[Chris O'Carroll]

Unhappy al fresco dining memories, anyone?

No 4242
Set by Leonora Casement
We would like you to send in verses all about the horrors of picnics. An entry many years ago to a similar competition read as follows:

Here I am an old man with
a dry mouth,
Bitten by flies among the cowpats
Eating dead winkles with
a crooked pin.
And the end is the beginning,
and tomorrow
It will be wasps at Runnymede . . .

Max 20 lines by 6 September comp@newstatesman.co.uk

[Shaun J. Russell]

Well surely someone here can do something better than that old "winner." Yikes!

[Brian Allgar]

We spread the blanket, sorted out the goodies,
Anticipating how we’d be delighted
By salmon, lobster, creamy little puddies ...
A family arrived, quite uninvited:
Two parents, three young girls, a pair of babies
That rapidly grew smellier and damper,
A snarling dog that made us think of rabies
Who, having peed against our picnic hamper,
Ran off with half a leg of roasted chicken
Then bounded back for more, obscenely drooling.
Their youngest daughter managed to be sick in
The bucket where our Bollinger was cooling.
Grabbing her twins, the mother got them teating;
The others started chewing something rancid.
‘Bon appetit!’ they said, but we weren’t eating;
We’d lost our appetite for what we’d fancied.

At last, the picnic interval was finished.
Although we felt unnourished, cross and weary,
Our spirits crushed, our joie de vivre diminished,
Without a picnic, Glyndebourne would be dreary.

[Lance Levens]

Had we but beer enough and time,
a lovely picnic were no crime.
We would char our burgers,catch
some rays, (I'll have to hide that batch
of cookies you call ginger snaps!)
and pass our stomachs' day with naps
and nips of grapes. But you brought the hissing
ogress--now, instead of kissing
and sipping my Merlot we'll have
to kow tow, suck up and behave
as if a goddess had stopped by.
In an hour you'll run off and cry.
I don't know about you, my dear:
I know the perfect foggy pier--
where she could take a healthful dip
with a concrete block we'd slip
around her neck. You think that's mean?
I think your so-called mom's obscene.

[John Whitworth]

I wrote this some years ago, but never did anything about it. Do you thnk it would fall ithin the parameters?


The Picnic

(A report of this incident is to be found in The Times, June 2006)

In the park of the southern city, students are having a picnic,
A picnic on clean white cloths in the late spring sunshine,
When many men attack them in the name of Islam,

Many dozens of men, all armed with sticks and rifles,
Pouring into the park of the fly-blown southern city,
With sticks and AK47s for the protection of Islam.

They shouted out that we were immoral,
That we were meeting, girls and boys together,
And playing music, expressly against Islam.

They shot into the air and people screamed,
Then at a single order they began to beat us
With sticks and rifle butts, calling on Islam.

And standing over them, as the blows rained down,
Black-robed, black turbanned (they recognise him immediately),
A representative of Hojatoleslam Moqtada al-Sadr,

The chosen one of the Prophet, peace be upon him.

[basil ransome-davies]

John – it's within the unusually generous 20-line limit, it features a picnic & there's horror there without feeding in the clichés of ants, rain, sad sandwiches, etc. No laughs, but the rubric doesn't prescribe comedy. So yes.

Though I do think humour is your forte.