A swarm of bees

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.