Competition: Fallen angels

In Competition No. 2751 you were invited to paint a portrait in verse of Ladies’ Day at Royal Ascot. In his Turf column last year, Robin Oakley wondered what the poet who, in 1823, described ‘the Thursday goings-on as “Ladies Day …when the women, like angels, look sweetly divine”’ would make of today’s proceedings. Well, the entry is a fulsome tribute to the Ladies of 2012, urging us to delight in the life-enhancing antics and ensembles that raise them hats and shoulder pads above their ‘angelic’ predecessors. The winners pocket £25 apiece. Brian Allgar gets £30.

The ladies are charming, although it’s alarming
To see how they jostle and chatter —
‘And guess what he said, dear…’ — while wearing
such headgear,
So fragile I fear it may shatter.

We’ve the usual collections of fruity confections,
But this year they’re mostly organic;
The rotting bananas would fill up a barn as
The hats grow increasingly manic.

Here’s one that’s quite ‘dishy’: a hat that is fishy,
Embellished with flounders and kippers.
(And bottoms are flaunted, their owners
undaunted,
Though few as delightful as Pippa’s.)

The girls are angelic, and only a relic
Could wish that these beanstalks were fatter.
But as for the hats, I’ve just one word, and that’s
That their wearers are mad as a hatter!
Brian Allgar

You would not mistake them for ladies
In the old-fashioned sense of the term,
These brazen young floozies from Hades
Who make Ascot’s upper crust squirm.

They move in a pack or battalion.
Their handbags are loaded with gin,
Their colour sense rather Italian
And orange the shade of their skin.

They tweet like a bevy of lemurs;
They smoke like a broken exhaust;
Their skirts soon ride up to their femurs;
But their natural joy is unforced.