A to P

In Competition No. 2543 you were invited to submit a poem about the things people need to live on, in which the first letter of each line spells out the first 16 letters of the alphabet.
Martin Parker, self-confessed ‘crawler’, played the flattery card (he was not alone), which had no bearing whatsoever, of course, on his inclusion in the winners’ enclosure. His is a Betjeman-esque nostalgia for a now almost bygone era. It provides a nice counterpoint to Mike Morrison’s grim lament on what makes today’s world go around. He bags the extra fiver, while the other winners, printed below, net £25 each. Honourable mentions to Brian Murdoch, Basil Ransome-Davies and R.S. Gwynn.
Thanks to sharp-eyed Roger Brunskill, who has pointed out a case of gender reassignment — accidental or deliberate — that I failed to note in Alan Millard’s entry to last week’s competition. Mr Brunskill quite rightly points out that the horse in ‘Widdecombe Fair’ is a mare, and not a ‘he’ as Mr Millard has it.

All-you-can-eat emporia, cheap booze,
Botox injections, trollopy tattoos;
Celebrity chefs who cannot cook for toffee,
Doner kebabs, foul four-quid high street coffee;
eBay, the trading post for not a lot,
Friends Reunited, facebook — sad or what?
Goss on la Winehouse, Doherty and Moss,
Handbags from Prada, suits by Hugo Boss;
Internet scams to ‘find your perfect mate’,
Jordan, whose joke-shop jugs we venerate;
Kitsch’n’sink drama, ishoo-driven soaps,
Leather settees, horrendous horoscopes;
Manicures; rings and studs in strange locations,
Naturopathic nonsense medications;
Obligatory sport purveyed non-stop by Sky,
Plasma-screen wall-wide televisions — why?
Mike Morrison