Competition

Tessa Castro

IN COMPETITION No 290 you were invited to write a poem, Spring Cleaning, as an acrostic with the first letter of each line spelling out the title. I don’t know if the extra requirement made the poems better, but rhyme and metre usually do.

Tony Bartlett pretended to quibble about the meaning of ‘spring’: ‘Pram spring? Mattress? Trampoline?/Rusty after years of use.’

Con Connell had Mrs Shakespeare giving her husband sound advice: ‘Not that you would ever lose Love’s Labour/ If you tried to keep your desk a bit more tidy…’

Andrew Bamji introduced a note of class war: ‘Now I know you rich bastards are having a laugh/ Gaily boasting, “No problem – for we have got staff!” ’

G M Southgate looked forward to ‘Noting the worktops/ Need scrubbing, and when this is done,/ Going to sleep on the sofa, in blessed spring sun.’

More grubbily, Peter Hayes’s narrator had his bank account cleaned out by his Thai bride; that’ll learn him!

Nowhere left to put belongings, Giant heaps are everywhere. Can I find the strength to clear things? Let the place taste some fresh air? Every time I swear I’ll do it Apathy destroys my will. Now at last I settle to it, I am set to climb the hill. Not quite yet. I think a beer may Give me strength to clear away.

Max Ross

Spring cleaning’s list of things to do Perhaps applies to poets too: Remove and dust all triolets, Install New Roman alphabets. Neat bleach shifts rogue apostrophe’s (Get Brasso to hyperboles.) Chop out unbridled US words Lest nouns take root and grow to verbs. Eradicate portmanteau grime And give your words more space to rhyme.

Next – toss used stanzas with a grin In Reverend Spooner’s Busty Din. Now make up for the time you’ve lost –Go out of doors with Robert Frost.

The bidding

Commiserations to them and to John Wilsher, D A Prince, Ann Drysdale and Basil Ransome-Davies, and congratulations to those printed below, each of whom win £25 with the bonus prize of Chambers Dictionary going to Jane Bower.

David Dixon

Sunbeams pierce the speckled windowpanes, Prompting me to start the grisly work Removing winter’s filth, the lingering stains

(1) Weak with seven decent hearts.

(2) For take-out.

(3) Able to hold up his ace of hearts the appropriate number of times to exhaust East then hope to avoid losing a subsequent trick to West. A clear choice.

West led the ten of Hearts, East playing the knave and declarer ducking. Z can count to five (as he put it). One heart trick and two club tricks: if he can make two diamond tricks, the game is down. Needing West to have a diamond picture, at trick two he switched to the seven of diamonds.

Declarer played low from hand, beating West’s knave with the ace. He crossed to the ace of spades and led the nine of clubs. Winning the queen, East now led the ten of diamonds, happy to lose it to declarer’s queen and set up two diamond winners for his king-nine. Oddly, declarer ducked the ten and now Z masterfully switched to an entry-cutting second spade.

Declarer could win dummy’s king-queenten of spades, but when he led a second club, East could win the ace and exit with his queen of hearts, soon scoring the king-nine of diamonds. Two down – Z magic.

ANDREW ROBSON

Squeaky-clean, pristine-green shoots spear skyward

Pledged to a polish, Ciffing with sap, Rinsoed with rain, rooting through loam, Inching and piercing. Astonishing rotten Nuggets of leaf matter, iced, winterweary Gobbets of mud, defrosted humus. Conditioned in Comfort the tumble-dried clouds,

Lathered in Lux the sky’s net curtains; Elating the sullen, sleep-sodden garden A bigness of light sweeps its Cillited sponge, Newly and now, annual, awaited, Immaculate freshening, Flashing, Febrezed, Newly and now, breath-catching, eye-bright, Gasp at the Vim of the Spring, cleaning. Jane Bower

Surrounded by my student clutter, Piles of plates and dirty cups, Room that’s modelled on a gutter; It is time to clean, perhaps.

Ice and snow have left. I cannot shirk

Necessary tasks. I fetch my broom, Gather up the other tools I need. Congealing dust resides in every room

Lurking under cupboards to impede Easy progress; muscles of an ox Are now required, and would it be a crime

Not to move them all? Relentless clocks

Inform me I am running out of time. No one could enjoy this annual chore. God knows at best it is a dreadful bore.

Katie Mallett

COMPETITION No 292 I’ve had trouble with creaky knees, but now I’m glad to walk at all. A poem, please, called The Walk, in any connection. Maximum 16 lines. We cannot accept any entries by post, I’m afraid, but do send them by e-mail (comps@theoldie.co.uk – don’t forget to include your own postal address), marked ‘Competition No 292’, by Thursday 6th April.

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Son-in-law a bad cop?

QI am a 70-year-old man with a daughter who’s been married to a police officer.

I have never liked him, but have been civil for my daughter’s sake. Now, with the recent revelations about the Met, I feel I don’t want his company.

I shall shortly be faced with the choice between visiting them or not. What do you suggest?

I can see that my feeling is irrational in that he himself is blameless for –though perhaps aware of – the toxic culture, but feelings are not always rational, are they? I’m sure I cannot be the only one in this position.

M F, Leicester

AYou have behaved impeccably so far. And visiting your daughter despite your dislike of her husband has been a kindly and civilised move. It would be a great mistake to stop visiting them, and would cause misery and fury within your family – and rightly.

This man has, as far as you know, done nothing wrong. It’s unfair to blame one innocent man for the sins of his (comparatively few) colleagues. That way, wars start.

I do hope you will continue to behave politely, rather than let your unfounded emotions get the better of you and cause irreparable damage.

No, feelings are not always rational, but it is a sign of a civilised person not to let them dominate his or her actions if they can cause harm.

I know quite a few people I have loathed irrationally for years. But, by keeping my feelings in check, I have finally become quite fond of them!

As Alcoholics Anonymous so wisely advises, ‘Fake it to make it.’