12 YEAR OLD SCOTCH WHISKY

COMPETITION

evaVAS

12 YEAR OLD SCOTCH WHISKY

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Pansy

Jaspistos

In Competition No. 1655 you were in- vited to write a modern 'Pansy', following D. H. Lawrence's collection Pansies.

Although my daughter's middle name is Eastwood (DHL's birthplace or Clint's surname, whichever way you or she like to take it) and although I admire some of his poetry, on the whole those cleverly re- named pensees strike me as rather sad and bitter little blooms. As a golf-playing, flat-owning, occasionally tie-wearing citizen, I no longer think 'How beastly the bourgeois is!' such a witty little bombshell as I did as an undergraduate. It being the Christmas season, I not only wish you all a happy time but make way for the max-

imum number of winners possible. The prizewinners printed below get /14 each, and the bonus bottle of Chivas Regal 12-year-old de luxe blended whisky goes to Will Bellenger, the most truly Lawrentian.

What people say they really crave is strong leadership.

They say they will vote for a brute, for a bully, even, for that means they are safe from even bigger bullies But then they complain that bullies upset them,

upset them more than they like being upset, and even that they never voted for the bully, only for strong leadership.

So they vote out the man — or woman — who bullied, and console themselves smugly by complaining that the new leaders aren't strong enough. (Will Bellenger) Give us back the old-fashioned grannies! We're so tired of peroxided grannies on motor- bikes, Grannies who swim the Channel or ski, Who go up in balloons, Who rule the country; Trendy grannies, knocking back gin and tonic. Give us the old grannies with grey wispy hair and lace caps, Smelling of lavender, Grannies who spend their day; creating pre- serves, Black dark jam from the turgid fruit of the bursting bushes, Straining it through muslin, And never straining at the leash.

(Vicky Cornford) Why do I always know whenever I'm told someone is a Green That I'm just about to meet A prig or a bore — or both?

As jilt weren't obvious That we have to love this earth Without all this self-admiring song-and-dance about it!

It's easy: love all plants and creatures, Both for themselves and for the life-pulse That thrills and throbs through every one of them.

Don't eat meat or wear furs Or buy or use anything that clutters and poisons the planet —

But do it as an individual,

Your own little flesh-thrill and blood-throb.

You can't be quietly green in your heart If you go round shrieking Green on your sleeve. (Molly Fitton) For God's sake, let us have legs, not rubber wheels on grey tarmac.

The motorist builds himself safe in his metal suppository and travels up the metalled anus of the world and feels potent. He is not alive!

If man were as much man as a car is a car he'd have some sort of power, but a man in his car has no more power than a Rhyacophila grub, and a much less pretty name.

At least a caddis worm becomes a pupa and emerges to fly, while the man grub emerges grub-faced and flaccid an ever-grub with a pension, earthbound.

How paltry, how vulgar, what a mean crea- ture. . .

Bah! (T. Griffiths) Since the Oxford Voice retired to the back benches doncherknow, And the Cambridge Voice twitters on late-night chat-shows, And the Northern Voice now means Funny but Honest With It, All we hear is the polyvox multiglot Voice of the Mediocracy Twanging its way down the adenoidal hooter, Gargling its diphthongs deep in the well-oiled throat . . . 'Let's face it? they say.

Yes, let's face it.

Mediocracy stinks. (John E. Cunningham) Plastic! It means malleable, but isn't.

It's dead, it's inert, it's worse than dirt, And, cast upon the waters, Comes back in time to meet your great-grand- daughters.

Whoever invented this stuff Should be put in a polythene bag with hermetic seals And sunk with a nuclear submarine To be the home of barnacles and eels.

(Richard Blomfield)