COMPETITION

Bad luck story

Jaspistos

In Competition No. 1437 you were in- vited to write a light-hearted rhyming poem on 'The Life and Death of an Accident-Prone Person'.

What gave me this idea was hearing an actor, when asked what on earth had become of unlucky old So-and-So, reply, 'He was strangled by an ant in Hudders- field.' I've always been fascinated by accident-proneness and I've known several very fine artists in this medium, yet none of them has ever admitted, even under press- ure of flattery, to conscious skill. I once watched a woman, after a quarrel with her husband, lay her hand with dreamy deli- beration on a red-hot electric plate. But it's not often one catches these people in the act of creation, as it were; usually they come bursting or limping in from outside, maimed, robbed, drenched, carless — and always astonished.

Your entries tended to feature the gory aspects of bad luck, and octosyllables were all the rage; in other words it was down the track beaten by Harry Graham and Belloc. As ever, I looked for the surprise element. I was agreeably surprised, for instance, by Mary Moore's 'young mystic called Fred, Who fell over his own dreams in bed'. Ten pounds goes to each winner printed below. One of them must be accident-prone, since this is the first week for months there hasn't been a bonus prize for the top winner. Roll on, next Saturday.

When Jesus was a little lad,

He tried to call his father Dad, Till Joseph said, 'I know it's odd, But I'm not Dad your Dad is God.' `Is God my mummy too?' said he. 'Well, no,' said Mary. 'I am she.' Thus muddled, Jesus never quite Thereafter learnt to get things right. He tried to swim, but could not sink, Or turned the water into drink; His friends, once dead, came back to life (A nasty shock for any wife); They said, 'He's not just mishap-prone, He's AD's first disaster zone.'

At last he met his death — but then On Monday he was back again. (Miles Kington) This tale is of Siegfried, the Volsung knight, By accident ignorant of his might, By chance conceived when his innocent mother By accident lay with her natural brother.

He welded together a broken sword, By accident stumbled on Fafner's hoard, Purloined the ring and, not knowing fear, By accident shattered his granddad's spear.

He travelled his true love (his aunt) to claim, By accident walked through a ring of flame, Then gave her away to another through By accident drinking a magic brew.

He perished while hunting when Hagen's spear

By accident punctured him in the rear, And went up in smoke as his heart's desire By accident leapt on his funeral pyre. (R. G. Pringle) Our heads were bare, we said a prayer, We sang a joyful hymn, And Jed was there and Ned was there And Anthony and Tim, And Bill was there and Phil was there And Jeremy and Clive, All white-haired wrecks who'd risked our necks In teaching her to drive.

God knows we tried—oh how we tried! To help her past the test Through thirty years of sweat and tears— And now she's laid to rest.

Her efforts claimed twelve victims maimed, Twelve motors sent for scrap.

At last, hooray, she passed . . . away, Poor maladroit Miss Happ. (J. J. Webster) Throughout his life Augustus Sloane Was doomed to be disaster-prone, From when his nurse, well-primed with gin, Transfixed him with his nappy pin, Through boyhood when he caused alarms By breaking legs and ribs and arms, And manhood when he bore the scars Of crashing thirteen motor-cars, Until we saw our last of Gus Beneath the Clapham omnibus And noticed on the roadway too His first down-payment to the Pru.

So if, like Gus, you cannot duck The lethal arrows of ill luck, Accept what has to be endured, But have the sense to be insured.

(Keith Norman) When Aspirin Jones (by oversight Conceived, for all pills look the same at night) Was born, the cord, her lifeline, formed a noose Around her neck. The midwife cut her loose, And dropped her on the floor. At boarding- school Young Aspirina suffered ridicule For dropping dishes, catches, aitches, bricks And bats, and even jolly hockey-sticks. She fell in love, and taking after Mother, Failed to distinguish one pill from another. She tripped on entering the bridal carriage. And lost the reason for the hasty marriage. Next day, her toaster set the house ablaze, Thus finishing her sleeping husband's days. Beside the church, the grieving newly-wed Fell in the grave and broke her silly head.

(Peter Wingate)