[Jayne Osborn]

Well... John's prediction about my poem on the original thread: "Betcha win with that, Jayne. Luvly" proved to be accurate.
They put an 'e' on the end of 'Osborn' though, in the magazine, and the punctuation wasn't quite as I submitted it, but never mind.
Chris is on a roll, with Spectator and WaPo wins as well, in the space of a few days. (No Hon Menshes; just us 'Two Parts' to keep the Spherical flag flying this month!)

(Next comp on a new thread.)

Jayne

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxThe Oldie Competition
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxby Tessa Castro

In Competition No 150 you were invited to write a poem called ‘Two Part Return’. Catching a train is now a battle of wits between the passenger (‘customer’) and the railway companies (‘train operators’). On my last journey, I felt so smug in getting a direct train from the Welsh Marches (slow but cheaper), instead of changing at Newport (Monmouthshire) and risking the usual missed connection, that I didn’t mind the French tourist who dropped her case on my head at Slough.
Among your First Class (Weekend Upgrade) entries, Fay Dickinson gave us a huffy ticket clerk: ‘Don’t rail at me when you speak. / I know the fares are baffling, / But I suggest you go off-pique.’ Mary Hodges ended her poem with a fine skirling refrain from the guard: ‘Ye canna tek yer tandem on my train / Ye canna tek yer tandem, our company had banned ‘em / Ye canna tek that tandem on my train.’ ‘So when with weary hearts,’ wrote Frank McDonald, ‘we reach / The platform of the final station / Perhaps we’ll find a waiting coach / With nameplate marked Reincarnation.’ That’s what it feels like already to me.
Commiserations to them and congratulations to those printed below, each of whom win £25, with the bonus prize of a Chamber’s Biographical Dictionary going to D A Prince.

How many, now, have handled them – those small
returns, rail tickets torn in half, and kept
secure in purse or wallet? That was all
you ever needed. Handed over, clipped,
the outward half retained, half handed back.
And when you travelled home, the same: so then
this promised journey home on the same track
and life resuming its old ways again.

And Emily Davison, the suffragette
who threw herself under the King’s horse, had
that same half-ticket carried in her purse;
hope to return from Epsom, even yet
escape her death? Who knows? or if it made
for her the smallest scrap of difference.
D A Prince

He checked my ticket, then he checked me out,
to my surprise. I was a fool; we dated,
(but just the once). He left me in no doubt
that fare evasion was the crime he hated
above all else. I hardly said a word
that evening. Then it ended. I was miffed
at being bored to death by such a nerd,
who topped it all by giving me a gift:
his ‘Ticket Inspector’s Handbook Number 5’,
a kind of Bible for a man whose brain
is filled with Rules, goes into overdrive
when he can implement them on a train.
He’d given me the book so he could boast
about his job, how much he’d had to learn.
I tore the thing in two, then dashed to post
it to him, with a note: ‘Two Part Return.’
Jayne Osborn

Travel was a close-linked trinity
of rucksack, sandals and the hopeful thumb,
a singleness focussed on luck to come.
A truck, brakes hissing, brought security,
at least as far as Rouen or wherever
it might go. Nothing to leave behind,
no fragmentation of a worried mind,
no pocket-patting – there was never
a watch to glance at, a booked train to lose.

Rail, when ventured onto, did at least
provide a ticket without trying to twist
the brain into contorted ways to use
a maze designed to drive one round the bend.
Two Part Return leaves part of my split mind
marooned in Ely, with no way to find
the schizophrenic myth of Elmer’s End.
Alison Prince

How much is it from here to there,
Then back from there to here
What is the fare to everywhere –
Cot, bivouac, boudoir, bier?

How much is it to travel far
From home, and then return?
What is the fare from where we are
To all we have to learn?

How much is it from all we’ve seen
To all we hope to see?
What is the fare from what we’ve been
To what we yet might be?

How much to journey out and back,
To lose and then regain?
What does it cost to leave the track,
To range beyond the train?
Chris O Carroll