COMPETITION

Short short story

Jaspistos

IN Competition No. 1503 you were Invited to write a story beginning and ending, or ending and beginning, with two given phrases.

Instead, I nearly asked you, but thought better of it, to complete a surrealist story, jointly written by Dylan Thomas and David Jones in their teens, which got no farther than: 'Near the outskirts of Panama the crippled Negress was bitten severely and time upon time, invariably upon the nape, by a white hat-shaped bird . . Bananas, I thought, were safer. And yet yesterday life at last imitated art and I actually slipped on a banana skin and fell. Dear sir, is this a record? In choosing the winners I confess I was biased against the obvious — banana bombs and kilts. There were good entries from Nigel Blewrell, David Oliver, Christian Miller, Peter Nor- man and A. Macdonald, but they lost out to the winners below, who get £12 each. The bonus bottle of Champagne Palmer Vintage 1979, presented by' Marie-Pierre Palmer-Becret, belongs to George Moor.

If only I hadn't been Scottish, I thought at the time, but what luck it has turned out to be: I might otherwise have gone to the dreary St George's celebration instead of making the purchase that was to change my whole life and much of zoology.

It was raining. I wandered at the lower end of the market where animals were for sale. It was a dreary day and place, but the monkey for sale in a cage partly protected by a tarpaulin was busy and happily occupied. He or she.was whittling! I could scarcely believe my eyes.

Swiftly I negotiated the purchase and hurried with her — for it was a she — to my lodgings. There I examined both the simian Picasso and her glorious golden creation. I shall never forget tnose moments. The banana was clearly artifi- cial! (George Moor)

The banana was clearly artificial, although the playing surface wasn't. You could be sure of the banana; real ones don't grow to thirty feet in the Low Countries. .Perhaps they do in America. The pitch was muddy and pot-holed as only a Belgian battlefield can be. 'ALLEZ BRUGES BANANES!' screamed a huge neon sign above the stadium entrance. Out in the middle the team was in training, hulks of men crunching systema- tically into one another. The chairman gripped his cigar and growled at the assembled press. 'This club is going to be a breath of fresh air,' he said in his familiar Glaswegian drawl. 'We aim

to challenge the Brussels Sprouts for supremacy in the Benelux Gridiron League.' He pressed a button — the giant banana lit up. 'Let nobody doubt my commitment to Belgian sport,' con- tinued McTavish. 'I was born here, raised here . . . I'd have been in the Olympic relay team if only I hadn't been Scottish.'

(Simon Townley) `If only I hadn't been Scottish, your Honour, I might have been less disturbed by the presence of cabbage leaves in the Cullen Skink — a solecism akin to marmalade in porridge. But, your Honour, it was not for that I tweaked the waiter's ear. The crumbed mushrooms stuffed with Stilton contained Danish Blue, Sir, Danish Blue. But it was not for that I pulled the waiter's nose. The guinea fowl, your Honour, was without doubt a chicken. Yet it was not for that I seized the waiter's hair.

'It was the ice-cream, Sir, the ice-cream that was responsible. Fresh home-made ice-cream, the menu said, but it was neither of these things. It is true, Sir, that I tipped the stuff over the waiter's head but I plead extreme provocation. The pistachio was nutless, the vanilla still bore the imprint of the wrapper, and the banana was clearly artificial.' (Bob Pringle) The banana was clearly artificial. So, too, were the cherries. Mother liked generously decorated hats. She always insisted on accompanying me to London interviews, despite my maturity. I had slowly acquired my professional skills — extra- vagant gestures, arrogant bearing, a Gallic accent redolent of the best kitchens in France. To such a chef an attendant mother was super- fluous. Reluctantly she was sworn to silence for my interview at the Savoy. It went well. I had pouted, and grimaced as a man struggling with a language not his own — and the job was mine. The manager's arm was round my shoulders as we parted.

`Tell me,' he said genially, 'what do they call you?' Mother, waiting in her fruit-decked Lon- don hat, got in first. 'Big Mac,' she said proudly. The manager's arm went rigid, glacial. Not even Nico himself could have got the job if his sobriquet suggested one of the faster fast food outlets. If only I hadn't been Scottish.

(D. A. Prince) The banana was clearly artificial. Mr MacAn- guish pressed me to to take it into my hand. Civility compelled obedience. Fashioned from some elastic substance, the object emitted a squeak. Upon my inquiring the reason for its presence in our dish of diminutive gooseberries (the sole fruits that the penury of this malignant region affords), the Laird informed me that the device was a Scotch joke, customarily exposed at Hogmanay, but produced today in my honour. For, said he, the name of the banana tree is Musa sapientum, a name which he would apply to myself, whose wisdom had been favoured by the lexicographical Muse.

This commixture of operose fatuity, barbar- ous ignorance and blockish encomium left me dumbfounded. Complaisance was due to my rustic host, were he a dunce, yet my dictionary was no banana. At length I turned to address Mr Boswell, who, piteously raising his hands, whis- pered: 'If only I hadn't been Scottish!'

(John P. Harris) If only I hadn't been Scottish . . . that weari- some and oft-repeated wish of those of us who have left Caledonia in vain pursuit of the phantom of betterment. In this case, it was my inward prayer on being asked to adjudicate at a Burns Evening Children's Fancy Dress Contest in Godalming. Nearly all the kids had come as Bonnie Prince Charlie or Flora Macdonald and that, as far as I was concerned, disqualified them. Their parents, who bore Scottish patrony- mics but spoke with fluting Surrey accents, watched aggressively as I strove to decide whether Neanderthal Man or Carmen Miranda deserved the prize. Finally, on a whim, I awarded it to the latter. Every other child instantly burst into tears, and I was faced with a swarm of angry, drunken parents, whom I staved off by flinging at them the soft, squashy fruit from Carmen Miranda's hat. Except the banana: the banana was clearly artificial.

(Basil Ransome-Davies)