition by 5th February
 

Good luck everyone.
"You never get a second chance to make a first impression" as someone once said.

Jayne


The Oldie Competition
by Tessa Castro

Competition no 199. Are first impressions truest, or just newest? A poem please, called ‘First Time in the Country’. Maximum sixteen lines.

Entries by post (The Oldie, 65 Newman Street, London W1T 3EG) or email comps@theoldie.co.uk to ‘Competition No 199’ by 5th February. Don’t forget to include your postal address.

First Time in the Country

Last week Miss Honey hired a bus
To show the Country to our class.
It seemed an awful lot of fuss
To see an awful lot of grass.

Oh please Miss Honey what are those
Huge hairy things that steam and stink?
The beasts that browse? Oh those are cows.
They give us lovely milk to drink.

Oh please Miss Honey what are those
That walk and squawk on skinny legs?
Along the fence? Oh those are hens.
They give us all our breakfast eggs.

It’s very int’resting, Miss Honey.
You’ve shown us heaps and heaps of stuff.
We think the Country’s awfully funny
And now we think we’ve had enough.

John, that reminds me of a previous life wherein I was part of something called The Highball Scheme which took kids from the inner city areas of Birmingham (Highgate and Balsall Heath) out into the nearby countryside for camping weekends. The group mood flitted, time after time, like a kineograph from studied boredom through real fear (Wossat?" "It's just an owl." "I know miss, but oo's 'owlin'?) to giddy joy and homeward singing in the minibus.

Those were the days - and probably the basis of my entry...

It was culled from my daughter Katie who took children from Edmonton out towards the wilds of the M25. Cows and chickens alike were unknown to them. Also shoplessness. I was working on a stanza about everyday countryfolk stomping about with guns and wellies looking for something to shoot but I hadn't the room.

By the way, couldn't the Country refer to another country, say France, where they eat unmentionable things and piss out on the street (well they used to)?

Yes, I was wondering about that, John, You go to a foreign part for the first time and you don't see the country itself, you see a different one called Not-England. Same in reverse with foreign students studying here. I think I know Not-Switzerland and Not-Japan quite well by now,

Indeed, John. Though my own experience of my first trip to France was along these lines... http://shitcreek.auszine.com/issue10...-or-reliquary/

Quite lovely, Ann. I went to Paris when I was twenty (not actually my first time but this is poetry i.e. lying). I have part of a poem about it. Perhaps sixteen lines could be salvaged.

'First time in the country' had me wondering: "What country?"
Now I see it means countryside.
Thanks for the clarification.

First Impressions: USSR

I survived the crush of Moscow’s
customs queues at Sheremetyevo
in ‘76, but couldn’t prove
I’d come to teach in Sakartvelo.*

From California, darkly tanned,
I stood alone for several hours,
grilled regarding books I brought,
some by Thoreau on personal powers.

The US consul finally arrived,
confirmed I was American—
invited there to teach those texts.
The Russians thought that I was Georgian.

Customs kept books, but not my copies
of Civil Disobedience: a creed
the Georgians dreamed with Gandhi and King,
fulfilled by peaceful plans to secede.**

*The native language name for Georgia

**The first soviet republic to do so, 4/10/91

Cousin Daisy came to us from the city
where she was raised in Brownstone splendor.
She was avante guard and very pretty
with long golden hair and very slender.

She helped me with the chores and milked the cows
and gathered eggs and turned the butter churn.
We culled apples and slopped the Hampshire sows.
She loved to work with me, eager to learn.

But she had indoor plumbing, which we lacked
and had her problems with the outhouse stool
and didn't know why the Sears were stacked
or why the privy smelled like lye. No fool

in her right mind could wipe with tractor pages
or printed sheets of sheets and towels and dresses.
She stamped out mad and shouted; "It's outrageous!"
She slung her hand where shit had made its messes.

Charlie, I think you and I are going head-to-head on this one. (or do I mean ass to arse?)

First time in the Country

First time I stayed with Gran in Steeple Bumpstead
she introduced me to her outdoor privy.
Here was the antidote to playground toilets.
Low porcelain, long chains, Now Wash Your Hands
and cold, unyielding tracing-paper wipes
gave place to a rickety bucket with a lid
in a tin shed at the top of a cottage garden,
newspaper squares threaded on hairy string.

My urgent expedition that first morning
was a damp-slippered trek through dewy daisies
to sit enthroned in solitary splendour,
the door propped open with a mossy brick,
seeing the sun poke slowly through a reedbed
to fondle the ginger cat under the asters;
hearing the hot trickle rumble into the bucket
to an improvised accompaniment of larks.

Well Annie, yours is more elegant for sure. My grandmother elegantly milked the cows while I watched her. She could spray the cats from at least ten feet away and never miss a stroke.

Later in life I learned to do that cat-thing with both cow and goats. Thinking about it, the sound of milk-bucket and privy-bucket were very similar.

Not being very familiar with these comps and the judges, is "shit" appropriate or do they look down(no pun intended) on it and prefer "shite."
I would rather use the former than the latter for the alliteration of those 2 last lines.

A usage that's seldom got right
Is when to say shit and when shite
And many a chap
Will end up with crap,
Which is vulgar, evasive and trite.

Robert Conquest

Use the one you prefer. I never did know the difference.

John, more to the point. Have you or Do you know anyone who has won a comp here with shit? And no, I'm not being rhetorical.

In my time I have won competitions with 'shit', 'balls' and at least one 'fuck' Charlie.

Yes, my mother is proud.

And quite often some competitions are won by, rather than with, shit. Though not by any of us, of course!

Important Distinctions (in agreement with Martin)

How much used shit that won the shit?
Who knows? Some used and won jack shit!
Some used shit and won all of it!
Some used to or once won by shit,
In which case ours was none of it!

,

Advice, please! I've only entered the Oldie comp once. Do they allow more than one entry? If so, how does one go about it? Does it have to be pseudonyms? False addresses? Or can one just send two entries?

I'd be interested to know that, too.

I've never done a doubler but my guess is you just send two.

Jayne will know.

There's no limit to the number of entries you can submit, but you won't win twice under the same name... at least it hasn't happened yet!

Don't use false addresses. If you do submit multiple entries it's a good idea to use the real name and address of a relative or friend who will receive the cheque and then give you the money. That way you can win more than once, as they won't know who's who!

Jayne

Oh, thanks, Jayne. I'm not bothered about winning twice - just want to increase my limited chances of winning at all!

I once phoned them on this point, and was assured by the young lady that sending multiple entries using pseudonyms was fine. "And is it all right to use the name and address of a friend?" I asked. "Well", she said, with charming ingenuousness, "We'd never know, would we?"

What I (sometimes) do is submit them all under my own name but give another, say Phoebe Flood or Fergus Pickering to use if circumstances dictate. Actually I don't think I ever have won twice. But Bazza, Bill and Brian do it all the time.

I've always assumed that those who won twice used different names and addresses - as opposed to submitting multiple entries and offering pseudonyms, as John does - so Tessa doesn't know they're the same person.

Bazza, Bill and Brian might disabuse me of this notion... or not.

Jayne

Surely everybody knows Bazza is at least three persons. Still, pehaps I ought to use different addresses. But what a business!

Anyway they all come from the same computer and from the same email address. Would I need multiple email addressses and multiple computers?

No, John, I'd suggest that if you submit as ''Someone Else'', you simply email your poem to that person and they submit it - just as if they had in fact written the poem themselves! (Get your sister to do it, perhaps.)

Tessa gets a poem with a real name, a real email address and a real postal address. You get the kudos when you reveal that "Josephine Bloggs", or whoever, is in fact you.

Jayne

Do you know, Jayne, I think you might be right?

I know of schizophrenia, but this is remarkable.

The countryside abounds in rustic charm-
I wonder why I've never been before?
I envy he who labours on a farm
Instead of punching keys behind a door.
I love the ‘zoidurrr’ and the hearty food,
The bawdy songs the locals like to sing,
Their readiness to frolic in the nude
Inside a sacred megalithic ring,
And how their wise old womenfolk attest
A swallowed shrew’s the thing to cure a wart.
Tomorrow, which is May Day, they request
I join them for a function of some sort.
I’ve heard a cryptic rumour that they plan
To introduce me to their 'wicker man’…?

Rob,

I shall have nightmares tonight, now that you've reminded me about Wicker Man. That film totally freaks me out. Aaargghhh!!!! :eek:

But seriously, that's a terrific entry, with an unusual angle. I'd put money on it...

Jayne

Thank you Jayne. Sorry for the nightmares, though.

Nah, it's theology.

“Oh, you must come and visit me, Darling,
in this charming old cottage of mine.
I have a nice guest room,
in fact it’s the best room;
the view from it’s simply divine.”

So I went, leaving what I was used to:
city life with its permanent thrill.
My great-aunt was charming,
though it was alarming
how difficult days were to fill.

No, I’m sorry, I can’t hack the country:
the slow life, the silence as well.
That first time – and last time –
not my kind of pastime
at all. It’s as lonely as hell.

The country was at war. The men had gone,
And farmers needed help producing food,
So city-dwelling girls were called upon
To 'do their bit'. Although the work was rude,
Ophelia volunteered to be a Land Girl,
Her first time in the English countryside.
The farmer greeted her: "My, you're a grand girl!
There's much to learn; my son will be your guide."

One day, she asked him: "What are 'country matters'?"
The farmer's son was happy to explain,
And soon her clothes (and virtue) lay in tatters.
Later, she told him: "Well, they can't complain;
I've learnt to feed the piglets in their pens,
Muck out the stables, dig for victory,
Collect the eggs each morning from the hens . . .
I've 'done my bit'." He grinned, for so had he.

Plainly Jayne's lonely lady and Brian's farmer's boy should meet. Which one of you is going to write the tale?

How pc is The Oldie?

Hard to say, Alan, without knowing what you want to send in. A good way of judging the tone would be to scroll down through this forum and look at all the "results" threads Jayne has posted. That will give you a "feel" for the sort of thing that goes down well.