In Competition No. 2443 you were invited to supply a letter from someone on holiday pretending they are having a good time when in fact they are not. This was tricky because some of the incidents described were beyond the pretence of enjoyment. Simon Massey, for instance, led off with: ‘See Naples and die, they
Bouts rimés In Competition No. 2442 you were asked for a poem with certain rhyme words to be used in a given order.The rhymes were taken from a poem by J.B. Morton (
In Competition No. 2439 you were invited to write a poem in praise of a friend. The only time I wrote a poem in praise of a friend, he shortly afterwards committed murder, followed by suicide. There are, though, much happier examples. Pope’s ‘On a Certain Lady at Court’ ends:‘Has she no faults then,’ Envy
In Competition No. 2438 you were invited to write, in the spirit of Aesop or La Fontaine, a rhymed fable involving animals. Last week I doubted my qualifications to be a judge, but this week my credentials are copper-bottomed, since I have translated selections of the fables of both Aesop and La Fontaine: a sympathetic
In Competition No. 2437 you were invited to supply an incident from a children’s adventure story featuring a mythical beast and a magic device. Perhaps someone who doesn’t dig Robinson Crusoe, Swallows and Amazons or The Hobbit and feels no inclination to read a Harry Potter book isn’t the ideal judge for this competition, but
In Competition No. 2436 you were invited to supply a very rude letter in which the writer terminates the services of an employee, tradesman or professional person. The most successfully rude letter ever written is surely Dr Johnson’s to Lord Chesterfield with its superb combination of sarcasm and sorrow: ‘Is not a patron, my lord,
‘To the Royal Society of Needlework — and drive like the wind!’ Sherlock is speaking, Watson narrating. In Competition No. 2435 you were invited to continue from here. ‘Not …’ I gasped as we careered on to the Edgware Road.‘Exactly, Watson, our old adversary. Did you ever wonder in what subject the Professor gained his
In Competition No. 2434 you were invited to write a poem in the metre of Hiawatha entitled ‘Breakfast’. Trochaics have rarely been more amusingly used than in Lewis Carroll’s ‘Hiawatha’s Photographing’, in which H. is exasperatedly trying to take portraits of a very tiresome and camera-conscious Victorian family. Mama is Dressed in jewels and in
In Competition No. 2433 you were asked for a poem in which each line’s rhymed ending is a truncated word. When I’ve a syllable de trop,I cut it off without apol:This verbal sacrifice, I know,May irritate the schol;But all must praise my devilish cunnWho realise that Time is Mon. This verse from ‘Poetical Economy’ suggests
In Competition No. 2432 you were asked for double or treble clerihews. It was E.C. Bentley’s son Nicholas who invented the double clerihew, and treble ones have been recorded. You were in pioneer country. A clerihew, as I see it, deals with one person, and so accordingly should a double or treble. I was prepared
In Competition No. 2431 you were invited to write a poem commemorating the recent death of the whale in the Thames. Verse marking a special occasion can be serious (Tennyson’s ‘Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington’) or light (Gray’s ‘Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of
In Competition No. 2430 you were invited to suggest some items in a government programme of ‘events’ designed to improve our sense of national identity. How British am I? I sometimes wonder. I am sorry for our troops in Iraq but I don’t support them. I am a republican who dislikes pubs, is bored by
In Competition No. 2429 you were invited to write a poem in praise of one of the Seven Deadly Sins. It was the Reverend Sydney Smith who, as Keith Norman appropriately reminded me, came down to breakfast smiling and announced that he had had a beautiful dream: that there were seven Articles and 39 Deadly
In Competition No. 2428 you were asked for a piece of prose incorporating, in any order, 12 given words, using them in a non-alcoholic sense. Despite the fact that some of you occasionally groan at this type of comp, it always pulls in a big number of punters. The combination of sidecar and bishop generated
In Competition No. 2427 you were invited to supply a poem or a piece of prose beginning ‘It began as a — but it turned out a —’, filling in the blanks as you pleased. It was that forgettable and forgotten poet Austin Dobson who wrote a triolet beginning, ‘It began as an ode/ But
In Competition No. 2426 you were invited to supply a poetic invitation from one friend to another to come and stay in the country and enjoy its pleasures. The title was meant to suggest that I was looking for a charming, straight-faced piece such as Horace or our 17th-century poets might have written, but most
In Competition No. 2425 you were invited to do as Ovid did: give poetic advice as to how to pick up, seduce and keep a lover of either sex. Here’s one of Ovid’s shrewd pieces of advice to girls (my translation, The Modern Library, New York, rush out and buy it): Steer clear of the
In Competition No. 2424 you were invited to write a poem naming in each line a startling event which will occur during each month this year, ending with a four-line glimpse of the more distant future. ‘Fasten your seatbelts’ was the consensus. I shall gag myself to make space for the winners, pausing only to
In Competition No. 2423 you were invited to write a poem in the voice of a fed-up soldier, of any country or date, far from home. I was apprehensive that most of you would use this invitation to vent your feelings about the unhappy war in Iraq, but I was pleasantly surprised by the variety
In Competition No. 2422 you were invited to write a poem or a piece of prose entitled ‘Dinner with the Devil’. ‘My meal consisted of an omelette made from eggs seven years past their sell-by date and stuffed with the minced brains of lunatics who never attended church on Sunday’ — Adam Campbell’s menu, reminiscent