Victoria Lane

For Competition 3390 you were invited to come up with your own version of the Groucho Marx song ‘I’m Against It’, from the film Horse Feathers: Your proposition may be good But let’s have one thing understood: Whatever it is, I’m against it. Hats off to David Silverman, who got into specifics: (‘Conniving, skiving; Mo Salah diving;/ Texting while driving/ VAR’). Also to Sylvia Fairley, Nicholas Lee, Bill Greenwell and others. Sue Pickard channelled the true spirit of Groucho by keeping it general: I am the very model of a modern-day contrarian If you are a sophisticate then I’ll be a vulgarian Whatever your opinions are, mine are antithetical I was determined from an early age to be heretical. The winners below get the £25 vouchers.

Comp. 3389 invited you to submit an estate agent’s blurb advertising a property development on Mars. There were many excellent entries, not all of them enticing. Sean Smith’s seemed potentially the most realistic, offering for £4.5 billion a 12 sq m dwelling with private sleeping quarters: ‘private on a rotational basis with other residents’. Nicholas Lee advertised ‘Mars-a-Lago, where namby-pamby accommodation is a thing of the past; where you can hang out with your backwoods pals, eat baked-bean tablets and grow a beard’. Meanwhile, Elizabeth Kay had ‘two enviable corner plots … with magnificent views of the glorious Prekrasny Putin, previously known as Olympus Mons’.

In Comp. 3387, for the centenary of the publication of The Great Gatsby and Mrs Dalloway, you were invited to submit a passage in which one goes to the other’s party. It was especially hard to whittle this one down. Deserving a mention: Mrs D.’s West Egg dream by Brian Murdoch (‘“Sod the temporal perspective and narrative shifts,” she thought, “I need a nap”’) and Basil Ransome-Davies’s rendering of stream of consciousness (‘newspaper vendors at Piccadilly Circus, pigeons marooned in roof space, university architects, pistachio ice cream in a Viennese café… What made her wonder if Mr Carraway was Mr Gatsby’s petit ami like that mad young French poet?’); also Sue Pickard, Sylvia Fairley, Joseph Houlihan and others. The £25 vouchers go to those below.

Competition 3386 invited you to submit poems about the domestic arrangements at the White House. The idea was to inspire some visions of what goes on behind the official scenes – oh to be a fly on the East Wing wall. MAGA hats off to Frank McDonald, Elizabeth Kay, Daniel Pukkila, Nicholas Lee, Tom Adam, Paul Freeman and others, and Basil Ransome-Davies’s final verse seems apt: It’s hard to read a mind in disrepair Or one as shiny and airtight as chrome: Two four-year tenants, signally aware That an official house is not a home. The £25 vouchers go to the winners below. Clean, baby, clean. That place is full of germs and foreign little microbe-alien things. I want it pure for all my future terms, bright as the hope my MAGA-presence brings.

For Competition 3385, with Valentine’s Day looming, you were invited to submit a passage in which one well-known character from literature goes on a date with another. There was a very full inbox, with enough excellent entries to fill weeks’ worth of competitions. It’s tempting to think that some of these imaginative pairings would have real potential. Lady Chatterley’s Mellors rendez-vous’d once with Lorelei Lee and twice with Clarissa Dalloway: it was hard to choose. Sadly I had to disallow Mrs Mala-prop’s encounter with Revd Spooner (‘too late, I understood what he’d meant by a “nosy little cook”’). Her other date was with Holden Caulfield (‘Golden Cornfield?’).

For Competition 3384, since this issue appears on the first of the month, you were invited to submit a short story featuring someone who is a slave to superstition. Every corner of the country used to have its own folkloric behaviours that have now been forgotten (one wonders why salt and mirrors and magpies etc stuck). These days individuals who use ritual to ward off misfortune are told they have OCD.

In Competition 3383 you were invited to submit a Tripadvisor-type review by an alien who has visited Earth for the first time. Frank Upton pointed out that it could have been titled ‘Mostly Harmless’, Ford Prefect’s entire entry for Earth in The Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The submissions were full of inventive detail and hard to whittle down. I liked Bill Greenwell’s prankster alien: ‘Staid the nihgt on Manhattan, enjoyd the screeming, skyscapers were a pushover.’ Jonathan White’s extraterrestrial dug jazz (‘an audible chaos I could resonate with’) while Mark Ambrose’s was amused by Earthlings believing Stonehenge to be manmade: ‘Some of the ancient stones from Kalibor’s moon have fallen down, but you can still make out the first landing site.

For Competition 3382 you were invited to write a poem to mark this day, officially the dreariest of the year. (This year, as a few pointed out, it doubles as Inauguration Day. Things can only get better!) Responses ranged from Tracy Davidson’s ‘It’s just a Monday. You’ll be fine’ to Sylvia Fairley’s despairing ‘When will the End of Life bill become law?’ The £25 prizes go to the following. I never liked the Christmas crowd, Carolling all and sundry. A January man, and proud, My feast day is Blue Monday, Which I keep rather as a fast, Doing no holidaying, I work, like others of the past Whose debts required paying. No offices need I perform, I work all day. Come evening, I sit home, hopeless, far from warm, Devout yet unbelieving.

In Competition 3381 you were invited to write a proposal for the rebranding of a well-known product/entity to aim it at an entirely different market. It was of course inspired by Jaguar’s gender-fluid relaunch ad, which has already somehow faded into distant memory by now. The idea here was to rebrand an existing thing rather than reinvent it, but the lines blurred sometimes. Among those deserving a mention: D.A. Prince’s idea to reposition the National Trust as a body that looks after wild coastlines and historic houses etc, which seemed like a crowd-pleaser. Basil Ransome-Davies took over Liz Truss’s PR (‘It’s irony, stupid.

In Competition 3380 you were invited to send in your predictions for 2025 in verse form. The entries suggested that not everyone is enchanted at the prospect of what the year may have in store. But absurdity flourished too, as in Ralph Goldswain’s fantasy that Keir Starmer will enter Eurovision in a glittery suit, while Hamish Wilson offered a set of unlikely scenarios: ‘Putin bangs the drum for peace,/ Pearson joins the woke police.’ Hats off also to Jasmine Jones, Joseph Houlihan, Frank McDonald, Brians Murdoch and Allgar, Tracy Davidson and others. I wish you all a happy new year, and let it be one in which WW3 and Antipodean fleas etc don’t feature.

Comp. 3379 invited you to submit a contribution to a collection of Christmas recipes by fictional characters. This is a festive version of one you made earlier, and it turned out well again. There were a couple of Ancient Mariners and Macbeth covens – special mention for Max Ross’s Christmas cauldron with its ‘badger’s head and reindeer’s toes, robin’s beak and snowman’s nose.’ A few gave meal plans rather than recipes, but George Simmers’s J. Alfred Prufrock deserves to be quoted anyway: In the room the ladies come and go, Preparing to watch The Gruffalo.

In Comp. 3377 you were invited to write a version of ‘Ozymandias’ for the future. (The original, which obviously is for all time, arose from a contest between Shelley and Horace Smith to write a poem with that title.) The idea was to elicit responses to the US election, and the President-elect does feature heavily, but a desert of oblivion interrupted only by stone Trumps seemed too unremitting. The mood could be downbeat, so for some light relief here’s a snatch of Janine Beacham’s entry: ‘My name is Kardashian, Queen of Bling:Look on my bod, yearn for my derriere!’No followers remain. No downloads play,Despite research, high tech, we’ve not one prayerOf knowing what this colossus had to say.

In Competition 3376, prompted by news that avocado bathrooms are back in vogue, you were invited to compose poems about interior decor trends of yesteryear. Reading them, bubble chairs and spider plants swam before my eyes. Jane Smillie’s list deserves a mention: Artex and lava lamps, bamboo and tie dye,Pop art and sideboards and stereo hi-fi,LP racks and shagpile and chakra batik,These are what passed for Seventies chic. As does David Blakey’s light verse: That rocket lamp’s no longer mine.I can’t remember what I did.But I’ve seen one for sale onlineFor almost seven hundred quid. There was a suggestion of Betjeman in many of the entries (‘Are the requisites all in the toilet?’). Among other noteworthies were Jayne Osborn, Tracy Davidson, C.

In Competition 3374 you were invited to write an ode to autumn. There was bathos amid the beauty. I regret not finding room for Alan Millard’s ‘Season of musts’, Elizabeth Kay’s garden musings, Joseph Houlihan’s paean to the blazing hills, Nicholas Lee on what Keats could do with ‘rotting vapes arranged about the scene’, and this from Anca Gramaticu: ‘a flock of leaves took their flight/ In a roar of applause’. Finally, there’s just space for Daniel Galef’s poem in full: ‘The first leaf that falls –/ That takes balls.’ Those below win £25. Supposing autumn to be a country doctorIn his vintage russet car and wholemeal tweeds,Prescribing to both plutocrat and pauper.

In Comp. 3373 you were invited to mull on a line that Sigmund Freud almost certainly did not say, ‘Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar’, substituting another object if it seemed apt. In the event there was plenty about cigars as substitutes and not so much about their substitutes as substitutes. A word in praise of Frank McDonald’s lovely poem about the transformations wrought by imagination and Gail White’s ‘Cat is simply cat’. Also deserving of a mention: Alex Steelsmith, Janine Beacham (‘Cigars are just cigars, no deep complex… Good Lord, stop thinking everything is sex!’) and George Simmers, whose poem ends: Then he, being an utter bastard, Quoted Kipling to provoke: ‘A woman is only a woman, But a good cigar is a smoke.

For Competition 3372 you were invited to submit a prose-style mash-up of Jilly Cooper and another famous writer. The entries were very amusing, though a handful were a little too pornographic for publication. Some of you seemed regrettably unfamiliar with the works of Cooper while others seemed to err in the other direction. I anticipated a fair few Austen--Coopers and there were indeed several excellent examples – shout-outs to Janine Beacham and D.A. Prince for theirs. Also deserving of a mention: a couple of versions of Chandler-meets-Jilly (Mike Morrison and Basil Ransome-Davies), Brian Murdoch for his Cooper/Tolkien, and David Silverman, who brilliantly yet unprintably infused Jane Eyre with some essence of Cooper (‘Reader, I shagged him’). The following win £25.

Competition 3371 invited you to rewrite the lyrics of ‘Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off’ to be sung not by Fred and Ginger but by another mismatched pair. Trump and Harris cropped up the most, while Joseph Houlihan deserves a mention for his version (‘I’m a Zoomer, you’ve a Boomer’s/ Problematic sense of humour…’). Those below win £25. You are the Windsor, and I am the Markle;You bring the heirlooms and I bring the sparkle.The Windsor, the Markle, the heirlooms, the sparkle:Let’s show the world how to live!You like the Roller and I like the Caddy;The papers abhor me and say I’m the baddie.The Roller, the Caddy, the papers, the baddie:Let’s show the world how to live!

Competition 3370 invited poems about the predicament of the Nasa astronauts stranded on the ISS – thanks to Paul Freeman for this suggestion. There was a wide range of ideas about how they could use their time, from self--improvement to… other things. Due to a different space issue, many good entries had to be jettisoned, but those below win £25.

In Comp 3369 you were invited to write about the recent underwear storm of Chongqing, or some other freak event, as if it had happened centuries ago and become legend. The entries were wonderfully imaginative, though they dangled some grim visions of the future. It pains me not to squeeze in David Silverman’s poem, so here is his second verse: Sing of that legendary dawn: Of Chongqing’s briefs and panties, borne Aloft o’er realms of Genghis Khan; Of knickers measureless to man, Of boxer, Y-front, bra and thong, Dry clean and machine washable. Recall the words of Mao Zedong: That miracles are possible! The winners below receive £25. In days long since, an ancient man came to Chongqing.

In Comp 3368 you were invited to update a well-known story from the Bible to make it ‘speak to’ life in 2024. There were a few Good Samaritans, Prodigal Sons and Cana weddings, and a splendid trio of Noahs. A special mention goes to David Silverman’s version of Psalm 23, which didn’t fit the remit but offers alternative comfort in these troubled times: The Lord is my life coach – I shall not stress. He empowereth me with positive affirmations And leadeth me to wellness strategies, Building my emotional resilience. He teacheth me mindfulness techniques, Emotional regulation and cognitive reappraisal. Praise be to the multitudes of runners-up (too many to name) and the winners receive £25. Genesis unfolds in a world obsessed with instant gratification.