COMPETITION

First time

Jaspistos

In Competition No. 1495 you were in- vited to provide a famous writer's account of an unexpected and untypical first experi- ence.

In my mid-forties I decided to have an annul horribilis and do three things the very idea of which had always terrified me. They were: to answer a Sex advertisement, to join an encounter group, to parachute. All were debacles. The first involved a long journey to a seedy suburb and ended in mystification rather than gratification. The second involved the obligatory removal of my shoes on arrival, and I quit after the second session, in which we all had to 'act out' on each other the roles of different animals (`You're a jerboa, Mrs Holroydr). The third involved training with the Metro- politan Police. The drop took place on a nippy November day. With. my glasses misted, I climbed out of the cockpit, stood on a little platform gripping the wing-tip, and threw myself backwards into the re- commended 'seagull' positibn. So far so good. The parachute even opened. Over- confident by now, I tried to steer myself by vigorous use of my 'toggles', but I must have overdone it, because, whereas all my fellows dropped inertly onto the DZ I ended up, still toggling, on the wrong side of a river in a thicket, and had to be rescued by a van. 'What a rotten jump, Dad!' said my embarrassed son. Still, I had earned a sticker for my car — 'Metropoli- tan Police Parachuting Club' — which was for long a talisman against meter maids. Emily Dickinson at a funfair, Yeats changing a nappy, Waugh at a Butlin's holiday camp, Joyce jogging, Marx at a cricket match, Hardy at a séance (the closest also-ran) — you laid on a good variety show. The winners printed below take £15 each, and the first bonus bottle of Champagne Palmer Vintage 1979, kindly presented by Marie-Pierre Palmer-Becret, is Charles Mosley's.

Ernest Hemingway `You hold the wool so' she said.

She looked at me with her nose all wrinkled up. Her forehead and cheeks were wrinkled too. She was old.

'Like this?'

`Like that.'

The wool felt good against my hands. When you're a sheep and you've got to die, you take comfort from knowing you've given real wool, the way a muy hombre sheep does.

`It's damn tiring holding the wool this way' I said.

`I can't stop now' she said.

She was bent very still over her ball, her hands flickering quickly.

There wasn't time to stop. There never is when you've got to get the wool wound and a sock darned before an offensive. I thought of the guys with cold feet who would be going over the top in the Piave Valley in the morning.

'It's good this way.'

`It's good. You're doing fine' she said. (Charles Mosley) Charlotte Brontë 'You need apprehend no danger with me as your protector,' said Mr Thackeray with that grave and gentle manly courtesy that characterises this best of men and authors, and before I could frame a reply in fitting phraseology I was lifted off my feet and set down in the basket. We were floating over the Hyde Park trees. Oh Ellen, alone at such an altitude with two males — you can imagine what were my feelings and trans- ports — I who have never ascended a ladder or stood on a chair to sweep a cobweb lest I should turn giddy, now borne aloft over chimneys, spires and fields like the veriest thistle-down!

Of course, dear Nell, you must never breathe a word of my ballooning at the Parsonage or to your family. Papa would not approve. Indeed I wonder at my own levity; but my principal sensation was of immense exhilaration and to your ears I confide that I cannot regret the adventure! (George Moor) Henry James Nothing could exceed the closeness with which Daisie, as I called her, pressed her form against mine. A friend had repeated to me, with great lack of discretion, a thing or two said to him by a man of distinction, much his senior, and to which a sense akin to that of Solomon's dithy- ramb might be imputed, said — as chance would have it, in Paris, and in a charming old garden attached to a house of art, and on a Sunday afternoon of summer — that the young lady under whom I so unexpectedly found myself was a 'goer'. One hadn't been noting 'goers' all one's life, at a certain distance, without recognising the truth of the observation. I was, largely, I confess, by her own endeavours, in her. 'After', she invited a return to the ground on which I had so recently 'stood', and I proceeded, almost successfully, to comply. (T, Griffiths) G. B. Shaw At the Alcoholics Anonymous meeting they had all told their grim stories. It was my turn to confess. 'Far from being an abstinent man,' I said, 'I am the worst drunkard here. You are content with alcohol, whereas I want something much stronger. Cowards drink alcohol to quiet their craving for real stimulants. I avoid alcohol to keep my palate keen for something much worse than drink addiction: to wit, work addic- tion. Remember Herber Spencer's autobiogra- phy, with its cry of warning against work. I become derperate if my supply of work is cut off. I get hideous headaches after each month's bender. I make stern resolutions to break myself free, never to work after lunch, do only two hours a day. In vain: every day brings its temptations: the craving masters me every time. I dread a holiday as I dread nothing else on earth.'

(Gerry Hamill) Jane Austen Since the horses could neither proceed nor be turned we were forced to witness a spectacle which no elegant female would choose unless unreasonably deprived of proper sensibility or alternative entertainment. Morland had anger for taking us by Tyburn but I can hardly suppose it deliberate. His follies are always inadvertent and if he had not five thousand a year he would be a very stupid fellow. The condemned wretch looked as sanguine as could be expected and from the lamentations of certain women present went fortified by the remembrance of past joys if no certain hope of lasting felicity. A woman in the crowd chose the turning off to give birth, thus causing much perplexity as to which event offered the greater entertainment. I would have averted my eyes from the drop had not the high hats of some of the ladies rendered such delicacy unnecessary.

(P. D. James)