[John Whitworth]

Well done Frank Osen. And only slightly less well done Adrian Fry, Chris O'Carroll and George Simmers.

Lucy Vickery 16 February 2013
In Competition No. 2784 you were invited to rewrite John Betjeman’s poem ‘Slough’, substituting the target of your choice.

The poet Ian McMillan sprang to Slough’s defence in 2005 with ‘Slough Re-visited’, an antidote to Betjeman’s jaundiced take on the town: ‘Come friendly words and splash on Slough!/ Celebrate it, here and now/ Describe it with a gasp, a “wow!”/ Of Sweet Berkshire breath’. But according to Betjeman’s daughter, Candida Lycett-Green, her father regretted having written the 1937 poem, a fact acknowledged by Frank Osen and several others besides. Mr Osen takes £30; the rest £25.

Although he lived to disavow
His wish that bombs might fall on Slough,
Soon bombs were raining, anyhow,
From Hull to Henley.

Would Betjeman have wanted moms
In Grozny, Vukovar or Homs
To read his plea for dropping bombs,
Albeit friendly?

No, he was more for conservation.
See how his statue, in elation,
Regards St Pancras’ preservation,
Pleased at its sprawling.

He wears a sharp, disarming air
While goggling at the rooftop, where
He seems relieved to see that there
Is nothing falling.
Frank Osen

Come, friendly bombs and fall on Brussels.
It stinks of money, chips and mussels
And everyone is into hustles
And parley voo.

Your MEP is sleek and fat
As is your venal Eurocrat,
Both avaricious as a rat.
As cunning, too.

Their avatar, Jean-Claude Van Damme,
An outsize slice of Belgian ham
Expressive as a traffic jam,
Does martial arts.

Let all such creatures be pell-mell
Annihilated, sent to hell,
And bomb that pissing boy as well,
But spare the tarts.
G.M. Davis

Come, friendly bombs, fall on The Lords,
Those past-their-sale-date ermined hordes
That our Exchequer ill affords:
It makes no sense.

Think donors, earls and party hacks
Who for decades just watched their backs,
And flipped their houses, saving tax
At our expense.

Precision bombing should ensure
Avoidance of the House next door:
Don’t worry, though, if thirty score
Should come to grief:

For MPs may (look on the Web)
Take cash for questions, call you ‘p**b’,
And even do I’m a Celeb.
Beyond belief!
Roger Theobald

Come, friendly bombs, and fall on Dave,
That televisual open grave
Where undead Top Gear shows behave
As if still living.

Go blast old Clarkson, bygone May
And Hammond on umpteenth replay,
Relief to those watching today
You will be giving.

The meathead banter of these ‘boys’
Can, by your efforts, be destroyed —
All women will be overjoyed
To see this bombing.

Let’s no more see that oafish troupe
To witless depths ceaselessly stoop
Bombs, break Dave’s never-ending loop
And sate my longing.
Adrian Fry

Come, friendly bombs, assail the Tate
(The Modern) to obliterate
Bizarre art I can’t tolerate
Or comprehend.

Then smash to smaller shards that Shard
By which our skyline has been marred.
Upon the wretched avant-garde
Let wrath descend.

But, dear bombs, what a dreadful shame
If you struck with imperfect aim,
And venerable structures came
To grief instead;

Smite only targets I despise.
(And should my war cries prove unwise,
My children can apologise
After I’m dead.)
Chris O’Carroll

Come friendly bombs, and fall on Albert Square,
Where life becomes more cheesy than Gruyère
As scripting hacks probe lazily the ‘issues’
That get the simple reaching for their tissues.
Fall, bombs, on matriarchs and feckless men,
On Beales and Butchers, Mo and Dot and Den,
For all speak clichés from the cheapest shelf:
‘Babe, he ain’t worth it,’ and ‘Don’t blame yourself.’
They whinge and weep, and have affairs, and fight,
And (arguments being easiest to write)
Spend half their lives in crass factitious quarrels,
In plotlines patly pointing PC morals.
So fall, bombs, fall, till not one single brick
Remains of that unlovely hole, the Vic.
Then, when the devastation is complete,
Head northwards, please, to Coronation Street.
George Simmers