The man himself
Jaspistos
IN COMPETITION NO. 2256 you were invited to write a rhymed nine-line single acrostic, mingling tribute, criticism and fantasy as you pleased, celebrating the name of Jaspistos.
This competition was set in my absence, and I haven't enjoyed judging it any more than you seem to have enjoyed doing it. Since attention has been drawn to myself, I might as well supply you with a few selfrevealing facts. Here goes.
I am a 75-year-old oenophile and arachnophobc who suffers from poor sight, two inconveniencing syndromes (Dupuytren's is one) and a dicky heart. My father was Scottish, my mother American, and I was born in Weybridge, which in its day har boured Leslie Charteris, E.M. Forster and Engelbert Humperdinck. I have never been south of Morocco, west of Vermont or east of Turkey, though I did in youth once walk from Lisbon to Cape St Vincent and back in August. I prefer Pope to Shelley, Verdi to Wagner, and Matisse to Picasso. I live in north-west London in a ground-floor flat with a large garden of my own with lovely trees and flowers, the names of which I am
always forgetting. forgetting. I loathe gardening, DIY work and publicity parties. I have been told, to my alarm, that I look a bit like Woody Allen. I have a kindly nature — I love you all.
The prizewinners this week, printed below, get £20 each, and the Sheaffer Prelude ballpoint pen in black lacquer goes to Paul Griffin, demonstrating that flattery doesn't always get you nowhere.
Just for a handful of silver he judges, Affords us a joy that's like winning the pools. Sadly possessed of a will no one budges. Popular? Sometimes, but not with the fools. Idlers, borrowers, drivellers, late ones, Suffer the penalty, caned by the beak, Tortured by reading the work of the great ones,
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