[Jayne Osborn]

Congratulations to Alison (I hope you're going to join us regularly, soon, Alison!), Bazza as G M Davis plus an HM as himself, and Adrian.
'Edna Witful' sounds intriguing (real name, I wonder?? An anagram search turns up Dawn Futile... Hmmm...)

(Next comp called 'In the Dark' on a new D & A thread)

Jayne

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxThe Oldie Competition
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxby Tessa Castro


In Competition no 182 you were invited to write a poem called ‘Fruitcake’. The entries made me laugh and left me peckish. David McCullough wrote a rhyming acrostic recipe for Dundee cake, without nuts. Not so Basil Ransome-Davies’s narrator, who baked cakes in hope of inheriting from Granny, until, one day making a Dundee cake, in exasperation he ‘threw aside the fruit and nuts/And stuck a knife into her guts’. Edna Witful sent the shortest entry, in an Emily Dickinson mode: ‘Fruitcake – not easy/To digest – or versify/ – Now it’s a Dundeed.’
Elizabeth Brassington picked up a theme I’d mentioned of fruitcake as compensation: ‘We’re sorry that your husband’s died/Whilst flying from a casement – /So please accept this fruitcake as / A like-for-like replacement.’
So commiserations to them and congratulations to those printed below, each of whom wins £25, with the bonus prize of a Chambers Biographical Dictionary going to Alison Prince for a fine poem.

The train from school came in to a glass-strewn
platform. A V2 had dropped. A man
was sweeping, and I asked, ‘Where did it fall?’
‘Round there in the lane,’ he said, which was
where our house should be. I did not run,
holding the time of not knowing yet
that everything had gone. But it was there,
though tiles and glass lay strewn. In the kitchen
my mother stood, hands in a mixing bowl,
and wept. A Dundee lass, she never cried.
‘I’d saved up dried fruit for your birthday cake,’
she said. The kitchen windows had blown in.
Glass mingled with the currants and raisins
and precious sugar. She picked up the bowl
and took it down the garden, tipped it out,
leaving the lovely smell of cinnamon.
Alison Prince

My surrealistic vision sees
Art in the everyday locale –
Witches’ knickers in the trees,
Bike sculptures in the dull canal.
A manhole cover has the cut
Of an impressive Roman coin,
To quarantine not sewage but
Nymphs and satyrs, groin to groin.
A pizza carton in the park
That seems to spoil the civic scene
Attests where Warhol left his mark
In stripes of scarlet, white and green.
To those who count on common sense
I live a wacky fantasy
Where daydreaming is evidence:
A nut job and a fruitcake, me.
G M Davis

With knife (showing my skills with light), a plate –
that flowery wedding gift her mother had –
there’d be a Chardin feel about the weight
of simple objects: timeless, nothing sad
about still life, the essence of the thing,
testing both eye and hand – and composition, too.
And this needs something more – a shift, a string
of broken colour. What would Cézanne do?

He’d take a slice: of course! The answer’s plain.
And so will I. With rich crumbs on the knife,
a glimpse into that inner dark, the grain
of fruit and crumb – a homage to my wife
and her best work. (Or nearly: somewhat dry.)
A larger segment, then – and angled – should
expose its cake-y heart, draw in the eye
and, oh! all eaten! Still, those crumbs look good.
D A Prince

He’s a fruitcake, a loner, a green ink abuser
Who thinks he’s a Prophet while being a loser.
A monologist at both bus stop and boozer
With a spirit They cannot keep down.
He writes to his MP, the papers, his Mother,
One letter as bitter and strange as another;
Believes David Cameron Jesus’ half-brother
And preaches as much around town.
He sports an old fez, a bow tie, red galoshes,
A beard on a face that’s not seen many washes
And several non-functioning digital watches
He consults with a serious frown.
He’s theories on UFOs, Diana, moon landings
Most of which are beyond even his understanding
And he reckons the Jews are behind poll tax banding
And would vote, every time, Gordon Brown.
Adrian Fry