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COMPETITION

Pat's poser

Jaspistos

IN COMPETITION NO. 1991 you were given a set of words and invited to incorpo- rate them in a plausible narrative set in Ireland.

Not patronisingly, but with empathy, I observed your efforts, some of them patently impatient, to patch together the incompatibles. Martin Woodhead's last sentence raised a chuckle: 'From the dowsed cowpat — now an expat — there arose, oddly, a whiff of patchouli.' Oddly, indeed! This competition may have been agony for you, but it was great fun for me. Thank you all for your pains.

The prizewinners, printed below, get £25 each, and the bonus bottle of Isle of Jura Single Malt Scotch whisky goes to Chris Tingley for the entry which I found the most simpatico.

My writer's wanderlust still not extirpated, I moved on to Dublin; and there, drinking at Sinnett's, I met the aged poet.

`I was an expat too, years back,' he quavered. `Went over to Paris, pour (pater les Irlandais, you know, where it was safe. Away from all the drizzle and cowpat, and priests on the warpath if you blew your nose wrong. Different, Paris was. The dancers sprayed patchouli behind their ears. Lovely girls.'

Further stouts soon had reminiscence in full spate. At last I worked him round to the big one. `Yes, I met Joyce. Not very simpatico, I took him some verses I'd written, hoped he'd jump at them, but he came at me like a psychopath. He was trying out anagrams of spatchcock.'

With a sure sense of climax and a patrician sweep of the arm, he drained his glass and tot- tered off into the night. (Chris Tingley)

"Twas in the Old Country' — years as a Tuscan expat hadn't extirpated the brogue — `before I started me travels. Her husband — your original psychopath, he was — took a shine to me. Said I was simpatico. Sure! — ma, with the likes of him, non troppo! There's me, just up from the Bog of Allen itself, me shoes all cowpat, and she a real lady . . .patchouli, you know, sweet as a Killarney morning. When himself saw it was her I was fancying, he was soon on the warpath, wait- ing to jump at me one thick night, and him in full spate about how she was a patrician — he had a tongue on him! — and he'd spatchcock the both of us.'

`So?'

`So I was away here with his little sister, was I not? My motto's old Voltario's — epater l'inftime! — never disgrace a lady!' (Alyson Nikiteas) Father Michael was on the warpath. 'I'll hang the thief, I'll have him extirpated.' Then, lest he epater his parishioners, he corrected himself to a more orthodox, 'excommunicated'. With that, he skirted a large cowpat and set off down the boreen.

`Not very simpatico. More like a psychopath,' said Liam observing him. 'Such a spate of words too. And all over a turkey.'

`The turkey,' Freddie corrected him. He had a braying voice and a large patrician nose which Seamus scorned.

`It'd be just a turkey if the holy man had a sense of proportion, said Seamus, ever ready to jump at a chance to slap down the expat. 'You'd think the thing was a film star. He grooms it every day, sprinkles it with that ...what is it, Liam?'

`Patchouli.'

`And wasn't he after killing it at Christmas for a spatchcock?'

`Spatchcock?' queried Freddie.

`Grilled,' replied Seamus, triumphant. (Colin Shaw)

For Patrick, Donegal's rock festival was an ideal way to epater not the bourgeois but his patrician relatives, who found U2, The Pogues and Van Morrison (the last an expat who regularly returned to his roots) scarcely simpatico. So of course he'd jump at the chance to wallow in a spate of mud as consistent as fresh cowpat, drink- ing poteen and smoking weed with patchouli- scented girls with shamrock in their red hair, and fiery tongues. Soon he had extirpated any memo- ry of his cousins' disdain, and, pausing only to spatchcock a hen raided from a local farmyard, surrendered entirely to excitement. The music thrilled him, with Bono like a psychopath on the warpath belting out vocals to The Edge's swirling guitar. 'Sure, isn't this the life?' yelled Patrick, declaring himself a New Age Celt, and kissing every colleen with a fervour previously reserved for his village's dismal ceilidhs. (Bill Greenwell) Inspector Drumgoole was clearly on the warpath. `Eyery case identical: the victim split like a spatchcock, and the only clue a whiff of patchouli. I will leave no sod unturned until this spate of outrages is extirpated from our commu- nity. My officers are seeking an Oriental psy- chopath.' Holmes, who found neither the Inspector nor his logic simpatico, rarely missed a chance to epater la gendarmerie. 'Do not, pray, jump at the first fly cast. Note that each victim was an English patrician. The roots of this crime lie more in Debrett than in Doolali. Note, too, the traces of cowpat on the boot. Yet there are no cattle on this estate. No, what we are seeking is a disinherited expat English aristocrat, former- ly of the East India Company, who keeps a herd of' — sniffing the boot — 'pedigree Jerseys.'

`Holy Mother!' gasped Drumgoole. Tendle- bury-Smythe to the life!' (Noel Petty)

Boylan's in full spate, booming methodically in Declan's Bar on O'Connell Street. 'Your man Joyce — Doctor Joyce — isn't he the fine fellow? Coins it by poor-mouthing Paddies, then scarpers to play the expat. That's Joyce, the sim- patico patrician-pleb, the Janus misogynist, anti- Semite scribbler, who thought he'd epater us bourgeois with literary gobshite. And couldn't he just kiss on a cowpat and get up smelling sweet as patchouli?' Casey cuts in: 'Boylan's on the warpath, lads — has Jimmy Joyce down for a psy- chopath."Sure, and if I were in Dublin in his time, wouldn't I jump at the chance to gut the ould sod like a spatchcock, kipper him apart and fry his guts flat out in my skillet?' Now who's the psychopath?' Casey observes. `Yiz know I'm right,' growls Boyland. 'The feller shoulda been extirpated in his crib!' Declan's falls silent; Boylan belches, then departs. (Mike Morrison)