For Competition 3421 you were invited to submit a reply from Slough to offset Betjeman’s rude lines on the subject.
The poet Ian McMillan got in there first, springing to Slough’s defence in 2005 with ‘Slough Re-visited’: ‘Come friendly words and splash on Slough!/ Celebrate it, here and now/ Describe it with a gasp, a “wow!”/ Of Sweet Berkshire breath’. But perhaps he needn’t have bothered; a year later, on the centenary of his birth, Betjeman’s daughter Candida Lycett-Green apologised for the 1937 poem, saying her father ‘regretted ever having written it’.
Commendations go to Paddy Mullin, Joseph McCann and D.A. Prince. The £25 John Lewis vouchers are awarded to the winners below.
He plans to (claiming it’s run-down)
Annihilate our thriving town.
For heaven’s sake, who is this clown?
Be on your guard.
Our restaurants are not canteens,
Pray, tell me what this numbskull means,
Tinned food? We have the best cuisines,
Michelin starred.
Though follically challenged, clerks
Will seldom belch – and in our parks
They tune in to the singing larks
And star-gaze too.
Getting ready for the plough?
No, Mr B, we all avow
With luck the bomb will by-pass Slough
And fall on you.
Sylvia Fairley
Earth has not anything to show more fair
Than Slough – blithe Slough! Dull would he be who’d drive
Through Bucks and Berks and fail to stop and stare,
To exit the M4 at Junction Five;
Yea, dead be they of soul who could pass by
The DFS at Bath Road Retail Park
Or Queensmere Car Park and Observat’ry;
By Choice and Poundland, TK Maxx, Primark,
All bright and glittering in each siren store,
With late September Yuletide fayre display
And Halloweenish cobwebs, ghouls and gore;
By KFC and Nando’s, Greggs, Subway –
Behold such splendour, Betjeman! Think’st thou now
That any friendly bomb should fall on Slough?
David Silverman
You fantasise a blitz with rules:
The only victims are sad fools
Who haven’t been to public schools.
Let them all die.
And ugly men, and women who
Use labour-saving aids – brand new! –
Nail polish and peroxide too.
I wonder why,
You mock the wish of mortgagers
To live behind their own front doors.
From most people that earns applause;
From you, a hiss.
You’re gifted at poetic art,
The play with words, but that apart
This ode smells rotten as a fart –
Of prejudice
Basil Ransome-Davies
Those friendly taunts that fell on Slough
No longer raise derision now,
For we are still surviving, John,
And you, dear poet, are long gone.
The words you thought would cause us shame
Have merely brought poetic fame.
Folk came and saw and with surprise
They found that you wrote friendly lies.
We’re normal folk with normal jobs,
Not bounders, beggars, sharks or slobs
And those who visit us discover
We’re a nice town like any other.
But we should thank the poet who
Brought our small township into view
And pouring laughter on our looks
Inscribed our name in poetry books.
Frank McDonald
Load up the guns with shell and shot
To lay waste all he thought we’re not:
Fill Diss with its deserving dead,
Pump pretty Pershore full of lead,
Heap Henley high with pink-tied kills,
Bombard those Herefordshire Hills,
And strike with grid-specific care
186 Cadogan Square.
But let each Sluff, once they have killed,
Recall revenge as best-served chilled:
For all the things he chose to boot,
Canteens and smut and tins of fruit,
Are now gone to that sepia place
His trilby’d shade must also grace,
Perusing with profound distress
The wine list at the Good Queen Bess.
Nick Syrett
You always found a place ungodly
Without a font by G.F. Bodley.
You satirised in tinkling verse
The metro suburbs – even worse
The new towns, like our evil Slough
Whose usefulness you should allow.
For what’s the use of damp nostalgia?
Dyspeptic lines that cause gastralgia?
When your idea of having fun
Was ogling Miss Hunter Dunn;
And much of what you wrote was jobbery,
Infused with mocking English snobbery.
You may have thought this town a blunder,
But you’re the one who’s six feet under.
We’re still standing. Poor old John
Is flattened, bombed, departed, gone.
Frank Upton
No. 3424: It’s a con
You are invited to write a short story (150 words maximum) for which ‘Conman’ could be the title, containing a dozen words of four or more letters beginning with con or man. Please email entries to competition@spectator.co.uk by midday on 29 October.
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