COMPETITION
No. 570: House of fiction
Set by E. 0. Parrot!: In a recent 'After- thought' John Wells speculated on the be- haviour of Long John Silver in his role as a Labour MP. There are other characters from fiction who might do even better in the House of Commons. Mr Micawber Would almost certainly qualify for the post of Chancellor; Sir Toby and Sir Andrew uould be strong candidates for seats on the Tory backbenches. Competitors are asked to provide excerpts from a speech, ry inter- view or newspaper article by a Member of Parliament recruited from the fruitful fields of fiction. Maximum 120 words; entries, marked 'Competition No. 570', by 26 Sep- tember.
No. 567: The winners Trevor Grove reports: The Oedipus Com- plex, and the story from which it is named, are well known. Competitors were invited
to compose an explanatory description of the symptoms, causes and effects of the less well known Salome Syndrome, Ixion's Disease, Phaeton Complex or some other affliction named after a mythical, literary or historical character.
T. Griffiths wins two guineas for the clos- ing sentence of his explanation of the Phaeton Complex : The variables are infinite, the constants al- ways include the destruction of a valued paternal vehicle, followed by a self-destruc- tive fugue.
Russell Lucas reports curious happenings in Watford and also wins two guineas : A recent Watford survey of thirty house- wives, observed collecting yoghourt from their doorsteps clad in their undergarments, has excited speculation about whether they believed the yoghourt to be a substitute for the severed heads of their adolescent sons, feared as threats to the father dominance and symbolic of a taboo sex situation. Twenty-eight of these women were dancing to the music of Radio One when the milk- man called, and no fewer than twenty of them were grossly overweight. The SALOME SYNDROME could be more than a nostalgic attempt at regression. It could be Nature's way of exercising the over-forties.
G. J. Blundell offers the following diagnosis : SISYPHUS COMPLEX : This affection of the nervous system is commonly found among golfers with a high handicap, and is induced by the misfortune of having short-putted several times in succession. The patient becomes depressed, abnormally irritable, and liable to indulge in outbursts of intem- perate language, and is obsessed by a vision of having to propel a spherical object up- hill. Before it reaches the summit the object invariably rolls back, and the process starts all over again. The only known cure is for the patient to give up golf and take to bowls.
Three guineas to Mr Blundell, and the same for J. M. Crooks, with a compelling gloss on a familiar theme: ODYSSEUS'S ITCH: This distressing, and well- publicised, complaint causes victims to have an irresistible urge to get away from their wives and families. Many sufferers take a long journey, often by sea, and show an extraordinary facility for thinking up im- probable stories to explain their absence. Interesting disorders have also been re- ported among patients' wives, notably Pene- 'ope's Plague, in which the wife becomes vholly absorbed by a monotonous and ap- larently endless form of handwork. Some ases of Odysseus's itch have taken as long is ten years to cure, but, fortunately, many men have the disease in an arrested form ind only dream of a long sea voyage.
Honourable mentions to P. W. R. Foot and Mannie Hall and a final three guineas to Lance Haward :
-rymmnsm: Compulsive urge to literary or artistic self-abuse, often coupled with fan- tasies of censor-castration. The distinctive feature of this dichotomic syndrome in its most recognisable form is the tension which exists between the sufferer's over- powering wish to inflict shock upon the
suspecting bystander and the fanatical modesty that rigorously restrains his exhibi- tionism from any manifestation other than the merely verbal. Sometimes referred to in consequence in its more general variants as Robin's Disease (after Christopher R— desire to rape governess sublimated to dis- tant, quasi-fetishist 'peeping' at her dressing- gown on the door).
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