[Jayne Osborn]

Sorry this is late, folks. For the second time in a few months my copy of The Oldie has failed to appear in the post so I didn’t know the results were out. Thank you to John for giving me a nudge; I had to go out this evening and buy another copy of the magazine and type out the page.
Whilst I’m at it – congratulations to John, too, along with Alison, the only Sphereans in the line-up this time.

Next comp is Satnavs (see new thread).

Jayne

The Oldie Competition
by Tessa Castro

In Competition no 193 you were invited to write a poem titled ‘A smell recalled’. The smells were varied: a saffron bun from Elizabeth White; plaster dust in the war from Alison Prince; rusks in a Farley’s factory from Richard Trahair; and too-strong jonquils from G M Southgate. Commiserations to them and congratulations to those printed below, each of whom wins £25, with the bonus prize of a life-redolent Chambers Biographical Dictionary going to Katie Mallett.

Who was the man who passed me by just now,
Leaving a trail of perfume on the air?
Aftershave, of course, I know it well
Something my first boyfriend used to wear.

Could it be him? The man has disappeared
Buried in the crowd down to the train,
I tell myself that many men still use
This brand, no doubt I’ll smell it soon again.

And yet, as I go home, my mind flies back
To teenage years, the thrill of my first dance,
The gawky boy who came across the hall
And led me to the floor, and then romance.

So many years have passed, and what ifs press
For answers. Though, whatever will be, will be,
Said the old song, if my life had turned
Another way, would I still be – like me.
Katie Mallett

I follow the cows in their jostling throng
As they shove and barge to their stalls.
My nostrils fill with their bovine pong
While our grumpy cowman curses and bawls.

I hear the clatter of hardened hoof
As they skid on the shit-strewn floor.
I see misty breath drift up to the roof
Mixed with the scent of fresh baled straw.

A hint of linseed wafts from each trough,
While spills of milk merge sweet and mild
With the grassy stink of a beast’s rough cough.

Oh how these smells confuse this child. <--We can only assume this was meant to be L4 of S3!
I tell what a boy smelled long ago,
For some recollections never grow dim
And still, when I hear a cow’s soft low,
The smells return and I am him.
Paul Elmhirst

Just once, a whole new school ahead, I carried it –
that clever-leather smell of a new satchel,
promising long years of books. They’d fit
into its vastness, held by straps, bright buckles,
against all weathers. Serious and tanned,
breathing out leatherness, it weighed
the future, reassuringly, a stand
against the dowdiness of canvas bags, and made
that harness-smell inseparable from school
and all it stood for, then. It smelt of choice
(the shop, rich with its scent of satchel-style)
and being allowed to pick, in my own voice,
the one – the one – to see me through, then out
beyond the confines of exams. These days
I’d shun so strong a scent, its privileged shout.
O tempora, o mores. Other ways.
D A Prince

In the summer of our voyage <---this line shouldn't have been in the magazine. It's from a previous Oldie comp!
Here on the tram I’m being good
Perched on the leather spruce and clean.
It smells of engine oil and wood
But that is not the smell I mean.

My gran is clad in bible black
Smelling of talc, severe and tall
With buttons going down the back.
But that is not the smell at all.

A notice tells us not to spit.
We do not spit. We are not crude.
We do not see the point of it
And anyway it would be rude.

The spitters stink. They stink of sweat,
Their kids as well, and puke and pee.
And that’s the thing I can’t forget
The acrid smell of poverty.
John Whitworth
 

[John Whitworth]

I'm not sure what that first line is doing at the top of my poem. It doesn't belong there, as is fairly obvious. Did I write it in a trance?

[Jayne Osborn]

Oo-er, John, I hadn't noticed, but you're right.

Looking back to the original thread you didn't write that line at all... it must be them at Oldie Towers wot done it!

I simply type up what's on the page. Would you like me to delete that superfluous line? It must have sneaked in from someone else's poem, I reckon.

Jayne

[John Whitworth]

Yes Jayne. It's quite a good line but it ain't mine.

[Ann Drysdale]

I reckon it's the ghost of a title (or even a line) the poem had on its way to becoming what it is now. I have long suspected that old mod-privilege of being able to edit without trace might one day rise to bite a bum.

Go on, Jayne, do that thing with spit on a hanky, just as John's gran would have done.

[John Whitworth]

You could be right, Ann. As I said it's not a bad line.

Originally Posted by Ann Drysdale

I reckon it's the ghost of a title (or even a line) the poem had on its way to becoming what it is now. I have long suspected that old mod-privilege of being able to edit without trace might one day rise to bite a bum.

Go on, Jayne, do that thing with spit on a hanky, just as John's gran would have done.

[Jerome Betts]

Ah no, John and Ann, it's the first line of a prize-winning entry in the 'Wrong Kind of Apple' comp by F.M., He-Who-Must-Not-Be Named.

Also, Line 12 of Paul Elmhirst's evocative piece needs reuniting with its Stanza 3.

Nice to see competition grande dames D.A. Prince and Katie Mallett up there with John.

[John Whitworth]

Thank you, Jerome.

If those estimable ladies are grandes dames then I must be old fart magnificent.

[Jayne Osborn]

Ah no, John and Ann, it's the first line of a prize-winning entry in the 'Wrong Kind of Apple' comp by F.M., He-Who-Must-Not-Be Named.

Well-spotted, Jerome! What the hell are they playing at; this page is a right mess. All I do is copy it - faithfully - but as I was typing it out my first thought was that Katie Mallett would surely have punctuated her poem better than this?

Also, Line 12 of Paul Elmhirst's evocative piece needs reuniting with its Stanza 3.

Same thing... it's how it appears in the magazine, and though I thought 'Huh?' I had no option but to write it as it appears.

Perhaps someone on The Oldie team was slightly inebriated.

Jayne