Speccie: Housekeeping
 

Bill and Bazza led the field in this very English competition. Our football cliches are all our own and has ever a sportsman been a delightfully boneheaded as David Beckham? Yes one. Frank Bruno, and he too is home grown. I wrote a poem for Bill and here, with no excuse at all, it is. Congratulations of your fiver. The opening line, you will observe, is one of yours.

Tony Blair reminds me of a budgie,
And Tony Blair has got his mirror too.
Tony Blair reminds me of a kludgie,
A word that Scotchmen use when they mean loo.

Meanwhile, here is the new competition. I predict a lot of Larkin and Frost. And why not?

No. 2655: Housekeeping
You are invited to submit a poem (16 lines maximum) about a mundane household task such as boiling an egg or changing a light bulb in the style of a poet of your choice (please specify). Entries should be submitted by email, where possible, to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 7 July.

Old Dunbar’s Sage Advice about Light Bulbs

Friend, do not count my counsels vain:
Switch off the current at the main
Lest excess voltage should thee slay;
Timor mortis conturbat me.

And if thou would’st employ a chair,
Take care the chair legs stand foursquare,
Neither to topple nor to sway;
Timor mortis conturbat me.

Say thou unscrew’st with twist too free;
Bulb breaks and bursts an artery.
Thy life blood then will gush and spray;
Timor mortis conturbat me.

Follow the wiser course. Perhaps
‘Tis meet to hire a pair of chaps
To come a week on Saturday;
Timor mortis conturbat me.

As I said to John, rigor mortis congelat me. Years ago I wrote one about cleaning the cooker in the style of Gerard Manley Hopkins (very popular at readings) and it keeps getting in the way. I wish I could recycle it.

I am struggling to get G K Chesterton to clean out the gunge in his gardening boots but may not kick it into shape in time. Is anyone else having trouble with this comp?

A hurried first draft from John Betjeman -- whose original Mfanwy was certainly not the sort of girl to wear lisle stockings!


Smiling Mfanwy, beguiling Mfanwy,
changing the bulb in my high-hanging light,
nanny and chum to me, all but a mum to me;
sixty years on I still cherish the sight

of you standing tip-toe there, high on my nursery chair,
wobbling and laughing and stretching up while
your skirt rises high to show some of what’s hid below --
calf-contoured stockings of flesh-coloured lisle.

Hands held aloft up there, bulb fitted in with care,
sleeves falling back up your arms bare and bold,
bright in your new-won light, there to this boy’s delight
the glow of their suntan and down of soft gold.

Neatest Mfanwy, my sweetest Mfanwy,
smiling and flushed as you kiss me goodnight,
leaving a boy to learn how a first love can burn
sixty watt bulbs with a hundred watt light.

here goes nothing
 

Plug-Wiring Blues (W. H. Auden)

Into the neutral the blue wire goes.
Once it was black; things change I suppose.

The live one is brown. It used to be red,
Bringing to mind a decade long dead.

My wife is impatient. She wants the tv.
She likes Antiques Roadshow, doesn't like me.

A trivial task, but it's making me sweat.
I daren't pop out for a quick cigarette.

My neighbour gave up. He put on three stone.
Now the women leave him alone.

Earth is bi-coloured, yellow and green.
I'd rather be reading a men's magazine.

I'm missing a screw, but it's always the case.
First you lose love, then you lose face.

When I've done this I'll get out the car
And go for a drive, but not very far.

Ah Vacuum Cleaner, weary of grime,
Who sweepest the steps and the floor,
Seeking after that sweet golden time
When the filth of the house is no more,

Where the crumbs on the carpet have vanished,
And the dustballs that constantly grow
Upon every surface are banished
Where my Dyson decides they must go!

Heavens, these are good. All winners. Which means, alas, that the bar is set very high. I'd be surprised if Bazza doesn't make it though.

The Raving

Once inside my scullery, musty,
Buried dishes, green, and crusty,
In the sudsy sepulcher,
Before the kitchen maid, Lenore;
In the middle of her washing,
Suddenly there came a smashing,
As if some maid insanely crashing,
Crashing through my chamber door -
Quothing, raving, "Nevermore!"

The Auden one is very good. I'm trying to turn Eliot's "A Cooking Egg" into "A Boiling Egg" but it's not going very well.

On p84 of my brilliant book 'Writing Poetry' I have a liitle poem 'Hiawatha Makes a Cup of Tea' and I also put forward cleaning your teeth as an exercise. I give you these suggestions for nothing. And what about walking the dog?