SPECTATOR COMPETITION No. 99 Report by N. K. Boot

A prize was offered for an extract from an ode to an inflationary spiral.

It is said to be impossible to describe a spiral staircase without having recourse to gesticulation. I had imagined that competitors, with an inflationary spiral for their theme, might find themselves involved in complex verbal and grammatical convolutions, twisting ever upwards and away, until they blew themselves of the page and outside the limits of the competition like a tornado. I was even prepared to expect visually designed verse on the pattern of the Mouse's Tale in Alice in Wonderland.

But in all this I was disillusioned, and perhaps disappointed. I was forgetting, of course, the traditions of the ode. An ode need have no concern with description. An ode asks questions more often than it presents facts. The technique of the ode is to ask : Whence comest thou ? Where wast thou born ? And why on earth dost thou not go away and stop making a nuisance of thyself ?

In fact the apostrophising quality of an ode lends itself easily to parody. Horatian odes, odes to Evening, Skylarks, Expiring Frogs— there is almost unlimited precedent for almost unlimited question- marks and exclamation-marks. Of this sort I liked Nan Wishart's, largely because it candidly gave up the struggle towards the end :

" What thing art thou ?

Of sea or land or air ? Whcredwellest That spiralling still dost soar And soaring ever swellest ?

Thou art naught but a spiral of the mind, A false-created puff of perilous stuff, A bit of bluff, For though I see thee not I feel thy draught.

Or am I daft ?

I cannot grasp the simplest explanation Of why and what thou art, thou giant gyration, Spiral Inflation "

On the strictly traditional lines James G. Logan and Waiter Percival were good :

" Deflate, vile Spiral ! Never seek to stray Far as the solar walk or milky way.

First costs, then prices, and then wages rise ; All quit their sphere and rush into the skies. From wages prices flee with fractious haste ; For ever those pursue and these are chased, Till everything to every man is dear Who's passing poor—a million pounds a year. Nor in thy fall will penury give way, And fools, who hoped to gain, will have to pay.

Thy hand, great BUTLER, lets the hatchet fall, And universal taxes swallow;all."

Spiral of Inflation !

Blest thou never wert, That from Hell's foundation ft, Fillest my grim chart „Ae With fearsome mounting curves of statistician's art.

Less we'll consume ; reduction — Will save our gold reserves ; And by increased production We'll level off they curves, • Inflationary. Spiral ! 'Tis Work our life preserves. Nobody had much comfort to offer. It was usually accepted that the spiral would go on mounting into what, by general consent, was called the empyrean, and that all that the poet or the man in the street could do was to goggle at its rise. (Although Walter Percival, it will be noticed, gave a rousing plea for more production.) One of the few competitors to find even a meretricious beauty in the spiral was D. R. Peddy : " 0 you who give my wife the cause to say My husband yearly earns three thousand pounds,' To her dear friends the Jones' across the way, Know what a mocking note that boasting sounds. In 1950 I could smoke at will On. two-five-hundred ; back in '49,

With carefree laugh I paid the grocer's bill Which since you-'ve brought, like others, into line. if I harked back to Philip Snowden's day, You'd find me in a house in its own grounds . . .

But soft—you give my wife the cause to say ` My husband yearly earns three thousand pounds '."

In the end the first prize seemed to spiral towards W. Bernard Wake, who almost alone set his words as well as his sense spinning. And two second prizes go to Edward Blishen and A. M. S. who points out that Speira is a Demon, Goddess or just a Bogie, in Greek Mythology.

FIRST PRIZE

(W. BERNARD WAKE)

Up to the zenith, beyond the meridian, Onward and outward to infinite space, Supple and sinuous as an ophidian Curling abd coiling with colubrine grace, Spiralling steadily you are obedient Always to laws that link prices with pay, Adding a coil with each makeshift expedient, Taking no thought for the reckoning day. Though we admire your symmetrical gradient, Ours is the fear that you surely must fail ; Yours the ecstatic, ineffable, radiant, Helical pleasure of chasing your tail.

SECOND PRIZES

(EDWARD BLISHEN)

O awful spiral, though I do not know, Nor, though 'tis oft explained, can comprehend How thy vile genesis occurs, I grow Weekly more wise to thy unpleasant trend ; Which is, while thou go'st up, to drive me down To pauperdom, or worse : To make a penny of my half a-crown : Play tricks with my poor purse.

In one thing only we're alike (I'm loath To say it of thee, churl) : And that is, cruel occurrence, that we're both O spiral ! in a whirl. • (A. M. S.) Hail to thee, blithe Speira !

Climbing higher and higherer, Ever" upward curling, Panic flight from Sterling.

Paper money pouring—

Cost of living soaring, Only hopes deflated.

Wages chasing prices, Crisis after crisis-

Speira ! this indeed is

Something Archimedes Never contemplated ...