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12 YEAR OLD SCOTCH WHISKY

COMPETITION

CS1VAS REGAL

12 YEAR OLD SCOTCH WHISKY

Baker's dozen

Jaspistos

n Competition No. 1625 you were asked I to incorporate 13 given words plausibly into a piece of prose.

Batty clergymen were thick on the ground this week. Michael Heber-Percy's ending was representative:

'If I wasn't feeling so damned liverish I'd do the job myself. Sergeant-Major, arrest the Padre!'

'On what grounds sirs?'

'Lunacy, Sergeant-Major.'

I enjoyed Adrian Vale's Home Health Hints: 'Fill a gallon bucket three-quarters with iced water and into it shred a ten-by- eight piece of dimity (any pattern). "Ouch!" I hear you say. "She doesn't expect us to drink that, does she?" No, darlings, not drink. Get your partner, or whomsoever you're with, to pour it slowly down your back. The effect is simply divine, lyrical . . .'. Monica G. Ribon, 0. Smith and Grani de Morgan were also felicitously funny. The prizewinners printed below earn a baker's dozen pounds each, and the bonus bottle of Chivas Regal 12-year-old de luxe whisky goes to D. Shepherd.

`Hibernating period's three-quarters over,' said Sally, abandoning her solitary game of hops- cotch in favour of conversation. 'He lives in an upturned bucket full of leaves and'll be out soon unless,' she added proudly, having just learned the word, 'he gets gangrene.'

`More likely a bit liverish,' said the Vicar. His sisters had worn gingham and dimity as children, and he was not at ease with hoydens in jeans. `Ouch!' he exclaimed, as all too fallibly Sally misjudged a cartwheel and bumped into Mrs Prendergast.

Mrs Prendergast, bound for the church, was laden with flowers.

'I'm on the rota and these are my quota,' she said.

`Lyrical, quite lyrical, Mrs Prendergast,' said the Vicar. 'Hughes must look to his laurels.'

The bell for matins sounded. 'There, Vicar,' said Mrs Prendergast, feeling that an ecclesias- tical flavour would improve the quotation, 'for whomsoever the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.' (D. Shepherd) Three-quarters of my time in this monastic retreat already gone, and my novel still far from finished. What has happened to my daily word quota? Whomsoever the Muses hate develops Writer's Block. I'm hibernating, not creating; liverish when I should be lyrical; conscious only of bizarre, almost surreal images all around me: the monks playing hopscotch after matins; the dimity curtains in my cell-like room so incon- gruously at odds with the bucket provided for my ablutions; the austere stone altar with its mag- nificent cross, each jewel set in an ouch of pure gold.

How I envy these men of God their rock-hard certainty! Fallibly, I search for my own way to fulfilment and salvation, but even here, in thus oasis of peace and harmony, I feel the onset of spiritual gangrene. (Watson Weeks)

I hadn't realised Rajiv was running a bucket shop. With his dimity shirts and lyrical speed' I'd supposed him just another smart Indian hibernating in Willesden. However, the Goa taP lay ruined before me, the money gone.

'To whomsoever it may concern seat quota three-quarters overbooked'. Ouch!

After matins I decided to visit Patel's empor- ium in Brondesbury. Feeling distinctly liverish, I stopped at the Freemasons for a heart-starter and read ABTA's rules, having fallibly missed the absence of that organisation's logo from the otherwise impressive letterhead. A masonic vision came to me. Rajiv, on a one-way charter raft to India, half-hoisted trousers aloft to catch the light airs before the gangrene set in off the Cape.

Several hours later I stepped outside, narrow- ly avoiding two sets of identical children playing hopscotch on similar tracts of pavement, before lurching into the local travel agent to book a week in Ventnor.

(Michael Limb) Whomsoever I am allotted by way of guide, and however lyrical my initial mood, touring a stately home frequently leaves me liverish and scratchy. There are so many sorts of bad guide: those only three-quarters educated, those who clearly regard me as another boring incident in their quota, those who play hopscotch from topic to topic, discoursing fallibly on all, and those who draw my attention to every dimity curtain, every handle on every bucket, with the air of a clergyman intoning matins. Worst of all, there is the joker, each of whose witticisms makes me want to cry, 'Ouch!' All these send me away mentally half dead, with gangrene of the spirit, tetchy as a hedgehog newly emerged from hibernating. (Paul Griffin) 'I have dormice hibernating in the organ loft,' said the clergyman, breathing heavily, 'and drug-crazed choirboys who play hopscotch in the aisles. Three-quarters of my hymnbooks have been struck by some kind of gangrene. I've dropped my matins sermon in the bucket that catches the drips from the roof. I am in no mood, frankly, to listen to a flood of lyrical cant about some revolutionary dimity vestments your company's patented. Ouch!' he yelled, as his restless pacing brought his ankle in contact with the base of the font, adding to his quota of woes. He calmed down, looking merely liverish. 'I shall not buy any tawdry trash whatsoever from any new-fangled clerical outfitter whomsoever.' `But,' I said, trying to combat the negative outlook he was all too fallibly revealing, 'have you considered the exceptional penitential possi- bilities of all these misfortunes? We also market a synthetic hair-shirt.'

`Monk's Dimity has had its due quota of murder recently,' observed Lord Peter. 'There's no need to wax lyrical about it,' (Chris Tingley) growled the Detective-Inspector, rising, and hitting his head on the beam yet again.

`Ouch!'

'Watch your napper, old fruit! Feeling liver- ish? Not surprising really — you two downed three-quarters of a bottle of best malt. You needed a bucket, not a glass. Poor Gerry has to take matins today!'

He glanced out of the window. Beyond the vicarage some choirboys were still playing hopscotch, but already people were arriving.

`Going to be a full house! It takes three murders, and the spring sunshine, to lure them frem Wherever they've been hibernating. I must go.'

`Where?'

`Forensic. Must bone up about the onset of gangrene. I don't accept Hillyer's analysis. Country quacks can behave fallibly. Then that suicicje note: "To whomsoever this may con- cern ......Lucy never wrote that. Who did?'

(E. 0. Parrott)