Spectator Competition: A tale of one city

In Comp. 3348 you were invited to submit an extract in which Charles Dickens writes about today’s London. It was perhaps a slightly smaller haul than usual but full of nuggets. In Dorothy Pope’s rendition, the great author is gratified to discover that ‘my Oliver is playing in one of the many theatres’; while Paul Freeman has him excelling at pub darts. I especially liked Janine Beacham’s Ghost of London Present: ‘I see Mrs Cratchit shopping at Sainsbury’s, and running a GoFundMe page’; also Frank Upton’s grime scene: ‘“Listen fam, I goin’ to shank that yute for you,” promised Mr Wellbeloved, with a theatrical gesture of hand and fist…’ Other honourable mentions go to Bill Greenwell, Frank McDonald, Mark Ambrose and John Paul Davis. The winners whose entries are printed below get £25.

It was the best of pies; it was the worst of pies. It was the Crêpe Suzette with lemon juice, orange and real Grand Marnier from La Crêperie de Hampstead; it was the pavement gift of a stale Subway sausage roll on Turnpike Lane. It was the restaurant at the Canary Wharf investment bank, it was the handouts at the Tottenham food bank. It was Christmas at the Dorchester – roast goose, kumquat compote, cranberry brie bites; it was Christmas with the Camden Crisis team. We were all going direct to the Ritz; we were all going direct to the soup kitchen. It was the Harrods Dining Hall spring guinea fowl with quinoa salad, pomegranate seeds, avocado and feta of hope, it was the Harringay bedsit beans on toast for one – the toast of Christmas Past, Present and Future, of despair. In one city, it was a tale of two sittings.

David Silverman

Is this truly London, Sir? The Uncommercial Traveller, dizzied by vertiginous towers mysteriously half-empty of clerks, perplexed by the uncannily translucence of a Thames he knew opaquely brown, can scarcely conceive this the Great Wen he loved and loathed.