Spectator competition winners: stories inspired by Beatles songs

In Competition No. 3299, you were invited to supply a short story that takes as its title the title of a Beatles song.

Haruki Murakami used Beatles tracks from the album Rubber Soul as names for both his 1987 novel Norwegian Wood and a short story, ‘Drive My Car’. But the Japanese writer has confessed that he was never ‘a fervent fan’. In high school and college, he says, he ‘didn’t buy a single record’ by the Fab Four.

In a large and inventive entry, Ben Hale’s dystopian ‘When I’m Sixty-Four’, with its echoes of the film Logan’s Run,caught my eye, and I was moved by Frank McDonald’s poignant tale of the last surviving lemming. Additional highlights were provided by Sue Pickard, Morna Clements, John O’Byrne, Paul Freeman and Mark Ambrose, who all earn an honourable mention. But the prizes this week are awarded to the entries printed below, which net their authors £30 apiece.

William Bryce removed his muddy boots and spread out the sticks, gleaned from the woods, where they could dry. He lit the tightly rationed gas ring for a cup of tea. It was hard, keeping warm without a heat pump. His 1963 Morris Traveller was, for the time being, exempt from the Mega-ULEZ restrictions, so he could at least go shopping (with, perhaps, a detour to the Last Filling Station in Town). Making ends meet was a struggle, though – the Single Storey Detached Dwelling Eco-Levy bit hard. He finished his tea and was getting out the carpet sweeper when the telephone rang. It was the activists again, cursing him for ‘butchering the ecosystem’ and threatening to ‘cancel’ him for good. William would hold out to the end, though. He still had real metaldehyde slug pellets to protect his kitchen garden and it was steak for dinner that night!

Frank Upton/‘The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill’