For Comp 3419 you were invited to write a poem to mark National Vodka Day (4 October) or another spurious designated day, actual or invented. There were several good vodka poems, by Adrian Pascu-Tulbure, D.A. Prince, Tanya Dixon–Clegg, and Helen Baty – I was sorry not to be able to fit them in. Ditto David Silverman’s celebration of National Crisp Day (the ‘Feast of Crispian’), John O’Byrne’s Baked Beans Day, Alan Millard’s Gobbledegook Day, Bill Greenwell’s National Plagiarism Day, Andy Myers’s Breakfast Wine Day, Jayne Osborn’s No Talking About Your Ailments Day, Frank Roots’s Self-ID Day, George Simmers’s Lemon Meringue Pie Day (15 August), and others besides.
The £25 vouchers go to the following.
Raise spicy Bloody Marys high
to National Vodka Day,
Serve shaken, stirred martinis, chilled,
It’s spud juice all the way,
This neutral, tasteless, odourless
Chameleon of booze,
Makes Moscow Mules and Wallbangers,
Boosts all bucolic brews.
Without it, Bond is on the rocks,
His franchise frail and straggly,
No Bond girl would look twice at him,
The Spy Who Didn’t Shag Me.
Let Slavic, slaking spirits shine
With olive, ice or twist,
The hippest hip-flask hooch in town,
Be chic, be suave, get pissed.
Janine Beacham
We chaps of Savile Row now fund a flag day for the cummerbund,
Which isn’t worn as often as of yore,
For we know gentlemen of taste require a band about the waist,
And press our silken garments to the fore.
Upon this Day of Cummerbunds, which Savile Row discreetly runs,
What more than wear one ought a fellow do?
Well, read our latest Press Release upon the purpose of the pleats
And you’ll be coming for a new ’bund, too.
Encummerbunded, surf the trend and swank about from dawn to end
Of one Day designated for the task.
In our accessory absurd, your midriff looks the final word
While for their own swish sash your friends will ask.
Quickly encumbered by demand from every chap across the land,
On Savile Row we’ll take no pause to smile:
We’ll have financial recompense of gratefully engirdled gents
Though we are simple servitors of style.
Adrian Fry
Welcome to Scotland’s National Porridge Day,
anyone can join us to exalt
its charms – that is, if made the Scottish way
with three parts water, oats, a pinch of salt.
Our hero, Rabbie Burns, enjoyed his oats,
what’s more he sowed some wild ones for good measure,
but every morning, read it in his notes,
’twas porridge fortified our national treasure.
The Sassenachs contaminate the dish
by adding fruit and nuts and raisins, too
then honey, sugar, anything they wish
to mask the real taste, the perfect brew.
It’s rich and creamy, flavoursome and hot,
the fibre keeps cholesterol at bay,
we stir it with a spurtle in the pot –
Yes, every day should be a Porridge Day!
Sylvia Fairley
It’s National Nothing’s Happening Day,
A day for everyone,
Make sure you do not get involved,
Do not join in the fun!
Of all the days throughout the year,
I think this is the best,
There’s nothing going on at all,
So you can have a rest.
The day will not be marked
By celebrations in the town,
They won’t be starting at midday,
Make sure you don’t come down.
There won’t be anything to do,
Or anywhere to go,
It’s National Nothing’s Happening Day,
Will something happen? No!
John Dredge
To celebrate National Poetry Day coinciding with both Fungus Day and National Back Pain Day
This morning on the lawn, a fairy ring of villanelles.
In clusters under hedges sprout great fleshy white rondels.
For breakfast, supermarket odes (of even size) on toast.
Radio 4 has ‘Fungus Please!’ A special long edition
Begins with Shakespeare’s famous lichen number ninety-four.
An enigmatic sequence of shiitake sets me musing…
Serenely a mycelium loiters till the time is ripe,
Then patient threads it looses to the surface smoothly swell
To sonnets big as dinner plates that take over the meadow.
But beware! The French bref double, which they’re easily confused with,
Is sometimes anapaestic to the young, or old and frail.
We’d learn to spot the toadstools and pick poems we could stomach
If it were more than once a year, but as it is, for many,
Such poetic puffball mornings aggravate the old lumbago.
Bob Newman
No. 3422: Timeshift
You are invited to submit a poem or passage on the theme of ‘daylight saving’ (16 lines or 150 words maximum). Please email entries to competition@spectator.co.uk by 15 October.
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