[Jayne Osborn]

Today's the day for Squirrel Eviction. The roofer chappie, Keith, is going to block the chimney with chicken wire. We should have bought a trap, I suppose, if we're ever to try squirrel stew. (But there's always my husband's air rifle.)

We could do with Tim Murphy being here.

Adrian,
I'm glad you like my mangle poem, and that's very interesting about the dementia treatment. There really is no smell quite like that of a soapy boil wash (no one boils whites any more. Stuff would fall to pieces or shrink beyond recognition.) My mum always boiled cotton sheets, towels, tea towels, handkerchiefs etc, to keep them snowy white.

Ah, nostalgia is a nice feeling! (Sigh)

[Adrian Fry]

I was drinking with some buddies – we all work in Social Studies –
Reminiscing about better times we’d seen
When there’d been amazing theories, trenchant essays, urgent queries
Every week in New Society magazine.

Dewy eyed, we listed writers who would week by week excite us –
Eric Hobsbawm, Laurie Taylor, Asa Briggs –
All their intellects were hefty and their leanings, like ours, Lefty
As they socked it to the Londoncentric prigs.

Articles on social housing and how dockers went carousing
Or Ray Gosling on the Rockers and the Mods;
We learned society was riven by those ologies and isms
That would soon become our livings and our gods.

New Society’s abatement, swallowed up by the New Statesman
Robbed us of a much loved strain of thinking.
Now we get maudlin or aggressive when we start waxing progressive
Which is why we only do so when we’re drinking.

[Rob Stuart]

When the coconut snout we rejoiced in went out
Of production three decades ago,
Could the PC brigade really claim their crusade
Against smoking had worked? Frankly no.

Oh they highlighted threats in the sweet cigarettes
We enjoyed in the playground all right,
And made serious gripes about liquorice pipes,
Which they sought to abolish outright,

But the craze simply died. Though the do-gooders tried
To take credit we’d just had enough.
Childish appetites jade; kids’ affections were swayed
By the coming of much harder stuff.

Now its marzipan smack, rocks of butterscotch crack
And amphetamine toffees in bags.
I’m not saying a bong made of chocolate is wrong,
But I do find I miss candy fags.

[Graham King]

Most amusing, Rob.
(I went for the sweet cigarettes and liquorice pipes too, and they haven't made me a smoker).


Bombay Duck! oh fish, not fowl,
My past repasts adorning!
For you I pine, and long I howl
Since that benighted morning

When EC jobsworths’ rule forbade
Your continued importing
Since ‘in no factory’ you’re made,
But dried, in sun disporting,

As fish-catch of small village trade!
Why penalise the humble? Oh,
Odour, taste, lost! I, dismayed,
Wept for my vanished Bummalo.

Permitted though at last, you’re still
Not sold where once I found you;
I’ll sing your praise and count the days
Till hindrance no more hound you.

[Peter Goulding]

This is an old one of mine that I've dickied up a bit.

It came to me quite suddenly, as I lay in my bed –
that wholesome taste that one-time graced our slices of white bread.
Rich and sweet, ‘twas quite a treat but, like the Dublin tram,
it’s had its day, gone on its way – the pot of greengage jam.

Look on the shelf in shops yourself. There’s jams of every flavour -
kiwi, plum, chrysanthemum - to sample and to savour.
Blue ones, red ones, hard-to-spread ones, elderflower and yam.
Oh yes, there’s lots of jars and pots, but not of greengage jam.

How did they stop this luscious crop? Quickly, or in stages?
Did harvests fail through snow and hail? What happened to greengages?
Was there a coup in Katmandu? A putsch in Surinam?
Is civil war the reason for the lack of greengage jam?

Whate’er the cause, it’s time to pause and doff our caps with piety;
to bow the head and mourn the spread that’s lost unto society.
Technology means naught to me - you can’t eat texts or spam -
but how I miss the luscious kiss of rich, ripe greengage jam.

[Graham King]

Originally Posted by Peter Goulding

This is an old one of mine that I've dickied up a bit.

...Old but not mouldy! Delightfully fresh and zesty, Peter.

Originally Posted by Peter Goulding

...
but how I miss the luscious kiss of rich, ripe greengage jam.

I second that emotion.
(If indeed I am remembering greengage correctly and not getting confused with gooseberry).

[John Whitworth]

Greengages are plums, green ones. The jam is good.