Hole hearted

In Competition No. 2506 you were invited to submit a short story entitled ‘A Life With a Hole In It’.

In Competition No. 2506 you were invited to submit a short story entitled ‘A Life With a Hole In It’.
This is the title of a poem written by Philip Larkin in 1974, shortly after a move that plunged him into a black depression. It reeks of fury and disappointment: ‘Life is an immobile, locked/ Three-handed struggle between/ Your wants, the world’s for you, and (worse)/ The unbeatable slow machine/ That brings what you’ll get…’.
The entry this week was impressive, which cheered me up after Larkin’s doom and gloom. Top marks to you all for inventiveness, with special mentions to Bill Greenwell and Adrian Fry. The winners are printed below. They get £25 each, and the bonus fiver goes to Josephine Boyle.

I was made in an odd shape. To be accurate, I was cast in a strange mould. It is not every woman who has a perfect round hole in her torso, and yet Everywoman was the name I was given. Below my waist, and well below my hole, I was of massive, Miltonic proportions and sat comfortably upon my base in the Sculpture Park. I was very stable and much admired. Children would run around me and play. One afternoon, a child more adventurous and probably more athletic than his friends managed to climb my bronze back and thrust his head through my hole. His shoulders followed and I held him fast. I delighted in the unaccustomed contact with his warm and lively body. The more he wriggled, the more I enjoyed it. He began to cry with fear. But I can’t feel pity; the hole is where my heart should be.
Josephine Boyle