Spectator competition winners: finding love in unlikely locations

In Competition No. 3321 you were invited to provide a love scene from a novel set in a location that might not be considered conducive to romance.

There was a distinctly scatological flavour to this week’s postbag. Rubbing shoulders with the abattoirs and morgues were sewage treatment plants and waste-contaminated waters. Adrian Fry’s description of romance blossoming in a post-thermonuclear apocalypse government bunker earns an honourable mention: ‘Their past as local authority officials retreated to irrelevance, their future as irradiated cannibals above ground proved literally unimaginable…’. As does Nick MacKinnon’s glue factory tryst: ‘Julianna had been warned about the men in Industrial Adhesives. “They’ll treat you like another Post-it Note on their bedroom mirror: easy-on, easy-off, no residue. Find a nice boy in Consumer Stickies.”’

The winners, printed below, are rewarded with £30 each.

– You’re quite a catch, he said.

It was the best he could do, and she loved him for it, although the pit of half-alive fish into which they’d slipped was causing them problems with balance and breathing. She tried to struggle towards him, shifting some of the smaller creatures from before her to behind her. It was slow going, and the sea-drool and scales were starting to soak her. If only she could reach him, she would kiss him so deeply, let her tongue lounge against his salty lips.

His head surfaced again, white and clammy, eyes agog with love and wonder, mouth gasping, opening and closing, trying to pronounce her name. Oh such feelings welling up within her! Fish nudged and nipped her as she made another attempt, her free arm grasping at the fetid air as if it might propel her forward. He sank again, lovely as ever.

Bill Greenwell

Duncan’s hands on the cleaver were strong, yet sensitive. Doris held tightly to her thick Cumberland sausages, longing for his touch on her chicken thighs.