In Competition No. 2406 you were invited to write a nostalgic poem about commercial products or brand images that are no longer with us. ‘O my Brylcreem and my Trugel long ago!’ sighed Tony Dawson. ‘Just bring me my Seebakrascope,’ begged John Whitworth (for those of you too young to remember, this was a miniature periscope, advertised in the 1950s, which showed what was going on behind you). Ah, Carter’s Little Liver Pills, Gibbs’ Dentifrice (to protect your ‘ivory castles’), Roboline, Elliman’s Athletic Rub, Fuller’s Walnut Cake, Spangles, the Bisto Kids, Bile Beans, the Rank Gong Man, Gripfix (the glue that smelt of almonds), Antiphlogistine for inflamed bronchials…. As Auden said about lakes, ‘Just reeling off their names is ever so comfy.’ The prizewinners, printed below, get £25 each and Godfrey Bullard has £30.
Hot summers brought Snowfrute to savour,
Ice-cold in its cardboardy case,
And Refreshers had fizz in their flavour
Which sizzled up into your face.
The Tippy-Top, deftly rotated,
Could turn upside down as it spun,
While the Glitterwax shapes we created
Had a smell that augmented their fun.
Those spoonfuls of Prunol they fed us
Ensured that our motions were right,
Till Chilprufe and Candlewick led us
To the warm benediction of night.
And Readybrek’s swift preparation
Would send us off healthy to school,
Where Valderma’s discreet application
Could prove even acne was ‘cool’!
Godfrey Bullard
‘You’ve spots now you’re older.’ ‘I know, Aunt’, I told her;
‘I’ve spots, and I think they’re a fixture.’
‘That’s rubbish, you know,’ said the Aunt. ‘I shall go
And buy you some Cherry Blood Mixture.
‘The makers are Clarks: they’re probably sharks,
But they brew up a powerful concoction.
In a fortnight or two, the result will make you
Look a boy one could bid for at auction.’
It wasn’t that fast, but they went off at last,
And my face was as clean as a whistle —
Well, not quite that clean, for I found at sixteen
That I then had to shave off some bristle.
The aunt is long dead, but what she had said
Remained in my mind. How I hated it
When my grandson had spots, and I ordered him lots,
To find that cruel time had outdated it!
Paul Griffin
Throughout the ages humankind
Has been inventively inclined.
The wheel, steam turbines, DVDs,
All manifest our expertise
At useful innovations made
Where Science bonds with Art and Trade;
But Bakelite was quite fantastic —
The world’s first thermosetting plastic.
So strong and yet so versatile
It beat its rivals by a mile,
The stuff of pipe stems, poker chips,
Of egg cups, ashtrays, pistol grips,
Of telephones and castanets,
Of fountain pens and wireless sets,
And even – thanks to Belgian boffins –
A handy line of budget coffins.
G.M. Davis
Alas, Collis Browne, one can no longer find
Your Chlorodyne on which depended
The bowels of our empire. These it would bind
Discreetly as nature intended.
From Cairo to Delhi, Accra to Karoo,
And on many a desolate ocean
Dysentery, cholera, squitters and sprue
Were subdued by your marvellous potion.
From Africa days I recall that a pigmy,
A nice little chap, told my wife
That Chlorodyne finally cured borborygmi
Which had troubled him all of his life.
So a grateful farewell from the empire you served.
You kept our intestines serene.
Imperial dignity thus was preserved
In the rudest, remotest latrine.
Hugh King
‘Me, I’m a heavy smoker. I smoke Weights.’
So ran the phatic, automatic joke
Back in the nervous Fifties. All my mates
Bought Weights, the underage and poor man’s smoke.
Like Woodbines, Weights were titchy, short of strength,
The runts of the tobacco world. One drag
Would burn your gasper down to half its length,
The rest a frill of ash. But what a fag!
That dusty flavour, redolent of hay,
Those cheap delights we’d guiltily consume,
Linger in my sensorium today
Like the aroma of long-closed room.
My virgin vice…but vices die away
As age invades and appetites abate.
I’ve outlived Weights and now, in my decay,
Free of the sotweed’s lure, I simply wait.
Basil Ransome-Davies
The evocative and fascinating label
On a square bottle (brown, not very large),
Showed, stiff beside a camp stool and a table,
A tall and turbaned servant of the Raj
Serving a fellow who looked pretty pukka,
With solar topee, tropically clad,
Perhaps relaxing from a tricky chukka,
Or back from ravishing Jelallabad.
But nowadays we must be too pc
For marketing with pictures of that stamp,
With its imperial mentality.
Besides, is any kind of coffee camp?
Brian Murdoch
No. 2409: Rotten review
Anna Karenina was greeted with derision by the Odessa Courier. You are invited to commit a similar misjudgment by providing a vitriolic review (maximum 150 words) of a generally acknowledged masterpiece by a critic at the time of its appearance. Entries to ‘Competition No. 2409’ by 8 September.
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