Thanks, Brian.
I think I prefer the second, but I've bunged both Lucy-wards, in the hope that one or other might take her fancy.
'The Last Spectator Competition' - that's a thought. Are we competitors an ageing breed, with our range of literary reference and our delight in formal verse?
In the course of some historical research, I looked at some copies of the Westminster Gazette of a hundred years ago. Every Saturday the literary editor (Naomi Royde-Smith) set a competition, usually of a somewhat daunting nature. Readers might be asked, for example, to translate a poem by Robert Bridges into Greek hexameters.
In a hundred years time, will our Spectatorial amusements seem as recondite and strange to any readers of the future who chance to puzzle over them?
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