The Oldie 'Bouts-rimés' results. *Wins for Bazza and Bill*
 

Congratulations to Bazza and Bill for their splendid entries, and thanks, guys, for keeping up the Sphere appearance in The Oldie. I went along to the 20th anniversary celebration of the magazine yesterday, which was great. (At one point I was sitting chatting to Barry Cryer and June Whitfield, just to name-drop for a moment ;))

(Next comp on new thread)

Jayne


xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxThe Oldie Competition
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxby Tessa Castro

COMPETITION No 153 was the annual bouts-rimés, whose rhymes were taken from the third stanza of ‘The Jumblies’. It was not good enough for Julie Edmunds, who baulked at the first rhyme word having no rhyme: ‘Please can I forbid / That awkward word did? / Your list has no other to rhyme. / I’d rather use din / Rhymed with in, spin and pin, / But hang up my pen till next time.’ There were plenty of imaginative leaps, Janet Kenny’s being those of Coppelia, for whom, ‘when she was in / an abandoned percussion-stomp one of her feet / snapped away at the ankle and fell in a neat / little bionic heap which she managed to pin / back in place with a click and a shuddery jar.’
‘Sieve’ proved the hardest word to accommodate. George McGilvray Wilson’s poem began as a love plaint for a broken rendezvous, with a twist in the last two lines: ‘Then two of you arrive out of the blue, / And you, my bus, are caught as in a sieve.’ Dr Andrew Bamji took inspiration from Pasteur: ‘Thanks to Gram’s stain, and Prussian Blue / He found those microbes too fine for a sieve.’
Commiserations to these and congratulations to those printed below, each of whom wins £25, with the bonus prize of a Chamber’s Biographical Dictionary going to the verbicrucial B R Wells.

Sordid second half obviously did,
and beheading sin is evidently in.
Just three in a single yard are feet
and stake money confused can be as neat
as conifer, when pruned, producing pin.
So is a door when not a door a jar?
Specific period reversed makes are,
just as belong with no buzzer becomes long.
Incorrect or immoral are they wrong
to rearrange vasectomy for spin?
Some, but not very many, are a few.
Change vile, reject veil and evil, to live!
Navy, royal and sad are prompts for blue.
Amnesiac’s memory’s like a sieve.
B R Wells

They told me ‘don’t go near her’, but I did.
Her simulated passion took me in,
Blinded my judgement, swept me off my feet,
This femme fatale who took her whisky neat
And picked her nightly bedmates with a pin
While I drank sour dregs from obsession’s jar,
Betrayed, as old romantics often are.
She had me cold. I suffered hard and long,
Loving a paramour who did me wrong,
Whose double-dealing put me in a spin.
My pain was deep, my satisfactions few
Until I found a better way to live
And profit from whatever made me blue
With my hit Country song, ‘My Heart’s A Sieve’.
Basil Ransome-Davies

I cannot now remember all we did
Nor how we wandered out, or entered in,
The many miles we walked, with skimming feet
That left the wanton grass so green and neat
Our promises as pointless as the pin
Which picked the horse that cantered to a jar
Defeated at the post, as losers are.

That spring-time then so sweet was never long
But Autumn’s blaze declared all hopes were wrong,
The oldest lies that men can ever spin
Were woven well, with errors all too few
Yet I still know, as long as I shall live
Nothing can dim those brilliant eyes of blue
Entrapped forever in Time’s tender sieve.
Iris Bull

What we do now’s no longer what we did:
They’re different, these lives we’re living in.
I used to listen for your quiet feet,
The way your words were riotous but neat
In that they pricked me. I enjoyed their pin,
And even if our doors aren’t left ajar,
I can’t complain. The days we played in are
The past. I do not want them back, nor long
For what we had, before it all went wrong.
That kind of thinking leaves one in a spin,
And perfect peace is only for the few.
Though I’ll love you as long as I will live,
They must not be allowed to leave us blue,
These years that separate us, like a sieve.
Bill Greenwell

And I didn't win, which is in no way noteworthy except that I thought I had done so. I received a Chambers Dictionary through the post (not Biographical) marked Competition Prize. Now what the hell competition did I win? Anyone like to hazard a guess?

Congratulations to those who did.

John, it was either a booby prize or a lifetime achievement award. I'm putting my money on the latter.

(Yust a rainy-day yoke, Yohn.)

John,

You won The Oldie 'Market Stall' comp last month; did you get a Biographical dictionary from them in July? (Was there no accompanying letter with this Chambers?)

Asking: "Who's this from?" may not be wise.
Just be thankful that you won a prize! ;)

Jayne

Yes I did. This is ANOTHER dictionary. I tried to find out who it came from but this information appears to be classified. So I now have TWO bloody fat books.

Congratulations indeed to B & B, and indeed anyone who had the patience and wit to make anything out of a really unpromising set of rhymes.

Congratulations to Bill and Basil. (My only regret is that I'm not congratulating myself as well ...)

John, although I was supposed to have won a Chambers Biographical Dictionary the previous month, what they actually sent me was a Chambers English Dictionary, so perhaps they did the same for you, having forgotten that they had already sent you the Biographical.

Hearty congrats to Bill and Basil. What fun!

I love bouts-rimés--or at least the idea of them--and almost entered, but I never feel I can be funny enough.

John, lucky you! Maybe you can use the books as door stops? Flower presses? Book-ends? I'm serious!

Charlotte

That'll be right, Brian. Unfortunately I have no machinery for the returning of extra prizes, so I can just thank the Oldie, or not really the Oldie but the Chambers people. I am twice blessed. I wish they'd all get back to offering booze though. Fifty quids worth of booze would be going some.

A little dictionary's a useless thing.
"Drink deep!", we cry, "Send barrels of Greene King!"