In Competition No. 2701 you were invited to take the opening line of ‘Adlestrop’, substitute a location of your choice, and continue for up to a further 15 lines.
The result of a brief, unscheduled stop at a Cotswold station just before the first world war, ‘Adlestrop’ has spawned many imitators. Jimmie Pearse’s fine parody, ‘Willesden Gree’, prompted me to set the comp — ‘We sat in silence, face to face/ (For that is what the British do),/ While over all the air, apace,/ Stole twilight scents of North-West Two.’) — and for especially devoted fans there is an entire anthology, Adlestrop Revisited edited by Anne Harvey, ‘inspired by Edward Thomas’s poem’.
Not surprisingly, then, it was a popular assignment. Commiserations to unlucky losers Noel Petty, Brian Murdoch, Bernadette Evans, Frederick Robinson, Bill Greenwell and John Beaton, and congratulations, for the second week in a row, to Gerard Benson, who nets the bonus fiver. His fellow winners, printed below, pocket £30 each.
Yes, I remember Odelstrap ─
A simple country railway halt
With wild flowers and singing birds
Unless my memory’s at fault.
Or was it, rather, Eidelestrip?
(That still seems wrong.) It was quite hot.
We stopped there once. I’m sure of that.
I think about it quite a lot.
Some fellow had a dreadful cough,
While we just sat in Ogglestrup.
I was quite moved, with all those birds
And everything. It cheered me up.
I won’t forget that sudden stop
And how I felt in Applesprot.
I’m haunted by those minutes spent
In, now I’ve got it! No I’ve not.
Gerard Benson
Yes, I remember Melbury Osmond,
For the wordcraft that could dub
That fair village ‘Melbury Osmond’
Also gave us Melbury Bubb.
Sterling coiners they, who minted
Minterne Magna free of dross,
Sixpenny Handley, Fontmell Parma,
Frome St Quintin, Harman’s Cross.
Dorset hamlets tagged in trophees
That have long withstood time’s test:
Sandford Orcas, Bishop’s Caundle,
Chaldon Herring, Chaldon West.
Piddlehinton, Turner’s Puddle —
Wells of English undefiled;
Toller Fratrum, Ryme Intrinseca —
Don’t they drive you Monkton Wyld?
Ray Kelley
Yes, I remember Elsinore —
A ghost in every bloody room,
As if in all of Denmark there
Were not a single restful tomb.
One told a tale of fratricide
And raved about a ‘porpentine.’
One madly scattered herbs. One clutched
A goblet full of poisoned wine.
‘He stabbed me through the arras!’ wailed
One white-haired shade. There was a brace
Of spooks with comic-opera names
Who’d perished in some foreign place.
‘My rank offense!’ one spectre wept.
Two youths held swords; one, sable-clad
(And, like his mate, just barely scratched),
Talked on and on. It drove me mad.
Chris O’Carroll
Yes, I remember Tunbridge Wells —
A lesser, English Marienbad,
Its residents entirely mad,
The tweediest of fascist hells.
The then prevailing genotype
For posh west Kent was gruff and stern,
A species born to rule, not learn,
With spaniel, Jaguar and pipe.
Old ways of life were fraught with dread.
Discussions at the nineteenth hole
Concerned the rise of rock’n’roll
And Communists beneath the bed.
A snapshot from another age…
I wonder, has the royal town
Retained or lost its lofty frown,
Grown more psychotic, or more beige?
G.M. Davis
Yes, I remember Steeple Bumpleigh,
The baaing sheep, the lowing beeves,
The chaffering chickens scratching plumply,
The reassuring hand of Jeeves,
Sweet Nobby Hopwood, so good-eggy,
Soul-mate to Boko Fittleworth,
Edwin the boy-scout, dire and dreggy,
Ought to have been put down at birth,
The jealousy of Stilton Cheesewright,
The drippiness of Florence Craye,
The twittering birds and buzzing bees right
Through the unending summer’s day,
The loopiness of Uncle Percy,
The ghastliness of Bertie’s aunt,
You have to say it’s such a mercy —
For Jeeves there’s no such word as can’t.
John Whitworth
No. 2704 Mind the gap
It is said that when Elizabeth Jane Howard and Kingsley Amis were married they used to write parts of each other’s books to seamless effect. You are invited to submit extracts from any less happy — perhaps less likely — collaborations between male and female contemporaries where the joints do clearly show (e.g., Raymond Chandler and Agatha Christie or Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman). Please email entries, if possible, to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 6 July.
Comments