Jaspistos

Saturday

14 Apr 2007
Jaspistos

In praise of slow

In Competition No. 2489 you were invited to submit a poem with the title ‘In Praise of Slow’. In Praise of Slow is a book by Carl Honoré, a chronicler of the Slow Movement, whose philosophy is that the important things in life should not be rushed.The prizewinners, printed below, get £25 apiece. Honoré would no doubt approve of the take-a-chill-pill spirit of Dorothy Pope, whose entry had the following footnote: ‘emails retrieved only on Sundays’. Hear, hear. The extra fiver, though, goes to Adrian Fry. The rhyme of ‘fjords’ with ‘Lords’ works well, as does the teasing reference to Auden’s ‘Night Mail’; Fry’s expansive ‘glacial pace’ contrasting with Auden’s careering rhythm.Now settle; be at leisure and let’s sing, adagio,Of branchline trains and Henry James and all things that are slow:Of Ibsen plays, bygone Sundays, of elephants and snailsAnd the reassuring glacial pace beloved of Royal Mail.

Saturday

7 Apr 2007
Jaspistos

Hard sell

In competition No. 2488 you were invited to write a publisher’s press release for one of the following: Weeds in a Changing World; Bombproof your Horse; How Green were the Nazis?. The assignment was inspired by the contest for the Oddest Book Title of the Year, run since 1978 by the Bookseller. Bombproof your Horse (helpfully subtitled: Teach your Horse to Be Confident, Obedient, and Safe No Matter What You Encounter), a serious manual for equestrians by Rick Pelicano and Lauren Tjaden which sells a steady 400 copies a month, stormed to victory in 2004. The prizewinners, printed below, get £25 a piece. Alan Millard’s brew of cliché and hyperbole, infused with breathy excitement, perfectly demonstrates the PR’s gift for using a lot of words while revealing very little, but the extra fiver goes to G.

Saturday

31 Mar 2007
Jaspistos

Ancient and modern | 31 March 2007

In Competition No. 2487 you were invited to submit a theatrical critic’s response to a production of a modern play in ancient costume. There were easy laughs to be had at the expense of ropy chitons and inadequate loincloths and in general you took a harsh line. Most of you set your jaundiced sights on productions of works by just a few (Pinter, Osborne and Coward loomed large). None, though, scaled the scornful heights of Kenneth Tynan’s much-quoted take on Gielgud in modern dress, whom he described as having ‘the general aspect of a tight, smart, walking umbrella’.A more or less lone chorus of approval came from W.J. Webster, who nets the bonus fiver. The other prizewinners, printed below, get £25 each. I am still unwell and so, for the time being, as of next week, the competitions will be set and judged by a colleague.

Saturday

24 Mar 2007
Jaspistos

The Ides of March

In Competition No. 2486 you were invited to submit a retrospective verse comment from the other world on the assassination by Caesar or by one of the conspirators. Most of you chose to put yourself in Caesar’s bloodied sandals, consigning the conspirators to the sidelines, which they would have hated. Adam Campbell was pithy and to the point:Talk about being stabbed in the back!Nasty way of getting the sack.The prizewinners, printed below, scoop £25 each. The extra fiver goes to D.A Prince, who used some nice half rhymes. I particularly liked ‘whine’ with ‘Elysium’, the rhyme and the meaning working together in a very satisfying way. A commendation to Ray Kelley, whose Caesar, vanity undented by millennia of self-reflection, laments being played by Louis Calhern rather than by Olivier in Joseph Mankiewicz’s monochrome masterpiece.

Saturday

17 Mar 2007
Jaspistos

Short story

In Competition No. 2485 you were invited to submit a short story entitled ‘Can You Forgive Her?’ The standard of the entry was mixed, but none was worthy of the mockery heaped on Anthony Trollope’s novel of the same name by Punch, which, infuriated by the indecisiveness of the heroine Alice Vavasor, referred to it as ‘Can You Stand Her?’ Henry James wasn’t much of a fan of Alice either, reputedly remarking that he could ‘forget her too, for that matter’.The unforgettable prizewinners, printed below, get £35 each. Hats off to Peter Smalley’s beguiling if bemusing Pinteresque two-hander, but the bonus fiver goes to Brian Murdoch’s compromised priest.***‘Father,’ came the whisper. ‘I need a quick favour.’‘I thought you had someone in your own confessional just now, Father,’ the second priest whispered back.

Saturday

10 Mar 2007
Jaspistos

Our vegetable loves

In Competition No. 2484 you were invited to provide the first 16 lines of an ‘Ode to Vegetables’. Thank you for the kind words that have been reaching me at the Charing Cross Hospital. Mike Morrison’s entry was particularly bracing:I’ve never known a patient quite like you,Jaspistos: no, you can’t have Irish stew ...‘May I have cheese on toast?’ No, you may not,It’s Hobson’s choice here, sunshine — that’s shallot!My challenge called for either the solemnity of an Erasmus Darwin or Auden in a light-hearted mood, but the results were disappointing. The prizewinners, printed below, are rewarded with £25 each, while the bonus fiver goes to Noel Petty.Oh, some go wild for fillet steak, enough to fill the plate,And some declare a rump to be the best they ever ate,But I’ve got high cholesterol and have to watch my weight,Said the old bold mate of Henry Morgan.

Saturday

3 Mar 2007
Jaspistos

Sorry, mate

To say ‘I’m sorry’ once can be emollient, but as everybody knows, to say it three times with arms flapping like a penguin is downright inflammatory. Most of your apologies were for sexual misbehaviour. Since there are so many other domestic sins just as exasperating as infidelity I found this surprising. The prizewinners, printed below, get £25 each, and the bonus fiver goes to D.A. Prince.Dear, there’s so much — so where do I begin?(To you the smallest fault’s a mortal sin.)I’ve boiled your egg too hard (again!); your TimesIs creased (I read it first); the cat — her crimesAre also mine — slept on your scarf; the carhas yet another scratch; the Marmite jaris empty; yet again the toast is burned.You muse on all the skills I’ve never learned.

Saturday

24 Feb 2007
Jaspistos

The mod acrostic

In Competition No. 2482 you were invited to supply an acrostic poem, involving questions and answers in which the first letters of the lines read SOCRATIC METHOD.Smartypants will have spotted that the title of this competition is an anagram of the required phrase. In hospital one undergoes much questioning as well as treatment. The other day a nurse with a clipboard asked me, ‘Are you apprehensive in this hospital?’ ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Why?’ she inquired. ‘Aren’t most people in hospital apprehensive, because they’re ill but they don’t know how ill?’ ‘Oh,’ she said most un-Socratically, ‘that was rather a silly question, wasn’t it?’ ‘Yes.’Commendations to Paul Griffin and Frank Mc Donald. Prizewinners, printed below, get £25 each, and the bonus fiver goes to G.

Saturday

17 Feb 2007

Saturday

10 Feb 2007
Jaspistos

Poor relation

In Competition No 2480 you were invited to supply a song beginning, ‘Oh, what have you done to your ...?, the blank to be filled by a relative of your choice.When you’re young, relatives — barring the family, of course — are automatically ridiculous. ‘Oh, Aunt Jemima, look at your Uncle Jim./ He’s in the duckpond learning how to swim./ First he does the breaststroke, then he does the side./ Now he’s under the water, swimming against the tide!’ I used to sing that giggling when I was a lad. Now I’m an ancient Uncle Jim, it’s less of a hoot. The prizewinners, printed below, get £25 each, and the bonus fiver goes to David Wood.Oh, what have you done to your Uncle Sydney?It’s years since we dined with the boring old sot:He’d spots on his liver and only one kidney —Now what did they call the disease that he got?Ned said he saw him at Doncaster races —Seemed sober, he said, though he tended to lurch,And, of course, he then went and kicked over the tracesAs he did when poor Agnes once dragged him to church.

Saturday

3 Feb 2007
Jaspistos

Woman of the guard

The Beefeatress in question is not, as you might imagine, a middle-aged matron in the mould of Margaret Dumont but a 38-year-old lassie from Lochgilphead, Argyll, named Moira Cameron. (Those who got her forename wrong or thought she came from Fife are pardoned.) Special commendations to Jim Davies, Michael Brereton, W.J. Webster and David Schofield. The prizewinners, printed below, get £40 each, and the bonus fiver goes without hesitation to that vivid veteran Basil Ransome-Davies.When a girl has a yen to compete with the men for a uniformed job at the TowerShe must fearlessly fight to establish her right and not weep like a baby or cower.She must dig in her heels with the pride that she feels as she challenges outmoded attitudes,Be a heroine who dares all those prurient stares and the mouthing of chauvinist platitudes.

Saturday

27 Jan 2007
Jaspistos

Bouts rimés | 27 January 2007

The rhyme scheme is from Auden’s ‘The Composer’. As eagle-eyed Basil Ransome-Davies, who spotted this, remarked, ‘It’s hardly the best of Auden, so compers have a chance of writing a superior poem.’ We shall see. Some objected to the word ‘adaption’, claiming their spellcheck didn’t acknowledge its existence. Auden was no slouch: the word is plainly recognised in my Chambers. I reckoned it was a difficult comp, so a large and skilful entry impressed me. Commendations are too numerous to mention. Just general congratulations. The prizewinners, printed below, get £25 each, and the bonus fiver goes to George Simmers.Says God, ‘That’s one of my unfinished sketches —A planet I’ve decided to reject.’He makes a sign to Gabriel, who fetchesBottle and glasses.

Saturday

20 Jan 2007

Saturday

13 Jan 2007

Saturday

6 Jan 2007
Jaspistos

No place to hide

In Competition No. 2475 you were invited to provide entries from the diary of someone trying to escape from the Christmas season — and failing.Maybe you were all suffering from pre-Christmas exhaustion, maybe it was an unsuitable comp, or maybe I was in an atrabilious mood, but the entries were so substandard that, to cries of ‘Have a heart, ref!’, I rule that there are only three prizewinners this week. They are printed below, earning £30 each, D.A. Prince taking the bonus fiver.To fill in the extra space in a seasonable manner I append an entry from Mr Pooter’s ‘Diary’, followed by the last paragraph of Max Beerbohm’s parody of Chesterton, ‘Some Damnable Errors about Christmas’.21 December: Damned mobile! Switched on for just five minutes to check cricket scores and Celia rings, begging me to drop in for ‘Chrissie drinkies’.

Saturday

30 Dec 2006
Jaspistos

Nursery rhyme time

In Competition No. 2474 you were invited to expand a nursery rhyme mockingly in the style of a well-known poet.G.K. Chesterton did ‘Old King Cole’ as written by Tennyson, Browning, Yeats, Whitman and Swinburne, and Anthony Deane expanded ‘Jack and Jill’ to the tune of more than 50 hilariously Kiplingesque lines. These can be found in Apes and Parrots, an anthology by that keen cricketer, drinker and parodist, Sir John Squire. I am fairly well-read in poetry, but I am not a mind-reader, so I was puzzled by one or two competitors who omitted to mention whom they were parodying, for instance Martin Parker’s ‘Humpty Dumpty’, which was witty, but at whose expense?Commendations to G.M. Davis, Peter Scupham, Josephine Boyle and Frank Mc Donald.

Saturday

16 Dec 2006
Jaspistos

Delusions

In Competition No. 2474 you were invited to supply, following the format and formula of Lewis Carroll’s ‘The Mad Gardener’s Song’, three stanzas which could aptly be titled ‘The Deluded Politician’.This is my favourite Carroll poem. People often miss it because it comes not from the Alice books but from Sylvie and Bruno, much less read. Anyway, it sparked off probably the most enjoyable comp of the year, a delight and an agony to judge. The only minus factor was the general tendency to attach the delusions to the same man, our present Prime Minister. After all, there must be many politicians, here and abroad, who are equally out of touch with reality. I have pleasure in awarding the prizewinners, printed below, £25 each, and in handing the bonus fiver to W.

Saturday

9 Dec 2006
Jaspistos

Your Ps and Qs

In Competition No. 2472 you were given ten words or phrases and invited to incorporate them, in any order, in a plausible piece of prose. Why, when I asked for a piece of prose, did four of you submit verse? Why did Mary Holtby, usually a skilled competitor, substitute ‘plague’ for ‘plaque’? Did D. Gibson think I would accept disposing of Plaque, Pique and Quid Pro Quo by making them three racehorses? And when I lay down ‘quip’ I am not prepared to accept ‘quipped’ or ‘equipment’. Still brooding over those who sadly disqualified themselves, I award Godfrey Bullard the top prize of £30 and the other prizewinners printed below £25 each. All credit to them; it wasn’t an easy challenge.‘I never mind dogs,’ I protested, signifying a strong reluctance to look after my neighbour’s Pekingese during her absence.

Saturday

2 Dec 2006
Jaspistos

Celebration

In Competition No. 2471 you were given two opening lines and invited to supply an appropriate song or lyric. No room for chitchat this week. Commendations go to W.J. Webster, Keith Norman and G.M. Davis. The prizewinners, printed below, get £25 each, and the bonus fiver lands in the lap of Brian Murdoch.Once I was only a wannabee,But now I’m a big celebrity,Because I’ve done realityOn Friday nights on the TV.Now although I’m only twenty-threeAnd I haven’t a single GCSE,I’m writing my autobiography(Well, somebody’s doing the words for me).It’s easy-peasy to get to beA really big celebrityAnd you don’t have to do much for your fee,You only have to let the camera see,When you have a wash or go for a pee(And your bra size has to be 42D).

Saturday

25 Nov 2006
Jaspistos

Pagan prayer

In Competition No. 2470 you were invited to offer a votive poem to a pre-Christian deity.Venus, take my votive glass:Since I am not what I was,What from this day I shall be,Venus, let me never see.Matthew Prior’s 18th-century prayer by a fading beauty is hard to beat, but Ezra Pound comes close with his unexpectedly charming poem, ‘The Lake Isle’ (is he having a go at Yeats?), which opens:O God, O Venus, O Mercury, patron of thieves,Give me in due time, I beseech you, a little tobacco-shop…The Golden Calf rewards its worshippers as follows: £25 each to five of the prizewinners printed below, and £30 to Virginia Price Evans, who prays as if she really means it.Ishtar of Assyria,Give me vengeance on that exiled bandOf Hebrews and send them back to their land — They’re sowing hysteria.

Saturday

18 Nov 2006
Jaspistos

Paracrostic

In Competition No. 2469 you were invited to supply a poem in which the initial letters of each line, read down the page, reproduce the first line.Another comp that was last set nearly 30 years ago, when it was won by J. Crooks with the intriguing key line, ‘Moguls at the BBC’. This time round many of the key lines had a topographical slant. Examples were ‘Liverpool Central’, ‘The midges on Mull’, ‘On Morecambe sands’ and ‘Street maps reveal’. Two delightful openings were ‘A camel, please!’ (Piers Geddes) and Laura Garratt’s Pepysian ‘And so he went to bed’. The prizewinners, printed below, get £25 each, and the bonus fiver goes, with an extra handshake for his clinching joke, to Hugh King.I am a bit upset by Bo,A girl who tends the sheep,My flock went missing hours agoAnd she’s been fast asleep.

Saturday

11 Nov 2006

Saturday

4 Nov 2006
Jaspistos

Seen but not heard

In Competition No. 2467 you were invited to write a poem in which all the rhymes are eye-rhymes, not ear-rhymes. Many years ago, even before Jaspistos cast his shadow on this page, a similar competition was set, with this difference: clerihews were demanded. Stuart Woods won with this:If Johann Sebastian BachHad remembered to attachBraces to his LevisHe wouldn’t have been so embarrassed while conducting a missa brevis.Thirty years on ingenuity still rules OK. I especially liked the rhymes ‘Aristophanes’ and ‘planes’, and ‘intuit’ and ‘suit’. The standard was so high that I expect there will be disappointment among the near-winners. Console yourselves with the assurance that you were appreciated. The prizewinners, printed below, get £25 each, and the bonus fiver goes to Adrian Fry, the only winner who avoided resorting to an ough rhyme.

Saturday

28 Oct 2006
Jaspistos

Catchphrase

In Competition No. 2466 you were invited to supply a poem or piece of prose ending with the phrase ‘It seemed like a good idea at the time.’ These words, according to Eric Partridge’s definition, are ‘applied in retrospect, jocularly or ruefully, to anything done impulsively with disastrous consequences, whether or not those were foreseeable at the moment of action’, like, I suppose, the self-castration of the priests of Cybele or the invasion of Iraq. I move aside to make room for six prizewinners, who get £25 each. The bonus fiver goes to Piers Geddes, who, if memory serves, is a newcomer. But if memory serves, it is often a fault.When Clovis the Frank wanted peace with his neighbours,A break from rebellions and rest from his labours,He sent invitations to tea on the lawnAnd afternoon sports, mixing judgment with brawn.

Saturday

21 Oct 2006
Jaspistos

Patchwork quilt

The scissors-and-paste work involved in this, though laborious, is easy enough; what is difficult is to avoid sliding into nonsense. The trick is, in Dryden’s phrase, to ‘deviate into sense’ as often as possible. John C.H. Mounsey began promisingly: ‘I met a traveller from an antique land,/ A cricket cap was on his head./ “Hold off! Unhand me, grey-beard loon!/ Charge for the guns!” he said’, but lost the plot afterwards. Coincidence corner: two of you used the first line of ‘Ozymandias’ as an opener, and two others did the same with ‘Boys and girls, come out to play’. What are the odds against that? The prizewinners, printed below, get £25 each, and the bonus fiver goes to Richard Ellis, who took fair advantage of dispensing with rhyme.

Saturday

14 Oct 2006
Jaspistos

Pseudospeak

‘What we have to facilitate is a bottom-up approach.’In Competition No. 2464 you were invited to provide a specimen of ministerial waffle.‘What we have to facilitate is a bottom-up approach.’ When I heard those words come out of the mouth of Ruth Kelly (could she really have been Secretary of State for Education?), I knew we had a competition. I am grateful to Virginia Price Evans for drawing my attention to ‘bafflegab’, defined in Chambers as ‘the professional logorrhoea of many politicians, officials and salespeople, characterised by prolix, abstract circumlocution and/or a profusion of abstruse technical terminology used as a means of persuasion, pacification or obfuscation.’ Dr Johnson rides again! The prizewinners, printed below, get £25 each, and the bonus fiver goes to Peter Gasson for a nice piece of balderdash.

Saturday

7 Oct 2006
Jaspistos

Zeugmatic

In Competition No. 2463 you were invited to incorporate in a piece of plausible prose examples of the following terms: oxymoron, personification, simile, hyperbole, archaism, periphrasis, solecism, paronomasia, alliteration, epizeuxis. My apologies for having misspelt ‘paronomasia’ in setting the comp. At least it gave Mike Lunan the chance to launch a mocking epizeuxis combined with alliteration at me: ‘Paranomasia, paranomasia? You stupid son of a simpleton, it’s not spelt like that.’ Five of you misread the instructions and incorporated the terms themselves instead of examples of them, with very strange results. My favourite bad pun was Philippa Mellon’s ‘After all this deep art it was time to depart’ and the most intriguing oxymoron Miriam Pender’s ‘appetising sausage roll’.

Saturday

30 Sep 2006
Jaspistos

Variety turn

In Competition No. 2462 you were given the lines, ‘A man so various that he seemed to be/ Not one prime minister but twenty-three ...’ (a rejig of Dryden’s famous couplet) and asked to continue.Dryden’s Zimri, the various man who ‘in the course of one revolving moon/ Was  chemist, fiddler, statesman and buffoon’, is a caricature of George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, who killed in a duel the Earl of Shrewsbury, while the countess, Buckingham’s lover, watched, disguised as a page. The incident is commemorated at Cliveden, where it happened, by flowers arranged in the shape of crossed swords, with the date 1667.The standard this week was exceptionally high, and judging accordingly difficult. Geoffrey Tapper summed things up nicely in his final couplet: ‘A man so various surely merits more:/ Not one prime minister but twenty-four.

Saturday

23 Sep 2006
Jaspistos

Devil’s work

In Competition No. 2461 you were invited to think up Seven Deadly Virtues and to mock them in verse.Chastity and sobriety and political correctness were obvious Aunt Sallies. Michael Saxby gave a wise warning against honesty: ‘Thus “Does my bum look big in this?” will land one in a mess/ Unless one says, “Of course not, dear” when really one means “Yes!”’, while Mike Morrison derided ‘the heinous vice/ Of being so insufferably nice’. The notion of the Seven Deadly Virtues, by the way, comes from George Moore’s Confessions of a Young Man, which strikes a lot of attitudes but also hits a great many nails on the head. The prizewinners, printed below, get £25 each, and the bonus fiver goes to Martin Woodhead.  From Charity, with which we shedHot coals upon our neighbour’s head;And Chastity, in which, demure,We hug ourselves that we’re so pure;From Cheerfulness, through which we seekTo chide the poor and daunt the weak;And from that crawling HumblenessWe glory in: Good Lord, deliver us.

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