In Competition No. 2999 you were invited to supply a poem which takes as its first line W.S. Gilbert’s ‘A policeman’s lot is not a happy one’ but replaces ‘policeman’ with another trade or profession.
Although this line doesn’t come until line eight in Gilbert & Sullivan’s ‘Policeman’s Song’, it was the opening I prescribed and so it was with a heavy heart that I had to disqualify some excellent entries that veered off piste. A competition-setter’s lot is not a happy one, then, but it does have its consolations and I was entertained — and informed — by your parade of teachers, lawyers, coroners, morticians and hitmen.
The bonus fiver belongs to David Silverman; the rest earn £25.
An Archbishop’s lot is not a happy one:
When you think you’ve got the Devil on the run,
You get War and Plague and Famine
And the people worship Mammon
And you find that flipping mitre weighs a ton.
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