No. 487: The winnners
In his essay on 'Politics and the English Lan- guage' George Orwell laments the indiscipline of prose writing in general and of 'officialese' in particular. That George Orwell in Nineteen Eighty-Four could marshal his vocabulary more successfully than 'most of this week's competitors will come as no surprise; that Nicholas Holbrook could manage it equally successfully and in a quarter of the space wins him five guineas : Just then the pig trotted across the lawn to the vegetable patch, and nuzzled at the ground as though rooting for truffles.
`There's nothing there but cabbage,' observed the Mad Hatter gloomily, wiping a crumb from his moustache. The March Hare, who was try- ing to drive the Dormouse further into the teapot by striking him with a large and fruity cake, looked up and said to Alice : 'If I were you, I'd straighten that pig's tail.' 'How?' inquired Alice.
'With a pig-iron, of course! How dull your mind is!'
'I should think anyone's mind would be dulled in this place,' retorted Alice. 'Besides, there's no such instrument.'
Offended, the March Hare turned to address the Hatter: 'The Duchess, I hear, is forming a Republican Party, and the Queen's in a fearfully sanguine mood about it.'
'What does that mean, pray?' demanded Alice.
'It means—why; that she's after Someone's blood!'
And four guineas to a brave parody by J. A. Lindon, 'Night over Naughtytown': To begin at the beginning.
- It is night, crook-slinking and lucky-for- some black-catted crow-hatted night, waking in dark alleys, sly-walking in wet-leaved gar- dens, peeping round corners and under the wicked eaves of Naughtytown. Crime-filled and creeping night. Night on the cold cobblei nuzzled by a necking moon, on mouldy beet and cabbage outside Dai Shortweight's day- green shutters, on Morgan the Policeman's twin- puppytailed moustache as he plans a purity drive under his plodding helmet, on fruity stalks and chinapack straw trapped under stacked trestles in the clock-towered swept and wind-scoured Market Square, on Scrapmetal Jones with his pig-iron personality snoring and dulled beside his indigestion wife, on every instrument in Commie Tomos's dream- orchestra as With scything bows drum-thunder and bloody trumpets he conducts 'The Inter- nationale' for his Party Comrades in a sanguine
Night over Naughtytown. Listen ...
The special prize of one guinea for identify- ing Nineteen Eighty-Four goes to John Mark Brady.
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