COMPETITION

Teasing ten

Jaspistos

In Competition No. 1580 you were in- vited to incorporate, plausibly, ten given words into a piece of prose, in any order.

This sort of competition, a hardy bian- nual, is always both popular and entertain- ing in the result, and so it proved this time round. There were, perhaps, rather too many drunken and pugnacious Scotsmen reeling around imperial India, but I was impressed by the variety of scenes you managed to conjure up. Stanley Shaw, W. R. Elgie, Monica G. Ribon, E. 0. Parrott, Peter Norman, Robert Baird and David Oliver were all in palmary form, the last with a lovely opening: ' "I'm afraid the sanitation is a bit basic," he explained, replacing the wooden door into its rotting frame. "One of our senior residents came back from the pub last night absolutely legless and fell through the panel separat- ing the ladies' section. Makes for together- ness, I suppose." '

Those printed below win £12 each, and the bonus bottle of Lamberhurst 1986 Seyval Blanc Dry English Wine, presented by Stephen Skelton of Lamberhurst Vineyards, goes to J. M. Stephenson.

`My dear, how perfectly Kiplingesque!' cried Algie, flinging open the door, 'But when you told me that the recent, ah, aggro, if I may be permitted a colloquialism, had left you legless, I presumed you were speaking metaphorically.'

`You know how it is, in a war.' I shrugged, my fingers brushing the sporran which was all that remained to me now of my service with a great Highland regiment.

`Indeed I do, dear boy,' Algie gushed, with the roguish twinkle that was so irritating a part of his charm. `The sanitation is appalling; but the togetherness...' He clapped his hands, and raised his eyes heavenwards with the expression of a cherub of the quattrocento. At seventy, to resemble such a being was no mean feat on his part; but there had always been more to the Master of my College than met the eye.

(J. M. Stephenson) Today, again, the Nausea. It's a filthy slug in my entrails, sensed not metaphorically but in som- bre actuality — in disgust I chart its limaceous, legless progress through my colon. Faugh!

The Autodidact, engrossed in some footling quattrocento folio, was too busy to see me earlier. So I am at the Café Mably, sipping coffee, and watching two flies locked in bloated togetherness quite near to my saucer. Fasquelle's concept of sanitation is rudimentary, but I don't care.

Fasquelle himself has gone to Rouen by tram, doubtless at home amid its cargo of aggro and crushed cigarette-butts. His roguish niece is left in charge, the grubbiest coquette I've ever clapped eyes on.

She jounces suggestively to a tired Kiplinges- que refrain on the gramophone, jiggling the leather pochette at her loins — her satchel of squalor, her sporran of sickness, her sabretache of slime. There's no doubt I'm ill.

(Andrew Corrigan)

`If you can keep your head . . .' murmured Dougal in Kiplingesque mode, gazing at Gill- ray's print of the guillotine. 'Pity all that Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite togetherness stuff ended in a nasty bit of aggro. Of course the clapped-out old aristos deserved all they got. Metaphorically they were as much use as a hairless sporran . .

. . or a legless barstool,' I finished for him. I know Dougal's standards of uselessness of old.

'Just think of the sanitation problems when the gutters are running with blood!' He warmed to his theme. Although proudly practical, Doug- al belongs to that breed of earnest self-educating Fabians, which is why we spend every Sunday afternoon in the British Museum, looking at anything from quattrocento cameos to Victorian

manuscripts. Today it was the French Revolu- tion Exhibition.

Suddenly he spun round with a roguish wink. 'D'you think a kilted Scot could be called a sans-

culotte?' he asked. (D. A. Prince)

Susan took me home to visit her parents last Sunday. I'll always remember that final moment of togetherness as we turned into the drive; we were joking and legless with laughter as she ushered me into the library where she left me alone. The photographs of Kiplingesque groups in pith helmets seemed in character, but where were the quattrocento masterpieces? A sporran with an ashtray in it clapped at a roguish angle to the arm of a Parker Knoll appalled me. I wanted to pee, and wondered if the sanitation would display the wealth at which she had hinted. Just then an enormous hippy came in. 'You didn't know Sue had five brothers, did you?' he said without preamble. 'She often plays this heiress game, but Father doesn't want any aggro. Speaking metaphorically, I expect you know the difference between a honeypot and a fly-paper.'

(Ginger Jelinek)

'Quattrocento be damned!' cried my father. `If you mean 14th-century, say so.' I don't.' Don't what?' I mean 15th-century.'Bah!' This sort of aggro would continue until all of a sudden, just as he and I were metaphorically at each other's throat, peace and togetherness would break out. The figure he cut at this time was a slightly bizarre, Kiplingesque one. Warm weather brought out the yellowing linen jacket and clapped-out straw hat he had worn years before when Medical Officer of Health in the Gambia. There he had been known as Sanitation Jack, and I could imagine the toughest mosquitoes paling at the sight of those roguish eyebrows beetling over his great sporran of a beard. On this particular evening he quite enjoyed putting me to rights. 'Idiot!' he roared. That damned book of Huxley's: Eyeless in Gaza — not Legless in Ghana!'

(David Heaton)

He had, I supposed, come South for the 'fitba' and fallen among publicans. He seemed to be completely clapped out, in that state metaphor- ically described as legless, though his lower limbs could be seen below the kilt supporting each other with a loving togetherness as he hobbled up the road. In one hand he held a lavatory chain by the pull, evidently being inadequately famil- iar either with his own strength or with this particular form of sanitation.

There was no aggro in him, though. He flailed the chain about quite aimlessly, occasionally becoming entangled in it and wrestling himself free like a grotesque parody of some quat- trocento sculpture of Laocoon.

As he reeled away down the road, I saw that his sporran had become reversed. The twirling of that Kiplingesque moustache on his backside lent an attractively roguish air to his departing form.

(Noel Petty)