Competition

For Competition 3443 you were invited to submit a dear John letter in the style of a well-known writer. The brief stipulated 16 lines but you submitted both verse and prose and I allowed both. I very much enjoyed Sue Pickard’s Bram Stoker: ‘My dear Count, I can barely summon the energy to write this letter as my haemoglobin levels are so low but write it I must…’. And Alan Millard’s Oscar Wilde: ‘The truth is that I have met someone who loves me almost as much as I love myself…’. I was also sorry not to have room for Andrew Simpson’s fruity D.H. Lawrence, Bill Greenwell’s T.S. Eliot, Richard Warren’s Andrew Marvell and George Simmers’s Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. The £25 John Lewis vouchers go to the authors of those entries printed below.

Competition 3432 invited you to submit a passage containing some AI-style ‘hallucinations’ (it would be just as anthropomorphic to call them lies). These are false assertions delivered in a perky tone, often with a smidgeon of flattery, in an answer that may contain enough correct information to give the user misplaced confidence. The yield was small but amusing and several entries managed to capture AI’s encouraging tone; the winners of the £25 John Lewis vouchers are below. ‘An apple a day’ refers to a mobile phone or computer invented by Isaac Newton, who discovered gravity in 1666 when a phone fell on his head. The fall of the apple, which is never far from the Tree of Knowledge, was recorded by the Beatles, a British pop group, in 1999.

For Competition 3431, you were invited to submit a passage in which Sherlock Holmes solves one of the great mysteries of our time. Many entries interpreted the ‘of our time’ bit quite loosely, with Holmes tackling the Princes in the Tower, the origins of Stonehenge and even the Big Bang. Nonetheless, after toying with pedantry, I decided to take the possibly generous line that some mysteries are for the ages and so still qualified – although in the event only one pre-21st-century mystery made the final cut. I was sorry not to have room for Richard Warren and Fay Dickinson, but the £25 vouchers go to the following. ‘I say, Holmes,’ said Watson, perusing the Daily Mail. ‘When is that Andrew chap going to get out of Royal Lodge?

For Competition 3430 you were invited to write a rhyming prophecy for 2026. Joe Houlihan’s closing couplet encapsulates the tenor of the entry: Next year is like this year, but much, much worse: So take a stiff brandy and call for nurse. But while the mood was downbeat, the standard was cheering and the entries below earn their authors £25 John Lewis vouchers. Happy New Year, one and all. When you wake up in bed with a harrowing head and your brain is assaulted by bricks you’re beginning to mourn that you partied ’til dawn as you welcomed in Year ’26. The barometer’s falling, the cold is appalling, the sky is as dark as the devil, the rainfall is thudding and everywhere’s flooding, the rivers have burst past their level.

Competition 3429 invited you to tell the story of the Nativity in the style of a well-known writer. There were very many excellent passages, enough to fill this column three times over, but as it is the £25 vouchers go to the following. Thanks for all your lovely entries this year and happy Christmas one and all. To begin at a new beginning: he was birthed, berthed in a barn with gert bulks of shifting, breathy beasts. Joseph would sooner have been up the pub, sheets to the wind, but it was no more the establishment to encourage the fulfilment of dreams than prophecies. At his own wordless dreamings, the little wet racket of a tike in the crib scarcely noticed his visitors that long night. Pompous Kings and grumbly shepherds (it was cold out, man) came and went.

For Competition 3427 you were invited to write a paean on a place traditionally considered to be ugly. In an accomplished entry, in which many took inspiration from William McGonagall, the Bard of Dundee, honourable mentions go to Ralph Goldswain, Richard Warren and Elizabeth Kay. The winners, led by Bill Greenwell on the Pompidou Centre, are rewarded with £25 John Lewis vouchers.

Comp. 3426 was inspired by Stephen Vincent Benét’s 1927 poem ‘American Names’ (see Charles Moore’s Notes, 1 November): I have fallen in love with American names, The sharp names that never get fat, The snakeskin-titles of mining-claims, The plumed war-bonnet of Medicine Hat, Tucson and Deadwood and Lost Mule Flat.     You were invited to submit poems to do with place names. It was hard to whittle down the very good entries (too many runners-up to single any out) though certain places kept cropping up so I tried to avoid too much repetition. The £25 vouchers go to the following. Morning! After downing booze, Have a fryup, come the dawn – Chopwell, chipping.

Competition 3425 was prompted by Gill Hornby, a biographer of Jane Austen, telling an audience at the Cheltenham Literature Festival that Jane’s sister Cassandra did the novelist’s reputation a favour by burning most of her letters, and if that hadn’t happened she might have been cancelled: ‘She has become this very vague, hazy figure, like God and Shakespeare…’. You were invited to ‘find’ a letter that had escaped the bonfire.     There was a strong response, though a few entries crossed into sacrilege. The best got something of the tone while casting her in an unexpected light. Tom Adam found her channelling thunderers de nos jours: ‘I grow quite weary of the Hampshire Chronicle.

For Competition 3424 you were invited to write a short story for which ‘Conman’ could be the title, containing a dozen words of four or more letters beginning with con or man. This produced a larger-than-usual entry in which all were fairly evenly matched, making it tricky to whittle it down to the six below who are rewarded with £25 John Lewis vouchers. Consider the lilies… he murmured, contemplating his reflection in Suzanne’s mirror. Like them he looked good, but unlike them he could sow, though his seeds were romance, and as for spinning – that was his metier. From their first date (contact, he called it) she’d been consumed with passion for his charm and confidence, regardless of the consequences. Apps: so easy.

Comp. 3423 invited you to submit a passage about a command or suggestion from literature being taken too literally. I was sorry not to squeeze in Alan Millard’s riff on John Donne’s ‘Go and Catch a Falling Star’: ‘The object in question can reach temperatures of almost 3,000˚F when entering the Earth’s atmosphere…’. A popular choice was ‘Neither a borrower nor a lender be’; nods to Elizabeth Kay, Nicholas Lee, Simon Godziek, Max Ross.

For Competition 3422 you were invited to submit a poem or passage on the theme of ‘daylight saving’. In a very good batch, once again the poetry bubbled to the top. There are too many close runners-up to name names, and it seems best to maximise space for winners. The £25 vouchers go to the following.

For Competition 3421 you were invited to submit a reply from Slough to offset Betjeman’s rude lines on the subject. The poet Ian McMillan got in there first, springing to Slough’s defence in 2005 with ‘Slough Re-visited’: ‘Come friendly words and splash on Slough!/ Celebrate it, here and now/ Describe it with a gasp, a “wow!”/ Of Sweet Berkshire breath’. But perhaps he needn’t have bothered; a year later, on the centenary of his birth, Betjeman’s daughter Candida Lycett-Green apologised for the 1937 poem, saying her father ‘regretted ever having written it’. Commendations go to Paddy Mullin, Joseph McCann and D.A. Prince. The £25 John Lewis vouchers are awarded to the winners below. He plans to (claiming it’s run-down) Annihilate our thriving town.

For Competition 3420 you were invited to submit a poem or short story incorporating that sentence of Emerson’s: ‘The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.’ Dr Johnson may have been the first to mention spoon counting, saying (according to Boswell) that ‘if he does really think that there is no distinction between virtue and vice, why, Sir, when he leaves our houses, let us count our spoons’. In a large and very good entry, in which poetry prevailed, Alex Steelsmith, J.C.H. Mounsey, Tracy Davidson, Frank McDonald, Brian Murdoch, Adrian Fry, Sylvia Fairley and a few others missed out by a whisker. Those below win the £25 vouchers.

For Comp 3419 you were invited to write a poem to mark National Vodka Day (4 October) or another spurious designated day, actual or invented. There were several good vodka poems, by Adrian Pascu-Tulbure, D.A. Prince, Tanya Dixon--Clegg, and Helen Baty – I was sorry not to be able to fit them in. Ditto David Silverman’s celebration of National Crisp Day (the ‘Feast of Crispian’), John O’Byrne’s Baked Beans Day, Alan Millard’s Gobbledegook Day, Bill Greenwell’s National Plagiarism Day, Andy Myers’s Breakfast Wine Day, Jayne Osborn’s No Talking About Your Ailments Day, Frank Roots’s Self-ID Day, George Simmers’s Lemon Meringue Pie Day (15 August), and others besides.      The £25 vouchers go to the following.

For Competition 3418 you were invited to provide a pompous leading article on a trivial subject. The ubiquity of ‘Hi’ replacing ‘Dear’; conjoined teabags; the apostrophe (ban it!); the semi-colon (save it!): all featured in a medium-sized, accomplished entry. The half-dozen below stood out and earn their authors the £25 John Lewis vouchers. Our readers will be aware of our unblemished record in reading the runes. And if there is one certain indicator of the unravelling of the fabric of western civilisation, surely it is the unending decline in quality of clothes pegs. Regardless of the emporium from which they are purchased, both plastic and wooden pegs are so woefully constructed that their falling apart may be taken as societal collapse in microcosm.

Comp. 3417 invited you to write an elegy to a piece of obsolete technology. This prompted a deluge of very good entries – too many to name all the runners up, though here are some of the lamented objects: mangles, steam engines, oil lamps, floppy discs, the trebuchet, cash registers, radiograms, gramophones, tape recorders, Ceefax, Betamax, proper cameras, the fish slice, the pipe knife and – most of all – the VHS and the typewriter. A special mention to Tom Adam’s relatable paean to the Nokia: I mourn that lump of plastic and its tiny little screen, With only ‘Snake’ to offer up a hit of dopamine. And Simon Godziek’s to the dial phone: Yes, you could receive and, yes, you could call But when all’s said and done, that’s about all.

Comp. 3416 invited you to marry romantasy (the romance-fantasy fusion now dominating fiction sales) with a third genre. Narnia, gritty realism and Holby City were in the mix. Some saw no reason to confine themselves to three, and we had romantasy sci-fi noir, as well as a Scandi noir-Richard Curtis romantasy-com. I’m sorry to leave out Sue Pickard, David Silverman, Basil Ransome-Davies, Nick Syrett, D.A. Prince, Bill Greenwell, Josephine Ruth and others. The voucher winners are below. ‘Don’t try to seduce me, mortal,’ breathed the Fae cowpoke. I had no intention of touching the varmint. He might be tall, sardonically sexy, cruel and cool, wear a black vampire-made Stetson, Elvish spurs, and leather chaps that clung to his sculpted thighs, but I was determined to hate him.

For Competition 3415 you were invited to submit a lost poem by a well-known poet which makes us see him or her in a new light. There is space only to commiserate with unlucky losers Elizabeth Kay, Alex Steelsmith, Sophie Hannah, Ralph Goldswain and D.A. Prince. The winners below take the £25 John Lewis vouchers. I am an atheistic chap. I like to trash the psalter, And lay some tins of Spam across each silly harvest altar. On every reredos I carve graffiti with my Stanley. God is dead and anyhow the Devil is more manly. The architecture of a church is frankly rather fussy, But in I go, because the verger’s daughter is a hussy. We start with some communion wine (a boozer is our Tiffany), And after every evensong we have a fresh Epiphany.

For Competition 3414 you were invited to provide an extract from a well-known literary work rewritten to include appropriate product placements. Honourable mentions, in a top-notch entry, go to Max Ross, Ralph Goldswain, Hamish Wilson, John O’Byrne and Paula Cameron – and to Matt Quinn and Nick Syrett for a pair of excellent twists on Betjeman. The winners, printed below, are rewarded with £25 John Lewis vouchers. The Owl and the Pussycat went to sea In an opulent Ovington boat, They took some money and Rouse Runny Honey Wrapped up in a Burberry coat. The Owl looked up to the stars above And sang to a Gibson guitar, ‘O lovely Pussy, O Pussy, my love, You’re as sweet as a Fry’s chocolate bar.’ Pussy said to the Owl, ‘You elegant fowl!