No. 1344: The winners

Jaspistos reports: Competitors were invited to incorporate as plausibly as possible the following words in a piece of prose: gene, mud/ark, flummox, contrariwise, un- stupendous, oomph, counterproductive, spats, regurgitated, piping, trucial, arson.

'This competition has about as much oomph as a dead bishop,' I said, 'or a mud/ark at Shoeburyness on a wet Wednesday.'

'Contrariwise,' Jaspistos replied. 'It's a real test of originality and ingenuity. I'm bored with your twenty-times regurgitated Blake parodies: "Piping up the alleys vile" etc. . .

So Gerard Benson (aka Gene Brandors or Arson Denberg), teasing away. But the results proved Jaspistos right, as ever. The tougher the challenge — and this was a tough one — the more spirited the re- sponse. Louis Finucane ingeniously de- scribed the mating habits of mudlarks (birds, not boys), J. M. Naish featured a biologist who was trying to locate the gene controlling the formation of pearls in oys- ter spats (you can guess in which part of the world), and Joyce Johnson came up with a Sardou play, Madam Sans Gene. Except for Jane Webb, whose prize-winning entry is only 98 words, competitors who aimed at brilliant brevity lost touch with plausibility. The winners below get £10 each, and the bonus bottle of Pol Roger White Foil Champagne (NV) belongs to Ba Miller.

The distributors, Dent and Reuss, have generously offered to present a bonus bottle for a further six weeks after the first six weeks already announced.

'Sorry,' she said. 'One tiny typing error. For the trucial read "crucial". Have I got the job?'

He raised an eyebrow. She had the right qualifications but was she really the redoubtable Miss Belmont's young sister? They hadn't one visible gene in common. This girl reminded him of a Bisto kid with oomph, her mud/ark cap fashionably askew. Looking down at her ankles he flinched. Even his green-haired daughter had not yet discovered spats.

'How would you rate your spelling?' 'Unstupendous. Contrariwise, my office orga- nisation is great.'

'What would you suggest to improve this office?'

Her eyes flicked from the worn carpet to the flaking paint on the radiator piping. 'Arson?' She grinned. She was enough to flummox anyone. Would her presence in the firm be counterproductive? He began composing a regurgitated version of the interview for his wife. Then he leaned forward.

'How soon can you start?' (Ba Miller)

With a sudden, tremendous oomph, the Athe- naum's water closet roared into flame. Watson, trouserless, staggered out with blackened face, like an elderly mudlark in spats. Behind him the stub of truncated piping regurgitated its final flush, 'Damn gas company.' he spluttered. 'I'll sue 'em.'

'That would surely be counterproductive,' said Holmes, 'since it would deflect us from the pursuit of the criminal.' 'It was not an accident, then?' 'Quite contrariwise. It was arson.' 'But why?' 'Sheikh Izal of the Trucial States dines here

today. By inadvertently standing in — or rather sitting in — for him, you have averted an international incident.'

Watson blushed. 'But who . . . ?'

'Who? One who will stop at nothing to embarrass the Foreign Office. One who can flummox Lestrade and the dogged but un- stupendous police brains of Europe. One who, but for a wayward evil gene, could fill my shoes.' 'Moriarty!' gasped Watson.

'No,' said Holmes. 'Kilroy.' (Noel Petty)

Uneasy trucial silence reigned. Jennifer was calmly tidying away her trousseau, whilst I, mute as the arson-reduced shells of the ware- houses on the far shore, stood on the balcony and contemplated the unstupendous vista across the estuary. Below, a solitary mudlark, like me devoid of oomph, trudged disconsolately by, dragging a rusty length of piping the ocean had regurgi- tated. The oily black residue clung to his gumboots like over-sized patent-leather spats. Argument, I reasoned, would be counterpro- ductive; Jennifer's stubbornness would flummox Job. I had suggested Sorrento for our honey- moon, but she, contrariwise, guided no doubt by some errant matroclinic gene, had insisted on New Brighton.

(Roy Davenport)

'Render not evil for evil, but contrariwise blessing, 'intoned the minister, concluding his unstupendous sermon, consisting of a hotch- potch of regurgitated quotations from Holy Writ. His efforts were counterproductive as far as I was concerned; I never adopted a trucial attitude towards my enemies. 1 was then about six, and a veritable little mudlark except when suffering from the Sunday scrubbing inflicted by my deeply pious mother, who had unaccountably failed to pass on one virtuous gene to her graceless offspring. My conception of the Almighty was modelled on Great-uncle Samuel, a bearded old tyrant who habitually wore a topper and spats. To me the Devil had all the oomph and Hell, with its prospect of unlimited arson, was infinitely pre- ferable to a pallid eternal Sabbath. In my piping treble I contrived to flummox the minister by announcing, 'I want to go to Hell; it's more fun.'

(0. Smith) The mudlark seemed to be able to flummox the Victorian social observer, otherwise all spats and

rectitude. The urchin's impudence, his readiness with regurgitated cockney wit, his shrill piping abuse (all that we today would call 'oomph') should have plainly labelled him 'undeserving'. But it didn't: contrariwise, provided he stopped short of arson or murder, he aroused a sort of trucial state of mind, between reproach and attraction, in his contemporaries. He was their unstupendous Peter Pan, possessed of a gene of enviable wildness. But to acknowledge this would have been counterproductive to their image of themselves.

(Jane Webb)