Sixth Poetry Competition – Results

Sixth Poetry Competition  – Parody

A small field, but choice, as the locals here say.

Christopher’s Wheelbarrow had all the right ingredients, wit, brevity and a pungent skewering of a presumptuous poem.

Soutie’s Rugby anthem certainly met the requirements and in addition “sparked some lightning” as that old toper Dylan Thomas might say.

Peter’s saga of late night perambulations was beautifully crafted and as familiar and chilling as this morning at three am.

But I truly loved OZ’s Fido’s Dream a classic take on a ponderous piece, deserving of a little literary criticism of the kind my old English Lit. teacher used to dish out in liberal portions (poor long suffering Mr. Voake).

A literary analysis of “Fido’s Dream”

Here we have Drake’s Drum made into a Dog’s Breakfast, the concept of “let sleeping dogs lie” applied to that old “Sea Dog” himself.

The wooden walls of Fido’s kennel, no doubt echo the more famous “Wooden Walls” – the great wooden fighting ships of Drake’s navy.

The unopened tin of Fido’s food brings to mind the toy tin drums of our youth, bringing Drake’s drum back to the present.

Of course the Golden Meal is a reference to  “The Golden Hinde” Drake’s flagship for many years.

As Bonio figures large in this story could this be a reference to Boazio Drake’s cartographer?  Such creative daring would make the parable complete.

Well Done O Zangado, over to you for the Seventh.

Cutting & Pasting (gerund-wise)

In  2006 The Iconclast writing for The New English Review published an article on his web page with the exciting title , ‘Breaking news – English has a gerundive‘.  I came across the article following a challenge to one of my comments on a  MyT post from ‘beanbeab (stefa)’.  This was some few years back, and I was always happy to have my use of English  corrected by the now sadly departed and greatly missed beanbean.  As I’m sure she suspected, my knowledge of the gerund (and I suspect that of most other people) was non existent.  Either that, or buried in some long unopened memory vault.  Nevertheless, my fleeting contact with beanbean did revitalise my interest in the English language.  An interest that I now avidly pursue.  In a recent parody  I composed based on ‘Sea Fever by John Masefield’ , the following line became a real test for a bear of very little brain:-


“I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide” Continue reading “Cutting & Pasting (gerund-wise)”

Sleeping wicketkeeper

Morne Van Wyk

I’ve heard of sleeping policemen but this takes the cake.

Morne van Wyk kept wicket for S.A. against India on Saturday, his performance was shoddy to say the least.

Morne who didn’t attempt a catch off Sehwag early on, missed at least one stumping and according to my newspaper today ‘looked a little soporific’ has admitted that instead of taking a vitamin supplement prior to the match he mistakenly took a sleeping tablet! (link)

Dope!

He had a good game yesterday though (okay he was dropped twice early on and ran out Continue reading “Sleeping wicketkeeper”

Japan

It was a year ago when, at about this time, I was sitting on a bench in Tokyo watching the ducks circling in a pond. Tokyo, a hectic city with seemingly more people per block than the combined population of New Zealand and its West Island, Australia, maintained a sort of quiet order through it all. For all that was going around, the city was clean and the people unbelievably polite/pleasant. Once, at a train station WC with a long queue, a man told me to follow him… He lead me to a loo without a queue saying that, while designed for the disabled, could be used by anyone. Most Japanese would not use it even if they were dancing the bladder jig. It was in Japan where I would stay up all night and sing karaoke before heading to a ramen shop for a 4 AM bowl of soup. All the way through the Japanese were impeccable in every way. Even the customer service at convenience stores exceeded that found in high-end German and US stores. Japan now is in a bad way. Today I spoke with two old friends who are now back home in Japan. Both are carrying on stoically, eager to get back to their regular lives. It is hard for me to discuss it, perhaps because I am also so thoroughly disgusted with the media and how they handle this. Over a million have no access to fresh water yet when packages of bottled water are brought, no one takes more than they absolutely need. The people are not looting, the people are not rioting. Even in this hell, the people are doing their best to carry on as well as possible.

Georgia, Sweet Georgia

Into Georgia, just, had a few mechanical issues today, batteries, generator, invertor but all solved by suppertime.

Highlight of the day, took on 440 gallons of diesel so hammered a credit card for $1500.

Anchored overnight in Shellbine Creek, southern Georgia after an early start (7:00am) to make the tide, much grumbling from the first mate.

Only a few piccies.

The first one is “What is it?”

Continue reading “Georgia, Sweet Georgia”

Ruminations on Japan.

Japan has taken the 5th largest earthquake ever recorded in the 20th &21st Centuries.

What is truly amazing is that the vast majority of the buildings survived the earthquake pretty well intact.  It was the tsunami that did for them subsequently.  When you compare the whole event with the debacle of Haiti and Indonesia and the relevant death tolls of both of those events  one has to have nothing but admiration for their civil engineering, stoicism and self control.  Had Christchurch received the ‘benefit’ of an 8.9, theirs was only 6.2, I doubt a brick would have been left standing in the city.  Seemingly the only other country that appears to have anywhere near the survival rate of structures is Chile.

Continue reading “Ruminations on Japan.”