Lucy Vickery presents this week’s competition
In Competition No. 2683 you were invited to submit a sequel to ‘The Owl and the Pussy-Cat’. Lear himself left fragments of one, the delightful if tear-jerking ‘The Children of the Owl and the Pussy-Cat’, a tale of premature death and penury. Yours, too, were mostly stories of unhappily-ever-after, though their wit and charm made me smile through the tears. J.C.H. Mounsey, Frank Osen and Sylvia Fairley narrowly missed the cut. The winners get £25 each, and £30 goes to Alan Millard.
The Owl and the Pussy-Cat sailed away
From the land where the Bong-tree grows,
And gave not a fig for the poor Piggy-wig
Who was left with a hole through his nose.
Though a shilling was thrilling, the outlook was
chilling
Since noses with holes, Piggy knew,
To winds would succumb and become rather numb
With Piggy-wig-pink turning blue.
But the Bell-Ringer smiled, ‘Poor Piggy, my child,
There’s really no need to feel down.
I’ve spare rings galore in my Ding-a-Ling store
And I’ll sell you a ring for a crown.’
Once more with a snout glowing pink as a rose,
Little Piggy-wig danced on his trottery toes,
With a ring at the end of his nose, his nose,
With a ring at the end of his nose.
Alan Millard
Said Pussy, ‘I purr to the tips of my fur
When I look at the ring on my claw.
How lovely to float on our beautiful boat
And drift here and there evermore!’
‘Dear Puss, I agree,’ said the Owl, ‘but you see
One day you may be more than wife.
In that happy event we may come to repent
Having led such a vagabond life.’
‘Oh, bless your wise head!’ the Pussy-cat said.
‘It is time to go home. Let us fly.
With you as my chair. I shall take to the air
And sail like the cloudlets on high.
So up the Owl soared with Puss safe aboard
And was soon just a speck in the sky,
The sky, The sky,
And was soon just a speck in the sky.
W.J. Webster
The owl and the pussycat, some time hence,
Sailed off to a foreign shore.
The vessel they had was a lily pad,
That Lily desired no more.
They headed north to the Firth of Forth,
Plus the Fifth and the Sixth Forths, too;
And they spent awhile at the mouth of the Nile,
Since the eyes and the nose were askew.
In time the owl gave an ominous scowl:
‘You’re beginning to give me hives.’
They had a spat, and poor pussycat,
She lost the third of her lives.
But the pair made up; drank the loving cup,
And before going home, withdrew
To a sylvan cot in a hidden spot;
And their purrpose? To wit: to woo.
Mae Scanlan
The honeymoon over, the pair lived in clover
Though soon their joy started to wane;
Spondulicks were tight, nothing seemed to
go right,
All they did now was carp and complain.
Pussy cried, ‘It’s not funny, but I can raise
money!’
To her chagrin, alack and alas,
The pawn-shop man tutted. ‘I’m sorry,’ he
muttered,
‘Your ring is just brummagem brass.’
So Pussy went cleaning (a trifle demeaning)
While Owl looked around for a job;
Found work in a pub and a gentleman’s club
For a pittance of twenty-five bob.
Owl turned out a cad and a bit of a lad:
He upped and he flitted one night;
Left Pussy, his dear cat, took up with a meerkat
Who ran a comparison site.
Mike Morrison
As they went up to bed, the Pussy-Cat said,
‘Dear Owl, we’re in quite a fix;
For that odd Mr Lear never made it quite clear
(When he played his versicular tricks)
Whether you are the male and I the female
Or was it the other way round?’
‘When push comes to shove,’ said the Owl,
‘it’s all love —
Let’s search for the middle ground.’
Their compromise suited them both — it was
mooted
They found the whole thing quite a ball;
But their strange coalition and corporate
mission
Amused their old friends not at all.
For Owl sometimes purred and Puss was
part-bird
And their characters were so subsumed
In a featureless blur of feathers and fur
That the marriage was deemed to be doomed.
Virginia Price Evans
Despite the romance of that nocturnal dance
By daylight the magic had fled.
The ring turned to rust, the guitar strings all bust,
And the turkey not licensed to wed.
The nice pea-green boat was no longer afloat,
Its caulking an utter disgrace,
But they patched up the cleft with what
honey was left
And managed to limp back to base.
‘Good grief,’ came the cries, ‘owls are meant
to be wise,
But you must have the brain of a flea.’
And the cats made it hot: ‘Of the nine lives
you’d got,
You must have left thirteen at sea.’
But it wasn’t too late — they’d been too
drunk to mate,
So of night-flying felines we’ve none.
And the last thing I heard of this puss and
this bird,
They were selling their tale to the Sun.
Noel Petty
No. 2686 epistolary
You are invited to submit a love letter from one fictional character to another. The characters can be from different works of fiction (150 words max.). Email entries to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 23 February.
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