Growing pains | 3 November 2007

Competition No. 2521: Tall tale

You are invited to submit an anecdote by a dinner-party bore that culminates in the dubious claim: ‘And that is how I came to eat a cucumber sandwich with the King of Norway’. (150 words maximum.) Entries to ‘Competition 2521’ by 15 November or email lucy@spectator.co.uk.

In Competition 2518 you were invited to provide an extract from the adolescent diary of a famous historical figure. Teenagers today publish their diaries online as blogs. How they can bring themselves to do this is beyond me — my own adolescent outpourings, a predictably toecurling blend of tormented introspection and pretentious pseudo-philosophy punct­uated by quotations from Nietzsche and Leonard Cohen — were kept firmly under lock and key.

Simon Machin gives a tantalising glimpse into the world of a pubescent Napoleon: ‘Puffed Caporals behind the stables with Soult. “I’ll be a Marshall one day,” he said. Yeah! Like I’ll be Emperor, doh! …’ while Brian Murdoch’s hormonally charged 15-year-old Queen Victoria frets about the size of her bum as much as about the prospect of becoming queen. It is nice to see some unfamiliar names in the winners’ enclosure this week. Those printed below get £25 each, while teacher’s pet W.J. Webster bags the bonus fiver for the second week running.

Up betimes and mighty troubled at finding fresh eruptions on my cheeks, notwithstanding the pothecary’s poultice of bat dung and monkshood. For breakfast eat two fat herring, but with no appetite, being full of discontent at my complexion. Later, I came upon pretty Martha stooping to the grate and did touch her netherly; a little afeared, I confess, lest she raise a wail. Yet she but turned me a glance and murmured ‘O Master Samuel’. I have a mind to hazer plus con ella anon. After dinner, to the back-room at the Cocke with Thomas, Digby and Daniel to rehearse our consort of viols.