[John Whitworth]

No winners from us this week, though some good poems. they are ALL celebrating the past though the rubric said you could talk about a modern corner shop, as I did dammit. Still, it is The Oldie after all. My experience of corner shops in my youth ws that they were all staffed by miserable gits who never had what you required. Your modern Asian is VASTLY preferable.

And now this month's offering. I don't know that I've ever read a church's visitors' book. Must research

COMPETITION NO 140
I find visitors' books in churches very strange things. Perhaps the messages would go better in verse. So please supply one or more; maximum 16 lines.
Entries to Competition 140. email comps@theoldie.co.uk by 29 July.

[Ann Drysdale]

Ah - Church Going, eh?

[John Whitworth]

Nobody's going to Church these days. So I thought I'd better. Our nearest church is made of corrugated iron, but there are some really charming ones, and some of them really quite big, farther out.


140: Visitors’ Book

This little church is very nice.
It smells of candlesticks and mice,
Harvest and hymn books, hearts and flowers
With sermons that go on for hours
Or to a child they seem to do
As creaky as a Sunday shoe.
And listen! There, behind the wall
A blackbird and a bouncing ball,
And, like a buzzing in your head,
The earthy mutterings of the dead
Whose entourage of skulls and bones,
Far from the reach of mobile phones
Or wikileaks or cyberspace
Encourage us to pray for grace,
Knowing that God is in the house,
With moth and silverfish and louse.

[R. S. Gwynn]

Our relatives, we found it queer,
Now speak in tongues and roll around,
And so we liked the service here–
At least the liturgy was sound.

I used to come here as a lad
And found it boring, stilted, plain,
And now I find it's twice as bad.
I shan't coming here again.

I am a stranger passing through
And thought that I would wander in;
After a couple of hours with you
I find myself impelled to sin.

I knew that I had gone astray
And faint hope led me to your door.
If ever I feel the need to pray
I'll do it on my bedroom floor.

[Toni Rumbel]

Churches have always been a spiritual place to voice your confessions and wrongdoings and troubles to God. I'm not Christian myself, but I've heard from many Christian friends and family members that God has done them miricles the couln't preform themselves. I like this poem. It's expressing the view that oing to church can make you seem too religious and is to a certain extent, boring. Well done!