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Competition No 3788

Set by John Crick, 30 June

Royal Mail is to terminate its mail trains. We asked for an elegy for this sad event or a salute to new forms of communication.

Report by Ms de Meaner

A lot of you seemed to believe you wouldn't be getting ordinary post any more and sent in elegies for the humble letter ("I miss my post, alas, alack/I wish they'd bring that mail train back"). No, the post is going by road instead - clearly a sign of the times, as people change over to e-mail, text messaging and so on - but it's not the end of the postage stamp, at least not just yet. Hon menshes to the two musical entrants: David Martin ("Oh the Cricklewood Stage is acoming on over the hill") and Michael Cregan ("Mail train, mail train, gone at last"). I also award a special hon mensh to dear Basil Ransome-Davies ("We share this remote mutuality/By the glow of our lit VDUs./In the domain of virtual reality/We really have nothing to lose"). The winners get £20 each. The overall winner is Lisbeth Rake, who also gets the Tesco vouchers.

Farewell to the postal service

Running down the coastal route;

Local owls will whisper, nervous,

"The Night Mail doesn't give a hoot."

Heavy packages and parcels

Sent from Par to Prestonpans

Will only strain the metatarsals

Of the men who drive the vans.

Sweaty credit cards and letters

Sent from Uncle Tom Champagne,

Plans to make us better debtors

Will not ride a midnight train.

While the night is mooning at us,

When the daylight falls and fails,

Alas! no Night Mail! Nothing matters:

The world is off its darkened rails.

Bill Greenwell

This is the Night Mail, stuck at the station,

The internet's almost extinct poor relation,

Letters from the rich, letters to the poor,

All promising victory in the latest prize draw.

Until she's more full of mail than air,

It's uneconomic to move her from where

She sits, a sign of snail mail's stagnation,

The last monument to a pre-digitised nation,

Slowly from all our recall sliding,

Silently rusting in her siding.

Adrian Fry

They're stopping the train that crosses the border

For who nowadays sends a pound postal order?

All techy people use internet banks

An e-mail's as good as a letter of thanks

Such progress

No need for a postcard saying wish you were here

A 3G pic image goes through fast and clear

No billet-doux for a sweetheart to treasure

There's websites for sperm - sex without pleasure

Such progress

Who wants to send gossip to distant relations?

The chatroom's the place - virtual friends of all nations

Old guards and old drivers will all be retired

And those that are left get txt msg ur frd

That's progress?

Lisbeth Rake

Fingers trip along my keyboard

Linking me to towns and shires,

Call the US eastern seaboard,

Sending e-post down the wires;

What a fortunate invention:

IT for the common good -

With emoticons intention

Rarely is misunderstood -

Snail mail's days are surely numbered,

Like the mail train it will go;

For how long will chaps be lumbered

Shifting paper to and fro?

E-mail floods across the nation,

And for those who're stuck at home,

Life is spiced with mild flirtation:

Less greyscale, more polychrome.

Anne Du Croz

This is the e-mail off into space

Bringing some spam to the market place,

Spam for the rich, spam for the poor,

The jock in the corner and the perv next door.

Panties up buttocks, a steady hike,

Or extending your organ to what you'd like.

Paying off debts or lending a loan,

Shovelling shit into every home.

Offering books, DVDs, CDs

And holidays that are bound to please.

Delete buttons click as spam pours in

Eyes glaze over, spam hits the bin.

Filters cannot keep them out.

They still pour in with little clout.

I wonder if this is really better

Than getting the mail to deliver a letter.

Rosemary MacKenzie

No 3791 Set by Keith Norman

A for 'orses, B for mutton, C for miles, D for dumb, E for brick, and so on. (L for leather is our favourite.) We all know that comic alphabet, written in the 1930s, but perhaps it needs updating. A pupil recently came up with Y for thin mints. Let's have some thoroughly modern examples.

26 letters by 1 August (to appear in issue dated 11 August). E-mail: comp@newstatesman.co.uk

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