In Competition No. 2455 you were invited to incorporate a dozen given words, all beginning with b, into a plausible piece of prose.
The given words were on the surface less testing than usual, but that was only to lure you into the trap of the too obvious. Cleverclogs, like Jeremy Chilcott and L.E. Betts, who managed it in half the maximum number of words lost in entertainment what they gained in brevity, even though they impressed me. David Jones, Andrew Brison and W.J. Webster were all close to the money. The prizewinners, printed below, get £25 each, and Alan Millard earns the extra fiver for his Cumbrian fantasy.
An internet source stated that Coleridge, banjaxed on opium, arrived belatedly at Dove Cottage in the buff one autumn, blue with cold, shouting, ‘Forget Keats’ “close bosom friend”! I’m freezing!’ Dorothy, seemingly unperturbed, proceeded to bank up the fire and offer him soup with a freshly baked, homemade oatmeal biscuit. As soon as he’d eaten, William beckoned him over, requesting assistance. ‘What rhymes with warm?’ he sighed, clearly struggling with Part Four of his ‘Intimations’. ‘Would arm do?’
‘You might as well rhyme bustard with bastard. Why not try Benidorm?’ Coleridge suggested. ‘It rhymes with warm, and is warm.’ With that, quite obviously the worse for wear, he stumbled upstairs, dislodged the banister and muttered guiltily, ‘Whoops! I’ve broken the barrister!’
A number of this year’s A-level candidates accepted this fictional nonsense as gospel. Only those with the highest pass marks dismissed it as utter baloney.
Alan Millard
The recent death of Charles Haughey, accountant, barrister and former Taoiseach, who almost banjaxed Ireland, opened up some old wounds. At his funeral he was belatedly back into the bosom of Fianna Fail. A lot of baloney was uttered about his achievements, but nothing was said about secret bank accounts in the Cayman Islands and the virtually tax-free lifestyle. When Charlie was 18, high office and the high life beckoned. The man from humble beginnings was determined to live the life of a true blue blood, not the humdrum existence of some poor bastard from the wrong side of the tracks.
His mistress did not attend the funeral. She had enjoyed lavish trips abroad with Charlie. A cheap package holiday in, say, Benidorm was not their style. She was the subject of many notorious stories, including the one where she appeared in the buff in a Dublin restaurant.
What really took the biscuit was the fact that the Irish taxpayer had to foot the funeral bill.
Patrick O’Byrne
Tony beckoned his deputy into a corner. ‘I’ve just heard, rather belatedly I’m afraid, that tomorrow’s Sun has pictures of you in the buff, nuzzling your assistant’s bosom on a Spanish beach.’
Crumbs of blue cheese and biscuit fell from the minister’s mouth.
‘That bastard Murdoch,’ he mumbled, ‘he’s behind this, you can bank on it. He’s mocked my bus lane, got me evicted from Dorneywood, completely banjaxed my regional parliaments …’
Tony interrupted, pink with fury. ‘What shall I say at Question Time tomorrow?’
‘Tell them it’s baloney. I haven’t seen the photo, but it’s not literally me inasmuch as I was only in Spain representing my constituents who mandated me to expedite the twinning of Hull with Benidorm as befits Directive 895 from Brussels …’
He paused mid-sentence, then smiled. ‘Anyway, you’re the bloody barrister, I’m sure you’ll think of summat. We’re joined at the hip, remember?’
Michaela Rees
Dear Tracey,
You were right. Belatedly, the penny’s dropped. He is a bastard and all that Everlasting-Love-and-Fate-has-Beckoned stuff was pure baloney. I blame the decibels in that bar in Benidorm — you know I’d said he’d said he was a barrister? Well, actually he’s a barista — posh word for coffee-maker — and works in that bar in Bromley that used to be a bank. I should have known when he was in the buff and all his tattoos were spiders’ webs. Gave me the creeps: he looked like blue knitting — so that banjaxed the sex side, even if he hadn’t dropped an olive down my bosom by way of an icebreaker. For corniness he really takes the biscuit, just like you spotted at the start.
Sill, I met this new guy. Works for Lewisham, says he’s the best operative. That couldn’t be Pest Operative, could it?
D.A. Prince
Cousin Edward, a shy Chancery barrister, preferred to holiday in the Cairngorms and came belatedly to Benidorm. He sat, fully clothed, on the beach, nibbling a water biscuit (he took them everywhere with him). All that flesh! Edward’s idea of being in the buff was to take off his wig and gown and keep his three-piece suit on. Then, out of the blue, a husky voice and an unusual endearment beckoned him. ‘Come here, my sweet little bastard, I make you rich.’ The young lady, long of leg and amazing of bosom, was wearing large sunglasses and very little else. ‘My name is Tatiana. I have system to break bank at casino.’
‘Baloney!’ said Edward. But he was intrigued. The first two nights he won. By the end of the week, though, he was banjaxed. But he had a Russian bride.
Nicholas Hodgson
Of course most of Lewis Carroll’s stuff is pure baloney, but a perceptive barrister, Montague Mercer, claims that there’s more to the Walrus and Carpenter tale than playful nonsense. An authentic copy of the poem, written on three postcards from Benidorm, was found, by one of Mercer’s clients, with a buff-coloured envelope in an old biscuit tin. Why did Carroll make the Carpenter out to be a real bastard who banjaxed a whole oyster colony? Mercer points out that the brutal Walrus beckoned the oysters to walk along the beach and then held the fattest to his bosom before devouring them. Some think Carroll produced these characters out of the blue, but Mercer has belatedly uncovered the interesting fact that Cornelius Walrus Carpenter was in fact Carroll’s much detested bank manager. His name was on the envelope.
Frank Mc Donald
No. 2458: Breaking the silence
Sandra Burridge has drawn my attention to G.K. Chesterton’s comment, ‘The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.’ You are invited to disprove that (maximum 16 lines). Entries to ‘Competition No. 2458’ by 24 August.
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