Spectator competition winners: Gulliver’s Day Out and other literary prequels

In Competition No. 3235, you were invited to invent a prequel to a well-known work of literature and supply an extract from it. In a stellar entry, Nick MacKinnon, Sue Pickard, Max Ross, Bob Trewin and Lorna Wood all shone, but the £25 prizes go to the following:

Believing it never to be my Fortune to travel in future Years, my Profession holding me fast in Respectability, I betook myself to London to discover what Strangenesses I might encounter in the Manners and Dispositions of People. Finding them of indifferent Stature and unwholesome Airs, yet was I minded to visit their Great Parliament, both for my Private Education but also thereby in hope of acquiring a great Tale as Souvenir, one to make my Name. Their Place being over-manned, as with hogs at a water-trough, and all making such Clamour, I could only coin them as Yahoos, each endeavouring to out-shout his Fellow.