In Competition No. 3211 you were invited to submit a nursery rhyme inspired by the pandemic.
When I set this challenge, I had in mind ‘Ring-a-Ring o’ Roses’, the rhyme that is said by some to date from the Great Plague of 1665 (though its origins are a subject of hot scholarly dispute).
In a medium-sized entry, Brian Murdoch, Nicholas Lee, Leslie Bresnen, David Shields and Barbara Jones caught my eye and earn honourable mentions. Equally impressive was Tom Singleton’s clever twist on the ‘Hokey-Cokey’: ‘Keep the public in, let the public out,/ In, out, in, out, you mess them all about,/ You make a slow decision, then you turn around, that’s what it’s all about… Oh, the jokey blokey! Oh, the jokey blokey! Oh, the jokey blokey! U-turn, never learns! Rah-rah-rah!’.
But the prizes go to those entries printed below, which earn their authors £30 apiece.
Blow, blow, blow your nose, queue up for vaccine, Fight your friends for toilet rolls. Infectious? Quarantine. Self, self, self-isolate, as the law demands, Home-school your beloved kids, scream into your hands. Wash, wash, wash with soap, lockdown boredom reigns, Wear a mask for every task and curse the Delta strains. Book, book, book your trips while travel bubbles hold, rooms at boring local spots are worth their weight in gold. Work, work, work from home, say you’re on the job, catch up with your Netflix queue, dressing like a slob. Bake, bake, bake your fifteenth batch of sourdough bread, stuff your face with homemade cake, watch your waistline spread. Tap, tap, tap your app, let them test and trace, pray you weren’t in contact with the sixty-seventh case. Keep, keep, keep apart, distance socially, cancel all events again, we’ll wed in ’23.
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