The Author, having criticised the Guinness, so incurring the Ire

of the doleful Innkeeper, bewails his subsequent banishment as followeth: Come, certain grief! Weep, every living thing!

Let all my images henceforth be those Of drooping, dying. Let no linnet sing, Nor cat cavort, nor burgeon any rose, Nor monkey frisk on Abyssinian swing, Nor Poet speak, save in the palest prose, Nor pot of stout be pulled. (Ay, there's the rub!) I have been barred, yes I, from Gerry's pub.

0 mournful cloud, so black yet topped with white Looming prophetic in the evening sky Much like a pint of porter to the sight, (Or art thou merely vision?) come anigh.

Tell me of closing time, tell me of night That seals up all. Thou canst not tell me why I must in piteous exile at 'The Star' Dream of the drear delights of Gerry's bar.

These win four pounds as also does Joyce Johnson:

Come, Melancholy, be my Muse.

Inspire me that I may use Thy plaintive notes in which to utter My sad lament. I'm out of butter.

For Greed and Panic have combined To rob those of more sober mind.

The locust housewives rose at down And took the wings of early morn To swell the queues and pile their prams With sugar, butter, tins and jams.

Where Plenty reigned, sits Want instead, And Reason weeps and hangs her head.

Sorrow surveys the ravish'd stands And Hope returns with empty hands.

And thus it is I must discharge This ode composed by Flora's marge.

The others printed win three pounds each and commendations go to A.M. Sayers and Violet R. Ormerod.

I woke today to skies as dark as lead With wind-whipped snow piled high against the walls.

The cistern in the roof above my head Had burst, releasing icy waterfalls. A letter from the bank was on the mat Telling me my account was overdrawn. (There's nothing I can do to alter that — I've nothing left of value I can pawn!) My motor would not start for lack of essence; The railways are on strike again. No trains. The boss upon the carpet wants my presence. When I get home I have to clear the drains. How often do I curse my parents' folly As a result of which I first drew breath Dooming me to such endless melancholy. `If this is Life', I mutter, 'Roll on Death'.

(Peter Vince) Ode to the Melancholy Induced by Installing a Cheap Colour TV The rigours of our national plight Looked stark enough in black-and-white; But union chiefs who froth and foam Loom starker yet in polychrome.

Drear, lustreless and sombre hues Chime well with cheerless TeleNews; But what's just vile becomes obscene In shocking pink and vomit green.

The tawdry and the meretricious, When thus 'enhanced', look brutish, vicious; The mediocre seems plain trash In strident tones that shriek and clash.

I thought that, as the days grew duller.

I'd countervail their mood with colour.

0 crass and self-deceiving folly! — It merely feeds my Melancholy.

(Jonathan Fernside)