In Competition No. 2577 you were invited to supply definitions of five types of anything you chose. As the eagle-eyed among you will have spotted, Jaspistos set an almost identical assignment a few years ago, inspired by Sydney Smith’s six types of handshake. On that occasion, Noel Petty scooped the bonus fiver for his definition of six ways of sitting down. Here is a snippet: ‘the “block-and-tackle”, when the full weight is taken by the arms and the body very slowly lowered into position, accompanied by the somewhat otiose information that the subject is not as young as he used to be’.
This time round, Adrian Fry nets the extra fiver. His fellow prizewinners, printed below, get £30 each.
Cough
The Katherine Mansfield: slight and breathy, this customarily female cough is put to best use in films and plays where it represents the romantically fascinating thin end of terminal illness, though it is also heard from malingering workers telephoning in sick.
Voxish: any cough sounding like someone saying ‘Ahem!’ Used to informally call meetings to the point at which they can be called formally to order, give egomaniacs the opportunity to fill silences during classical recitals or disguise the breaking of wind.
Wet guffaw: expansive, phlegmy masterpiece invariably favoured by the person sitting next to you in a doctor’s waiting room or by rural pub ‘characters’.
The Dog: that deep, terrible whooping reminiscent of an enraged Alsatian imprisoned in an outhouse.
The Guff-chew: evolves swiftly from cough to almost orgasmic sneeze, especially beloved of advertisers wishing to demonstrate the need for double-action remedies.
Adrian Fry
Apologies
The apology grandio-gestural fashionably employed by politicians on behalf of a people whose ancestors failed to foresee how history would regard their activities. (Key word ‘apologise’: ‘sorry’ would sound embarrassingly personal.) A hair shirt worn inside out.
The forced or grudging apology invariably uses the word ‘regret’: this distances the speaker from personal responsibility and implies that circumstances — or others — are to blame.
Confessional contrition introduces the regrettable news with ‘I’m afraid…’ The speaker aims to gain credit for an admission of guilt before the facts are known. ‘I must confess…’ is a pompous sub-species of this form.
The hyper-dramatical mea culpa uses ‘sorry’ but prefaced by ‘Oh, no/Omigod, I’m terribly/awfully/dreadfully’. The melodramatic effect — calculated or not — upstages the offendee and so seems to diminish the offence.
The personal-space invasion reflex: the typically British muttered ‘sorry’ on any inadvertent bodily contact in a public place.
W.J. Webster
Prayer
Meta-prayer. This scholarly variety references biblical sources, viz. Isaiah 26:16 (‘pouring’), Lamentations 3:44 (‘cloud cover’); Psalms 88:2 (‘inclination of ear’), and discusses with God the nature and circumstance of prayer itself.
Creative free associative prayer. Suitable for creative writing students, this prayer follows its own direction, and invites God to direct it towards the opening of a decent story.
Competitive prayer. This reassembles extracts from known prayers to form a paracrostic and palindromic original prayer (16 lines max.)
Non-specific, all-purpose prayer. Sometimes known as ‘hot-hassocking’, this silent prayer sketches in random apologies and requests for forgiveness in no more than 25 seconds.
Jazz prayer. When two or three (or four or five) people are gathered together, and improvise meditations and supplications out loud, picking up on each other’s riffs, over the course of an hour.
Bill Greenwell
New Year’s Eve Parties
The Memorable: the year the whisky ran out at 23.30; the year medication meant no alcohol; the year you broke your wrist during ‘Auld Lang Syne’.
The Unmemorable: was that the year at your aunt’s and her neighbours with the haulage business who showed us ten years’ worth of slides of their caravanning holidays in Skegness? Or was it when your cousin started to explain macro-economics with Twiglets and chocolate sticks?
The Mentionable: the year we remembered to book flights to Edinburgh, on the plane with the entire James Bond cast and the chap who used to be in Corrie.
The Unmentionable: the year you were sick in three different taxis; the year you were arrested for graphically obscene suggestions to the bank manager.
The Oblivion: the year that slipped from teatime on 31 December to News at Ten on 2 January, and the cloud of unknowing in-between.
D.A. Prince
Comebacks
The Lazarus: the benchmark, announcing new hope for the dead. This is an exceptional type, so deeply reliant on supernatural intervention that it is unlikely to be repeated in a sceptical age (but q.v. Mandelson).
The Napoleon: A historic ‘double’ — as Marx remarked of his nephew, the first time as tragedy, the second as farce. A hundred days was enough for Bonaparte to fail again, fail worse.
The De Gaulle: The prima donna paradigm: the hero gains renown during wartime but subsequently finds democratic government irksome and deserts it to sulk in his tent till another emergency recalls him, only to flounce out again.
The Nixon: Only in America could Tricky Dicky, a loser long notorious for his dishonesty, foul tactics and squalid personality, be freely elected President. Inevitably, he blew it.
The Mandelson: A miraculous serial returner. Higher forces of a darker kind are thought to be involved.
Basil Ransome-Davies
No. 2580: Short story
You are invited to submit a short story entitled ‘New Year Letter’, concluding with the words ‘under the familiar weight of winter, conscience and the state’ (150 words maximum). Entries to ‘Competition 2580’ by 22 January or email lucy@spectator.co.uk.
Comments