Spectator Competition: First thoughts

Spectator

11-06-2025

Competition 3403 invited you to provide an extract from a prequel to a well-known work of prose or poetry.
It was a stellar haul this week, with prose and poetry represented equally. I was sorry not to have space for Ralph Goldswain's 'Eleventh Night', Brian Murdoch's The Lion, the Witch and the Trip to Ikea, George Simmers's 'On First Considering Looking into Chapman's Homer' or John O'Byrne's The Pretrial. Also worthy of special mention are Sue Pickard, Alan Bradnam, Mike Morrison, D.A. Prince, Nick Syrett, Joe Houlihan, Sylvia Fairley, Martin Parker and the Revd Dr Peter Mullen.
The £25 John Lewis vouchers go to those entries printed below.
Had she been of a less patient nature, Maisie Farange, a girl of six years, custody of whom proved contentious in the acrimonious divorce of her parents, might have contested the argument, advanced by attorneys in the case, that her opinions ought not be sought on the grounds of her inexperience. Considerable lawyerly wit was deployed in the listing of things of which Maisie as yet knew nothing. The proceedings of certain of the Punic Wars were instanced, together with the ability to parse Latin sentences and the process for successfully bleeding a radiator. Maisie's mind, they argued, stood as an unfurnished room, wanting only the chattels of knowledge to fill it. Maisie, hitherto content to run about said empty room and greatly enamoured of its unique atmosphere, demanded from the court an exhaustive list of accomplishments required for the attainment of personhood. Its compilation, and necessarily the case, continues.
Adrian Fry/'What Maisie Doesn't Yet Know'
A handsome young Owlet aloft in a tree
Gazed down on a Kitten below,
The Owlet was smitten at once by the Kitten
Whose whiskers were whiter than snow.
'Dear Kitten,' he said 'we're too young to be wed
But I simply adore your sweet purr,
Do you think that we might, when we're older, unite
In a marriage of feathers and fur?'
'We might or might not,' the Kitten replied,
'I imagine it rather depends
On how things turn out but I'm sure beyond doubt
We'd be happy for now to be friends.
Let's frolic and play for a year and a day
Content to be cheerful and free,
What the future might hold has yet to be told
And till then we must just wait and see.'
Alan Millard/'The Owlet and the Kitten
That's my first duchess painted on the wall
Looking as grim as a warrior from Gaul.
She'd move in mourning black from room to room
And everywhere she breathed was filled with gloom.
I dreamt of having someone who'd beguile
And warm my heart with the magic of a smile;
Someone who'd grace the title that I gave her
With regal looks and exquisite behaviour.
Instead I got a witch whose evil spell
Made me believe that I had gone to hell.
But thankfully she's dead and I must find
A wife who dotes on me, who's warm and kind,
And mindful of the horrors of the past
I pray my next duchess will be my last.
Frank McDonald/'My First Duchess'
Santiago, clutching the plastic Che Guevara bucket his mum had bought in Havana, caught a sudden movement in the rock pool. Translucent, mysterious, with dark brown stripes – la gamba! With his long antennae the shrimp looked to Santiago like a bull in the corrida. Imagining himself in the plaza de toros, he waved his net like a matador's cape. The shrimp glared at him, did a little salsa turn then darted under a rock. Santiago waited, net in one hand, bucket in the other. 'I will catch you, hijo de puta, if I have to wait for ever,' he thought, smoking an imaginary Cohiba cigar. Then he began to move the other rocks. 'Cangrejo,' he muttered, as a little crab scuttled away. But with the shrimp, it was personal. An obsession. 'Shrimp,' he said softly, 'I love you and respect you very much. But you will be in this bucket before sunset.'
David Silverman/'The Young Boy and the Rockpool'
And I saw in my dream, a man that stood not up, nor moved (Esther 5:9), but turned aside and stood still (II Sam. 18:30), and could not in three days expound the riddle of what he must do (Judg. 14:14, Num. 6:21). And it came to pass after three days, that he was still in the same place where he was on the first day of the first month when I saw him (Josh. 3:2, John 11:6, II Chr. 29:17, Rev 1:7), without hope, not walking northward, southward, eastward, or westward (Job 7:6, II Cor. 4:2, Gen. 13:14), and stood like a pot of ointment (I Sam. 6:14, Job 41:31), as the horse, or as the mule, which have no understanding (Ps. 32:9), proceeding neither to the right hand, nor to the left (Rev. 22:1, 11 Chr. 34:2), and falling into a trance (Num. 24:16). The fool! (Ps. 53:1).
Bill Greenwell/'Pilgrim's Standstill')'
Do not go careless into that good morn,
young dads should juggle coffee cups and toys;
engage, engage with your offspring and spawn.
Jog with the pram, change nappies, feed at dawn,
Join playgroup meetings, relish bathtime noise,
Engage, engage with your offspring and spawn.
Read bedtime stories, scrub off puréed corn,
Dress them in onesies, rompers, corduroys,
Engage, engage, with your offspring and spawn.
Take naps, build castles, get those pictures drawn,
Give up wild nights of drinking with the boys,
Engage, engage with your offspring and spawn.
For each new father this time flies, I warn,
Curse, bless the little darlings and their joys,
Do not go careless into that good morn,
Engage, engage with your offspring and spawn.
Janine Beacham
No. 3406: Problematic
You are invited to cast a well-known fictional or non-fictional character, living or dead, in the role of agony aunt or uncle and provide a problem of your invention and their solution. Please email entries (150 words maximum) to [e-mail] by midday on 25 June.