In Competition No. 2618 you were invited to submit a sequel to Betjeman’s ‘A Subaltern’s Love Song’. As a native of the home counties — born in Aldershot, raised in Camberley — I have a soft spot for Betjeman’s muse, who imparted a touch of glamour to this unlovely part of the world. The real Joan Hunter Dunn, white-coated goddess of the catering dept ardently admired by Betjeman from afar at the Ministry of Information in the early 1940s, was tracked down by a journalist 20 years later. And her life was, it turns out, a continuation of the poem. There was euonymus in her garden in Headley, Hants, and Joan Jackson, as she rather prosaically became, was still nimble about the tennis court well into her forties.
Which was a far cry from the less than glorious future that you envisaged for her. A record-breaking entry painted an almost exclusively grim picture of lost youth, disappointed hopes and sun-damaged skin.
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