Eratosphere - (Standing in for John) Speccie Any Questions

John is temporarily indisposed and has asked me to post The Spectator results this week. (Don't worry, he assures me that he's going to be a 'New Man' in a few days.) But seriously - "Haste ye back" John.
And yippee, you're a winner!

A good Spherian presence again: Many congratulations to John, Bazza and George.

Saturday 6th August 2011
Lucy Vickery
Any questions

‘To ______, or not to ______, that is the question...’ In Competition No. 2707 you were invited to fill in the blanks and continue for up to a further 15 lines.
The challenge elicited a topical response from many competitors — ‘to hack or not to hack...’ agonised George Simmers — and dilemmas of the digital age loomed large too: ‘To tweet or not to tweet... Can fourteen times ten characters ever tell a tale...’ (Jenny Lowe).
Tim Raikes, Carolyn Thomas-Coxhead and Elizabeth Bullen were unlucky losers. The winners, printed below, get £25 each. The extra fiver is D.A. Prince’s.

To drink or not to drink: that is the question.
Whether to down one’s units all at once
In one sweet session of outrageous booze
Or eek them out in thimblefuls — small sips
Through meanly measured days. To count, record —
Oh God! And by addition to prolong
Our temperate time to drag along like death
From over-moderation. That’s no life.
But yet, through wine’s excess, what hell may
come
When livers have surrendered in the fight?
For who would face the medic’s stern regard,
The tutting nurse, the glum teetotaller’s frown
When units are uncountable as sand? —
It makes you think. Still, one more for the road.
Tomorrow’s bus might have my number on’t
And then the rest is dryness.
D.A. Prince

To rhyme or not to rhyme, that is the question.
‘Free verse,’ some cry, ‘from all such verbal ties!’
Dismissing any diffident suggestion
That matching sounds might be a thing to prize.
Does rhyming make a corset or a frame,
Set off a thought or curb its natural line?
Is choosing words that chime an idle game
Or honouring a classic verse design?
If blank’s the way all modern verse should be,
And all that abba stuff has had its time,
Reactionaries are gratified to see
That hip-hop likes its lyrics wrapped in rhyme.
Let’s leave the resolution, then, to Will,
The master of this craft, whose verse would be
Turned for the role it needed to fulfil,
Untrammelled, as you like it, rhymed or free.
W.J. Webster

To go or not to go, that is the question.
I need to go, of that there is no doubt,
But then I’d have to wade through this congestion,
Whereas, if I sit tight, I might last out.
I should have thought of what it might portend
Before I booked the middle of row J,
But now it’s legs tight-crossed until the end
Or else disrupt the action of the play.
My mother’s voice comes to me down the years:
‘Clean hankie? Tidy hair? And have you been?’
Back then I used to brush aside such fears,
But Time has worked its evil in between.
Can I edge past the deep, long-suffering sighs
Then stumble back through those resentful knees?
Along the other road, though, madness lies.
Here goes, then: ‘Sorry. Would you excuse me, please?’
Noel Petty

To eat, or not to eat, that is the question:
Whether ’tis simpler in the end to suffer
The flab and bulges of a bloated body,
Or to be firm about the rolls of blubber,
And through a diet end them? To diet, to slim,
Not gorge; and with a diet to say we end
The bulges, and the rolls of excess fat
And flesh that dangles: ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To diet, not eat;
Then dream of all that food — ay, there’s the rub:
For in that iron diet, what dreams may come,
Of chocolate, cheese, cream cakes and caviar,
Of fillet steak au poivre, foie gras and pies,
Of bacon butties, buns, boeuf bourguignon,
Must give us pause — there’s the respect
That makes calamity of a flabby mass.
Shirley Curran

‘To be or not to be, that is the question’ —
That’s what Hamlet said, or was it Jean-Paul Sartre?
Was he being trite or deep? Was he talking in his
sleep?
Was he suffering perhaps from indigestion?

‘Exist or not exist?’ mused Samuel Beckett.
‘Here’s your problem, ontologically speaking.’
Since the evidence was sparse he pursued it up his
arse,
Then exclaimed, as Father Ted might do, ‘Oh feck
it.’

‘Give me libido or death,’ was Freud’s injunction;
Being Viennese, his mind was in a whirl
As it wrangled like a squid to solve the ego and the
id
And conclude the human default is dysfunction.

These are questions that demand incisive answers,
As all the mighty thinkers cited knew,
But my brain hurts when I think and I’d rather have
a drink
In a sleazy cocktail bar with go-go dancers.
Basil Ransome-Davies

To think or not to think, that is the question.
But every question doesn’t have an answer.
If I may be permitted one suggestion:
Too much anxiety can give you cancer.

Best cultivate a calm, uncluttered mind now.
Don’t read the papers, shun all broadcast news
And never argue politics. You’ll find how
Life runs more smoothly if you don’t have views.

Opinions on the Middle East. Not me, mate?
World Climate Change? I haven’t got a clue.
Likewise the Euro and the British rebate.
Or is it opt-out? Long ago I knew.

My general ignorance is just the ticket
For all discussions on the Wealth of Nations.
I’ll eat and drink and smoke and watch the cricket
And leave it to the coming generations.
John Whitworth