Missing person report

In Competition No. 2973 you were invited to give your thoughts, in verse or prose, on who the Person from Porlock might have been — assuming, of course, that there was such a person. Many thanks to John McGivering, who suggested this excellect competition. Some fingered, as De Quincey did, Coleridge’s doctor and laudanum source. Also in the frame were Jehovah’s Witness, PPI ambulance-chasers and the drugs squad. And many agreed with Stevie Smith: ‘As the truth is I think he was already stuck/ With Kubla Khan … When along comes the Person from Porlock/ And takes the blame for it.’ The winners take £25 each; Frank McDonald nabs £30.

There came a man from Porlock
And he knocked on Samuel’s door
While he was hard at work. Alas
Poor Samuel wrote no more.

‘Now who be ye’ the poet asked
‘Would come at such a time?’
The old man simply stared and said:
‘Put what I say in rime.