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IN COMPETITION NO. 1846 you were asked for an obituary of a life devoted to the pursuit of perfection in an utterly triv- ial field. This idea, or something like it, was kindly suggested to me by a Spectator read- er in East Fremantle, Western Australia, which goes to show what an unparochial journal this is. Had I died at the age of ten, it is just possible that I might have been remembered for my collection of golf tees, carefully stuck in an album with small strips of Elastoplast and categorised according to colour, length, material and point of discovery. Luckily, I lived on, to develop more adult but less newsworthy eccentricities. In judging, I decided to accept obituaries regardless of their strict credibility. Entertainment was the watch- word.

The prizewinners, printed below, get £25 each, and the bonus bottle of Isle of Jura Single Malt whisky is on its way to Adrian Vale.

Matthew Seerbuck, who died yesterday, was last in a long line of 'straddlers' — men dedicated to arranging the stepping-stones across rivers in East Sussex to give the public crossing them a greater degree of safety and comfort. Seerbuck was a familiar figure, loping along towpaths with the traditional straddling stride, and more than one hiker has had reason to be grateful for his oft-repeated advice:

Overstretch and in you fall — Stone by stone or not at all!

Inevitably, stepping-stones have been super-

seded by concrete bridges, but even wooden planks were resented by Seerbuck and his col- leagues. They made it too easy, they complained fiercely — were unnatural even; and Seerbuck enjoyed airing his deep knowledge of stone lore in Egyptology.

Now he has crossed that last river — his feet assuredly as firm-set and dry as ever.

(Adrian Vale) Morton Bassett skittishly attributed his fascina- tion with crosswords to being born in 1913, the year of the crossword's first appearance. Among that exclusive coterie of collectors of crossword clues he was a giant, discoursing on punning allusion or anagrams (an inferior form, in his view) at international level. His ambition — to collate clues for all published crosswords — quickly grew from a weekend hobby, causing his early retirement from British Rail to devote him- self full-time to his ring-binders. He once boast- ed of having 200 different clues for 'whimsical' and his delight at discovering a new word and creating its file entry never dimmed. In latter years his hearing failed; he was less popular at parties, tending to dominate any word games, and he deplored OUP's refusal of his collection as a definitive dictionary.

His widow, Colstonia, plans to endow a Museum of Crossword Clues in his memory.

(D.A. Prince) The unexpected death of J. Frimley Potts at the age of 79 will come as a shock alike to moun- taineers and to musicians.

Both fraternities may well be surprised that a Hartlepool cobbler should devote his life to exploring the significance of the common desig- nation 'K' in the classification of the world's highest mountains and of the works of Mozart. Working downwards from Everest, Potts quickly established that the entire oeuvre of the Master was Himalayan, though to the end he espoused the hope that undiscovered musical works or recalculations of the heights of obscurer peaks might permit a brief 'Andean' period. His last unpublished monograph, 'The Sonatas and Divertimenti of Sikkim and Bhutan', vividly illustrated the way in which his mind was still working when death intervened to rob two major areas of human endeavour of an influence they had scarcely begun to feel.

(Jonathan Sleigh) The passing of Rhianna Abraham of Mumbles, whose collection of poodle droppings was on permanent show in her back garden, was cele- brated by a march and bark-in along Oystermouth Road, Swansea, in which several dozen poodles and their owners participated. The Abraham collection was exhibited on an old ferris-wheel upon which somebody (reputedly Gwen John's friend) had doodled laughing poodle-heads.

During a worthy life of 92 years Miss Abraham owned nearly 6,000 poodles, all the dogs being named Nibbo after a local poet, and the bitches Jilly after Miss Abraham's suffragette mother. The droppings were numbered, dated and kept in transparent sachets with details of their provenance. They ranged from early Nibbos and Jillys (1913) to Nibbo 4356 andlly 2643 (1944). The rarer, pure white examples were no larger than button mushrooms and in recent years vastly esteemed by the Fulani of Mali as an aphrodisiac and culinary aromatic.

(Connie Yapp)