COMPETITION

No. 588: Holiday spirit

A recent letter in the Times correspondence columns pointed out that only Scotland and Iraq have fewer public holidays than we in England (with six) `while some favoured spots have as many as sixteen, or even seventeen (Hongkong).' The writer suggested that five new holidays should be added to our own list, one of them being New Year's Day. Competitors are invited to submit likely dates and suitable names for the other four, giving (in brief) the reasons for their selection. Entries, marked 'Competition No. 588'. by 30 January.

No. 585: The winners

Trevor Grove reports: Christopher Booker's The Neophiliacs and David Bailey's Good- bye Baby and Amen recently identified some influential trendsetters of the past decade, many of whom will surely have seen New Year's Day 1970 as marking the end of their gilded heyday. Competitors were in- vited to submit a 'Lament for the 'sixties' from any one of them, or an optimistic 'Ode to the 'seventies' from an up and coming young pacemaker who might relish the prospect of making the new decade his own. I had nourished some hopes of learn- ing who an-1 what such a 'young pacemaker' might be if not the old 'sixties lag togged out in daring new 'seventies gear: the only bold prognostication came from R. L. Sadler:

. . . May 'sixties' winter herald 'seventies' spring !—

Instead of demos rags and revelling; As after righteous Cromwell's

years austere Came Good King Charles, His charity and cheer.

Shall Charles again, who hath his forebears' wit, Nudge this day's Roundheads to embracing it?

A guinea to Dr Sadler. A good many saw Miss Quant rising phoenix-like from the embers of 1969 to impose (this time suc- cessfully) her much-vaunted topiary notions on a crutch-conscious nation—Nancy Perry, for instance, who wins a guinea: . . . The coming decade should persuade Renewed attention to be paid,

By all the ultra-chic and smart, To rites that Mellors chose to start,

When flower-arrangements he essayed With pubic hair.

Others saw her predicament as altogether more lamentable. among them Martin Fagg who wins four guineas:

Alas, who will want Qua nt In the 'seventies? How shall I fare When people no longer care How I wear My pubic hair?

In the day of the decorated navel, When only skin Is 'in', Clothes that yesterday would have made them ravel' Fall flat. Perhaps, now that

the only thing that's a la mode

Is getting intricately top to toed In lacquer, I could open just one

more wee boutique off the King's Road—

And sell woad?

Frankly, this Miss Mary Is getting rather scary.

L. W. L. Kibble was another who fixed the ▪ 'seventies with a somewhat doleful eye (and wins three guineas):

If you can find a set that's not been trended, Or profitable variant at least, If you can find some filth yet unexpended, To please a publisher, or with-it priest; If you can scrape the intellectual barrel For stuff to start a sub-aesthetic storm, If you can find some ghastly new apparel To uglify the hapless human form; If you can make the shifting scene your oyster, And time the shifts to suit your cash requirement, If, when new modes are foisted, you're the foister, And pusher of the old modes to retirement, If you can fix some racket that unfixed is, Of find yourself a puppet-string to jerk, You'll do as well as I did in the 'sixties, But oh! my son, you'll really have to work.

Honourable mentions to T. L. Roy, M. K, Cheeseman, Judith Weltman and William Case; four guineas to Brian Allgar and his mourning Bailey: Oh Shrimpton! Oh Deneuve! Oh Tree!

All made by my photography -

And all the others made by me—

Where are they now, your much-exploited charms, Those photogenic breasts and legs and arms? Permissiveness, which made my day, Is on the wane, the pundits say, And this could well be my last lay; Yes, I have seen the dollies up in town Whose legs are closing as their hems go down.

Alas for fashion! Woe is me!

Without sex, what's photography?

Oh Shrimpton! Oh Deneuve! Oh Tree!' Things may improve, but I'll be past it then, So now it's Goodbye, Bailey, and Amen.