Speccie; Forward Thinking
 

The results of the McGonagall Competition can be found on the appropriate thread. Congratulations to Bill Greenwell who has a well-deserved top spot. You will note that the prize money has been increased in the last few weeks to £30 or £5 for Bill. That will not quite make up for the spectacular slide in the pound. What you want, my friends, are Australian dollars. They are the international currency of choice. It's probably down to that nice Mr Rudd, eh?

Now to this week's competition. A goodie I say.

No. 2627: Forward thinking
You are invited to submit a rhyming prophecy for 2010 (16 lines maximum). Please email entries, where possible, to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on Wednesday 9 December.

And here is my set of prophecies. They may need annotation here and there for some of you foreign lot. But then few audiences are as well read as Sphereans. But I'll give you a start. UKIP is the United Kingdom Independence Party whose policy it is to leave the EU. As far as I know it has no other policies. Spud-U-like you will just have to google.

Forward Thinking

In January six-foot drifts of snow will block the Strand
And packs of wolves will howl in every corner of the land.

In February polar bears will stalk through Aberdeen
As Scottish Terror Squads invade Buck House and shoot the Queen.

In March Her Majesty, revived, a Second Good Queen Bess,
Will halt the English armies at the walls of Inverness.

In April, Bess on horseback celebrates, to rousing cheers,
A Kingdom of the English that will last a thousand years.

In May the Caledonian Brown Bear and all his crew
Of rogues and fools and nobodies will meet their Waterloo.

In June the UKIP Government will ban all minarets
And halve the hellish tax on petrol, booze and cigarettes.

In dank July the English clad in raincoats and galoshes
Renounce the Evil Empire of the Frenchies and the Boches.

In August an XI of old England’s stalwart sons
Will whack the Pakistani side by seven hundred runs.

September: now the English start to trade at special rates
With Australasia, Canada and the United States.

October: caped crusader Boris Johnson on his bike
Rescues four and twenty virgins from a London Spud-U-Like.

Come wild November, Boris, with his Midas touch of drama,
Flogs the Twenty-Twelve Olympics on to President Obama.

In drear December arctic ice will close the Channel ports
Leaving Santa Claus to perish under skidding juggernauts.

It's 8 lines over but who cares. Sometimes the poems you write are so good I feel like giving up on trying to write poetry all together.

Damn! In the heat of composition I clean forgot. Well, THAT is the poem. I shall send Lucy an abbreviated version. Thanks for liking it, Orwn. It gave me much pleasure to compose but sometimes that's a BAD sign

Spectacular slide in the pound, eh?
Since I'm hoping to be in England next summer, I'd like a weak pound and a strong dollar scheduled for about July 5, please.

Good one, John! The bit about Boris Johnson cracked me up!

I've had to toss several of my own drafts so far--they were all too predictable!

Donna

Gail, if you weant a REALLY weak pound then you must pray for a Gordon Brown victory in the polls. But please don't. He's the Scotch answer to Robert Mugabe.

This is what you do so magnificently, John: forward thinking. Your lines push onward with irrepressible momentum.

I predict more Whitworth wins in two thousand and ten,
heralding eleven when he’ll win his weight again.

John, does reviving Her Maj save you from charges of lèse-majesté?

My own predictions are probably too parochial and I couldn't ever hope to match your galoshes and Boches.

That's a permanent poem.

After Nostradamus

He with the hornéd helm returns to vex us.
G.W.B. will venture out of Texas.

The kilted one shall cringe beneath the steeple.
"God's will is Simon!" say the joyous people.

The Whore of Babylon shall dress in glory.
The Pope decides gay priests are hunky-dory.

The sinking ship is one in which to bail in.
We haven't heard the last from Sarah Palin.

Seek everywhere, in all the nooks and crannies.
Don't try to make much sense of the Afghanis.

A tongue unleashed is but a spitting llama.
Declining polls vex President Obama.

Gaul's vintages are tannicy and nosy.
Another term for Nicolas Sarkozy.

Green raiment augurs April's wealth of asters.
Tiger rebounds and wins another Master's.

Nice one, Sam. You're right about Tiger, I reckon. And you will all be overjoyed to hear I have rejigged my own set of prophecies. I was going to kill off Boris but fivefootone (bless her) found him funny so he stays in.

Forward Thinking

Winter – polar bears are stalking through the streets of Aberdeen.
Scottish Terror blames the English, firebombs Windsor, shoots the Queen.
Her Britannic Majesty restored, our second Good Queen Bess
Leads invading English armies to the walls of Inverness.

Spring – the Caledonian chancer, Brown with all his pirate crew,
Rogues and fools and tarts and gangsters, staggers to his Waterloo.
Rampant UKIP sweeps the country, vows to ban all minarets,
Then to halve the hellish tax on petrol, booze and cigarettes.

Summer – and the doughty English, in their raincoats and galoshes,
Vote to shun the Evil Empire of the Frenchies and the Boches.
At the Oval, an XI of our skilled and stalwart sons
Whacks the Pakistani tourists, wins by seven hundred runs.

Autumn – see our caped crusader, Boris Johnson on his bike,
Rescue four and twenty virgins from a London Spud-U-Like.
Then this Mighty London Mayor, connoisseur of wit and drama,
Flogs the Twenty-Twelve Olympics off to President Obama.

2010
will be one big amen
to our lemming-like yen
in the noughties.
Determined to lose,
the new leader we'll choose
will be one more white schmooze
in his forties.
We'll continue to spend
on a war without end,
ever willing to send
reinforcements,
quite prepared to believe
all the things they'll achieve
every time we receive
their endorsements.

2010 PREDICTION

After oh-one, oh-two, oh-three,
oh-four, oh-five, oh-six and then
oh-seven, oh-eight, oh-nine, foresee:
next year will be called oh-ten.

Sporting Forecast 2010
 

Cappello's lot won't light up grounds
But make it to the knock-out rounds
Until, in extra time, dog-weary,
They meet the second Hand of Thierry.

Long after spring has been and sprung
The House of Commons will be hung
And Brown and Cameron will beg
That saving grace, the Hand of Clegg.

The roof at Wimbledon will pass
Two weeks shut tight to save the grass
While outside, in the wet and mist,
Umbrellas shield a Hand of Whist.

Test Matches too will be a pain
When shrunk to one day due to rain
And after light is offered - Boo! Hiss! -
Crowds curse the Hand of Duckworth-Lewis.

Initially I took that House of Commons line another way and my eyes lit up. All those gibbets strtetching back almost infinitely! Nice piece though.

Looking Forward to a Happy New Year!

The earth will tilt far easterly
as China’s coffers fill,
and Kim ll Sung gets heavier,
despite his being ill.
A war will mushroom rapidly
across the Middle East
as bold Iran completes its plan
to leaven bread with yeast.
And Southeast Asia cultivates
a fatal strain of flu
that hops a plane in Singapore
and comes to visit you.

PREDICTIONS FOR 2010

A new consensus will be found
and fences will be mended
as enemies find common ground
and war, at last, is ended.

The world will hold a plebiscite.
Uanimously carried:
a law declaring it a right
for gay folks to be married.

Pollution will be purged from air,
from water, plants and earth.
The bald will grow back all their hair.
The barren will give birth.

Peace and love and art and song
and charity and cheer
are on their way, unless I'm wrong.
It should be quite a year.

Nice one, Roger. Fun stuff, I really hope yours comes to pass!

Cheers!
Donna

Peace and love and art and song? No. We had that. Chap called Manson.

So maybe you'd prefer my alternate final line:

Oh wait, that was last year!

I do prefer the alternate, Rajah!

Roger and I had much the same idea:

Coming in two-thousand-ten:
Peace on Earth, good will to men!
The Irish finally will see
the sense of being C of E.
The Scots will give the sacred Stone
its rightful place beneath the throne.
Barack will wave his Nobel Prize
and cause to dematerialize
three-quarters of the Middle East,
while Kim Jong Il (the current Beast)
along with leaders of Iran
will vow a nuclear weapons ban.
As climax of this upward trend,
on July fifth the world will end
just prior to Bin Laden's capture.
Grasp the first fine careless Rapture!

2010 PREDICTIONS

Each morning throughout twenty-ten
the light will break at dawn,
and not a minute sooner.
By night it will be gone.

January will be cold.
So will February.
March will start out cold, as well,
but by the end, not very.

April, everything will thaw.
The heat will build in May.
When June is three weeks old, hear this:
we'll have our longest day.

And then the days will shrink in size
until ten days before
New Year's Eve, when we will cheer
it's twenty-ten no more.

This one's for Gail:

2010 Cheer

Hip hip hurray!
Let's give a big holler
for the weak little pound
and the big strong dollar!

Apocalypse 2010

Terrorists huffin',
world leaders puffin',
the earth destroyed
like a burnt up muffin,
then nuffin'.

Marion - that last one is hilariously, lovably, wonderful!

Thanks, Cally!

*********************

After Returning from Their Five-Year
Mission, The Crew of the Starship
Enterprise Watches American Idol

Stardate 2010

“Spock, this is Idol? With Paula gone?”
“Insufficient data, Captain. Although it
appears to be some form of Idol.” “Bones?”
“It’s Idol, Jim, but not as we know it.”