Speccie dear diary by 29th January
 

Rhyming diaries? I don't think so. Did Shakespeare keep a diary?

No. 2833: dear diary

You are invited to submit an extract from the adolescent diary of a well-known public figure, living or dead (150 words maximum and please specify). Please email entries, wherever possible, to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 29 January.

Not dissimilar to a recent comp (2823) although it doesn't involve a pet, of course. I didn't have any success in that one, and I fear history may repeat itself!

Don't adolescent diaries typically feature effusions of Gothic and/or treacly verse?

(Like Sylvia, I thought of something I did for the "my pet" comp -- a young Catherine the Great writing about how much she loves her horse and hates the cousin she has to marry. If Lucy didn't care for that effort then, I'm sure she wouldn't like it any better this time.)

Not necessarily, Chris. For obvious reasons, recycling usually works best between different magazines, but I once managed to recycle a losing entry for one Spectator competition into a winning entry for another - admittedly with substantial modifications, but the plot and the punch-line were identical. Perhaps Lucy had simply forgotten them!

Even if he didn't, I suspect he's about to acquire several.

I'm really sad that Catherine the Great's horse never saw the light of day on the Speccie page!

I may join the green movement and see if I can do something with re-working Rasputin's fondness for small, defenceless creatures. Who know what may come peeking through the woodwork?

(David Miliband’s diary)

Hav been reading a smashing book called ‘Down with Skool’. The hero, Molesworth, is clerely a man after my own hart. He hav no time for gurlies and other sissies. He hate latin, geog. and skool sossages. He also hav a bro Molesworth 2 who is uterly wet and a weed, just like my own bro Miliband 2.

When I gro up I shall bekum a politishun. My bro sa he want to do the same, but any fule kno he hav no chance, ha ha ha! Still, he is famly, and when I am eleckted I shall find a nice job for pore Ed. ‘Knobless obleege’, as the French master freekwently tell us. Of course, it hav to be sumthing comenshurate with his puny brane, i.e. serving the tea and biskits at Cabinet metings. As for me, I shall naturaly be Prime Minnister.

How cruel. How accurate. Skewererd.

Right, Bazza. This boy will win. Lucky I haven't entered.

Yet.