Lucy Vickery

In Competition No. 3024 you were invited to submit a short story in the style of Dan Brown. This comp, a nod to the glorious awfulness of the wildly rich, bestselling author Dan Brown’s much-mocked prose, drew a nicely calibrated entry. In the interests of allowing space for six winners (who are rewarded with £25 apiece), I’ll step aside without further ado. Over to you. Langdon stared steadily with his questing blue eyes at the poem the balding gigolo penned. What was it about the scansion? His heart pounded like a lineman’s hammer. A sonnet! An old form, invented by Giacomo da Lentini. 1230. ‘The Magna Curia!’ said Langdon out loud. A voice came from the night-coloured darkness, interrupting his thought with a curdling scream. ‘Mind the volta!

In Competition No. 3023 you were invited to submit cringeworthy portmanteau words. The word portmanteau was first used in this sense by Lewis Carroll in Through the Looking Glass when Humpty Dumpty is explaining ‘Jabberwocky’ to Alice: ‘Well, “slithy” means “lithe and slimy”… You see it’s like a portmanteau — there are two meanings packed up into one word.’ There’s nothing wrong with new words, of course. As Thomas Jefferson wrote in a letter of 1820 to John Adams: ‘I am a friend to neology. It is the only way to give to a language copiousness and euphony.’ The best, most enduring portmanteaus are witty, pithy and fill a gap (‘brunch’, ‘metrosexual’, ‘workaholic’).

In Competition No. 3022 you were invited to compose a safe poem that Boris Johnson could have on hand to quote from when out in the field. The recent kerfuffle caused by the Foreign Secretary’s murmured quotation of a few lines of Kipling’s poem ‘Mandalay’ during a visit to Shwedagon Pagoda in Myanmar led me to wonder whether it might be wise, given the ever-increasing number of no-go areas when it comes to subject matter, to challenge you to fashion an all-purpose poem unlikely to offend. Barbara Jones’s Blakean-flavoured entry — ‘And did my feet in foreign clime/ Trample on sensitivities?’ — caught my attention, as did Tim Raikes’s patter song. But they were outstripped by the winners below, who take £25 each.

In Competition No. 3021 you were invited to compose terrifying lullabies. Lorca wondered why ‘Spain reserved the most potent songs of blood to lull its children to sleep, those least suited to their delicate sensibilities’, but the Scandinavians set the bar pretty high too: the unsoothing--sounding ‘Krakevisa’, from Norway, tells of gruesome uses for the carcase of a crow: ‘… from the entrails he made twelve pair of rope/ and the claws he used for dirt-forks.

In Competition No. 3020 you were invited to submit the formula for a successful marriage courtesy of a well-known husband or wife in literature.   Some time ago, I challenged you to do the same on behalf of well-known poets, and if you like your advice brief and to the point, there’s always Ogden Nash’s ‘A Word to Husbands’:   To keep your marriage brimming With love in the loving cup, Whenever you’re wrong, admit it; Whenever you’re right, shut up.   Your prescriptions were less pithy, but no less impressive for that. The winners take £30, and a fine display of Mr Polly’s ‘innate sense of epithet’ earns Alan Millard £35.

In Competition No. 3019 you were invited to submit a limerick describing a feat worthy of inclusion in Guinness World Records.   This assignment is a nod to my nine-year-old son, who is a big fan of astonishing facts. Every year, when he gets his mitts on the latest Guinness World Records, he follows me around the house bombarding me with them. To the records I’ve recently expressed amazement at — most people in a camper van; most basketball slam dunks in a minute by a rabbit; tallest ever domestic cat — you added the feats below, winningly celebrated in limerick form.   Each one printed earns its author £9. Honourable mentions go to Clare Sandy, Jeffrey Aronson, Mike Morrison and Martin Parker.

In Competition No. 3018 you were invited to take your lead from Meik Wiking — CEO at the Happiness Research Institute and author of The Little Book of Hygge and The Little Book of Lykke — and provide an extract from your own Little Book of…. When I set this challenge, I had in mind the words of the Austrian psychiatrist and neurologist Viktor Frankl (he was speaking of American culture): ‘…again and again, one is commanded and ordered to “be happy”. But happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue.’ You probably don’t need to tell that to Svend Brinkmann, whose book Stand Firm: Resisting the Self-Improvement Craze is a robust response to our relentless, self-help-manual-propelled quest to create a better, happier self.

In Competition No. 3017 you were invited to submit a sonnet containing household tips.   You were on sparkling form this week and there were plenty of stylish, inventive entries to choose from. I was riveted by your recommendations and hope to put them to the test, though I might just take John Whitworth’s word for it: (‘Prick sausages and they will never burst./ A pint of piss will slake a raging thirst.’) Commendations go to David Silverman, Joseph Conlon, Jennifer Moore, Fiona Pitt-Kethley and A.H. Harker. The winners earn £20 each. Basil Ransome-Davies trousers £25.   A healthy dose of vinegar will clean Your windows and wipe porn smears off your screen. A saucer makes a handy weapon if You need to finish a domestic tiff.

In Competition No. 3016 you were invited to submit an extract from the diary of the spouse of a high-profile political figure, living or dead.   It was a neat idea on the part of David Silverman to imagine Calpurnia’s journal in the style of Bridget Jones’s Diary, but hard to match the genius of the original. Also eye-catching, in a patchy entry, were Philip Machin (Diana Mosley) and Alan Millard (Ri Sol-ju).   High fives to the winners below, who are rewarded with £25. Adrian Fry takes £30. Dear Diary and Dear Donald’s people whose job is to read Diary for Donald, Melania very happy today as every day, not tiniest bit terrified. I love him (this means Donald, Donald’s people) so much.

In Competition No. 3015 you were invited to submit a poem about Big Ben’s bongs.   The decision to remove the 13-tonne bell during the four-year restoration works on Elizabeth Tower has caused a right old ding-dong, with senior ministers, including the PM, joining the fray.   There were lots of poems about health and safety gone mad, though given that being at close quarters to the Great Bell’s 120-decibel bong is the equivalent of putting your ear right next to a police siren, I am not so sure about that. Commendations go to Nathan Weston and Adam Rylander (aged 15). And with echoes of Wordsworth, Gray, Auden, Lear and Newbolt echoing in my ears, I award the bonus fiver to Bill Greenwell. The rest take £25.

In Competition No. 3014 you were invited to submit a love poem written by one contemporary politician to another.   Virginia Price Evans, writing on behalf of Jeremy Corbyn, channelled Betjeman in a bid to woo the PM: ‘Theresa M May, Theresa M May, I sigh and I die for our special day…’. Frank Upton’s Jeremy Hunt clearly thought that a spot of Eliot might melt the heart of Baroness Primarolo: ‘In the room the women come and go/ Talking of “Dawn Primarolo”…’. And W.J. Webster imagined Nicola Sturgeon making eyes across the Channel at M. Macron:   The Auld Alliance, sealed long since, Served both our nations well: As two made one again, my prince, We’d give the English hell.