In Competition No. 2603 you were invited to submit a newspaper article on a subject of your choice currently in the news containing as many excruciating puns as possible. I’ve never been a big fan of puns but something of a pundemic broke out in a discussion thread on the web about swine flu — ‘I rang NHS Direct and got crackling on the line’ — and it made me laugh out loud. True to Edgar Allan Poe’s observation ‘The goodness of the true pun is in the direct ratio of its intolerability’, I chortled and winced my way through the entry. Top seed topic-wise was Wimbledon, which produced various painful permutations on ‘Murray mints net profit’. Graham Grafton was unlucky to be squeezed out of the winning line-up, printed below. It’s £25 each, and £30 to W.J. Webster.
D’Oyly cartographers had it easy. These days would a Mappa Mundi still be accurate by Tuesday? As far as our coastline is concerned it’s far from shore. Given the current predictions being voiced about top sea levels we can wave farewell to littorally vast areas. High tides will turn them into roller-costas and breakers’ yards. In parts not a shingle beach will remain and our once ploughed land will be trodden under the sea’s relentless marsh. Water disaster! But really it surfs us right. With more effort we could brake water’s advance. We have a notion but no action. Our seedy fences are useless. Let’s say to the planners, ‘In undated graves — is that where our fate lies? Wet-and-sea policies need re-thinking. Seize the opportunity now. Know a flood’s coming. Dune need more evidence? Hoping all’s well that ends swell just won’t do.’
W.J. Webster
According to the European Central Bank, Irish people are suffering from a hangover after a huge boozed inn borrowing. Many are feeling loan-ly now; easy lending can never be a country’s saver. Negative equity is the fair, especially among those who bought at the top of the wheel economic cycle, with a view to tax brakes and easy re-tirement. Mullions took the property bubble for granite. All manor of investors went into the ‘buy-too-late’ market, a bard storey made verse by ode debts. Bricks and mortar do not always yield concrete results; the vault line may be low ceiling prices. The lessons: enormous jeep credit, little to chauffeur it, and a lien time ahead.
John O’Byrne
Ordure! Ordure! Now that our sub-prime-minister Brown has stuffed us all and sailed us up a creek famously full of Brown stuff (like the Oxford poetry chair, without a padel), parliament clearly needs a Grim Speaker able to cut them off, tip-toe nimbly on balletic points of order, order, and take the con out of ‘confidence in our MPs’. With the loss of the former Macbeth-like incumbent (though shouts of ‘Cawdor, Cawdor’ would be taking the Mick), parliament needs someone to control expensive members of the House (and of the Other House) who stock up their other house on expenses (hoarder! hoarder!), rent rooms with their sister-in-law’s cousin (boarder! boarder!), or protest innocence while claiming for moats and beams. Flipping heck! Enough Orwellian Newspeak, it’s time for a new Speaker in the Westminster speakeasy saying that it is time for last order, orders!
Brian Murdoch
It was Och High the Noon as Scotsman Andy Murray courted disaster in a smashing five-set finish at Wimbledon yesterday, where a highly-strung crowd generated an am-ace-ing racket during a close call for the local hero against Stanislas Wawrinka. It’s a lawn hard road to the final, and Murray reminded fans that there’s Hogmanay a slip ’twixt cup and lip, nearly being turfed out of the championships before the Swiss rolled over in defeat. When normal service resumed, Murray showed he had the balls to seize the advantage, chalk up another victory and prove that his heart is volley set on the prize. Reticent afterwards (had the cat gut his tongue?), he lobbed just one backhanded compliment to his opponent, conceding that Wawrinka’s slices of luck had had him close to breaking-point at times. One thing’s certain: with prize money of £850,000, Wimbledon victory would make Murray a mint.
David Mackie
People aren’t reading any more. Even at the beach, summer reading, summer not. Let us hope these will spur a revival of this perishing pastime: The Oddity and the Ill ’E ’Ad: unfortunate Cockney lad is covered with warts, wens, and wherefores. Wart’s a poor fellow to do? The Old Man and the C: Octogenarian chokes to death on a vitamin C tablet while fishing. With no one on hand to apply the Hindlift Manoeuvre, it was …manoeuvre board. Warren Piece: Mr Buffett explains the ecch!onomy. Cod is Not Great: Christopher Hitchens disdains the fish a large Cape was named for. He doesn’t much like ‘sole’ either. The Mildew on the Floss: sad story of a teenager whose teeth turned permanently green because of fungal growth on her home dental equipment. The Harlot, Pimp, an’ Nell: comedy of errors, set in a house of prostitution. All’s swell that ends Nell!
Mae Scanlan
The roof, the whole roof and nothing but the roof. That’s the mantra in court this week — Centre Court in SW19, that is. It’s not so much a question of whether Murray, in mint condition and in a hurry to win his first Grand Slam, is up to the challenge, but how well the new retractable roof will strut its stuff. This year steel trusses are grabbing more headlines than Sharapova’s tresses. It’s air conditioning not hair conditioning for 2009 and being broad in the beam has nothing to do with the female tennis players. Will it be such a brolly good show though if the element of unpredictability is lost? Let’s just hope the structure is solid and that the roof is not in the pudding, as tennis fans sample their strawberries and cream beneath it. It would give a whole new slant to the question, ‘What’s for rafters?’
Juliet Walker
No. 2606: Premier poetry
It was mischievously suggested that Gordon Brown might have turned to former poet laureate Andrew Motion in order to inject a bit of poetic oomph into his speeches. You are invited to imagine GB turning for inspiration to other poets or authors and submit an extract from the resulting speech (16 lines/150 words maximum). Entries to ‘Competition 2606’ by 23 July or email lucy@spectator.co.uk.
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