COMPETITION

Dear Sir (dear God!)

Jaspistos

In Competition No. 1612 you were asked for a letter of unconscious and staggering banality such as occasionally gets printed in a newspaper.

I was moved to set this competition by a recent letter in the Times, in which a lady was eager to apprise the nation of two facts: that a pudding basin she used at Christmas had also been used by her mother when teaching a domestic science class well before 1914, and that it also now occasionally served as a block for moulding and drying her husband's washed garden- ing hat. That was all. The letter, not unreasonably, ended with an exclamation mark.

Neil Datson, B. Glover, Martin Braby, David Ealey, Amanda Nicholson and P. I. Fell all provided delightful examples of po-faced looniness, as did others. The winners printed below get ill each, and the bonus bottle of Mercier Britt cham- pagne, kindly presented by Champagne Mercier, goes to Keith Norman.

Sir: Am I alone in Finding it insupportable that today no transaction of any kind can be com- pleted without the expression 'There you go'? These words have become the inevitable accom- paniment to the handing over of goods, change, receipt or credit card slip at every counter, check-out or ticket window. What, in the name of reason and sanity, are they supposed to mean? Where do I go? And of what possible concern is it to the person, male or female (for both sexes are equally guilty), who has just served me — if, that is, the word `serVe' has anY meaning in the England of 1990. Where, indeed, do I go? Where, for that matter, does this once great country of ours go? Alas, there is but one possible answer to that: downhill!

Yours more in sorrow than in anger, W. M. Gray-Malkin. (Keith Norman)

Sir: My son recently married and I have been surprised to find that I can only refer to his wife's father as 'my son's father-in-law'. This seems a very circumlocutory title, for my son's father-in-law and I now have a relationship through our children's marriage and I would have expected a word to describe it. My relationship with a child of the marriage will be plainly grandfather, as indeed will be that of mY son's father-in-law, and my son can refer to his wife's brothers and sisters straightforwardly as brothers- and sisters-in-law, yet my son's father- in-law and I are distanced in an impersonal way by having to bring in a third person.

My son and his wife are now one flesh, so I suggest 'co-father' and 'co-mother' would be suitable, which would eventually become 'Cop- per' and 'Comma', their origins forgotten.

(D. Shepherd) Sir: I see that once again the fashion in women's skirts is to have a Red Indian fringe or Victorian Mantelpiece bobbles. When will women and their designers acknowledge and follow the fundamental principle of aesthetics stressed repeatedly by the late Sir Herbert Read cleanness of line is all?

Do we have to face a bleak future of women Who think they are lampshades?

(George Moor) Sir: I feel I must write to you about something. I love birds and one of my particular friends is a robin redbreast who comes to my back door. Every time I go out he is there, hopping from bush to bush and even perching on top of the dustbin. He twitters so prettily when he sees me and picks up all kinds of scraps and sometimes a Poor little worm.

It is just the same outside my front door, but What worries me is that I cannot tell whether it is the same robin or a different one. Can any of Your readers help? (Richard Wells) Sir: In view of the fact that newspapers and the media generally on an across-the-board basis

seem to regard 1990 as the first year of a new decade instead of, as it should rightly be, the last year of an old one, I am concerned that the same wrong-headed thinking may be applied to the year 2000. We hear a lot in this day and age about the declining standards of literacy, quite rightly in my view, but what, one may ask, about the declining standards of numeracy? The rnis- attribution of a single year may seem a small thing, but it is the small things that matter in matters of this kind. It is now surely time for a redrafting of the new National Curriculum in order that provision may be made to prevent any

further errors in this area. (Jim Yorke) Sir: Over the past few weeks I have become increasingly aware that the fluff which lies in the corners of my home, before vacuum cleaning, is predominantly blue — this in spite of the fact that my carpets are multicoloured and my upholstered furniture is described by the manu- facturers as 'mink' in colour.

I have now conducted a survey amongst my friends and acquaintances and have found that 70 per cent (pro rata, for my poll was less than a hundred) also had predominantly blue fluff,

I have now studied the residue of material in my car and have found that this also is predomi- nantly blue, and intend to conduct a similar survey on automobile interior detritus. I wonder if there are any national statistics relating to this matter, or if there is any sound scientific basis for my findings, of which I have kept detailed written evidence.

(Katie Mallett) Sir: Men, whether left- or right-handed, using a safety razor generally hold it in the dominant hand. Lathering apart, shaving this way used to take me 2½ minutes. I have now learned to shave with both hands at once, using two razors and halving the time involved. In one year I now save approximately seven hours and four mi- nutes. I recommend this time-saving technique to all shaving men.

(R Baresel)