[Jayne Osborn]

First things first – Congratulations to Adrian and Bazza on winning 2 of the 3 prizes. Yep, that’s right: THREE prizes only this month, because as well as the poetry competition write-up (and it’s not even a poetry comp this time) and the SUD/OLD/KU competition, we now appear to have lost another large portion of "our" page in the magazine to a new feature, “The Oldie quiz.” Humph! I think a complaint may be heading their way. This has made me a bit grumpy, sorry, but I feel justified. Historically it's been only four, or maybe five, winning entries – but three, when there are so many (excellent) entrants???

Next time they want a poem. Hooray. (See new thread: 'The Oldie "New Shoes" Competition by 6th March')

Jayne

The Oldie Competition
by Tessa Castro

In Competition no. 185 you were invited to send an extract from your Desert Island Diary recounting the consequences of your choice of luxury. In response you were quite good at being afflicted with the calentures and reduced to the condition of Pincher Martin. Anyone would think you were all trained Ben Gunns.
Alison Prince’s parrot was eaten by a tiger undeterred by its cries of ‘Bugger off!’ Mike Morrison’s bass tuba, submerged in the shallows, attracted a seafood catch until a roller swept it away. By contrast, Gillian Ewing’s grand piano merely grew clogged with sand until one leg fell off through termite infestation.
Peter Crosby’s solar-powered shaver did well enough on his chin and the native gazelles, but sent a gorilla (where is this island?) into a fatal rage.
Commiserations to them and congratulations to those printed below, each of whom wins £30, with the far from insular bonus prize of a Chambers Biographical Dictionary going to Roger Rengold.

I’ve been working hard for a lunar month. My shelter is sound; the wild red dog rests at my feet. Yesterday I took out my luxury. I had thought it was amusing to say ‘my pipe’ and explain that it was an elegant artefact, still tasting of tobacco.
No one knew of the glen on the far side of the hill. No botanist in the world knows of the tobacco poppy that grows there, its blue and yellow spotted petals, its black stalk with glittering specks, like diamond dust. I took out the mixture of petals and leaves I had been drying, put it in my pipe and smoked it. My body was suffused with joy. An Abyssinian maid approached. She knelt, offering in one hand honeydew, in the other milk of paradise. She said, ‘Think Life is beautiful. You will live forever.’ I thought, ‘Of course, I know that already.’
Roger Rengold

Day 37: He’s watching me. Watching my increasingly perfunctory ablutions, scrutinising me licking at the damp on the island’s cave wall, observing me dine sparingly upon tiny, bony fish and tinier, bonier insects. Hawk-eyed, Easter Island-stern, he watches, judges. My fault; a bust of Samuel Beckett was a pretentious choice of luxury. I’ve paid. The sheer intensity of his silent disapproval forced my destruction – Abba to Zappa – of my eight discs.
I tried turning him to face the palm tree so as not to feel his gaze, but even the back of that head exudes austere inscrutability. Whatever I’ve said to, at or about him, he just soaks up like a silent confessor. When ships pass – tantalisingly close, impossibly distant – I wade out gesticulating, bellowing. He drowns my noise in gnomic silence: nobody comes. I yearn to return to the world. ‘Godot, it’ll wait,’ he says, lips unmoving.
Adrian Fry

Monday. So here I am, just me and the palms and the beach and the blue, blue sea. And of course the crock of gold.
They weren’t lying about that. It almost blinds me as the tropical sun strikes the mint-bright sovereigns. Pure luxury. I can’t spend it, but it’s mine, all mine.
xxxFriday. A stroll on the shore, but no footprint in the sand. LOL. An aggressive mantis shrimp took two of my toes off. I hobble, but the sight of all that gold makes the pain bearable.
xxxSunday. Can gold glitter at night? Mine seems to.
xxxWhenever. Somehow I’ve lost track of time. Can’t walk and can’t find anything to eat. And I’m starting to regret my choice of records. But that doesn’t matter, because today I asked my crock of gold to marry me and it accepted. I’ve designed a lovely ceremony for us.
Basil Ransome-Davies

[Adrian Fry]

Jayne, I fear The Oldie has had its day, this cutting of space for the comp symptomatic of a general loss of that humorous, genial amateur approach favoured by Richard Ingrams.

[basil ransome-davies]

Still, thirty sovs. Can't be bad. Know what I mean, squire?