Well, if it wasn't for our Ralph and new member Peter Goulding we wouldn't have had a look-in this month! Well done, gentlemen, for holding up the Sphere - though only just 
It seems we must try harder, but I predict we'll fare better with the new comp, and you'll see why when you look at it (on a new thread).
Jayne
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxThe Oldie Competition
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxby Tessa Castro
In Competition no. 160 you were asked for a poem called ‘Vegetables’. I feel as though I’ve had a cornucopia emptied on me, so bountiful was your response. Una McMorran’s narrator thought veg not worth the growing, since: ‘A coterie of garden thugs / Make for the choicest path / To fornicate and then to hatch.’ Greg Platt used vegetable cookery as a metaphor for the European Union: ‘Most common taters, if they’re asked, / when shown a Brussels sprout, / will come back with a stock reply: / “That’s definitely out”.’ Ralph L Rosa pondered broccoli as an emblem of poverty, when served endlessly with pasta. Val Hardy cheerfully sent her vegetables to a Grand Macedonian Ball, and D A Prince descanted on the virtues of the carrot alone. Nick Hobart lambasted one root vegetable: ‘From New York across to Vegas, / They are known as rutabagas… / It a slur on Scandinavia / the bloody awful swede they gave ya.’ Peter Goulding made his narrator give the advice: ‘If your problems are parental, you should be more veggie-mental / and champion the ruthless use of greens.’ Commiserations to those mentioned and congratulations to those below, each of whom wins £25, with the bonus prize of a Chamber’s Biographical Dictionary going to Jenny Morris.
You have elegant ears, my dear.
Like rare fungus they clamp your head.
And your hair is as crisp as kale
with its fronds which are crimped and red.
Those so-knobbly wrists and knees
like Jerusalem artichokes,
marrow limbs and that pumpkin chest
are all envied by other folks.
While your butterbean teeth excite
and asparagus fingers tease,
eyes within your potato face
have the verdure of mushy peas.
From the top of your turnip head
and the tip of your mushroom nose,
you bloom, down to your tuber feet
And your radical radish toes.
Jenny Morris
I am a carrot, I live in a clamp,
Clamps should be dryish,
This clamp is damp.
Uprooted last month from my waterlogged plot,
I may not have carrot fly,
I’ve got rot.
I had an ambition to be in a salad,
Or with boiled beef as in harry Champion’s ballad,
But with skin very rough and a shape rather wonky,
I doubt if I’m fit to be fed to a donkey.
Now I can see daylight, there’s blue up above,
A small hand has seized me,
We’re hand in glove.
Kids play in the sunshine. It’s ME that they chose
For this vital position,
The snowman’s nose.
Daphne Lester
I’ll be damned. I’m green and fit
except the rank bit on my tip.
A knife-wielding god cuts away the decay
of my depraved extremity, drops me
in the pan. Halleluiah, I am saved.
It’s hot in here. Purgatory: preparing me for eternity.
I’m on the plate, what I’ve waited for,
was created for, free from sin. The god opens its face.
The Kingdom Come, I’m going in.
I’m the tip the god cut off. In the compost bin
with pips and peel and gods know what:
sweet stink of rot.
Maris Piper gone to seed gives me the eye,
lays claim to tribal memory,
says the earth will take us back. I’ll be green again.
Sounds good to me.
Maureen Bowden
The squash in the basket’s Victorian-corseted,
Hour glass and golden in feature and shape;
The cucumber’s ramrod, a seasoned performer,
Slimly enhancing the curves of the grape;
The carrot’s a phallus, a beacon to beckon,
The parsnip’s frost-darkened, his sweetness all won,
The watercress bites at the tongue like a lover,
The sweetcorn comes rocketing up to the sun.
The beetroot’s complexion is full of dark promise,
The kale curls like lace on a courtesan’s ruff:
Taste them and savour them, pull them, enjoy them,
Five times a day – are you getting enough?
G M Southgate
The Oldie 'Vegetables' results. Menshes for Ralph and Peter
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