[Jayne Osborn]

Sorry if this is late, folks. I just got back from a lovely week in Ireland and, meanwhile, I don’t know how many days ago The Oldie came through the letterbox.
Congratulations to winners Nicholas and Jerome, and to Gail for an HM. (The other HM, James Gunn, is a friend and neighbour of mine.)
See new thread for the next competition: ‘Running for the Bus’.

Jayne

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxThe Oldie Competition
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxby Tessa Castro

In Competition no 181 you were asked for a poem on chestnuts. James Gunn sent a limerick that began: ‘Horse chestnuts are also called conkers/To eat them you’d have to be bonkers.’ But he did not quite sustain this high level to the end.
Some competitors discussed the kind of chestnuts that are familiar stories, but they were fighting an uphill battle to entertain. Gail White did avoid longueurs by making her narrative snappy: ‘He told her some lover’s chestnuts/and wrapped her in a fleece./Then he pulled out two chestnuts/that made her yell ‘’Police!” ‘
Some of a loftier cast of mind played with Housman’s precedent. I enjoyed Gillian Ewing’s frolic through the Shropshire woodland, ending: ‘Though rich with cliché both may be/The chestnut tops the cherry tree.’ Ted Lane sent an actual poem, not a parody, evoking an autumn evening in 1954 shared by a couple. I particularly admired these two lines: ‘From shared chestnuts you saved a keepsake piece/which later turned to amber in a corner of your purse.’
So commiserations to them and congratulations to those printed below, each of whom wins £25. Most congratulations go to Dr Andrew Bamji, who also wins the Chambers Biographical Dictionary.

We had three spreading chestnuts; in spring they came alive,
As pretty spikes of pink and white would steadily arrive;
As all the buds burst open ‘twas lovely, I confess,
Except the sticky buds would drop and make a shocking mess.
As summer ran to autumn cool the conkers started falling,
The kids about the neighbourhood perpetually calling
To pick and choose plump specimens to play-fight in the schools –
Except the safety elves declared ‘twas now against the rules.
The leaves turned subtly golden in the Indian summer’s sun
And fell, and fell, and sweeping them was not a bag of fun;
Some thirty sacks I filled up, and left out on rubbish day,
Except the bloody council wouldn’t take the things away.
I came to hate those chestnut buds, and leaves and conker spikes,
And wished the wretched things could simply eff off on their bikes.
And then the blight struck… and I’m mighty glad that they are dead,
Except I need to buy some yews, and plant them up instead.
Dr Andrew Bamji

Happy are we, on this nivalene eve,
For everyone’s wanting and everyone’s peeve
Is all in an instant just kids’ make-believe:
A bag of hot chestnuts will see us to bliss.
Worries? Forget them this white winter night,
Soon everything’s lovely and everything’s right
And no one can help but be jolly and bright:
A bag of hot chestnuts will see us to bliss.
Have you dilemmas, your plans gang agley,
The sun hasn’t shone and you haven’t made hay?
Then come! It is time you were merry and gay:
A bag of hot chestnuts will see us to bliss.
Nicholas Stone

As boys peer up and pelt the boughs
What falls from there on high
Brings double grief to knit the brows
Or cause a muffled cry.
Oh, chestnuts that I would recount
And number by the score,
No longer do you quite amount
To what you did before.
You give not all you once gave when
Your harvest time had come,
For I am twenty-two, plus ten,
A miserable sum.
You cast your flambeaux, then your seed,
Your leaves will follow fast
To teach the lesson few lads heed
That Youth must end at last.
Jerome Betts

I used to love the autumn time
When I was in my youthful prime.
But now I’m older than before
I find I like the springtime more.
So when I see – God rot them all –
The bloody chestnuts start to fall
My spirits sink. I feel quite ill
As I recall that winter’s chill
Will shortly have me in its clutch.
That’s why I don’t like chestnuts much;
If you love autumn you must be bonkers.
And don’t get me started on f***ing conkers.
Ian Assersohn
 

[Jerome Betts]

Congratulations to fellow-Spherians Gail and Nicholas (and I'd like to see the rest of Gail's snappy number).

Nicholas's 12 lines and Ian Assersohn's again show that you don't have to go to the maximum 16 to win.

But, Jayne, is The Oldie space-starved? Did they really print Nicholas' and mine with the stanzas scrunched together? Swiz, if so.

[John Whitworth]

I am glad to see that 'actual poems' can also make the grade. Or in this case not quite make the grade. But the other poems don't appear to be parodies either. Perhaps Tessa means it doesn't rhyme. Humph!

[Martin Parker]

Admiration to anyone who made something out of such a dull subject -- even if they do not seem to have been classed as "actual" poems.

I wish the Winner luck with his Dictionary. Mine, won in July, is still undelivered despite two emails, plus phone call from Jayne to a contact of hers at the apparently mannerless and moribund Oldie. Perhaps the person who runs their Post Room was sacked at the same time as Ingrams. If not, he should have been.

Once Tessa has read John's bus-piece she could save herself a lot of work by closing the next competition to further entries. It -- the one on the Metric thread -- is truly a delight.

John, when/if your "spare" Dictionary arrives . . .

[Jerome Betts]

John, by ‘parody’ I think Tessa was referring to that LUPO stalwart Gillian Ewing’s ‘frolic through the Shropshire woodland’. Certainly my marron d’Inde à la Housman was intended as parody.

[John Whitworth]

I understood Ingrams resigned, as he had often done before, rather like Le General, whom Ingrams might have hope he resembled. I had the same sort of trouble getting beer out of the Speccie during Boris' reign. But it came in the end.

Chancellor seems OK, don't you think?

[Jayne Osborn]

Jerome,

None of the poems had stanza breaks in them this time, as printed in The Oldie. A chunk of the page is taken up by a SUD/OLD/KU puzzle, as they call it, so the poetry competition doesn't even warrant a whole page of the magazine, sadly, or we'd get one more winner every time. Perhaps we should protest en masse...

Martin,

I'm sorry I haven't been in touch with you about your prize since I rang them about it. For the last three weeks I've been to France, Germany and Ireland with my husband (by car; he on business, me bumming a free holiday) so I've been living out of a suitcase. I assumed you'd have received the dictionary in the meantime, so I'll be on the phone to The Oldie again in the morning, now we're back at home. (They promised to sort it out weeks ago. Humph!)

John,

Richard Ingrams resigned over an argument with the publisher, James Pembroke, who called him to a disciplinary hearing. He declared himself too old for that kind of malarkey, and left. Chancellor is no Ingrams -- read that how you like -- but neither of them has a clue how to use a microphone!! Chancellor mumbled and mumbled his way through the last Oldie lunch I went to, and it was most frustrating.

[Martin Parker]

Jayne,
If your efforts succeed you will surely deserve your own entry in the Nat. Biog. Dic.!

[John Whitworth]

I meant the magazine, Jayne.

[Jayne Osborn]

Jayne,
If your efforts succeed you will surely deserve your own entry in the Nat. Biog. Dic.!

Martin,
I have a result -- well, of sorts! Apparently the dishing out of the dictionaries is done by Hodder & Stoughton, and is nowt to do with The Oldie itself. The lady whose job it was has left and I've rung her successor, but he doesn't seem to pick up his calls so I've left a message. I await a call back from him!

John,
Yes, as far as the magazine goes Chancellor does a good job. He lives quite near to me, I believe, in some big country pile.