THE MACALLAN
IN COMPETITION No. 2040 you were invited to incorporate nine given words into a piece of prose without using any in the sense of 'hat'.
Although there were only nine words to cope with, rather than the traditional 'dirty dozen', this proved a tough assignment. There was a huge entry, most of you con- triving to make sense, but few of you man- aging to make sparkling sense. Among those who did — and were unlucky not to win — were Chris Tingley ("Welcome, wild sou'wester," murmured Muriel, mis- quoting as usual') and Geraldine Perriam with her hatful of ideas for brightening up the garden: 'Instead of putting a boring old glass cloche over your tender plants, why not decorate it with broken mosaic tiles
COMPETITION
Treble hat-trick
Jaspistos
round the edges? Or take a heated cheese- cutter and shape some polystyrene foam into a cap mushroom . .
The prizewinners, printed below, get £25 each, and the bottle of The Macallan The Malt Scotch whisky is Esdon Frost's.
The annual conference of The Worshipful Company of Hatters was held recently at Eastbourne in a converted coastal defence pill- box, during a howling sou'wester. Delegates hud- dled round a stovepipe, but remained a wide- awake audience for the address by the Master, Sir Thomas Beaver, 'The Millinery Experience' which traced the development of such classics as the fedora, the poke-bonnet and the toque. Afterwards, cheese and some excellent South African wines were served. To everyone's embarrassment, the Master, who had partaken liberally of 'les vins du Cap' was seen to slouch progressively deeper into his chair, whilst direct- ing verbal abuse at the unfortunate wine waiter and his assistant, the cheese-cutter. Later, I asked Sir Thomas for his opinion of my designs for the `Cool Hats for the People' competition. He replied, "They were not quite goo' enough to recheive awardche."But,' he added more kindly, `shome of them came pretty cloche.' (Esdon Frost) There's a fatal attraction about fromage. With bulimic frenzy I besieged the Brie and gorged on the Cheddar until Monica put the cloche on it and returned the cheese-cutter to the pantry
Then she eyed me alluringly: `Shall we slouch upstairs?' It was only just after ten but we were wide-awake until the small hours, and I may say that it wasn't because the sou'wester was rattling the stovepipe. Let me give you a clue: I had no need, that night, to unscrew the cap on the Viagra pill-box at the bedside. I can remember Monica's last words just before we both sank into satiated sleep: `Congratulations, eager beaver, you've just scored a treble hat-trick!'
(Jeremy Lawrence) The situation had become intolerable for the Beaver. Day after day the Butcher would slouch against the stovepipe, watching his every move- ment with a nasty smile. It made him so nervous that he had emptied the pill-box of its contents. Worse still, they had found a cleaver under the large cloche where the Bellman was growing his aspidistra. On being confronted, the Butcher had claimed it was only a cheese-cutter. To cap it all, the fiend had smirked malevolently when the Bellman stupidly returned the cleaver to him. The Beaver had no choice. At the crack of dawn he was wide-awake and with a biting sou'wester blowing he made his tearful way ashore to hunt the Snark alone. (Frank McDonald) Colonel Brewster was an adrenalised eager beaver who thought nothing of attacking a well- defended German pill-box with a broken bayonet or mounting a tricky commando raid in a howl- ing sou'wester. Invariably wide-awake while everyone else slept, or tried to, he would spend the hours of darkness drawing up suicidal battle plans, then cap this frantic lunacy with a dawn drill, roaring at his soldiers not to slouch. Insanely brave and foolhardy, he seemed des- tined to fall in combat. But when the smoke had cleared you'd find him helping himself to plump strawberries from a smashed cloche, or relaxing with a cognac by the stovepipe of a local estaminet, more or less according to the weath- er. So the Germans never got him. But someone did one night, separating first the battalion chef from his cheese-cutter, and then the colonel's body from his head. (Basil Ransome-Davies) 'What a night!' exclaimed Noah. 'God didn't say anything about a Force 10 sou'wester as well as a flood. The animals have been wide-awake for hours, and that stupid beaver keeps on mak- ing a dam with his bedding every time we ship water.' God also forgot to mention that the blessed cow needed milking every day,' grum- bled Shem. 'We've got gallons of milk and no means of making cheese, and no cheese-cutter anyway.' And what about feeding the rabbits?' Ham added. 'It's bad enough trying to grow greenery on board without the cloche blowing away. Mother will be furious; it was her best pet- ticoat."Now, to cap everything, the stovepipe has snapped,' Japhet shouted; 'no hot drinks today.' `Go and feed the doves,' Noah ordered, handing him as much grain as would fill a pill-box. Japhet departed with a would-be natural slouch and fell over the beaver's dam. (0. Smith)
The howling sou'wester left me wide-awake. I dressed and joined the crowd on the harbour wall. The man from the market garden where Edith brought her cloche was shouting instruc- tions through the door of the old pill-box. Inside, his colleague, the bearded one the others called Beaver, was struggling with the wartime stove. Over his shoulder the market gardener observed, 'Not usually a slouch when it comes to combustibles is Fred. Reckon someone's put a cap on the stovepipe. That's why the thing won't draw, see?' He turned back to his colleague. I left them to it and wandered towards another group, which parted to let me in. `No point in going hungry,' said a familiar voice. Its owner thrust something soft into my hand. It was Brie, crudely removed, in the absence of a cheese-cut- ter, from a much larger piece. 'It'll be a long night,' she said. Dear, dear Trilby!
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