Fill the frame

In competition No. 2453 you were given beginning and ending words and invited to supply a short story within them.

The given words were the opening and closing sentences of a story by V. S. Pritchett entitled ‘The Evils of Spain’, with one small difference: owing to a misprint, Pritchett’s ‘Angel’, a male, became our ‘Angela’. 

It contains a delightful moment: ‘The proprietor said: “M’sieu, whether you were drowned or not drowned this morning you are about to be roast. The hotel is on fire.’’’

Commendations to Alanna Blake, Patrick O’Byrne and Richard Ellis. The prize-winners, printed below, get £25 each and the bonus fiver is awarded to G. M. Davis.

We took our seats at the table. There were seven of us. First time I’d been in the same room as Mandelson and the German chancellor. Chirac had sent some epicurean lackey, there were two sleepy Italians and a Spaniard who smelt of hair oil. Import quotas — who cared? But Merkel did, enough to attend in person, and she gave a head-of-government performance that would have made Bismarck (or Thatcher) proud, insisting on an exception for pyjamas. No one understood it, but it was lunch-time when she finished, so we all caved in.

The meal went on rather longer than usual. It was our last session, we’d reached agreement, even if we weren’t sure on what, Brussels restaurants are the world’s best. Six months later, the UK was flooded with cheap Far Eastern sleepwear imported via Germany. And then we asked Angela to explain about the pyjamas.

G. M. Davis

We took our seats at the table. There were seven of us — myself, my three top officials from the ODPM, the Governor, his aide and our interpreter, a pleasant lass we called Angela because her name was unpronounceable. To put our host at his ease, we’d done our best to adapt to the local Asiatic dress, which I knew all about from reading Fu Manchu stories.