In Competition No. 2596 you were invited to submit an alphabet primer designed for children of the Noughties.
A far cry from the piety and moral lessons of primers past, yours were designed for a generation-in-waiting of Heat-reading (J is generally for Jade), debt-ridden (‘Y’s for the Year the economy shrank, Z’s for Zilch that’s in the bank.’: Tim Raikes), violent (K almost always spells knife), illiterate (‘Z is for xenophobia’: Phil Thomas), egocentric (‘M is for me before everyone’: Michael Cregan), appearance-obsessed (B is mostly for botox) technophiles (Facebook, Twitter, etc, etc). While my Asbo reference didn’t exactly set the scene for an uplifting read, I suspect that today’s young are a brighter lot than they are given credit for.
The standard was patchy this week but I liked Jim Davies’s rhyming couplets: ‘C is for credit that lets us have fun days/ D is for daddy who visits on Sundays’).
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