Jaspistos

In Competition No. 2365 you were invited to supply a piece, written in the style of a fashion editor, expressing enthusiasm for either see-through trousers for men or full plate armour for women. Two confessions (not apologies). First, I lifted this comp from a Spectator of over 40 years ago, and a very good one it proved to be. Second, although one of my sons once trod the dogwalk? in Milan, I am no fashionisto?, and so Solomon-like I invited a Queen of Sheba to help me judge.

In Competition No. 2364 you were invited to supply the opening, set in a club, to the sort of 19th-century tale mocked by H.E. Bates: ‘Four of us were having a sundowner when Carruthers, apropos of nothing, remarked ...’. Bates also provided an appropriate ending: ‘It is not for us to judge. But I believe if ever there was a good man it was Roger Carpenter.’ I didn’t invite you to begin your story with Bates’s actual words, but if you did I had no objection. Where have all those clubmen’s names gone? Why doesn’t one run into a Carstairs, Carruthers, Ponsonby or Marjoribanks? Have they gone into hiding in Boodle’s? The prizewinners, printed below, get £25 each, and the Cobra Premium beer goes to J. Seery.