Competition | 1 May 2010

In Competition 2644 you were invited to submit the views of an inanimate object, in verse, on its owner/s.
Highlights of a large and entertaining entry included Gillian Ewing’s outraged iron — ‘She doesn’t use me half enough,/ But when she does she treats me rough…’ — and Mary Holtby’s unjustly accused oven, in fine indignant voice: ‘Victim of the botched assault,/ Soon I learn it’s all my fault, Great to hear a hopeless sloven/ Blame her inoffensive oven…’ There were harsh words, too, from Mike Morrison’s bicycle: ‘The Cornish-pasty headpiece/ Black Spandex bondage kecks/ That total tosser T-shirt/ And aviator specs…’

Congratulations, one and all. The winners, printed below, get £25 each, except Alan Millard, who gets £30.

You’re clearly narcissistic. You’re the soul of
    vanity.
You gaze at me for hours but it’s never me you see.
You feign a sickly smile and you stroke your
    stubbly chin,
And marvel at your profile when you’ve pulled
    your stomach in.
You see yourself as elegant, a star of stage and
    screen
Whose face would grace the pages of a glossy
    magazine.
You pose like some Apollo with a supercilious air
And manufacture faces while you rearrange your
    hair.
Blind to every aberrance and abnormality,
You idolise a fantasy that only you can see.
Your hair is white, your teeth are brown, your
    skin is granite-grey,
You’re nothing but a sad old crock who’s long
    since had his day,
And yet the wreck before your eyes you doggedly
    reject
And choose to see what you select and not what I
    reflect.
But knowing that there’s none so blind as those
    who cannot see,
Perhaps you’re wise to close your eyes to what’s
    confronting me.
Alan Millard