In Competition No. 2853 you were asked to incorporate the following words (they are real geological terms) into a piece of plausible and entertaining prose so that they acquire a new meaning in the context of your narrative: Corallian, Permian, Lias, Kimmeridge, Oolite, Cornbrash, Ampthill.
The inspiration for this comp came from a bit in Robert Macfarlane’s wonderful The Old Ways where he muses on the names of the surface rock formations in the British Isles: ‘It’s tempting to lend them hypothetical definitions. Great Oolite (the honorific of the panjandrum of a non-existent kingdom). Cornbrash (a Midwest American home-baked foodstuff)….’
There was a great deal of wit and ingenuity on show in the entry this week and competition was hot. Like Macfarlane a lot of you saw cornbrash as some sort of foodstuff; permian was often a synonym for permanent; and corallian a colour.
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