Comp. 3444 invited you to submit a Hilaire Belloc-style cautionary tale for our times. This one was last set in 2009 and the world’s pitfalls have changed a bit since then. There were many very good entries, covering a lot of bases. Commendations to Bill Greenwell, Frank Upton, Basil Ransome-Davies, Sue Pickard, J.C.H. Mounsey, Duncan Forbes and George Simmers (‘Young Eric told such dreadful truths/ He was the most disliked of youths’). The £25 voucher winners are below.
‘But why,’ asked Osbert, ‘should I try
To think when I can ask AI?’
Identifying Osbert’s need
His chatbot fulsomely agreed.
First, algebra and Kierkegaard
Were what young Osbert found too hard,
But soon he couldn’t add, subtract,
Or know how, socially, to act
Without consulting with the bot
And trusting it as he should not,
For chatbots, though their powers are great,
Are tempted to hallucinate.
Poor Osbert now, alas, in thrall
To one that makes no sense at all
Stands as a warning: what you’re taught
Is dogma without human thought.
Adrian Fry
Nina’s family, clever chaps,
Beseeched her to beware of apps:
‘You want some haddock?’ they would say,
‘There’s Waitrose just a stroll away!’
‘Fear appenstances…’ they insisted;
Nina stubbornly persisted.
One day, she tried to change a flight,
That app, it changed her flight all right,
Then showing all that it could do,
It changed her name and passwords too,
It claimed she’d moved to Birkenhead,
It rented out her garden shed…
Poor Nina fought until she broke,
‘Your call’s important to us (joke),’
Then took a flight to Timbuktu,
Because the app had told her to.
Nick Syrett
Hearken to the tale of teenage Spencer
Who ran off to be an Influencer
Ignoring his parents’ heartfelt pleas
Though they wailed and begged on bended knees.
‘Just be an accountant, chef or plumber,
Even join a rock band as the drummer,’
The parents cried with tear-stained cheeks,
But Spencer was deaf to their desperate squeaks.
He took lots of selfies, he posed and he pouted,
He filmed silly pranks, he sang and he shouted,
His follower numbers soon went sky high
And he took himself off to live in Dubai.
He was filming himself on that fateful day
(Boasting how life was no work and all play)
When an Iranian rocket fell on his head
And poor Spencer was rendered entirely dead.
Joseph Houlihan
Henry, the fifteenth Lord Lestrange
Did not believe in climate change.
His seat was a substantial pile
On the north coast of our fair isle,
And every morning he would say:
‘The tide seems pretty high today,
But global warming’s just a tale,’
Until one Thursday, in a gale,
His home fell into the North Sea.
Ever resourceful, Lord Henry
Spotted an ice-floe drifting past,
And leapt onto it, and held fast,
But then he found he had to share
It with a hungry polar bear,
Who, unable to catch a seal,
Thought Henry made a noble meal.
Brian Murdoch
Jemima rode green bikes so fast
You felt the breeze as she whizzed past.
Ignoring road signs, crossings, lights,
She gave pedestrians shrieking frights.
One day she turned her pedals fleet
The wrong way down a one-way street,
Then swerved a red light, without fuss,
In front of an oncoming bus.
A call to 999 was made,
A crew attended, plied their trade:
They gathered up the sad remains,
Took photographs of all the stains.
(Back at the morgue there would be time
To filter out the bits of Lime.)
Don’t ride about like Mr Toad
When other folk are on the road.
Helene Nowell
Lord Sucker lived a happy life
Because he had a lovely wife
Who catered for his every mood
And sent him pictures in the nude
And thanked him nicely when he gave
Her all the money he could save.
He loved her with just one regret
They hadn’t actually met.
He asked an expert: ‘Find her soon
So we can have our honeymoon.’
Meanwhile he gave her beauty’s crown
Until the expert tracked her down
And showed on Sucker’s smartphone screen
A gangling boy of seventeen.
Do not investigate your dreams:
You’ll find that nothing’s as it seems.
Philip Roe
‘You know, at least you ought to know,
Unless your name is Sleepy Joe:
Free speech! It’s in the first Amendment
And Declaration of Independence –
Home of the Brave! Land of the Free,
Defending life and liberty,
Pursuit of happiness, y’all,
And nevermore to be in thrall
To all those woke, repressive laws
Imposed on us, all in the cause
Of Democrat depravity
Like – take the law of gravity…!’
Thus spoke Jim, soon to levitate,
Perched high atop the Empire State –
You’ve guessed the sequel: some laws should
Be heeded – they’re for your own good.
David Silverman
No. 3447: Ouch
You are invited to outdo Kingsley Amis by detailing the hangover from hell in the style of any other writer (150 words maximum). Please email entries to competition@spectator.co.uk by 22 April.
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