COMPETITION

England and St George

J aspistos

IN COMPETITION NO. 1775 you were asked for an imaginary conversation be- tween St George and Shakespeare, who are reputed to have a common birthday on 23 April.

Shakespeare set none of his plays in one of the three countries in which George was allegedly born, Cappadocia, Palestine and Libya, and George, although he was the patron saint of Venice, Genoa, Portugal and Catalonia as well as of England and was widely invoked against syphilis, re- mains a very misty figure. As the Oxford Dictionary of Saints (Gibbonian in style if not in attitude) remarks, 'It is one of the more unexpected destinies of Palestinian soldier-saints that George, of whom so little is known, should be regarded as the

symbol of English nationalism and prowess in war.'

Consequently, not the brightest of weeks, to match the weather. But the four winners printed below (£20 each) shone fairly enough, and the bonus bottle of Aberlour Single Malt whisky goes to that `sun of York', Gerard Benson.

St G: I can show you the scars.

S: But what manner of beast is your dragon? St G: I tell you, sir. It came at me roaring. S: How is it backed? How dentated? Its roaring, is it like to the tiger? The wind?

St G: Wind, sir?! I tell you it is palpable as iron. Wind! For two fartings I'd strike your head from your shoulders. S: Nay, good George, unfold to me its shape, its colour.

St G: It is more real, sir, than you. It inclines to length. Its tail is prodigious, encoiled. It is magical, sir.

S: Breathes it fire? Does it resemble to your Aegyptian Crocodile? Your Phoenix? Has it a song? St G: It is a winged furnace, venomous and mighty, a devourer of virgins.

S: Its eyes? Tell me of its eyes. St G: It is a motile horror, but not indestructible. S: Its tongue? Its slaver? St G: I was unscathed, sir. Here, I can show you the scars. (Gerard Benson) St G: Did you know a church was dedicated to me in Doncaster the year Alexander the Second became Pope, and that Alexander Pope was your second modern editor and had a Yorkshire mother?

S: Most interesting.

St G: I thought so. And were you aware that counting a=1, b=2, etc — the numerical total for 'Georgius draconem interfecit' is the same as for 'Will Shagzbaur killed Falstaff?

S: But it isn't my name, is it?

St G: Oh dear, isn't it? I knew I shouldn't have trusted that quarto. Still, talking of names people give you, did you realise 'Nomen: Draconius' is an anagram of 'Nemo Androni- cus'?

S: There wasn't a Nemo Andronicus.

St G: Precisely. That's the whole point. Suppose I said -

S: (testily) Suppose I were to bite my thumb at you, sir?

St G: (crestfallen) Sorry! I suppose deep down I'm just trying to show I exist.

(Chris Tingley) St G: It's about my image. I'm patron saint, and I haven't a decent story.

S: And you think I can help?

St G: Well, look at Hamlet: a complete nonenti- ty until you handled him. Macbeth, too — a Scots thane, for God's sake, and now he's mega. It was Timon recommended you.

S: OK, so what have we got to work on? St G: That's the problem: I'm just a poor little Greek boy. A story got about that I'd slain a dragon.

S: Elm. Dragons come expensive. Besides, gore's more in Kyd's line. Anything else? St G: Nothing, really. It was all a bit of a misunderstanding.

S: I can't work from nothing. I don't make the stuff up, you know.

St G: I thought maybe a few plugs linking me with royalty.

S: You mean God for Harry, England and Saint George sort of thing?

St G: Great!

S: Money up front then, or you get the Crookback treatment. Get me, George?

(Noel Petty) St G: Why you chose to refer to that mounte- bank Crispin in your scribblings never ceases to baffle me.

S: That's a profoundly unsaintly remark, George. Remember, I gave you mentions in Henry Five and John, to name but two.

St G: But Crispin's so downmarket. Patron saint of leather workers! . . . whatever next?

S: My own father was a glove-maker. I had a fellow feeling for the man.

St G: So that was it! I had wondered if perchance you'd been piqued that my birthday — that-is, our birthday — had been named after me. S: Fiddlesticks! A myth, as thou art, cannot nurture jealousy. All that folderol about you slaying a dragon suffering from bad breath and rescuing a princess . . . Gadzooks, The Dream has more credence than that farrago of non- sense!

St G: Methinks you're unaware it's said of me that my deeds are known only to God.

S: Ah, there lies the rub . . . God only knows! St G: You — you — hack!

S: Myth!

St G: Bacon! (Chas. F. Garvey)

No. 1778: Travels with my aunt

P. G. Wodehouse was very keen on aunts. You are invited to describe, in the person of a well-known Wodehouse character, part of a tricky journey taken with an aunt (she can be invented). Maximum 150 words. Entries to 'Competition No. 1778' by 7 May.

The top winner of this and the next 51 competitions will receive a bottle of Drum- mond's Pure Malt Scotch whisky.