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COMPETITION

Self-portrait

Jaspistos

IN COMPETITION NO. 1882 you were invited to provide a prose self-portrait.

I did once meet two or three of you at a party, but that was 15 years ago and it's all a blur now. However, I've always fondly imagined that Basil Ransome-Davies sometimes wears green corduroy trousers, a fact or fantasy which he teasingly failed to confirm or deny in his entry. I enjoyed your portraits. What a range of approach- es! There was the narcissistic Ca craggy countenance whose determined chin some- how blends naturally with the sensitive lines of his mouth'), the self-hating (`bitter, twisted and yellow, the grave yawns invit- ingly for this lemon in life's orchard-fruit salad'), the wryly stoical Cif you could buy a used face and were a mid-market con- sumer, you might choose this one as a bar- gain, or a risk') and the blatantly fantastic (`my left eye, lost in a laboratory experi- ment in 1962, is covered by a patch, inge- niously fashioned from the sloughed husk of a favourite tarantula'). The prizewin- ners, printed below, get £20 each, and the bonus bottle of Isle of Jura Single Malt Scotch whisky goes to W. J. Webster.

Eyes: Never bedroom, now distinctly boxroom vacant when open, and more often closed; colour, the kind of brown you always got when you mixed all the poster paints together. Nose: Has the sturdy, no-nonsense quality of a tent-peg.

Teeth: Less gleaming than gloaming; more exca- vations than most archaeological sites.

Lips: Fortunately just long enough to cover teeth; corners of mouth turn down in a way that seems to encourage cries of 'Cheer up! It may never happen!', which does not turn them up. Chin: Shows no sign of coming out of recession. Forehead: Deep corrugations have the beneficial effect of guttering sweat down either side of the eyebrows.

Hair: Distressed.

Build: A nice illustration of the difference between 'mean' (which here would be meaning- less) and 'average', which appropriately encom- passes ordinary and unprepossessing.

Gait: A shambling amble, under a stoop that conquers no one. Overall appearance: Ursa Minor. (W.J. Webster) Is it a moustache? Poirot would have disdained it, but I cultivate it fondly. At any rate it's straight, except when it twists, along with the lips, into odd, ugly shapes at the mention of limited-overs cricket. It's an unusual shade of ginger-grey. Moving northward along a stubby nose, you will find, beneath tufted Healey brows, a pair of bluish eyes which I regard as piercing, though carpers speak of a fixed glare; either way I find barmen careful over measures. Thereafter the story turns depressing. On a broad expanse of pate about a hundred faded hairs struggle miserably for existence, while nearly the same number (or so I sometimes think) riot in my ears, which taper to a mildly Spockish sharpness. The head sits on (why deceive oneself?) a frankly cadaverous body, ending in large, flat feet. The whole thing has lasted me well enough, and one person loves it. (Chris Tingley) Who is this plump, middle-aged, earth- mother/Hausfrau in the mirror, then? Not me, it isn't! I'm a rather shy — fey, even, almost vir- ginal — artist and I have portfolios to prove it! Somewhere ... those touches of grey? Just chalk-dust from sketching (In a minute!) and the slight frown-lines (Switch it off! You know it frightens your sister!) are from concentrating at the easel. You can see I'm cosmopolitan when I get this apron off — from my jewellery, and I speak three languages fluently but don't seem (Can't you just open the fridge and look?) to finish sentences in them very often.

Spreading a bit? Well, you might say that my back is broad enough. Needs to be. But I'm real- ly a rather timid, convent-educated young girl. At heart. (If she wants to play with your death- ray thingy, let herl) So what you see now is tem- porary. Like life . . . (Coming!) (Alyson Nikiteas) The horse-shaped face is crowned by hair which has lightened to a not unattractive sand colour, though microscopic examination, rarely under- taken, suggests that it is merely the ratio of gin- ger to white that has become less favourable. The hair is swept upwards in the manner of Griffith Jones in They Made Me a Fugitive, an attempt to add an inch or two to a stature which was formerly average but which now, though unchanged, feels increasingly midget-like. The beard, which owes much to Marius Goring in The Investigator, has been regarded as experi- mental for many years.

The freckles which were the delight of aunts and the bane of youth have at length merged into a satisfactorily amorphous mass. Over them are spectacles in flesh-tinted frames, in a style recommended by an ambitious optician which, the wearer has since been advised to his dismay, is inappropriately termed 'Aviator'. (Noel Petty) You'll probably find me in the Clothiers' Arms, with a little notebook, spectacles on the end of my nose (it being an infallible sign of middle age to use two pairs).

My haircut is from a former, less hurried age. I once favoured a moustache, but spying myself in a mirror, smiling, and seeing what I took to be a weasel loping across my face, I dispatched the vermin forthwith.

I occasionally limp (on my favourite leg!) and have a badge for such occasions reading, 'No, it isn't gout — and wouldn't it be funny if it were!' (no concessions about the conditional). I tend to wear odd socks, but more from shortage of sup- plies than for eccentric or anarchic reasons. I am not quite a gentleman but you would hardly notice: it is enough that my small daughter should tickle my ears and admire their lovdly, long, low lobes. (Martin Woodhead)

No. 1885: Dirty dozen

You are invited to incorporate the follow- ing 12 words or phrases, in any order, in a plausible piece of prose: sewer, bagatelle, messianic, flange, zip, gutless, willy-nilly, compos mentis, benchmark, clobber, jockeyed, opus?ule. Entries to 'Competition No. 1885' by 8 June.