Competition

In Competition No. 2443 you were invited to supply a letter from someone on holiday pretending they are having a good time when in fact they are not. This was tricky because some of the incidents described were beyond the pretence of enjoyment. Simon Massey, for instance, led off with: ‘See Naples and die, they say. Well, you know how literal your father is — or was, as we shall now have to get used to saying.’ I was amused by Adrian Fry’s hotel in Chechnya — ‘wonderfully intimate: local couples can’t afford more than a couple of hours here but certainly enjoy it’ — and J.H.

Bouts rimés In Competition No. 2442 you were asked for a poem with certain rhyme words to be used in a given order.The rhymes were taken from a poem by J.B.

In Competition No. 2439 you were invited to write a poem in praise of a friend. The only time I wrote a poem in praise of a friend, he shortly afterwards committed murder, followed by suicide. There are, though, much happier examples. Pope’s ‘On a Certain Lady at Court’ ends:‘Has she no faults then,’ Envy says, ‘Sir?’Yes, she has one, I must aver;When all the World conspires to praise her,The Woman’s deaf, and does not hear.The compliment is spiced by the fact that she actually was deaf. I also like Day Lewis’s poem ‘For Rex Warner on his 60th Birthday’, which contains the shrewd line, ‘“Keeping up” a friendship means it is through.

In Competition No. 2438 you were invited to write, in the spirit of Aesop or La Fontaine, a rhymed fable involving animals. Last week I doubted my qualifications to be a judge, but this week my credentials are copper-bottomed, since I have translated selections of the fables of both Aesop and La Fontaine: a sympathetic pair. Though separated by 2,000 years, I feel that the reputedly deformed Phrygian slave and the lazy courtier of the Sun King would have liked each other. I was lucky enough to be introduced to them as a child in wonderfully illustrated editions — Tenniel for Aesop and the great 19th-century draughtsman Grandville for La Fontaine. Groggy with peasant wisdom, I present the prizewinners, printed below, with £25 each, and award Paul Griffin the bonus fiver.

In Competition No. 2437 you were invited to supply an incident from a children’s adventure story featuring a mythical beast and a magic device. Perhaps someone who doesn’t dig Robinson Crusoe, Swallows and Amazons or The Hobbit and feels no inclination to read a Harry Potter book isn’t the ideal judge for this competition, but I did my best and enjoyed it. Especially enjoyable was the amazing array of monsters you summoned from the vasty deep — the Plagerypuss, gruntilopes, the samaker, ‘a huge fish with whirling wings’, Diplorus the Dinodidacticus, Nobbin the Gobb, ‘a cross between a piglet and a sharpei dog’, and of course the Jasbeastos, ‘green-bearded, glasses strapped on with an eye-patch’.

In Competition No. 2436 you were invited to supply a very rude letter in which the writer terminates the services of an employee, tradesman or professional person. The most successfully rude letter ever written is surely Dr Johnson’s to Lord Chesterfield with its superb combination of sarcasm and sorrow: ‘Is not a patron, my lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and when he has reached ground encumbers him with help?’ For the curious, Max Beerbohm’s samples of very rude letters can be found in the essay ‘How shall I word it?’ in And Even Now. ‘Even Jehovah’s witnesses avoid our door.’ ‘You have the dress sense of a Rutland scarecrow.

‘To the Royal Society of Needlework — and drive like the wind!’ Sherlock is speaking, Watson narrating. In Competition No. 2435 you were invited to continue from here. ‘Not ...’ I gasped as we careered on to the Edgware Road.‘Exactly, Watson, our old adversary. Did you ever wonder in what subject the Professor gained his academic distinction? Crochet ...’. I enjoyed this Moriarty moment in Derek Morgan’s entry. Mycroft Holmes, however, didn’t feature in any of your scenarios: perhaps it would have been too difficult to get him out of his armchair in the Diogenes Club and into a bumpy hansom.

In Competition No. 2434 you were invited to write a poem in the metre of Hiawatha entitled ‘Breakfast’. Trochaics have rarely been more amusingly used than in Lewis Carroll’s ‘Hiawatha’s Photographing’, in which H. is exasperatedly trying to take portraits of a very tiresome and camera-conscious Victorian family. Mama is Dressed in jewels and in satinFar too gorgeous for an empress.Gracefully she sat down sidewaysWith a simper scarcely human,Holding in her hand a nosegayRather larger than a cabbage ... See the New Oxford Book of Light Verse, edited by Kingsley Amis. The large entry was swelled by half a dozen 10-year-old school pupils, who showed plenty of talent even though they all went metrically awry.

In Competition No. 2433 you were asked for a poem in which each line’s rhymed ending is a truncated word. When I’ve a syllable de trop,I cut it off without apol:This verbal sacrifice, I know,May irritate the schol;But all must praise my devilish cunnWho realise that Time is Mon. This verse from ‘Poetical Economy’ suggests that its author, Harry Graham, writing in the 1930s, was the inventor of this game, one which you played with brio. The prizewinners, printed below, get £25 each, and the bonus fiver goes to Alan Millard, whose splendid final rhyme tickled me pink. I’ve never had a pretty bodAnd so I visited the doc’sAnd asked him for a body modTo make me fit the norm, approx.

In Competition No. 2432 you were asked for double or treble clerihews. It was E.C. Bentley’s son Nicholas who invented the double clerihew, and treble ones have been recorded. You were in pioneer country. A clerihew, as I see it, deals with one person, and so accordingly should a double or treble.

In Competition No. 2431 you were invited to write a poem commemorating the recent death of the whale in the Thames. Verse marking a special occasion can be serious (Tennyson’s ‘Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington’) or light (Gray’s ‘Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes’). I can only explain the fact that this was the smallest entry I have ever received by the supposition that many of you wrongly thought that I was asking for a funny poem on an unfunny subject. Perhaps it would have been easier to treat the subject with a straight face if it hadn’t been a bottle-nosed whale. Only four competitors managed to be prizeworthy. Printed below, they get £35 each, and the bonus fiver goes to G. McIlraith.

In Competition No. 2430 you were invited to suggest some items in a government programme of ‘events’ designed to improve our sense of national identity. How British am I? I sometimes wonder. I am sorry for our troops in Iraq but I don’t support them. I am a republican who dislikes pubs, is bored by soccer and doesn’t drink tea or enjoy roast beef. I’ve been investigated by MI6. I fail the sports loyalty test: if the British Lions were trounced by the Solomon Islands, I wouldn’t give a frozen hoot. And yet I regard myself as deeply patriotic. Odd, isn’t it? The prizewinners, printed below, get £25 each, and W.J. Webster has the extra fiver.

In Competition No. 2429 you were invited to write a poem in praise of one of the Seven Deadly Sins. It was the Reverend Sydney Smith who, as Keith Norman appropriately reminded me, came down to breakfast smiling and announced that he had had a beautiful dream: that there were seven Articles and 39 Deadly Sins. Because we all willingly admit to it, sloth was the most popular sin. The poet James Thomson, who was said to be so lazy that he couldn’t be bothered to reach out to pluck a peach, nevertheless wrote a long poem entitled ‘The Castle of Indolence’. Avarice and envy proved hard to praise. Commendations go to Mary Holtby, Paul Griffin, Jeremy Lawrence and Michael Swan. The prizewinners, printed below, have £25 each, and Lindsay Staniforth lifts the bonus fiver.

In Competition No. 2428 you were asked for a piece of prose incorporating, in any order, 12 given words, using them in a non-alcoholic sense. Despite the fact that some of you occasionally groan at this type of comp, it always pulls in a big number of punters. The combination of sidecar and bishop generated a fair amount of gas (in the American sense) and gaiters. Shrub, since you ask, is a drink of mixed alcohol and fruit juice. I did not, of course, accept it or any other given word with a capital letter used as a surname. The prizewinners, printed below, get £25 each, Richard Ellis takes the extra fiver and David Jones has an honourable mention. Bond stared out at the wooded Transylvanian landscape. It was St Agnes Eve. A bitter chill was in the air.

In Competition No. 2427 you were invited to supply a poem or a piece of prose beginning ‘It began as a — but it turned out a —’, filling in the blanks as you pleased. It was that forgettable and forgotten poet Austin Dobson who wrote a triolet beginning, ‘It began as an ode/ But it turned out a sonnet.’ Your variations were legion: ‘It began as a hedge but it turned out a casus belli’ (Alanna Blake); ‘It began as a treat but it turned out an error’ (V.M. Perrin, referring to the apple in the garden of Eden) and ‘It began as a total disaster/ But it turned out a lot worse than that’ (W.J. Webster of a stage production). The prizewinners, printed below, get £25 each, and the bonus fiver goes to Godfrey Bullard.

In Competition No. 2426 you were invited to supply a poetic invitation from one friend to another to come and stay in the country and enjoy its pleasures. The title was meant to suggest that I was looking for a charming, straight-faced piece such as Horace or our 17th-century poets might have written, but most of you refused to throw away the jester’s cap and bells. ‘Come to Devon soon. But hurry./ Now’s the season we spread slurry,’ warbled Martin Parking, while Mark Ambrose offered rural entertainment of a most unusual sort: ‘There is also bell-ringing if you are still keen./ We ring in the nude: it’s a sight to be seen.’ The prizewinners, printed below, get £25 each, and G.M. Davis has the bonus fiver.

In Competition No. 2425 you were invited to do as Ovid did: give poetic advice as to how to pick up, seduce and keep a lover of either sex. Here’s one of Ovid’s shrewd pieces of advice to girls (my translation, The Modern Library, New York, rush out and buy it): Steer clear of the young professorOf elegance, the too good-looking snappy dresserWho’s always arranging his hair — he’ll tell you a stale,Thousand-times-told tale,But his heart’s a gipsy, it camps, it moves.What can a woman do when the man she lovesIs smoother than she is and, for all she can tell,Has more men than she does as well? Not many of you successfully caught ‘the sweet witty soul of Ovid’, in the happy phrase of a contemporary of Shakespeare.

In Competition No. 2424 you were invited to write a poem naming in each line a startling event which will occur during each month this year, ending with a four-line glimpse of the more distant future. ‘Fasten your seatbelts’ was the consensus. I shall gag myself to make space for the winners, pausing only to mention Adrian Fry’s prediction (optimistic or pessimistic?) that this month will see the Queen’s limericks published in the Times. The prize-takers, printed below, get £25 each, and W.J. Webster nabs the bonus fiver. Thank you, the person who sent me a Christmas card.

In Competition No. 2423 you were invited to write a poem in the voice of a fed-up soldier, of any country or date, far from home. I was apprehensive that most of you would use this invitation to vent your feelings about the unhappy war in Iraq, but I was pleasantly surprised by the variety in time and space of your fractious servicemen (there was only one servicewoman) — a tribesman from the steppes bored in Rome, a redcoat on St Helena after Napoleon’s death, a conscript from Clerkenwell stuck in Wales during Edward I’s campaign, a French quartermaster in Egypt with Napoleon, a German soldier not enjoying Stalingrad.... The prizewinners, printed below, are awarded £25 each, and Keith Norman takes the bonus fiver. A happy new year to you all.

In Competition No. 2422 you were invited to write a poem or a piece of prose entitled ‘Dinner with the Devil’. ‘My meal consisted of an omelette made from eggs seven years past their sell-by date and stuffed with the minced brains of lunatics who never attended church on Sunday’ — Adam Campbell’s menu, reminiscent of Miss Thatcher’s recent gastronomic ordeals on television, struck the sort of flesh-creeping note that Dickens relished at Christmas. But the winners, printed below, were the ones who remained urbane and witty rather than horripilant. They get £25 apiece, and Adrian Fry has the bonus fiver. I wish you all as happy a Christmas as you can contrive.