COMPETITION

Pure nonsense

Jaspistos

IN COMPETITION NO. 1815 you were invited to write a piece of pure but enter- taining nonsense in prose.

My favourite in this department is Samuel Foote's 'Farrago', composed by him to test the vaunted memory of the actor Charles Macklin, which begins 'So she went into the garden to cut a cabbage- leaf to make an apple-pie . .' and ends

. . and they all fell to playing the game of catch as catch can, till the gunpowder ran out at the heels of their boots.' (The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations gives the full text.) There is also the immortal

telegram which the Good Soldier Svejk laboriously copied out just before he en- trained for the Galician front: 'As a result of more detailed it has been permitted or the same can on the other hand none the less be supplemented.'

After reading over a hundred pieces of balderdash, my faculties were fairly scram-

bled, but I conscientiously examined at breakfast what I had blinked over at midnight. The prizewinners, printed below (some of whom, I acknowledge, occa- sionally deviated into half-sense which added to the entertainment), get a well deserved £20 each, and the bonus bottle of Drummond's Pure Malt Scotch whisky goes to Joe Hyam.

'Paper-clips can sing.' She sounded reasonable. but her unsmiling navel indicated her true feelings. Her voice turned from indigo to sickly, ochre as she hissed, 'So can vegetable marrows. She was snoring now and her toes burst in anger

from her stockinged feet like cold chips. He watched unmoved from the safety of Victoria Station.

Could he have foreseen the outcome? The collapse of the Eiffel Tower? The theft of the county of Surrey? The thought entered his head, cocked its leg and left with a derisive sniff. All he could hear now were those damned paper- clips.

(Joe Hyam)

Let us take for an example this piece of string: verdant, recognisable, flavourless. Voila! You will see that now there are three pieces and that I have not cut it. How, you wonder, is this achieved? But I will reply, This is life. Or assume the further example of a cushion or a doorstop, or, more poignantly, a valve trom- bone. Who put it there? With what end? I will merely reply that these questions are so much attenuated candy-floss. A plastic gibbet, on the other hand . . . But I observe that you are convinced. Come. No more hair-splitting. Let us dance.

(Gerard Benson) 'Titter, you surd! Mehr Licht!' Uncle Jemima combed the oxtail on the quark, till whole tendrils of gripe came muttering from its turbid crunch lanes. 'Put the socage in the grouter, where the sad swallows arc!' No blip; still the spayers sprawled amid half-croaked umlaut too plummy, too bonkable even, for such mauve safari. Where were the astral crumbs? And how could frumcnty waddle when treason shambled? No freemartin groped oblivion now, no gibbous natterjack treaded the synod. An eerie goujon, lambent and defeated, sprayed wallops of roisterous pratfall, its ictus spiralling persimmon pure in McVitie's wink. Spats ascended.

(Chris Tingley) 'Why, oh why,' people cry, 'can't we have a deregulated London bus system based on the political system of Poland in the 19th century?' Then they regretfully reject the idea after a moment's superficial consideration. But think again — the Polish parliament of that time employed the Liberum Veto which enabled any individual member to block any measure; unani- mity was essential. A free-vote bus queue would he determined, when operating such a system, to gain each member's support to decide the route of the bus. This is the point sceptics ignore — at their peril.

(James Morgan) (With apologies to Frank Keating) Sit out the opening jousts, it could be their undoing. Even a half-decent performance this weekend will dilute in their spirits. Likewise, even if beaten in the opening skirmish, they will remain my good outsider's bet for Molly Malone's singular favours. Enough Hail Marys will see them through. Bookies' favourites of course. Only the most optimistic Taff will have a bet. Before he died, he wrote: 'We are breeding robots. We have few thinking — the next ten years promise to become barren.' It was a visionary's forecast. A couple were policemen.

(H. Denis Harvey-Kelly)