Lucy Vickery

Competition: Going for a song

Lucy Vickery presents this week's competition

issue 08 January 2011

Lucy Vickery presents this week’s competition

In Competition No. 2679 you were invited to usher in the New Year with a teetotallers’ drinking song. As usual with this sort of challenge, many that read well on the page didn’t lend themselves to being sung aloud. But an impressive entry yielded some rousing and not unpersuasive calls to shun the liquid devil. Their authors of the following earn £25 each while Ray Kelley nabs £30.

In the instructions for Competition 2681 the year should have read 2010. Figures from either 2009 or 2010 will be acceptable.

Charge your pannikin with water,
Toast in springsprung H2O
Staunch Aquarius, transporter
Of the finest drink we know.


Thus we honour, sir and madam,
Of all draughts the very first —
It’s the ale God brewed for Adam
That most satisfies our thirst.


Scorning Scotch, refusing ouzo,
Banning brandy and Bordeaux,
Each and every kind of booze, O!
We teetotally forgo.


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