Lucy Vickery

In Competition No. 2725 you were invited to supply the sales particulars for planet Earth. ‘Need a home where you can really spread yourself?’ asks George Simmers. ‘It’s the ideal residence for the adventurous virus with an urge to propagate. There’s a comfily warm and humid climate in most parts of the planet (And it’s getting warmer! Fantastic!) Potential hosts abound.’ What’s not to like? Equally persuasive and slippery of tongue were John Plowman, Tracy Davidson, Frank Upton and Adrian Fry. But those who most successfully accessed their inner  estate agent are printed below and get £30 each. This week’s top dog is Brian Murdoch, who pockets the bonus fiver.

In Competition No. 2724 you were invited to supply a poem in which the initial letters of each line read down the page reproduce the last line. Though some of you clearly relish competitions of this kind (check out Frank McDonald’s double-paracrostic in the winning line-up), there was the inevitable rumble of protest in the ranks. Here’s Jerome Betts: ‘To write a verse within such rules,/ How can this count as fun?/ I think that only drunks or fools/ Suspect it can be done...’ Bill Greenwell agrees: ‘Some competitions/ Expect you to slave/ Nightly. Perdition/ Draws near, as, unshaved,/ Manic and glum,/ Expecting to die,/ Folly fills bumf./ It’s like working out pi.’ Discontent notwithstanding, you rose to the challenge with gusto.

In Competition No. 2721 you were invited to supply a short story incorporating the following: ‘rebarbative’, ‘solipsistic’, ‘lapidary’, ‘consequential’, ‘plangent’, ‘gibbous’. It was an impressive postbag with only the occasional stilted moment — you displayed considerable ingenuity in weaving the given words into a plausible and entertaining narrative. I was sorry to have to disqualify Adrian Fry’s amusing portrait of a village literary festival on account of a technical slip. Commendations, too, to Max Ross, Susan Therkelsen and John Plowman. The winners get £25; the bonus fiver is Brian Murdoch’s.

In Competition No. 2720 you were invited to supply a piece of prose written by a well-known author working in an unlikely context. Thanks to Brian Moore for drawing my attention to Samuel Beckett’s flirtation with a career in grocery trade journalism, as revealed in the great man’s recently published volume of letters: ‘I see advertised in to-day’s Irish Times an editorial vacancy on the staff of the RGDATA [Retail Grocery Dairy and Allied Trades-Association] Review at £300 per an. I think seriously of applying. Any experience of trade journalism would be so useful.’      It was a strong entry and I very much regretted not having space in the winning line-up for Gerard Benson, Shirley Curran and Adrian Fry.

In Competition No. 2719 you were invited to imagine that a well-known literary character of your choice had spilled the beans to a tabloid and to supply the resulting front-page story, including headline. I liked Virginia Price Evans’s paternity shocker: ‘I was Scrooge’s love child’, says Tiny Tim. Una McMorran, John Samson and Mike Morrison were also unlucky losers. The winners get £25 each; G.M. Davis takes the extra fiver. M Pimped Me, Claims Ex-spy ‘Call me a patriotic whore.’ This startling confession came from a man who has looked death in the eye for his country many times.

In Competition No. 2718 you were invited to submit an account, in verse, of a medical procedure undergone. The inspiration for this assignment, was James Michie’s characteristically witty and well-made ‘On Being Fitted with a Pace-Maker’: ‘What with sex and fags and liquor,/ Silly old mulish heart,/ Dear unregenerate ticker,/ You needed a kick start’. Afflictions of the nether regions featured more prominently in the entry than those of the heart. Brian Murdoch captures the mood nicely: ‘Even when there is no malignity,/ You can say goodbye to freedom and certainly dignity...’ And while accounts ranged from the eye-watering to the heartwarming it was a strong performance all round. The bonus fiver belongs to Basil Ransome-Davies.

In Competition No. 2717 you were invited to supply a poem expressing distaste for something or someone widely considered to be beautiful. You poured scorn on Paris, daffodils, Michelangelo and Alan Bennett’s plays. Newborns were also a popular target. Here is Melissa Balmain giving it both barrels: ‘You can dress it in taffeta, ribbon and lace;/ you can scrub it each hour of the day;/ you can name it Belinda Veronica Grace;/ it’ll still look like rump roast manqué’.

In Competition No. 2716 you were invited to supply the gripping final 150 words of the first instalment of a serial thriller. Charles Reade, now mostly forgotten but ranked with Dickens in his day, summed up  the art of the cliffhanger thus: ‘Make ’em cry, make ’em laugh, make ’em wait — exactly in that order.’ The best of a magnificently overwrought entry that elicited the odd wry smile though no tears from this flinty-hearted judge are printed below and earn their authors £25 each. Alan Millard pockets the bonus fiver. Assured of a handsome income despite the dubious outcome, I relished the Franco Deutsch challenge to salvage the foundering eurozone, sadly torpedoed and sinking fast.

In Competition No. 2715 you were invited to condense the plot of a well-known novel into 16 lines or fewer. In the interest of making space for the winners, I will follow your lead and keep it brief. Honourable mentions to G. McIlraith, Robert Schechter and Michael Grosvenor Myer, who pulled off the impressive feat of boiling down Moby-Dick to four lines. The prizewinners below are rewarded with £25 and the bonus fiver flutters into the lap of Alan Millard. Bright bonnie Connie, though less bonnie latterly, Marries a knight and becomes Lady Chatterley. Clifford, her spouse, tries his best to appease her But, being defective below, fails to please her.

In Competition No. 2714 you were invited to supply a poem that begins ‘’Twas brillig...’ and continue, in the spirit of Lewis Carroll, using your own neologisms. ‘Jabberwocky’ has, of course, spawned countless parodies and been translated into many tongues. Frank L. Warrin’s frabjous French version, ‘Le Jaseroque’, appeared in the New Yorker in 1931. Here are the first couple of stanzas: Il brilgue: les tôves lubricilleux Se gyrent en vrillant dans le guave. Enmîmés sont les gougebosqueux Et le mômerade horsgrave. Garde-toi du Jaseroque, mon fils! La gueule qui mord; la griffe qui prend! Garde-toi de l’oiseau Jube, évite Le frumieux Band-à-prend!

This was an enjoyable comp to judge: I have some sympathy with the actress Celia Imrie’s (who played Mrs M) view that, given the current trend towards the use of dull and overused verbal short cuts, the much-mocked Malaprop’s attempts to improve herself by expanding her vocabulary are actually rather creditable. Printed below are the best of an entry brimming with novelty and hilarity. They earn their authors £25 each; Chris O’Carroll gets £30. Amsterdam is crisscrossed by so many canards that it has become known as ‘the Venison of the North’.  No visit to the city is complicit without a cruise on its Pinteresque waterways.

In Competition No. 2712 you were invited to come up with your own additions to the ever-lengthening list of modern maladies. The assignment was prompted by reports in the Daily Mail and New York Times of the growing epidemic of Fear of Missing Out. Scourge of Generation Facebook, FOMO has at its roots the relentless bombardment, courtesy of social media, with evidence that your ‘friends’’ lives are so much better in every respect than your own. The best of your contemporary maladies appear below and earn their authors £25 each. John O’Byrne grabs the bonus fiver.

In Competition No. 2711 you were invited to cook up a recipe for marital bliss on behalf of a poet of your choice. It was agony to whittle an especially fine entry down to the half-dozen printed below. Inevitably, some good ’uns missed out. Space permits only a hearty congratulatory slap on the back all-round. The winners earn £25 apiece and the bonus fiver belongs to Basil-Ransome-Davies. There’s a cloud o’ trouble loomin’ when a     squaddie takes a wife And the man ’oo’s lived in barracks ’as to face     domestic life With a creature ’alf ’is dearest pal and ’alf a sort of     sphinx And prettier than a Christmas rose and wiser than     ’e thinks.

In Competition No. 2710 you were invited to supply a poem reflecting on travelling by Tube. Not something, perhaps, that would inspire many of us to heights of lyricism, though T.S. Eliot evokes subterranean travel to powerful effect in Four Quartets. Here he is, in ‘East Coker’, on the experience of stopping in a tunnel, when life itself seems to stands still: ‘Or as, when an underground train, in the tube, stops too long between stations/ And the conversation rises and slowly fades into silence/ And you see behind every face the mental emptiness deepen/ Leaving only the growing terror of nothing to think about...’ And then, of course, there is Ezra Pound’s ‘In a Station of the Metro’, which Frank Osen’s entry makes a nod to.

Competition: Dead end In Competition No. 2709 you were invited to take as your opening line ‘When I am dead, cremate me’ and continue, in verse, for up to a further 15. This assignment was suggested by Frank McDonald and inspired by an exchange in the film Wilde between Queensberry and Wilde. Asked by Queensberry, ‘Where d’you stand on cremation?’, Wilde replies: ‘I’m not sure I have a position.’ To which the Marquess responds, ‘I’m for it. I wrote a poem about it. “When I am dead, cremate me.” That’s how it starts. “When I am dead ... cremate me.” Whaddya think of that for an opening line?’ ‘It’s ... challenging,’ says Wilde.

In Competition No. 2708 you were invited to submit an obituary of either God or Homo sapiens. There is space only to congratulate the winners, printed below, who get £25 each, and to share this delightful and pertinent limerick by Gerard Benson: There was nothing, then dinosaurs, then There were mammals and finally men, Who ruled for a while In belligerent style, And then there was nothing again Brian Murdoch scoops the bonus fiver. The death has occurred in a Bournemouth nursing home of God, after a protracted battle with rationalism. Although early announcements of his death by Nietzsche proved unfounded, he never really recovered from serious Darwinism.

‘To ______, or not to ______, that is the question...’ In Competition No. 2707 you were invited to fill in the blanks and continue for up to a further 15 lines. The challenge elicited a topical response from many competitors — ‘to hack or not to hack...’ agonised George Simmers — and dilemmas of the digital age loomed large too: ‘To tweet or not to tweet... Can fourteen times ten characters ever tell a tale...’ (Jenny Lowe). Tim Raikes, Carolyn Thomas-Coxhead and Elizabeth Bullen were unlucky losers. The winners, printed below, get £25 each. The extra fiver is D.A. Prince’s. To drink or not to drink: that is the question.

Four letter word In Competition No. 2706 you were invited to submit an entertaining and plausible piece of prose using words of only four letters. ‘This must hold some sick joke!’ wailed Shirley Curran. ‘Lucy, show more pity next time,’ pleaded Barry Baldwin. But you are clearly a masochistic lot; despite the howls of protest and pleas for future clemency, the challenge generated a big postbag. I allowed contractions, within reason, but extra points were awarded to those who managed to avoid them as much as possible. The winners get £25 each. The bonus fiver is Alan Millard’s. ‘Poor Jack,’ Jill says, ‘sore head, huge lump, deep scar!’ ‘Poor Jill,’ says Jack, ‘deep scar, huge lump, sore head!