(1)
Three attractive girls have been selected to cover a tricky course. Points will be given not only for speed but also for pin-up appearance and general sex appeal.
And there will be no full-scale stops for freshening up.
It’s 10 a.m. Here is your programme for the day’s events.
Sidling up to the starting post now comes Bev. She’s wearing a red and yellow jazzy blazer, teamed with sporty low-heeled shoes.
Carol is our second contestant. As she trips up to the post she’s wearing a white wool sweater and little-heeled white shoes.
What a picture!
But will white keep its pristine looks?
Zandra, our third girl, looks a little harrassed, although attractive, as she arrives.
She’s wearing a slim dress in lined terylene and cool, strappy sandals with high heels.
A useful filly.
However, she’s made one mistake. Her handbag, which has wide horizontal stripes, looks rather heavy.
And indeed it is.
It contains a creased up poplin mac; big hair-spray; false hair-piece; three Bath buns; cosmetic bag crammed with make-up.
Zandra has made a mistake here for this is not meant to be a handicap race.
Well, there’s the line-up, a strong line-up, and as for the winner, well, that could be anyone’s guess, but I would say that Bev is the favourite by a short lead, certainly that’s the message I’ve just received from Randy O’Toole from the paddock.
And now possibly you may just be able to hear the clatter and clump of strappy cool sandals and clippety-clop of little-heeled shoes as they’re under starters orders now, a little trouble for Zandra, Carol holding back a little.
THEY’RE OFF!
And now at the first secret checkpoint our own on-the-spot commentator is waiting to give you the positions of these three lovely girls.
All have been running well incidentally, and as well as basic point to point and sprinting, this race will also involve a shopping spree, dancing, a visit to a bowling alley, and lunching.
Someone is approaching now. Who is it? Ah, it is Bev.
Bev doesn’t know that we’re hiding at the secret checkpoint and, uh uh! We spot a shoulder strap on display.
Should have been anchored inside dress with a sewn-on tape and press-studs, or safety pin. Lose a mark, Bev.
Carol now comes into view, running well. Wise Carol has coped with the breeze by tying her hair in a bright pink headscarf.
Whoops! Oh dear, a setback! Stocking suspender goes west! She should have checked it before setting out. Lose a mark, Carol.
Zandra has caught her foot in a drain. Quick Zandra, pull it out! But Zandra too has lost a point.
Now the pace quickens, and Bev is really beginning to show her mettle. Stockings splashed from an unexpected puddle, she whisks off marks with a quickie pad. Bonus mark, Bev! This just about wipes out your previous minus mark!
Setback for Carol. Passing a shop, she catches sight of a big glass jar filled with coloured wool balls. Oh no, it can’t be! The silly filly is going to buy it. She’s bought it! How she’s handicapped herself. Not only with the glass jar but also with the loss of four marks, not to speak of the coloured wool balls. Which parcel goes where? There! Now she’s dropped one! On the toe of her little heeled shoe! Lose yet one more mark, Carol!
And where is Zandra? Oh dear, Zandra is nowhere to be seen.
Meanwhile Bev, lunching with Peter, her trainer, chooses a sustaining meal, but not too heavy – an omelette, spinach, no chips. A glass of iced milk. Two bonus marks for Bev.
Carol does badly over lunching. She starts all right – orders a mixed grill, gives her chips to Tom. But then, when his back’s turned, she seizes a meringue ... and cream ... and two minus marks for Carol.
And oh, there’s Zandra! All along she was lunching with David. She’s picked ham and salad, a hunk of cheese and an apple. Nearly a bonus mark here, when suddenly – oh, she’s trying out her new lipstick in front of her escort, and so publicly! Lose a mark, Zandra.
And now there’s quite a crowd gathered round the finishing post, now the girls are beginning to come into the straight for their final stint, bracing themselves for that final sprint out of the long drab reaches of the afternoon and into the lush pastures of the evening, and it’s a wide field now.
The three girls are stretched out, the leading girl will be coming into view any moment now. Who is it? ... Well, of course, it’s Bev coming into the straight now ...
Number two, ah, there’s number two coming into sight. Now who is this? She seems to be carrying a glass jar filled with cotton wool balls, yes it must be Carol!
And now gamely running in third place is Zandra! Zandra is in some trouble I think, she’s swept her flopping hair into a French pleat, but it’s already coming down!
Over now to our special reporter Jock Strap on the straight.
Yes, well, Bev is going very well now, she’s stripped off jacket and top, whisked off make-up with a couple of quickie pads. A wash for face and hands, then on with her make-up ... finished with a blush of powder for quick glow.
And now going well is the second of our lovely contestants, this must be Carol. Carols whisks off her silk blouse, bra off too, she freshens and tones with splashes of cold water. She also uses another quickie to remove those dirty marks from her skirt.
And now I’m scouring the field with powerful binoculars for Zandra. Ah, there she is! Zandra is running badly. Oh dear, she’s not doing well at all. Poor Zandra. Those cool strappy sandals with high heels are holding her up. Poor Zandra.
And now by the winning post their trainers Michael, Brian and Jeremy, are waiting, stop-watches in their hands. The post is growing nearer. Can I hear the sound of triumphal music? Can it be a wedding march? Fifty feet! Forty feet!
And now the sporty low-heeled shoes carry Bev past the winning post! Bev’s the winner!
And what a popular winner! There comes round after round of applause.
In second place! With the flap flap of little heeled white shoes and the bounce bounce bounce of cotton wool balls! Carol is second past the post!
And now, a sporting last, comes Zandra. Zandra carries a rather heavy handbag with wide horizontal stripes. It contains a creased up poplin mac, big hair spray, false hair piece, three Bath buns. And it’s crammed with a whole spectrum of products from the Childe Bride and Dreamgale range of make-up. She must have been quite unable to resist that boutique along the way. Poor Zandra. And those strappy sandals have certainly let her down as well.
These girls look so tired.
I reckon they’re all just about ready for sleepy bye-byes so let’s hope their trainers will soon have them all safely tucked up in bed.
Commercial Break
‘Brunettes leave me cold’
that’s what he always used to say.
‘I passed brunettes by until finally I met a girl
who had got something to show me.
Here’s how she put it’
‘I shampooed new colour excitement
into my hair with Deep Beech. I was radiant’
‘I changed my tune.
I had to’
Later the same man very much took against ginger girls.
‘Ginger girls terrify me’
That was how he put it.
However one day he met what he took to be a different girl.
‘I shampooed new colour excitement
into my hair with Autumn Amber’
‘Colour excitement but not the same
colour excitement. Autumn Amber’
‘It was so easy! Just one shampoo
and my hair was ablaze! Fiery gold!
And the effect on him?’
‘Set me alight too
Just – look at me!’
Next, typical man, he took violently against black hair.
‘Black hair?’ he said, ‘Doesn’t do much for me’
‘Dreary’ was another expression he used for it.
‘But I set to work, and once more
shampooed new colour excitement
into my hair with Raven Jet!’
‘Once more I changed my tune.
I love her!’
Be bewitching, daring, winsome, demure!
and be the life of the party!
Have it with your hair tinted
blond beige gazelle.
only more so, try Panther Jaguar
All available from Deep Beech Tress
Colour Promotion.
Tomorrow’s sensations come again today.
In the autumn of 1978, Philippa Finnis and I went to the little Mediterranean island of Formentera, just south of Ibiza. We stayed in a small room above a bar in the little village of San Francisco, which is also the island’s capital, and we stayed here and on neighbouring islands for three months.
One reason for being here was that the poets Adrian Henri and Carol Anne Duffy had approached us at the Edinburgh Festival that year and asked us if we would join them in putting on a combined show the following summer, with the basic theme of ‘relationships between men and women’.
The four poems that follow were written on the beaches and in the bars of these pleasant islands, and the foundations were laid for quite a few others.
The first four were first performed at a Pentameters poetry reading, organised by Leonie Scott-Matthews, at the Three Horse Shoes, Hampstead High Street, in February 1979. Adrian Henry was the other ‘half’ of the show and we also did songs by Brecht/Weill and Philippa’s ‘Intimations of Immorality’.
‘The Country Dashaway Bag’ was also written during this period, though it wasn’t first performed till summer 1980 at the Young Vic.
News of Some Recent Skirmishes in the Sex War
how’s it going between men and women at kitchen sink level
when it comes to the crunch?
who does the housework, who cooks the lunch?
who takes who to be wined and fed
who gets you-know-who so drunk that he/she ends up in bed?
(I ask you)
who strokes?
who pokes?
who washes up while who pours out the drinks?
it’s all got much more complicated than we think.
who’s the leader, who gets led?
who’s the two-timer and who’s bled?
who gets the morning tea while you-know-who cool
as a cucumber would you believe it just lies there
lazing around reading cosmo spik and clunt
lazy sod in bed?
who wears the high heels, who looks good in pink?
who sorts out the likely talent with a know-it-all wink?
it’s all got much more complicated than we think.
our sexual roles and fondles have been reallocated it seems
who now is the practical one who screams
when he/she sees a silly little mouse?
who’s head is feather-filled, who’s feet are made of lead?
who gets taken home to meet the folks
and ends up getting a pass made at him/her by randy Uncle Fred?
who spends too much of their time in unhealthy bars?
who flashes the credit card, who sports a tiny touch of mink?
who drenches themselves in rauncy pauncy tang of sea salt
sweat-style glu-jo to cover up the stink?
it’s all got much more complicated than we think.
who mends the fuse?
who gets the blues?
who seems to forget who he/she is meant to be going out with
when he/she’s had too much to drink?
who pays for that lovely dinner?
who just sits tight and says sincerely ‘thanks!’?
who finds love wherever they go?
who stays at home and wanks?
who surf rides so high, so high, on life’s ice rink?
who loses their balance and falls into the drink?
it’s all got much more complicated than we think!
Sagittarians Song
pardon, may I career into your parlour?
excuse me, I am only half a horse
so will you wipe up after my hoofprints
dustpan and brush your way after my hoofprints
hoover up the (ahem) unfortunate leavings?
and, oh Mrs Domestic with the face and body of a South Sea
siren
having emptied the dustbins and dimmed the lights
switched on the waste disposal unit and put the flowers
out of the sunlight, and drawn the muslin curtains,
may I be party to your Hawaiian ecstasy
prancing about but within reason?
may I be privy to graze in a meadow hard by your paddock?
I promise not to gallop or kick up too much dust
or make a mess on the lawn or scuffle up the flowerbeds
and I promise not to break many of the china cups
or drink up all the tea.
may I come into your bed?
Oh I know that this is rather sudden and
I know I have four legs
and that some people would say that’s four too many
but I can fold them up under me
and my hooves aren’t that sharp!
and I know I have a whisking tail
which whisks about and sometimes knocks things over
but in my opinion it could be actually useful
really quite useful for
wiping off dusty marks that we don’t like to see
on the furniture
that sort of thing,
and forget what I mentioned that bit about coming to your bed
I got carried away
I didn’t mean it
(I am harmless
O so truly harmless)
and Mrs Domestic
you who have Klene-Eze brushes for eyebrows
brillo pads
for softly gazing eyeballs
cleansing soap in your veins and arteries
and whose body is lithe and warm like a South Sea siren’s
may I career into your tastefully furnished parlour?
I promise not to gallop or take my saddle or bridle off.
excuse me but I really am only
half a horse.
The Contract
turning away from these more general considerations
of woman’s oppression
and the way we’re all degraded
by sexism
to the more particular
here’s something else that interests me.
you said
what do you think;
if a man and a woman should happen
to go to bed together
would that give either one any rights
over the other
except I mean the right to be
in bed with each other at that moment,
or touch each other up
or whatever?
no
no rights
why do you ask?
and what would you say to the question
if their going to bed with each other
led to consequences such as one or other
falling in love with the other
would either partner be justified in blaming the other
for those consequences?
mm ...
no ...
but
what if those consequences
were quite unforeseen
quite unforeseen by either party
and ended up entirely
different to what either
of them ever thought they would?
what would you say to that?
could either hold the other to blame?
such things have been known
but it wouldn’t be right!
would you still like to go to bed with me,
like you said on Tuesday?
oh yes
yes
I said it too on Wednesday and Thursday!
you stretched out your hand
took mine
shook it gently once
went out to go to the loo
came back said
on those terms, I accept
next moment all hell heaven and high water broke loose.
Bride
How can I just a dish of peaches and cream
tangle locks and tiptoes, shoulders and toes
lead him to the subway where warm waters stream
take the lift down the mineshaft where the passion flower
grows?
clinging lovingly
wantonly urgently
wrap all his huskiness
in pink satin bows?
I just a girl with two slender arms
twine him enshrine him with me
bind him eglantine him to me
lingeringly longingly
foolishly fondlingly
drown him in dark oceans
bind him with charms?
How with just only two little tits
how can I be new to him
how get through to him
man that he is
how thrill him to bits
girl that I am
show him I’m not a sham?
How can I radiant in body and soul
how enough admire him
how stoke and fire him
sooner or late
take him for my mate?
Like the crunch of the apple in the mouth of the foal
all suncrushed and gleaming I’ll reach to my goal
and glowing and shining I’ll firm him and raise him
pouring cream over him
smother him in peaches
praise him cascade with him
in my radiance whole!
Here Lies Truth
You lied through your teeth
and concealed it all beneath
mouth salve and
cosmetic toothpaste
and your eyes told me lies
so you disguised
them with eye shadow
and mascara
I came to trust your smile
for a while
those were good times
we lived in style
till the lies became so huge
that I just became your stooge
I couldn’t ignore the falsehoods
that you plastered over with rouge
and so now you’ve dabbed cosmetics
all over your face
your skin feels like cooking oil
but that’s no disgrace
and I know you’ve always been strange
always quite outside my range
but this deviousness properly dressed
isn’t too hard to digest
and I thought you’d managed to paste
over all your spiritual nits
till at breakfast I noticed something
that did rather give me the shits
that you’ve now broken out
in spots all over your tits
The Country Dashaway Bag
O I was glum and I was gloomy
I didn’t seem to have the fun
other girls had
fact is I felt myself getting more and more disorientated
until really almost everything
seemed un utter drag
and then one day quite by chance
my best friend told me
about the jaunty soaraway saucy
Country Dashaway Bag!
only twelve and a half guineas
would you believe it – a snip
from Debenhams
now this Dashaway Bag it’s big, beautiful and super-packable
it’s got a sunny, funny, away-day ‘don’t care’ dash
about it that you can’t help loving
and comes with a jaunty jolly-colour
triptolene ‘look at me’ ‘how’m I doing?’
lime green sash
so very versatile, really it’s
equally at home for fondles in the Ritz
or being chatted up high on a mountain crag
is my Country Dashaway Bag
it came first as a very shrewd offer
from Anthea Logan’s Dremegale range of products
and here’s another thing I’d like to say
about the C.D.B. – it’s certainly shown me the way
to fabulous new freedom in skincare
dewfresh and oh – so – ready for
a tumble in the hay
or whatever you say
go on say it!
I dare you
come what may!
and it was featured in the Observer Colour Mag
was my Country Dashaway Bag.
what do I put in it?
well I really cram it up
with fritzels, cheesi thynges
lo-los, atomiser,
negative ioniser, twigsters and fruities
that way I keep the weight off my tootsies.
also I pack in a cardigan, spare bra,
two shades of stocking, twin-set, Li-let,
sensible shoes, bedroom slippers,
‘Country Life’, a Mars Bar
and of course my dutch cap and spermicide
and odour-killer for Geoff’s car.
(Geoff’s my boyfriend by the way. He’s such a charmer.
I must get you together one of these days
I’m sure you’d get on like a house on fire!)
never out of place be it lordly or humble
just right for grand grope or midnight fumble
vulnerable and frangible as saucy apple crumble
is my Country Dashaway Bag.
and so here comes Friday and it’s on the train from Paddington
or in Geoff’s convertible down to the shires
and the Dashaway Bag is as button bright as I am,
really it’s a product that never tires
equally at home in dawntime nightboxes
or lounging around by old wood fires
or just picking those droll old-fashioned flowers.
it’s really changed my life
I have to brag
about my Country Dashaway Bag.
so now at any time, from city tripping
to quiet Country Dashaway weekends
I just pick up the Dashaway Bag
and am immediately on my way to visit friends.
now I’m ready for it
but never feel a slag
O it’s a girl’s very best way
to fly the flag
and the flag
says ‘hullo!
look at me!
how’m I doin?
I’m doin fine!’
does the saucy
soaraway
sunny
jaunty
give-away
funny
jokey
jolly colour
Country Dashaway Bag!
This was premiered at the Academy Club in Liverpool, in December 1978. It was a pre-Christmas party and also was the occasion of the first get-together of Adrian Henri, Carol Ann Duffy, Philippa and me, to discuss the show which was to become known as ‘Boxes of Toys and Creamy Whirls’. All of Liverpool was under a very beautiful thin white powdery snow, and I think I changed the first lines, at the last minutes, to fit the weather.
The thinking behind it was that where Wordsworth had attempted poetry in ‘the language really used by men’, I wanted to do something in ‘the language really used by newspaper men’.
But there were also a lot of other things that interested me, and which I hoped to get into this poem.
The lawcourts as theatre, where everyone is playing a part, from the accused to the judge. I was interested in the way newspapers report court cases; a bit like theatrical performances.
Then I was interested in the moral duplicity of newspapers’ handling of trials, where sex is involved, the way that they condemn while getting an erotic enjoyment from what they report.
And I was interested in the age of consent. Whether the law really has any place in a case of this sort, or, as Bishop Robinson puts it, whether ‘the law has any place in the field of sex’.
What follows is often felt to be a comic poem, or a poem of black comedy. I also feel it to be a deeply tragic poem as well as being funny.
The poem was an important ingredient of our show at the Edinburgh Festival in 1979.
The Schoolgirl Scandal of Mucky Farm
All seemed quiet down at Manor Farm
Outside snow drifted quietly and fluffily into crevices
Edging round the stones with its gentle caress
Snow covered animals mooed baaed and neighed
But inside in a secluded hayloft
Things were not quiet at all as ...
Thirteen schoolgirl Lolitas were selling their bodies to Grandads
And this squalid sex ring when it all came out
Shocked even experienced police officers
To hear that girls so young and
well, we can hardly call them innocent!
For as little as one hot dog for masturbation
Or a giant cornet, three sarsparilla lollipops and a
neopolitan split with nut chippings
for ‘featherbed treatment’
Were peddling their tender sex to elderly men.
The Judge, Mr Arthur Charles de Van Poer Chenevix Tench,
Had trenchant things to say when the thirteen curvaceous
Schoolgirls romping high breasted lively came before him in court.
To hear of their indulging in what His Worship called
‘Such an Unusual form of Away from Home work’.
Even journalists, wise and liberal men who’ve seen it all
In many and various parts of the globe
Africa, South America, the Far East even, Aden,
Could hardly put their fingers down straight
On the keys of their typewriters ...
As there flashed through their minds
the hardhitting no nonsense phrase the next day
was to sum it all up;
THE SCHOOLGIRL SCANDAL OF MUCKY FARM!
So now for a line-up of the young ladies in the case,
from Gloria Toiletry our Tellyfun and showfunbiz editor.
Gloria’s outfit for today is shimmering seethrough toile
in puce and grise.
First, Ivette.
Ivette looks chic enough for a sheik, let alone a silly old farmer.
Ivette is wearing black silky lace-trimmed harem panties
and a lace-trimmed jacket at £6.95 a set
available in sizes from 10 to 16, assorted colours,
from Dremegale,
they’re just the outfit to bring a touch of that
old black magic to those long winter nights in the hayloft
and sure to set her partners pulses soaring.
And second, Juliette.
Juliette is wearing a slashed neck peachy babydoll
nightie from Dorothy Perkins (also available in blue, turquoise and cerise).
At £5.99 it’s certainly a snip that’s calculated to create plenty of pillow talk and wideawake admiring glances, even from silly old unemployed farm labourers
Even when he’s sleepy, Juliette’s partner isn’t likely to get tired easily
and that should turn his thoughts away from VAT and dung.
And now Loretta.
Loretta is wearing a dusky pink
Satiny romper suit with jacket to match
at £12.99 a set, also available in jade from Topshop
if you’d like to claim your share of the action
go and get one now!
The Grandads were shown what were described as
naughty books to arouse them, the court heard.
While, in a pigsty, the girls waited
Around for their turn to bounce around in the hay
with Jeremiah Stogett et Al – his brother Al.
Nor was the sexual act the only thing
that could be bought at Mucky Farm.
The schoolgirls also posed in their erotic
nightgear for kinky photographic sessions
with no film in the camera!
Uncovered in January at Framley, near Blogstable,
This sleazy sordid sex ring prompted His Worship
To speak of the many persistent and long standing
fallacies which he felt were rife in these areas
and which should and must be cut down to size and
of the vital importance of keeping us, the public,
constantly reminded that we are daily in danger
of being overwhelmed by an ocean of filth.
Right at the centre of it all, the court was told,
Was burly Jeremiah Stoggett (71) farmer and seed merchant
The schoolgirls took it in turns to fondle him
and turn him on
Then there was partly blind agricultural labourer
David Tupsley (64) of Stillview Cottages, Eastleigh.
He cooked the girls beefburgers in exchange for cuddles
But barred some of them because he found
Their ffing and blinding offensive
and taught them to sing hymns,
himself playing harmonium in Ivington Mission Chapel.
Another man, a disabled miner, Donald Ackers (54)
was first approached outside a supermarket.
Sex games followed in a wood and in a barn at his home,
Tump Farm, Hillside, the court heard.
Butcher Jack Hobbes (65) of Darnleigh Villas, Exleigh,
was also blatantly approached and asked if he would
pay for sex.
After that he left notes pinned to joints outside the
butchers, containing love assignments for the girls.
Al Stoggett, also partly disabled after a mining disaster
was also named and so also was
Pam-Davis (78) an epileptic, mentally subnormal, born
with only three fingers on one hand, the court was told.
Sir Denis Bloxham, Bart, (56) completed the squalid eight.
He has difficulty in walking and remembering who he was
said the Judge, His Worship Arthur Charles de Van Poer
Chenevix Tench, summing up.
He did obscene drawings of the schoolgirls
On House of Lords notepaper
But, he claimed, everyone who knew him
would vouch for it that he was really just a very pleasant
nice old chap.
The elderly eight, whom pressmen dubbed
the mucky monsters of Manor Marsh
pleaded guilty to a total of
four thousand and twenty-six cases of unlawful
intercourse and indecent assault.
And the Judge, Mr Arthur Charles de Van Poer Chenevix Tench
told them;
‘I am not surprised that you have been reviled
and shunned by all right minded respectable people.’
‘One’s first reaction,’ said the Judge, ‘is to send
them all to prison, every girl Jack of them.
And I expect that is where most of you expect to go
But, he added, in handing out a swingeing
six month suspended sentence all round,
‘I’m going to take a more lenient course.
Take me take me oh take me to Mucky Farm.’
Becky Davis, our fashion editor, adds;
Girls used their pocket money to buy make-up and
accessories and in general
were carefully got up,
eyes darkened with eye shadow in
the Dreambridge range of make-up
Peluce, Seduce, Rubarella and Delice predominating.
Shoulders and breasts liberally dashed with oo la la.
Three of them wore naughty Jokey Spanish fleur
picture lace drenched in la odeur de ferme
jock straps
To teaze the men again and yet again ... poor chaps!
Jeremy Sandford FanClub Archives
Almost all of the content of these webpages is copyright of the estate of
Jeremy Sandford, RIP.
They are provided here for your private research,
and as a tribute to Jeremy.
However the index and sorting and coding are copyright of me,
George @ dicegeorge.com(c)2006