COMPETITION

No. 613: The word game

Competitors are invited to use any ten of the twelve following words in any order to construct part of a narrative, essay, speech, advertisement, newspaper report, diary entry or other coherent piece of prose. Length limit (including given wordi) 120.

The words: parade, perfunctory, printers, perishable, Heath, pragmatism, pontoon, parablepsis, Crossman, paradigm, pabulum, paint.

Entries, marked 'Competition No. 613,' by 31 July.

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No. 610: The winners

Charles- Seaton reports: Perhaps I was tempt- ing Providence, but competitors were asked to write 'On Being Without Newspapers'. By the time the competition ended they found themselves Without The SPECTATOR As Well for a week. An entry bigger than usual was fairly evenly divided between pros and cons-

On the one hand D. D. Walker exclaims, 'Gott sei dank—keine Morgenblatter!' and P. W. R. Foot makes this crack :

Deer Fleet! You put the very Truth to sleep, And all your massive copy lying still.

Contrariwise N. J. Rock with the best of the sonnets wins three guineas with this tribute: When I consider how my time was spent, Ere this dispute that stopped a Nation's Press, And those few moments that it takes to dress Grew hour-wise with me on the News intent; When I consider that I took for naught The midnight treadmill of my Fleet-Street man, And dropped by midday in the garbage can The little gems his teeming brain had wrought; Then surely am I guilty with the rest Of entertaining angels unawares, Of denigrating their vast skill and zest Who serve a public that but faintly cares As long as it with daily pulp is blessed: For this—to Fleet Street, all my fervent prayers!

Other praiseworthy sonnets came from Peter Peterson and Bruce Boyle.

Among those who went to the poets for inspiration J. M. Crooks wins three guineas:

Had we the Mail to read or Times, Thy breakfasts. lady, weren't such crimes. With Express speed we'd drink our dregs Of tea, to wash down rock-hard eggs. Thou in the Guardian Woman's page Would'st uplift find: I by some sage Of Fleet Street would be soothed. I would Love you despite your frightful food.

But in my place I only see

Toast's singed sogginess welcoming me. No Telegraph can hide its taste, Nor Mirror blur what must he faced: That, if the Sun stays in, the course Of true love runs to swift divorce.

and so does H. A. C. Evans:

No Sun, no Star, - No Vietnam war, No leading articles, no Times each day, No Mail, no Evening News, No pre-election views. No Art, no films, no crit. of any play, No Diary of Sport. No Foreign Correspondent's hot report, No Telegraph, no Mirror, no Express, No dolly-bird in see-through dress. No Sketch, no Guardian, no printer's ink, No horrified account of student capers, No buzz, no talk, no diatribes, no stink, No fret, no shock, no grief, no pain, No papers!

The final winners of three guineas each are a little more earthy: 'ere, matey, this ennarf a caper, now we 'aven't got no paper: 'ow can punters bet, poor sods- 'oo's the runners, wot's the odds?

wot's the form, oo's on the card, is the goin' soft or 'ard?

an"ow we gonna do our pools, with the printers downin' tools?

Sunday. if they're not agreed, 'ow we goin' to 'ave a read?

where to get our bit o' spice

like, POP STAR'S LIFE OF SIN AN' VICE-

'strewth—it makes you realise the edgercation sixpence buys!

Toni Brewer Camus said papers and copulation were the urban occupation.

Seekers of Midi must wait and see What in nine months will be

The birthrate since the papers stopped—

Unlikely that it will have dropped!, However, Camus being Gallic Forgot a rival to the phallic.

My guess is that a call on TAM

Would show that rather than the pram The gainer from the print collision Was very largely television; And that a news strike chiefly nips The man who wants the stuff of chips.

T. Griffith Besides those mentioned earlier, just below prize level were also Douglas Hawson, P.M., K. Northover and Adam Khan.