COMPETITION

No. 632: Greetings

Set by Timothy Snow: Verses which appear in Christmas and New Year cards are rarely of great literary -merit. SPECTATOR competi- tors might do better and are in- vited to compose a sixteen-line seasonal greeting to any well- known person. Entries, marked 'Competition No. 632,' by 11 December.

No. 629: The winners

Charles Seaton reports: Competi- tors were asked to comment in verse on the news that the Con- sumer Council has lost its grant— and Des Wilson his prospective job as its head. Rather surprisingly, readers were not unduly disturbed, if the number of entries was any- thing to judge by. However, those who did send in entries were almost to a man behind the Coun- cil and its now-not-to-be director. Some of them unforgivably con- fused it with the Consumers' Asso- ciation, and consequently all refer- ences to Which? were completely out of Focus. One of the few who showed any detailed knowledge of what the Council has been doing for the last seven years was E. 0. Parrott and his piece after Eliot wins two guineas:

A sad going we had of it Just the worst time of our life The prices rising and the wages inflating And the merchants laughing to see our departure And getting their shoddy out of their storerooms. There were times we regretted The flame-proof nightwear and campaigns For the labelling for proper washing.

It was hard to descend into oblivion With the ministers hostile and Tories unfriendly, No one would have ever thought They had set us up in the first place, There were those of us who murmured That if had not been for our new God, Our new God, Des of Shelia. We would not have died at all.

This last idea, that Mr Barber was paying off some Tory scores, was fairly general. G. J. Blundell has this to say: Who shelters whom when winds of change Blow hard for good or ill, son, We know not: but, when all's free-range, No right wing shelters Wilson.

And Roger Woddis has a savage entry called The Chop' by Des/ Mary Wilson: How like the Chancellor and Grocer Heath To kill the Council and remove its teeth!

Or was it simply Tory cunning So that the fellow at the top Would get the chop?

O anguish as you made your budget speech!

I found it hard to credit what I heard, But still I understood each

numbing word—

We can't go on like this, The Treasury's not the Mint; You must see that we're skint.' I thought at first you wouldn't

cut the grant, But then I saw your frozen face And I knew what you were up to. If I'd been on the floor

I would have hit you with the Mace

I felt like going out and getting

plastered,

God! What a bastard!

In spite of his running over the line limit he must have three guineas. George van Schaick wins two guineas for his apostrophe to Des Wilson. Here is part of it:

Said Shylock, when he came up for the chop, 'You take my house when you

do take the prop

That doth sustain my house.'

I hope that you

Des Wilson, will adopt a

different view.

Think rather of the pruning

of a rose: The harder cut, the stronger yet it grows;

For 'Shelter', grantless, soon

became a name To reckon with—and you could do the same

For the Consumer Council .. ,

Finally, Rufus Stone's worldly but all too true reflections win three guineas as does J. M. Crooks's Wordsworthian sonnet:

If you persist in ventilating

scandals,

In kicking up the devil of a fuss; In being unimpressed by names

with handles,

That hint: 'Old boy, relax—

you're one of u?;

If you can shrug of praises and invectives, Resist the kiss of death from Left and Right; Keep trekking on towards sour old objectives And never let your targets out

of sight

If you disdain to wheedle, crawl

or bluster.

And stand aloof from every

shads' ploy.

You've not a hope in hell of

passing muster.

And what is more—you'll get the boot, old boy! Rufus Stone Wilson! thou should'st give counsel at this hour: Consumers have need of thee: we are all mugs For Special Offers, bargains, sales and plugs: Adverts. descending like a - golden shower.

Have dazzled us. but soon such

fruits turn sour

Before they're paid for. We are

stony broke:

0 Des! speak out, and help us

put a spoke

In wheels of arrogant commercial

power.

Thy voice was like a trump on

Judgment Da}', Proclaiming human rights—and human wrongs.

Thou hest o'er-topped the protest charts with songs That struck an instant chord in

every heart.

And in the selling jungle kn,m,i thy %val.,

Since thou, for good. had 11..31

the salesman's art. J. M. Croaks (PS. A final thought: Would you have faredll. q Suitone so i, Had your name not b n ee Des)