Lucy Vickery

Competition | 7 May 2011

Lucy Vickery presents this week's Competition

Lucy Vickery presents this week’s Competition

In Competition No. 2694 you were invited to provide the female equivalent to Shakespeare’s Seven Ages of Man.
Thanks to Phyllis Reinhard who submitted a pithy, witty entry that triumphed, she confesses, in a similar competition run by Another Magazine a decade or so ago. This disqualifies it from a place in this week’s winning line-up but not from being reprinted below for our pleasure:

Pampers, pull-ups, PMS,
Playtex pads, the Pill,
Provera as your HRT,
Then Pampers …life’s a thrill.


The overall standard was high, and other competitors who impressed and amused were Noel Petty, David Duncan Jones, Jayne Osborn, Virginia Price Evans and Janet Kenny. The winners, printed below, get £25 each. The bonus fiver belongs to Bill Greenwell.

At first, a bib as floral as it’s pink:
And choral aunts who coo and buy her fluff.
The second act’s some alcopop to drink,
Some sulking hormones, and tattoos and stuff.
Objectified by testeronic men,
She strikes out on her own, designer-dressed:
The fourth act pins her down again, but then
It also frees her, baby at her breast.
At last she breaks away, is fearless, fitter,
And gives her tongue and talent fuller rein.
We find her next as Gran, the peerless knitter
Who rules the roost, has nothing to explain.
The last, alas, surrounds her with some nurses
Who squabble over channels, feed her scran.
Some stereotypes, you say, pervade these verses?
The same with Shakespeare, codifying man.
Bill Greenwell















A man’s life gives him seven roles to play?
A woman acts all seven every day:
An infant’s love and need and lack of guile
Are present in her every tear and smile;
Though she outgrows the schoolgirl’s gap-toothed
face
And pigtails, she retains the coltish grace;
The pop stars on her walls are evanescent,
But adult love glows hotly adolescent;
She’s always the young single on the town
Whose lovers may but friends won’t let her down;
Always the wife and mother, life a blur
Of duties sprung from desperate need for her;
Always the workplace leader who enjoys
Winning on pitches once reserved for boys;
Always the madly wise, eccentric sage;
Always all ages, so don’t ask her age.















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