Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
POETRY CORNER COMPETITION
Many of you talented readers have been putting pen to paper over lockdown, and my inbox has practically overfloweth with poems, so today we’re launching a competition to find star Daily Mirror poets.
We have two age categories for entrants. One is for under-25s (minimum age is 10 – we don’t want the kids showing us up) and the other’s for over-25s.
Best-selling poet Blake Auden will judge your entries. Last Saturday, he said great poetry is “anything that’s honest and vulnerable. I want to read something that feels like it has the author’s soul in it”.
And don’t feel pressured to make it rhyme, as Blake says: “Some of the greatest poets in history didn’t use rhyming structures!”
There are only two rules, the poems must be no more than 150 words long, and they can be about any subject – except pandemics or lockdown!
The winning poems will be published in the paper, and each winner will receive signed copies of both of Blake’s books of poetry.
Please send your full name, age, contact email address, contact phone number and original poem of up to 150 words (as per the T&CS below).
Let the writing commence…
Our Bring Them Back campaign is gathering momentum with a bulging postbag full of readers’ old favourites – and also quite a few emails to tell me off about chocolate bars that did in fact exist. But as one correspondent kindly pointed out, I’m far too young to remember (well, that’s my line...).
So in today’s shop, we are now restocking our shelves with both Rowntree’s Coffee Crisp and the deeply missed Milk Tray Bar. Also, many of you spoke of your deep love for the lime barrel in the Milk Tray bar, including Anne Knebel, in Ashton-under-lyne, Lancs, although Linda Lee says sadly: “I always seemed to get the coffee cream.”
Patrick Tracey, in Carlisle, recalls the bar from the 1970s: “They came in various sizes of six chocolates and more. The lime cordial was to die for.”
Maureen Tigwell, in Dorchester, says she remembers it even as far back as the 1950s when she was a kid. “It had five or six chocolates joined together in a bar – caramel, hazelnut whirl, strawberry cream… my mouth is watering already, and it cost a shilling.”
Patrick Tracey also had an 80s moment. “Even better was the Cadbury’s Go bar, which I found to have a considerable aphrodisiac effect.” Wrong type of bar, Patrick, wrong bar.
There were also several votes for the Aztec bar, but as Mrs E Park, of Coldstream, noted: “They had a short limited-edition revival several years ago, but they weren’t the same. If only it had been the original recipe!”
And finally, we have another reader, M Grealey, in Liverpool, who thinks he dreamed up NUX Bars. “No one remembers it!” he cries.
On this occasion I can… without a shadow of doubt… 110% certainty… assure you, Mr Grealey, that it was made by Rowntree from 1959 until the late 1960s and it was filled with nuts.
But no doubt someone will be along to tell me I’m wrong… (dons hard hat).