‘Around the House in 80 Days’ and other titles for lockdown

In Competition No. 3149 you were invited to tweak an existing book or poem title for lockdown and provide an excerpt from the resulting work.

This excellent challenge, suggested by a reader, produced a vast entry and some cracking titles, including Masefield’s ‘Cabin Fever’ and Jane Austen’s Compulsion, as well as several variations on ‘Come Not into the Garden Maud’. There was more Tennyson from Sally Fiery, whose impassioned ‘Charge of the Price Hike-Brigade’ begins: Half a quid, half a quid,/ Nobody wondered,/ That was the price of soap,/ Now it’s six hundred…’ Commendations also go to Brian Allgar, Barry Baldwin, Frank Upton, Nick Syrett, G.M. Southgate and Iain Orr, whose tweaked title, Joseph Heller’s Covid-19, was an inspired one in these crazy times. The winners below pocket £25.

The hues that once were pure and bright Are yet a well-remember’d sight, When first we sank into the void Our radiant hair was unalloy’d, Yet time, unerring, doth expose The root’s deception, as it grows. Those locks, combed out and neatly layer’d Cannot from nature’s growth be spared, They yet become a troubled ocean Impervious to styling lotion, Untamed, they wander as they will Lacking yet the stylist’s skill. Whene’er our freedom is restor’d Neglected tresses shall afford This lasting memory for the nation, A symbol of incarceration. ‘To a Shock of Hair’/Sylvia Fairley

They lock you up, the government. They make you stay inside the house Until your mind snaps and you vent Your irritation on your spouse. Then off you go, for ‘exercise’ On lonely streets, in empty parks, Or queue for requisite supplies In Sainsburys or Marks and Sparks. For once, the British public knows Exactly what two metres means. Coronavirus boldly glows In colour on a zillion screens. Back in the home that’s like a cell You feel yourself a viral martyr. It’s life sans others that is hell, So suck a lemon, Jean-Paul Sartre. ‘This Be the Virus’/Basil Ransome-Davies