[Jayne Osborn]

Here's the next competition to keep you busy over Christmas and New Year, when you've had enough of eating, drinking and watching TV!

Jayne


The Oldie Competition No 146

From Tessa Castro:

The Daily Telegraph published a collection of letters not selected for publication in the paper, under the title: Am I Alone in Thinking?
A letter to the editor in verse with that title, please. Maximum 16 lines.

Entries to ‘Competition 146’ by post (The Oldie, 65 Newman Street, London W1T 3EG), fax (020 7436 8804) or email (comps@theoldie.co.uk) by 13 January.
Don’t forget to include your postal address.

[John Whitworth]

Am I Alone in Thinking

Am I alone in thinking
Our Nation is a stinking
Morass of sex and drinking?
Vile convicts, fetters clinking,
Child rapists, slyly slinking,
Then gone, as fast as blinking,
Immoral danseuses prinking
In musquash or in mink, in
Their limousines of pink, in
Their strings of jewels winking,
Dear God, we're sinking, sinking,
Perhaps our minds are shrinking,
So many miles of ink, in
Green Waterman's or Quink, in
So many letters linking.

Am I alone in thinking?

[FOsen]

If ever one called for a monorhyme, this is it. Good one, John.

[John Whitworth]

Tnak you, Frank. I don't think there are many more available rhymes (he said smugly).

[FOsen]

I could name some, but that would be finking.

[John Whitworth]

Thre is also yinking, but I haven't yet decided what it means. Car engines used to do something called pinking, but I've no idea wat it was except that BP had the answer. Of course I've got 'pink in' anyway. Gin king?

[Ann Drysdale]

Spin king (as in A. Campbell)?

[Jerome Betts]

Ann, of course, you meant 'spinking' i.e. what spinks (chaffinches) do.

[Jerome Betts]

Or, of course, 'dinking' or 'jinking' which is what footballers do, I believe.

[Jayne Osborn]

What about when you make something bendy that was formerly straight? Isn't that 'kinking'?