Rhyme time | 4 September 2014

In Competition No. 2863 you were invited to recast a well-known nursery rhyme in the style of a well-known author. The entry was evenly split between prose and poetry but in general verse worked better. Commendations go to Chris Port, Mike Morrison, Max Ross, Nick MacKinnon, Adrian Fry and Mark Shelton. The winners earn £25 each. Chris O’Carroll takes £30.

Once upon a sturdy tuffet sat a maid
the world calls Muffet,
Dining on a wholesome bowl of dairy
oddments, curds with whey.
On a sudden, just beside her, she espied
a loathsome spider;
Cold abhorrence surged inside her.
She could find no words to say,
No ejaculations suited to convey her
deep dismay,
Not a single word to say.
 
Vile arachnids, large and hairy, tender
lactovores find scary,
So the frighted maid abandoned all her
curds and all her whey.
Muffet gazed upon the spinner of silk
traps to snare its dinner,
Felt her vitals churn within her, knew
she could not stay and play.
In the presence of this insect-eating
fiend she dared not stay.
Up she sprang and ran away.
Chris O’Carroll/Edgar Allan Poe


 
Smiley shook out his umbrella before entering.
‘Raining,’ said the constable at the door. ‘Indeed pouring, if I may venture an opinion, sir.’
The old man lay in bed upstairs, making a gross, piggish noise. The room smelt of mothballs and a picture of Brighton Pavilion hung lopsidedly over the mantelpiece. A medic was already there.
‘Occipital damage,’ he said. ‘In lay terms, he bumped his head. Odd thing is, it seems to have happened after he went to bed.’
‘He’s in a coma?’
‘Probably. He certainly couldn’t get up this morning We’ll know more later.’
‘Snoring in a coma?’
‘That will happen if the airways become obstructed.’
Smiley watched the raindrops slide down the window, then vanish. It had the smell of one of Karla’s sandbaggers. Or was that too obvious? It could be a decoy, a trap. Either way, it would take all the tradecraft he had.