The Tall Girl from Somerset 30

HENRY A village show, prize cakes and some rhymes.

The other day I went to the village show in the village of Tollbury, Anne’s village, in Somerset. They hold it every year. There were several white tents and marquees in the green fields and there was bunting over the entrance where you buy the tickets to go in.  It’s one of the events of the year and gardeners have been watching over their produce for the last few weeks to bring it to the peak on the day. No Olympic athlete prepares more thoroughly. The six best carrots, the six best potatoes, the six best onions and so on.  In the main ring there is some show jumping and gymkhana events for children with their ponies, and there are prizes for the best cows and sheep and goats.  You know the sort of thing.  Behind the elms at the edge of the field, the old church tower looks over the fields, keeping an eye on things in as it always has.  The show takes place on the second weekend of July, and I try to get there every year.  There is nothing like summer in Somerset.  Come rain or shine, nothing can compare with it. Nothing.

In one tent they have the competitions for the best Victoria sponge and fruit cake and I always wander round and inspect the entries on their doilies in the cake stands. ('Do you remember Godfrey putting a doily under the gun to protect the Regency desk in the window of his cottage?'  ‘This is war, not Sothebys’, shouted Captain Mainwaring!) The judge of the cake section has to taste all the exhibits and this must be the most enjoyable job on earth. Sometimes he hesitates and doubts and has to have a second or even a third mouthful. And to do all that on a summer’s afternoon in the country.  What more could you ask for?  To wander round and actually be obliged to have a slice of each cake!  This is a boy's dream! Never mind about wanting to be an engine driver when you grow up! Oh dear, what child today would want to be an engine driver?Anyway, in a corner of the cake tent were the entries of the children’s poetry competition. I went over and read one or two and I noticed that any poem which rhymed was bottom of the list. This was so systematic that it seemed to be done on principle. In the village poetry contest rhyme was anathema.  What a pity!

Poor rhyme has been consigned to the bin, and not only in Tollbury village show, and it needs a word or two in its defence!

Take the absolute rightness of Coleridge’s rhymes in the ‘Ancient Mariner’ in verse after verse. Not a sound is out of place. It actually had the title ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’, didn’t it! What about these lines, when the wind dropped and the ship could no longer move:

‘Day after day, day after day,

We stuck, nor breath nor motion;

As idle as a painted ship

Upon a painted ocean.’

My English teacher at Waterbury said, after reading that verse to us,  ‘Coleridge wrote The Ancient Mariner so naturally that every word was just right and when he finished it, he said, ‘Well that’s done and, well I never, I have written it in rhyme!” And what was it Keats said? ‘If poetry comes not as naturally as leaves to a tree, it had better not come at all!’

Sometimes rhyme is just for fun. 

‘The shades of night were fall fast

The rain was falling faster

When through an Alpine village passed

An Alpine village pastor.’

Read this version that is without rhyme:

‘The shades of night were falling fast

The rain was falling faster

When through an Alpine village walked

An Alpine village vicar.’
Oh dear!

Actually, we could redeem that version a little with another rhyme!

‘The shades of night were falling fast

The rain was falling quicker

When through an Alpine village walked

An Alpine village vicar.’

But the original is so much better.  The original always is. 

Take Byron, tongue in cheek and making fun of his own rhymes,

‘But – Oh! Ye lords of ladies intellectual,

Inform us truly, have they not hen-peck’d you all?’

What about Paul McCartney?  Do you remember? How many times have you hummed this to yourself?

‘Yesterday all my troubles seemed so far away,

Now it looks as though they’re here to stay.

Oh, I believe in yesterday.’

Now take away the rhymes. Here we go.

‘Yesterday all my troubles seemed a long way off,

Now it looks as though they’re here for ever.

Oh, I believe in yesterday.’

No, no, no!

Rhyme gives that finishing touch.  Rhyme feels good. It is re-assuring. All’s right with the world!  It should never have been banished from the poetry corner of the cake tent!

Another thing while we’re here and I have you to hand. If you are still with me , that is.  Or perhaps you've gone off to make yourself a coffee?  I can't help wandering a little but bear with me.  There is method in my madness. Now, here it is. Have you noticed how humanity is losing the art of description? People no longer describe anything; they send a photo on their mobile phone.

Think back to Cleopatra on Cydnus.

‘The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne,

Burned on the water: the poop was beaten gold;

Purple the sails, and so perfumed that
The winds were lovesick with them; the oars were silver,
Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made
The water which they beat to follow faster,
As amorous of their strokes.'

Enobarbus did pretty well for a rough, plain-spoken soldier. What would he do today?

‘Cleopatra, you say? On the Cydnus?  Ah yes, I was there alright. I’ll send you a couple of pics on WhatsApp.’

No burnished throne, no poop of beaten gold and no purple sails. Just a pic.

But this is already becoming a third hobby horse and that is far too much riding for one day.  And I haven't mentioned Anne at all.   I am sorry.  I'll do better next time.  I really will.