[John Whitworth]

No. 2852: unlikely champion

You are invited to step into the shoes of a well-known writer of your choice, living or dead, and submit a poem or piece of prose in praise or defence of something you would not expect them to champion. Please email entries (wherever possible) of up to 150 words or 16 lines to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 11 June.

[Rob Stuart]

John Whitworth salutes Ed Miliband

Hip hip hooray for Miliband,
My brainy lefty chum!
A better Britain’s close at hand,
Goodbye to Tory scum!

With Steady Eddie as PM
We’ll see a bright new eon.
The lad’s a bona fide gem,
And staunchly European.

[John Whitworth]

So here's a toast to Ed the Red,
The doughty Socialist.
I'm very glad he isn't dead.
My God! I think I'm pissed.

[Rob Stuart]

A Sonnet for Tescos by John Keats

I wander oft amongst these stately aisles,
Where one may many gourmet foods procure,
Entranc’d; I’d rather linger here than tour
The ruin’d temples of Aegean isles.
They ne’er run out of bread--there’s always piles--
Their fruit is ever fresh, their cheese mature,
The check-out girls are charming and demure,
And fairer still than Helen was, with smiles
That make each moment queuing seem a joy.
Potato waffles, Wotsits, Snickers bars,
Exotic oriental leaves--bok choi--,
And gherkins too, display’d in crystal jars;
Such dainties are the buyer’s to enjoy,
And stir me more than any grubby vase.

[Douglas G. Brown]

Miniver Cheevy, foe of booze
Crusaded with the utmost vigor;
He’d fight the fight, and never lose,
’Gainst jug and jigger.

Miniver loved to beat the drum
Teetotalers would all agree to;
He’d preach how hooch would make a bum
Of you and me, too.

Miniver proudly claimed the knell
Of doom would topple every vintner,
And brewers all would burn in Hell
Before next winter.

Miniver confidently hoped
To send distillers to damnation;
Until that night when he eloped
With Carrie Nation.

[Jerome Betts]

Hope that's a winner, Douglas, Much more entertaining than the original.
You remind me that AEH started life versifying for the Temperance movement, all that later stuff about malt and Milton notwithstanding

O lad, rest unacquainted
With what they call 'a round';
Plain water, cool, untainted,
Lays no chap underground.
From old men stooped and slippered
To youths once tall and true,
Ale's fumes have kippered
The brains of not a few.

And fellows that go barmy
Fare on to fearful ends;
They sign up for the army,
Or cut their throats, or friends.
Ay, lads who fill their crops in
The smoke-room or the snug
Oft take last drops in
The county jug.

[Douglas G. Brown]

Jerome,

Thanks for your approval; you've really nailed Housman's style with your piece. I didn't know that AEH began as a member of the cold water army, nor that the UK had much of a temperance movement (since most of the good liquor Americans drank during Prohibition was smuggled in from Scotland and Canada).

I'm hoping some Hemingway scholar on the 'sphere can up with something in the same vein.

[Rob Stuart]

Slough Revisited by John Betjeman

Come tourists and descend on Slough!
Pick up your phones and book right now.
They welcome everyone, and how.
It’s a delight!

I promise you, this town’s the tops;
It’s got a park, an ice rink, shops.
The entertainment never stops
(Except at night).

The local painters choose to scrawl
Their works on every outside wall,
So arty types will have a ball,
I guarantee.

It’s easy too, I’m told, to get
Hooked up with some debauched brunette
Who’s not an intellectual threat.
Now where’s my fee?

[Adrian Fry]

Larkin on Punk Rock

Bald, half deaf and almost four parts drunk,
I stick the wireless on to find John Peel,
A Northerner who plays the latest punk.
His tone reflecting how I often feel.

The Sex Pistols, he plays, The Undertones,
The Damned, XTC, Splodgenessabounds –
And suddenly I’m glad to have come home
To such base yet invigorating sounds.

There’s sink estate graffiti in their words,
The music is all insolently crude.
Yet something deep inside me half concurs:
A nihilistic truth is being pursued.

I once heard just such primal noise in jazz,
A kind of desperate throwing up of all,
But now that’s merely antique razzamatazz
Compared with something caustic by The Fall.

[John Whitworth]

The boozy masters at my Scottish School used to lunch at Darling's Temperance Hotel near the East End of Princes Street. And came back all the better for it. There is a song that goes (in part) 'Lips that touch liquor shall never touch mine'.

What about. G.K. Chesterton in support of Gay Marriage. Just saying.