The next poetry competition – “Lost love”

He’s always referred to as ‘Alfred, Lord Tennyson’  – I don’t know why. (‘Sebastian, Lord Coe’? Naeh, it doesn’t sound right. But I digress. This is a post about pomes, not poetry in motion.) Alfred is an easy poet to enjoy, not just for his aphorisms, but for his metre too – like these: Continue reading “The next poetry competition – “Lost love””

August Poetry Competition – and the winner is…..

A fine turn out from the usual suspects plus a few.

A lightning fast entry from Janus 1 in the style of that music hall favorite “Albert and the Lion”
Followed by modern pieces by Araminta
and Pseudonym
Then a sparse and thoughtful piece by Janus 2.
Then on the final day, two Caledonian entries.
Another “Albert” from John Mackie
And with barely hours to spare a visit to France by The Royalist

All really good reads, clearly a lot of well remembered holiday times and subsequently awfully tough to choose just one winner. However, I do like my pomes to rhyme so let’s start with focusing on the two “Alberts “ and “When in France”. I really also do like “Albert” so lets limit ourselves to those two entries.
Both rocked along and were perfectly constructed and rhymed, but I will award the prize to Janus 1 and “Holiday Pome” winner by the barest nose of the ‘orses ‘ead ‘andle.

For the avoidance of doubt the decision was not determined by the double (bash)ing of Mr. Mackie.

A good one Janus, I liked it very well.

An interesting (?) anecdote.

The friends for whom I was dog/house sitting for the last three weeks are Hong Kong Chinese.  On posting abroad, they had prudently laid in a year’s supply of staples to bring with them, all their favourite HK brands – or brands that are popular in HK – of course.  I neglected to take toothpaste with me and was given a tube of this brand…

I used to use this brand myself when I was in HK – a bit of nostalgia.  There is, however, a story

Any more for the roundabout?

Totally non contentious post. No other mention of Norway, Roma or cricket.

I did watch some of the Republican National Convention last night, I thought for a moment I had stumbled on “America’s got talent” by mistake. The last man to think that the Presidential election is NOT a popularity contest was Richard Nixon and look what happened to him.

We have four entries for the poetry comp. (from three regular contributors) nothing yet from the Dream Team, but there are a full twelve hours left to enter (even allowing a full thirty minutes for uploading and formatting).

All aboard!

How to deal with Roma

This morning on a motorway in Poland we were chosen as possible victims by a car load of Roma.  They waved frantically at us – mother, father and grinning children – that we should pull in to the hard shoulder.  Yeh right!  We continued on to the service area we had already decided to stop in, pulled up at the pumps and the Roma, in a tatty old German registration vehicle, pulled up alongside.  Husband spoke English, but I spoke German, asking what the problem was. “ Was ist los?”  I might as well have shouted “Heil Hitler”, because they took off like a scalded cat.  They obviously have a healthy respect for German.  I know that with fair hair and blue eyes  and a good knowledge of German, I might have appeared intimidating.

Now I realise that these wicked Roma are only a tiny percentage of the whole population.  But obviously the solution is to send the whole bunch back so that the angelic 99.9% can show the remaining 0.1% naughty ones the error of their ways.