Spectator competition winners: Samuel Pepys on Liz Truss

In Competition No. 3272, you were invited to imagine a well-known diarist, real or fictitious, commenting on contemporary events.

This month marks the 40th anniversary of the debut of adolescent diarist Adrian Mole, and several competitors imagined what he would have made of these turbulent times. Here’s Janine Beacham: ‘I have tested positive for Covid, worse luck! All that hand-washing, social distancing and mask-wearing was for nothing. This is what comes of living in a cul-de-sac.’

Hats off to Sylvia Fairley’s Bridget Jones for her ability to find a silver lining: ‘Perpetua at her most obnoxious. Excellent news, mortgage on her millionaire home cancelled, thanks to fiscal catastrophe. Bought more chocolate. Feel fat and repulsive, but reprieve in sight. Cost of living crisis means unavoidable abstemiousness. Potential weight loss, solving personal unattractiveness crisis…’ And to Nick MacKinnon, channelling Chips Cannon, whose diaries Craig Brown described as being like a drunken round of consequences.

Mark Bellis and Alan Millard also stood out, but the best of the bunch, printed below, earn their authors £30 apiece.

“Up betimes, here in the afterlife, and as a former Member of Parliament my shade is entitled to attend Cabinet-meetings, so to their new quarters in George Downing’s Street, where a divers assemblage sat about a table, to which approached a female person, inane of visage, but with a well-turned ankle, whom I took for a serving-wench, but who, it transpired, is First Lord of the Treasury. The Exchequer being much depleted, she proposed grinding the faces of the poor, the which was universally acclaimed, though there was much discourse on how this might best be concealed from the commonality and the publick prints. Another female person advocated curtailing the dole for the undeserving paupers whilst affording aid to the deserving moneyed classes. She also wished to fire upon those fleeing hither in boats across the Channel. I was minded of the Scotch preacher Knox on the regiment of women.

Brian Murdoch/Samuel Pepys

“I repaired to the convocation of Conservatives, where I beheld Mr. Kwarteng in full flow, remarking upon the singularity of that self-same day. His intended meaning, I suppose, was that he had reversed a principle, the which was neither improper nor reprehensible, but which many considered ignominious. That very evening, the ladies and gentlemen who adhere to Mr. Kwarteng’s economical wisdoms, fell into a splenetic discourse in which the one blamed the other, and many uttered condemnations of the late Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. My Lady Truss conceived ill of such disputes, and was herself of fiery aspect, yet an audience with her astrologers, and their further advices, persuaded her too to alterations of opinion.

There is a great shortage both of alligator pear and chiche pease, and many at court exceedingly distressed for their want. The Malorussian war is considered responsible for this lamentable circumstance.

Bill Greenwell/John Evelyn

“I’ve always wanted to visit the Ukraine. Only now have I been able to hang a documentary series on the slightly silly conceit of a search for its now missing imperialist ‘the’. Arriving in Kiev, everyone seems terribly busy with the war, so there’s barely time to do a dumb-show version of the Parrot Sketch with a bemused stallholder before my cameraman and I set off to see it. Roads here terribly potholed, so we’re quite at home. Arriving at the Zaporizhian frontline, I stop to chat with Ukrainian soldiery. Neither my cameraman or I speak Ukrainian but we gather that, like everyone I’ve ever spoken to, they have names, families, friends and an ignorance of the Monty Python Fish Slapping Dance quickly transformable into shared hilarity with the help of YouTube. I mildly contend Russians must be the just the same. Total, stony silence. Then bombs.

Adrian Fry/Sir Michael Palin

“Sunday. After Church I tried explaining to Carrie about saving water and heat. But when I demonstrated with a ruler the desirable depth of bathwater, she said testily: ‘I don’t know that sitting in a tepid puddle is what I call having a bath, but I do know whose precious radishes will be properly watered.’ I was too taken aback to speak. Hearing about this, my friend Cummings said: ‘I save water by taking my whisky neat.’ What a ‘dry’ sense of humour he has!

Monday. Worked from home. Must say it has its advantages: no ’bus, no impertinent people. Carrie says she misses waving me goodbye but bears up. She does chaff me sometimes for adjusting my tie before answering the ’phone, but I firmly believe that the voice reflects how one is attired.

Tomorrow our boy Lupin promises to ‘set me up’ for a zoom call. My stars!

W.J. Webster/Charles Pooter

“I took notice, on my return to London, how the populace no longer studied the daily bills of mortality, no longer shunned each other, nor practised the constant rituals of purification. One attributed his deliverance to the prophylactics of Science; another, to her isolation; a third, to herbs of the Indies. Of those who had preached a great Conspiracy, only that quacking philosopher, that epitome of dunces, Doctor Twitter, yet peddled his fancies to any with more leisure to hear him than wit to comprehend; and a greater fool I hope never to find; (though, when he says, that the other Doctors kill more than they save, he may be a wise fool). Instead, the people have returned to their old frets; taxes, distant wars, the price of necessaries, and the capering of politicians; the finger of God, pointing to their iniquity, being ignored as ever – H.F.

Frank Upton/A Journalist of the Plague Year

No. 3275: delusional

‘He thought he saw an elephant/ That practised on a fife:/ He looked again, and found it was …’ So begins Lewis Carroll’s ‘The Mad Gardener’s Song’. Following this format and formula, you are invited to supply three stanzas (18 lines) which could aptly be titled ‘The Deluded Politician’. Email entries to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 9 November.