Comp. 3423 invited you to submit a passage about a command or suggestion from literature being taken too literally. I was sorry not to squeeze in Alan Millard’s riff on John Donne’s ‘Go and Catch a Falling Star’: ‘The object in question can reach temperatures of almost 3,000˚F when entering the Earth’s atmosphere…’. A popular choice was ‘Neither a borrower nor a lender be’; nods to Elizabeth Kay, Nicholas Lee, Simon Godziek, Max Ross. Other runners-up: Joseph Houlihan’s ‘If’-inspired story of someone risking every-thing on a turn of pitch-and-toss at Caesar’s Palace; Tracy Davidson’s ‘Bring me my bow of burning gold’ leading to disaster at the White House; Brian Murdoch’s pedantic querying of the wisdom of ‘Now let us sport us while we may’; Jeremy Carlisle’s gory soliloquy following the biblical instruction to pluck out thy right eye, and more. Here are the winners.
Stop all the clocks, shut off the telephone. And why not? All that big hands/little hands stuff at school: he still carried the mental scars of Mrs Groggins’s mockery. And what is time? Only a petty-minded way for Big People to keep Little People in check, and although he was now a Big Person – with the power to do this – the old scars still throbbed. No more timetables, being late and nagged for it. But who’d have thought planes would crash, trains get gridlocked, Just in Time production be snarled up eating its own tail, the economy tank, the clock industry collapse, house sales be frozen in limbo, meetings be rendered unworkable as the workforce stayed in bed all day, hospitals clogged with appointment queues, boiled eggs be too hard, restaurant meals burned to ashes, brides left waiting at altars, lovers suicidal, and nowhere to ring to complain?
D.A. Prince
To walk ten thousand miles to prove your love, as reckoned by Robert Burns, requires planning. The distance is in effect 16093.44 kilometres, a solid year of hiking. Walking, rather than driving or flying, is imperative to impress. You will go through an estimated ten pairs of shoes, depending on pace, daily effort, and terrain. In some places you will cross oceans and borders, so passports must be up to date. A first aid kit is a must, to deal with blisters, exhaustion and sunburn. A sabbatical from work is also advised. However, this hike is unquestionable evidence of devotion, so expect matrimonial results. It is also easier than waiting until ‘all the seas gang dry’. A walk of even one thousand miles indicates a solid 1/10th of passionate desire. If such a marathon is out of the question, flowers or a box of chocolates may suffice.
Janine Beacham
His first match on Centre Court. He prepared to serve. Fifteen minutes later, after suffering a crushing 6-0, 6-0, 6-0 defeat, he fist-pumped, raised his arms aloft, cupped his ear to the crowd, blew kisses, patted his chest, mimed hearts, kissed a blade of the hallowed grass, climbed to his family and embraced them, booked an open-top bus. Returning to the court for the post-match interview, he was thrilled. ‘Honestly, I’m super-happy. This is a super-proud moment for me. A dream come true. I wanna thank my team – we did it, guys! And the crowd – I wanna thank all you guys for your support…’ Then he signed autographs, chatted to fans, posed for selfies. Finally leaving the court, he gave a knowing nod and smile to the inscription above the players’ entrance: ‘If you can meet with triumph and disaster, and treat those two impostors just the same…’
David Silverman
Dear Mr Gunn, Whilst I do not normally take advice from the biking fraternity, I was much struck by your exhortatory line One is always nearer by not keeping still. I have endeavoured to put this into practice. Although you do not specify the movement of a leg or legs, I believe you have these in mind, since I have experimented with the head and arms, and find that the resultant nodding and (for instance) flailing have not advanced me even slightly towards a different destination. But here is the problem. If I take a step, and the point of the compass seems immaterial, I am frequently not so much nearer as further away. I find for the most part that I might have been better remaining still. However, I will persevere and have also been considering your snail. Like him, I feel sure I may get there one day.
Bill Greenwell
Edmund Cork, literary agent to Agatha Christie, knew something was amiss when she informed him, all evangelical zeal, that her latest whodunnit followed Emily Dickinson’s dictum ‘Tell all the truth but tell it slant.’ This meant, Cork found, the abandonment of all readerly comforts – tea and cake at St Mary Mead, that conceited little Belgian – in favour of realistic police procedural. A team of indistinguishably raincoated CID officers investigating a raft of similar cases solved the motiveless murder of a man outside a Wolverhampton public house, the culprit’s guilt immediately and logically established by a surfeit of the victim’s blood on his hands. Her tale, Christie insisted, contained ‘all the truth’ about murder. Cork, who felt the story read as uninspired pastiche of crime journalism, may yet have championed his golden goose author’s bad egg had she not demanded her text be italicised throughout to produce the ‘slant’ Dickinson prescribed.
Adrian Fry
Summing up, Counsel for the Defence begged the Bench to accept that the regrettable incidents just described in unforgiving detail, were not the results of casual negligence. Indeed not. The defendant had long cleaved to the Poet Frost and hence always took the road less travelled by. The juxtaposition of this inclination with his career as a long-distance lorry driver had proved problematic, and Counsel acknowledged that the defendant’s eventual acceptance of the management of the 770 horsepower Scania R770S ten-wheel articulated lorry had proved injudicious. Nevertheless, temporary inconvenience should be set against poetic vindication: to the inhabitants of Stoke Disstantt, and to the Haywain Public House, the St Martha’s lychgate, the 11 vehicles and their occupants in hedges and ditches, the structure formerly described as End Row Cottage, and Mr Bartholomew’s slurry pit, the events of 12 July had indeed made all the difference.
Nick Syrett
No. 3426: Here and there
Place names have been a recent theme in The Spectator. You are invited to compose a poem mentioning some (16 lines maximum). Please email entries to competition@spectator.co.uk by 12 November.
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