[Jerome Betts]

Another keeping more narrowly to Lucy's apparent brief and rollicking entertainment, Peter! Maybe 'great' instead of 'old' in L2 to avoid clash with 'Old Hodges' in L3?

[Peter Goulding]

Thanks Jerome. Good spot.

[Martin Parker]

A shortened version of something which grew to almost "slim volume" length in a matter of a few frantic minutes. Probably not what Lucy was hoping for at all!

Like me they'd had dandruff and terrible spots and that lurking testosterone smell
which pervaded the bike-sheds at Hackney Sec. Mod. As a group we had failed to excel
at anything much except dreaming of sex; for most of each term-time had been
spent staring up Emily Evans's skirt and lying about what we'd seen.

But Friday's Reunion “Nite” at The Grand convinced me, for what it is worth,
that it isn't the meek but the mentally bleak who have come to inherit the earth.
Viz., Jeremy Lloyd, of grey matter devoid, with his E Grade in Media Studies
has been Head of TV and of Radio 3 and is one of Lord Patten's best buddies.

The rest are all rock stars, celebrity cooks, Big Brother contestants – or worse --
for Anthony Frame who could scarce spell his name has won a Nobel for his verse …..
While middle-aged me with two As and a B, having married a girl who's now Kurt,
am pockmarked with acne, still squatting in Hackney, still dreaming of Emily's skirt.

[Rob Stuart]

I like that a lot, Martin. Ah, that testosterone smell of teenage boys-I remember it well, if not fondly. An unsual metre-what's it called? Decametre?

Who can say what Lucy wants from this comp? She's got to publish something, though.

[Martin Parker]

Rob, Good question. No doubt some metrical geek will soon answer it with an undeserved welter of technical detail. Me, I reckon it is heptameters with a splash of dactyls chucked in -- that's about as far as my technical knowledge goes.
Actually, it should more happily appear on the page in alternate lines of 4 and 3 three thingummies. But that would take it over the sixteen line limit. The original ran to 30 lines plus -- or sixty lines if split 4 and 3. It might have a life of its own as a piece for reading aloud providing the audience can stay awake long enough!

[Brian Allgar]

Martin, the lines contains so many syllables that perhaps, by analogy with 'terabytes' in computer terminology, you should call them 'teradactyls'.

[Martin Parker]

Brian,Or enough metrical feet to be a "centipede."
Though the overall result, bearing in mind the very small amount of brainpower used in keeping the whole thing moving, might be described as a brontosaurus.

[John Whitworth]

I posted that I thought this was terrific but the post seems to have gone. The metre is that of W.S. Gilbert's Lord Chancellor's Song, is it not?

[Martin Parker]

John, Rather than WSG I suspect one of its closest metrical relatives may be V1 and 3 of Noel Coward's wonderful song, Alice Is At It Again which begins --

In a dear little village remote and obscure
A beautiful maiden resided.
As to whether or not her intentions were pure
Opinion was sharply divided .....

One of my favourite Coward songs (and well worth searching out by those who do not know it.) But since he was not doing it with a Speccie line limit in mind The Master was able to set out the lines in the more easily readable 4 and 3 format !

[Sylvia Fairley]

'Open up the caviar and say Thank god,
Alice is at it again...'
Love it. However, having spent a fair bit of my life toiling away in the orchesta pit for countless productions of G&S, I'm inclined to agree with John. It's the single syllable at the end of the line.
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