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  #1  
Unread 04-01-2016, 01:19 PM
Jayne Osborn's Avatar
Jayne Osborn Jayne Osborn is offline
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Default The Oldie 'Limit: Two Tons' results

Congratulations on the ‘Two Tons’ comp to heavyweights Rob, Bazza and Alison – and commiserations to Alder for an entry that was ‘good enough to publish’.

As part of the ‘new look’ Oldie there’s a slightly different layout to the page in the magazine; I’ve typed it out as it appears (except for the narrow columns, which I've moaned about before) with all the thin lines between the poems. (This page looks better than the one in the magazine, where the lines are chopped up.)

Next comp is ‘Easy Peeler’ (See new thread)

Jayne
__________________________________________________
Competition
_________________________________________________
TESSA CASTRO
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In competition 200, you were invited to write a poem with the title ‘Limit: Two Tons’. Speed, cricket, weight limits on bridges and in lifts were the main categories of tonnage, with a couple of considerations of Noah’s Ark. Among entries good enough to publish were those from Alder Ellis, Judith Caulfield, Katie Mallett, Mae Scanlan, G M Southgate, L M Williams, Stephen Wathen and Andrew Bamji.
Commiserations to them and congratulations to those printed below, each of whom wins £25, with the bonus prize of a Chambers Biographical Dictionary with tons of lives going to Rob Stuart’s larger than life creation.
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Weigh a ton, and look it too: there’s simply no disguising
The puckered rolls of adipose I’ve got from gourmandising.
There’s very little I would deem unsavoury or icky;
If carbon-based, I’ll chug it down; I’m really not too picky.
This predilection grieves my wife – I struggle to appease her
When I’ve been collared crunching chips directly from the freezer,
Partaking of a sausage roll that’s feculent and stinking
Or drinking cooking oil (or something else not meant for drinking.)
She’ll wring her hands, comparing my addiction to a junkie’s,
But truth be told, I genuinely couldn’t give a monkey’s.
I’ll turn and walk away from her the moment she starts bitching
And pluck a goldfish from the bowl to swallow, live and twitching.
I’ll fill my tum with anything from fat balls to polenta,
From steak and kidney pudding to a blob of rat placenta,
From KFC and egg-fried rice to acorns, leaves and catkins,
But if I ever reach two tons, I’m going on the Atkins.
Rob Stuart
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He walked out to the wicket,
His aim to score two tons,
Which in the game of cricket
Denotes two hundred runs.

No affable team player,
He always walked alone,
A miserable stayer
Completely ‘in the zone’.

He wasn’t entertaining.
He didn’t do it fast.
The tedium was draining
As decades, aeons passed.

Though others feel dejected
If the other side had won,
He wasn’t much affected
When he’d got his double ton.
Basil Ransome-Davies
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‘How much do you love me?’ Grandma would enquire
Before rewarding me with some surprise.
‘Two tons,’ I’d say to set her heart on fire
And see a smile that started in her eyes.
On my last visit, when her eyes were mist,
Her glance still asked what I identified;
And as I bent beside her bed and kissed
Her thinning hair, my wordless lips replied.
I opened out my arms to let her know
The width of all my love, its weight and might,
And in her eyes that old familiar glow
Came back for just a moment of delight.
A few days later, saying my goodbye,
I thought of my unswerving adoration,
And knew the love wrapped up in my reply,
‘Two tons,’ had no such foolish limitation.
Frank McDonald
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I’d loaded hay before.
I knew the weight, wore leather gloves
to stop bale-string cutting the palms,
was used to the up-swing and dump,
left air spaces in the hope that
the whole blasted barnful would not
combust through sheer malevolence.
The roof, once thatched but now
corrugated iron, was roasting hot.
Sweat stung my eyes. The shirt stuck to my back.
I’d have left this until the morning
when it would have been cooler, but
the farmer wanted his trailer back.
A mug’s game, raising calves. Worse than
teenagers, currently sprawled in the house,
laughing at The Good Life on TV.
Alison Prince
________________________________________________
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  #2  
Unread 04-03-2016, 01:59 PM
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Gail White Gail White is offline
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So they didn't fancy my entry about two circus elephants crashing through a wooden bridge...
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  #3  
Unread 04-03-2016, 05:28 PM
Rob Stuart Rob Stuart is offline
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Not even an HM for Sylvia's? You woz robbed.
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  #4  
Unread 04-04-2016, 07:25 AM
Sylvia Fairley Sylvia Fairley is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Rob Stuart View Post
Not even an HM for Sylvia's? You woz robbed.
That's kind of you, Rob. I'd been tentatively hopeful - but I knew it wouldn't top your excellent adipose tissue! Congratulations!
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