[Jayne Osborn]

Some fun poems here – from great Sphereans, of course!
Congratulations to Rob, Brian (in the guise of Nicholas Holbrook) and Bazza. Rob, your "Richard Stilgoe Action Man" will forever make me laugh. Also, a huge ‘Well Done’ to Lois for an HM.

(Next comp on new thread)

Jayne

xxxxxxxxxxThe Oldie Competition
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxby Tessa Castro


In competition no 168 you were invited to write a poem with the title ‘The Shop That Isn’t There’. There was naturally much invective against the effects of supermarkets and business rates upon the high street, and a good deal of nostalgia. Mrs G Telford remembered a haberdashery shop in a hut behind broad beans, where grey, spectacled Miss North kept her money-sock to hand.
Lois Elaine Heckman imaginatively hoped to find in the shop that isn’t there, among other things: ‘a straighter nose, unwrinkled skin, / long life to foil my next of kin.’
Peter Slimmings remembered a family butcher in one poem, and also in another entry compendiously expressed the theme in a quatrain: ‘I used to walk to the hardware shop / Where I could buy one screw. / Sadly, it is there no more / So I drive – to B&Q.’
Commiserations to them and congratulations to those printed below, each of whom wins £25, with the bonus prize of a Chamber’s Biographical Dictionary going to Dorothy Pope.

A few yards from the schoolyard gate
was Madame Wilson’s, Corsetière,
and I was sent there from age eight
two or three times every year

to pick up Miss Black’s corselette
(a corset topped off with a bra),
a pale pink garment of some weight.
The bones made it a cylinder

and later showed in ridges through
her crêpey dresses – mauve and green.
Slim gym-slipped infant’s incongru-
ity, thus burdened, seldom seen!

Sedate, dim shop with pinging wire,
to whizz the change back down, complete,
has disappeared, with its attire.
So has my school. So has the street.
Dorothy Pope

A grandson clock, a football bat,
Shampoo for pubic hair:
They stock the rarest items at
The Shop That Isn’t There.

A taxidermy fish that drowned,
The Dawkins Book of Prayer:
You see these sorts of products at
The Shop That Isn’t There.

A realistic gents’ toupee,
A kids’ electric chair:
You name it and they’ve got it chez
The Shop That Isn’t There.

A Richard Stilgoe Action Man,
Some reggae by Voltaire:
You’ll find them nowhere other than
The Shop That Isn’t There.
Rob Stuart

An Oxford student, hungry as a horse,
I needed ways to supplement my grant.
The bookshop in the Broad became a source
Of more than intellectual nourishment.

I’d loiter there, just browsing, and pull down
The most expensive book that I could see,
Then, tucking it beneath my scholar’s gown
I’d leave the building, whistling casually.

Outside, I’d nip across the street as planned,
And sell it for a quarter of its price
To what’s-his-name, who bought books second-hand;
My dinner would, for once, be more than rice.

But fifty years have passed; I’m not surprised
To find the book emporium has gone,
For now that everything’s computerised,
It’s hard to steal a book from Amazon.
Nicholas Holbrook

The knocking shop across the street
Cures boredom, anomie, despair.
Effluvia of KY and Veet
Invigorate the humid air.

Gustav on the piano plays
A medley of nostalgic tunes.
The girls in silk and nylon laze
Away the languid afternoons.

Come night, game on. I dress in style.
Michelle, la patronne, welcomes me.
My credit card attracts a smile,
My golden pass to ecstasy.

It cuts me like a cruel knife
To hear my analyst declare
The hub of my erotic life
Is in my head. It isn’t there.
Basil Ransome-Davis