Competition

In Competition No. 2566 you were invited to submit a poem in which the initial letters of each line, read down the page, reproduce the first. Many of your entries struck a grimly topical note with key lines such as ‘Greed driven swine’ and ‘Gordon Brown is mad’. Others turned their attention to the natural world, but here too the tone remained downbeat and melancholic: ‘So autumn closes in’; ‘The falling leaves’; you get the idea. I was cheered, though, by some of the quirkier openings; in particular, Celeste Francis’s intriguing ‘I’d give you a kidney’ and Martin Elster’s ‘Fido chased a doe’.

In Competition No. 2565 you were invited to submit a poem about the minor irritations of life written in heroic couplets. Things that bring out the misanthropist in me include ‘comedy’ stickers on cars (e.g., ‘my other car’s a Porsche!’), the over-enthusiastic use of exclamation marks and strangers who say ‘cheer up, love; it may never happen’, which strikes me as a very risky statement. High on yours were poor grammar, impenetrable packaging and anyone who chirrups ‘have a nice day’. And I now know that those who seek to reassure me with claims that no one minds my baby son’s piercing squawks on public transport are lying. The winners, printed below, get £25 each except Mary Holtby, who gets £30.

Lucy Vickery presents the latest competition In Competition No. 2564 you were invited to submit a feature looking back at the Olympic Games written in the overblown style of a sportswriter with literary pretensions. High-brow followers of football are nothing new. And these days, as people flit increasingly freely between high and low culture, there is nothing unusual about the sight of a fan leafing through a volume of Barthes during half-time at Millwall. But the spectre of Pseuds Corner hovers over the sports pages and some writers can’t resist spicing up their prose with wince-inducing metaphors and clunking literary allusions. There are some fine examples from this week’s deserving winners, who are rewarded with £25 each.

In Competition No 2563 you were invited to write a poem or a piece of prose whose lines or sentences end with twelve given words in any order. This is my last week minding the Comp Shop while Lucy Vickery has been on maternity leave. It has been a pleasure and a privilege doing business with you all and witnessing your wit and wisdom. Special thanks to Bill Greenwell, Basil Ransome-Davies, Alan Millard and a few other early-bird entrants; if a comp passes the B and B test, the setter knows that it won’t be a total turkey. No less valuable are the later arrivals, like the doughty Scots duo Brian Murdoch and Frank McDonald, whose strong contributions often beef up an otherwise jejune postbag.

In Competition No 2562 you were invited to write a soliloquy by someone prone to malapropisms or misquotations, or a dialogue between them. The trouble with this comp, as I realised when the entries started to come in, is that the two categories overlap; a misquotation often is a malapropism. Happily this didn’t put too many of you off, and there were plenty of verbal absurdities that would have had ’em rolling in the aisles in 1775. It’s many years since I read The Rivals and I didn’t find it very funny then; even less so now. Too much Sheridanfreude, as Mrs M would have it. Today malapropisms prompt embarrassment, perhaps, but not much laughter unless they come from a buffoon like George Bush or John Prescott. Or, indeed, yours truly.

In Competition No. 2561 you were invited to continue in verse or prose the statement ‘The gentleman in Whitehall knows better...’ Another exercise in spleen-venting, this attracted a weighty postbag. The quotation is from Douglas Jay’s The Socialist Case written in 1939. In full it reads, ‘In the case of nutrition, just as in the case of education, the gentleman in Whitehall really does know better what is good for people than the people know themselves’ (probably the only words for which that gentleman is remembered). His pronunciamento marks the birth of the nanny state, though luckily Jerry came along and put things off for a few years.... The entries below get £20 each while the bonus tenner goes to Basil Ransome-Davies.

In Competition No 2560 you were invited to describe a visit to Glyndebourne or Glastonbury in the style of an author of your choice. But first a memo from Doctor Johnson re. his recent Competition 2558 (Harmless drudgery) in which he let through a contribution that confused a ‘roadie’ with a ‘groupie’. To the lady who drew his attention to the error, he apologises unreservedly and adds, as is his wont, an explanation for allowing the wrong definition: ‘Ignorance, madam, pure ignorance.’ Back to the current Comp: this was another big field and of a high standard, especially the Glastonbury offerings. Lots of entries were good enough for the winners’ enclosure — would this were larger!

In Competition No 2559 you were invited to complete a poem starting ‘Come, friendly bombs, and fall on ...!’ with the target of your choice. In a huge entry, Gordon Brown and his crew were by far the most popular destination for your WMDs (you may as well pack your bags now, mate). Other favourite targets of the Spectator-reading and competition-entering community were George Bush and his gang, yoof (especially its clothes), bad smells, graffiti, the Celtic fringe, Geordieland, Disneyland, The Archers, Crewe, Worcester, Kent, Heathrow, Brighton, Bath, Windsor and Eton, people who write nasty things about Slough, Tesco, plastic bags, Men (from a man) and Me (from two women).

James Young presents the latest competition In Competition No 2558 you were invited to submit entries to Dr Johnson for inclusion in a 21st-century supplement to his dictionary. At first the Doctor feared that too many of you were confining your definitions to the five examples he gave of the sort of thing he wanted. In the event he awarded first prize of £30 to the entrant who best defined these five examples — Brian Murdoch, albeit a Scotchman. The runners-up are Bill Greenwell and Basil Ransome-Davies, who win £20 each, while the other contributors get £5 for each definition used.

In Competition No. 2557 you were invited to write a poem or a piece of prose with each line or sentence beginning with the letters A S D F G H J K L Z X C V B N M in that order. I discovered while setting this comp that the longest word you can type using just the QWERTY row of letters on a typewriter is ... ‘typewriter’. No doubt one or two of you will prove me wrong; indeed, there is an even longer word if you allow ‘tripewriter’....  Anyway, where was I? The less tripe I write, the more space there is to showcase your wit and wisdom. In a big and varied entry, commendations go to Adrian Fry for his Laurie Lee, anti-gardening Alan Millard and Basil Ransome-Davies’s Rimbaud.

In Competition No 2556 you were invited to describe an encounter between Bertie Wooster and James Bond in the style of either P.G. Wodehouse or Ian Fleming. They are two of the most popular characters in English fiction, but it’s hard to think of two more disparate ones; Bertie, the chump, always in some sort of soup and needing Jeeves to free him from unsuitable romantic entanglements; Bond, the spook, both gunman and swordsman, in a state of perpetual priapism. Nearly all of you chose Bertie as narrator, which is as it should be; I expect Bond will eventually go the way of the action heroes of my childhood Dick Hannay, Bulldog Drummond and Biggles — unread and unremembered save for his martinis and his 007 licence to kill — while Bertie, bless him, will live for ever.

In Competition No 2555 you were invited to write a poem, short story or news report containing the line ‘They couldn’t hit an elephant from there’. The line, which I altered slightly to make versification easier, was uttered by General John Sedgwick, a Union general who was shot dead in the American civil war battle of Spotsylvania Court House, Virginia, in 1864. Actually, they were his penultimate words (which, according to an eyewitness, he uttered more than once); but he would not have uttered them at all had he known that the enemy had recently acquired much more sophisticated weaponry, thus improving the strike rate of their sharpshooters. Anyway, the e word prompted some suitably surreal entries; commendations go to Martin Parker, Katie Mallett and George Simmers.

In Competition No. 2554 you were invited to write an extract from George Orwell’s Twenty Eighty. One or two entrants queried the seemingly odd choice of year. I arrived at this by following Orwell, who chose 1984 by reversing the last two digits of 1948, the year he completed his book on the Isle of Jura. You treated dystopia with fine gallows humour: in John Griffiths-Colby’s world, coffee was king due to everyone being hooked on caffeine; with Katie Mallett the main industry was measuring household rubbish; while Virginia Price Evans’s children were looked after by robots, with parents caught trying to touch them being branded as perverts. The winners, printed below, get £30 each and the extra fiver goes to Alan Millard for his monstrous Large Lady.

You are invited to describe an encounter between Bertie Wooster and James Bond in the style of either P.G. Wodehouse or Ian Fleming. Maximum 150 words. Entries to ‘Competition 2556’ by 31 July or email jamesy@greenbee.net. In Competition No. 2553 you were invited to write a sonnet by the Mistress in reply to the author of Sonnet 130. Zounds! Such a pounding unkind Shakespeare     took When Rival Poets used the sonnet’s power! But who’s to bring their weighty words to book? T.T., thou shouldst be living at this hour! But ’cos thou art well dead, I’ll sing of those Who gave the Avon Swan such well-earned welly. Seven share the purse; the extra tenner goes For understated ire to good Ray Kelley.

No. 2555: Last words You are invited to write a poem or short story or news report containing the line ‘They couldn’t hit an elephant from there’. Maximum 16 lines or 150 words. Entries to ‘Competition 2555’ by 24 July or email jamesy@greenbee.net. In Competition 2552 you were invited to follow Bernard Levin (who liked eggs boiled for the duration of the overture to The Marriage of Figaro) and spice up a cookery column with similar cultural references. Unfortunately Bernard did not tell us who was conducting while he was boiling; a Toscanini egg, for example, would be a much softer thing than a Klemperer one. W.J.

In Competition No. 2551 you were invited to complete in verse or prose a letter by Noël Coward, ‘Dear 338171 (may I call you 338?)’, to Aircraftman Ross (aka T.E. Lawrence) and Lawrence’s reply. First an apology. Bill Greenwell points out that Lawrence, though originally Aircraftman Ross, was serving as Aircraftman Shaw in a second RAF stint when Coward wrote this letter in 1930 (Shaw was also the name Lawrence used when he served in the Royal Tank Corps between the two RAF stints). All very complicated, as befits a very complex man. So for the purposes of this comp, both the Ross and the Shaw aliases are allowed. Many entries successfully captured the contrast between the blithe spirit of Coward and the tortured soul that was Ross/Shaw/Lawrence.

In Competition No. 2550 you were invited to submit a children’s story or a poem written in the style of an established author who has never published in that genre. The challenge produced a lacklustre response in the main with a few top-notch exceptions. The entry was split evenly between verse and prose, and it’s hats off to the poets, who triumphed this week. The winners, printed below, get £25 each. George Simmers scoops the bonus fiver. I’ve got infants on the brain as I’m having a baby soon. In my absence you’ll be in the capable hands of James Young. Please note the new email address for entries. His boot was fashioned for the spade’s lug.

In Competition No. 2549 you were invited to find a gap in the language and plug it, explaining the etymology of your coinage. There is a word, ‘sniglet’, created by the American comedian and writer Rich Hall, which describes ‘any word that doesn’t appear in the dictionary but should’. There were some fine sniglets in the postbag this week. Frank McDonald’s ‘carcophonist’ — ‘a driver, usually a young male, who is keen that everyone should hear the music he’s playing in his car’ — is a useful insult to hurl at offending motorists though it’s unlikely that they’ll hear you.

In Competition No. 2548 you were invited to submit sales particulars for a property well known in literature in your best estate-agent-ese. It was a capacious entry, which benefited from unrivalled clichés and florid, tautological prose. You aped the estate agent’s way of accentuating the positive well. We all know that ‘bijou’ translates as ‘broom cupboard’ and that ‘convenient for motorway access’ would be more accurately rendered as ‘suitable for the hard of hearing’.

In Competition No 2547 you were invited to write a poem or some prose ending with ‘The pen [or pun] is mightier than the sword’. The tag comes from a play, Richelieu, by Lord Lytton, the 19th-century politician and writer remembered today, if at all, for The Last Days of Pompeii. The idea for the pun bit came when I read of a proposal to remove a statue in central London of General Charles Napier, the Victorian conqueror of Sind, who is remembered today, if at all, not for his feats of arms but for the one-word telegram ‘Peccavi’ (I have sinned) that he allegedly sent to his London masters. In a big entry you divided fairly equally between penners and punners, while a few clever dicks chose to ignore the space between ‘pen’ and ‘is’.