Culture

In 1994 I was working in marketing at London Records, a frothy pop label part-owned by the Polygram Group — both long gone, swallowed up by Warner Bros. That summer some Americans came into our office to pitch us a project. Rather than unfurling some band or singer, they wanted to talk about technology, specifically the internet and what it would mean to our business in the future. They were looking for an investment of around 50 grand. They talked about how, in the future, kids would buy music on their computers and that they would be able to do it anywhere — on the train, in the street. ‘But where will the wires go? Where will you plug it in?’ we asked, back in those dial-up days. ‘There won’t be any wires,’ they said.

The American writer Richard Brautigan fulfilled his ambition to end a short story with the word ‘mayonnaise’ in his 1967 novel Trout Fishing in America. Actually, strictly speaking, he didn’t. As an eagle-eyed friend pointed out to me, the word appears, in most editions at least, as ‘mayonaise’, a deliberate misspelling on Brautigan’s part. But it was still a good excuse to invite you to write a short story ending on a condiment of your choosing. In an entry rich in invention, the pun-merchants had a field day and there were a number of Cluedo- and Wodehouse-inspired entries. Honourable mentions go to unlucky losers Peter Sain ley Berry, S.A. Leavesley, J. Seery, C.J. Gleed, Julie Hattingh and Josephine Boyle. The winners take £30, D.A.

My father Anthony Hobson, whose books are to be sold at Christie’s in two sales next week, claimed that the book collector’s greatest joy was the sight of an empty shelf: a vacuum begging to be filled. Such a thing was a rare occurrence in our home, so freighted with literary matter, mainly upstairs, that the advice of a structural engineer had to be sought: were we all about to be buried beneath an avalanche of bibliographical rarities? On the landing stood the vast tomes on Renaissance book binding, my father’s lifelong study - serried dark objects stamped with words that sounded to my young self like spells: Sigismondo Boldoni, Aldus Manutius.

I don’t know much about poetry, but I know this: whoever Craig Raine’s poem is about, she will be chuffed. When you are 22, you are, probably, nobody. Not many 22 year olds are somebody. So to be immortalised in a poem that's been published in the LRB will be pleasing. It may even be the defining moment in her life. No doubt some hack is currently trying to track down this girl. The doorstepping will begin. She met a poet at the airport and he wrote about her. Of course, she may not wish to tell this to the hack but: being immortalised in art, playing the muse, is many a young girl’s wish. People will be angry about this poem, but why? The girl is no doubt happy, the poet is happy. So why deny this moment of glory.

The poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy’s failure to pen a poem commemorating the birth of Princess Charlotte of Cambridge prompted us to invite you to do it instead. You stepped into the breach with gusto: sonnets, odes and haikus poured in. The entry was diverse, full of charm and a pleasure to judge. I was particularly moved and impressed by the poems submitted by a group of seven- to eight-year-olds, which put some of the adult entrants to shame. Honourable mentions also go to Coco Hills and Marc Woodward. Sylvia Fairley’s entry, a neat riff on Duffy’s ‘22 Reasons for the Bedroom Tax’, was a winner. W.J. Webster’s sonnet earns him the extra fiver. The rest take £25. W.J.

Considerable areas of our memory are taken up with food: it might be the taste of Mother’s sponge, the melting texture of an aunt’s buttery pastry or something recent, like the flavour of the first spoonful of a sour and nutty south-east Asian dish. Especially good meals are recalled with the same clarity as revolting school dinners and the stench of stale fish — we can conjure aromatic memories with ease thanks to the olfactory nerve, the brain’s cache of stored eating experience that helps us to tell good from bad when choosing what to eat. Jennifer A. Jordan, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin, believes we should be remembering more than just the sensual pleasures of eating, however.