[John Whitworth]

Competition: Odd job
LUCY VICKERY
SATURDAY, 5TH NOVEMBER 2011
In Competition No. 2720 you were invited to supply a piece of prose written by a well-known author working in an unlikely context.
Thanks to Brian Moore for drawing my attention to Samuel Beckett’s flirtation with a career in grocery trade journalism, as revealed in the great man’s recently published volume of letters: ‘I see advertised in to-day’s Irish Times an editorial vacancy on the staff of the RGDATA [Retail Grocery Dairy and Allied Trades-Association] Review at £300 per an. I think seriously of applying. Any experience of trade journalism would be so useful.’

It was a strong entry and I very much regretted not having space in the winning line-up for Gerard Benson, Shirley Curran and Adrian Fry. Those that did make the cut nab £25 each. W.J. Webster gets £30.

The game opened on a gropingly conversational note — scattered brisk exchanges, more or less robust, with neither side ‘holding the field’. But then Wagstaffe, so long an effervescence on Wolverhampton’s left flank, launched, as it were, into a bravura monologue. He was superb. Defenders advancing to check his flow with determined sallies of their own were left chopfallen in his wake. With his final stride he gained the very corner of the pitch and delivered, nonchalantly enough, a ‘cross’ of Euclidean precision. Dougan, who had been lurking near the goal in the hope of exactly such a moment, stiffened at the sight. The ball was — was most beautifully — there. He rose, with the magnificent yet precarious elevation of a tossed caber, and nodded. One-nil. But that ‘one’, let me be clear, transcended the merely numerical: it was, in fine, of a brilliance that will dazzle long in the recollection.
Henry ‘Chopper’ James reports from Molineux
W.J. Webster

It’s one of those days when the Hollywood hills are a misty blue-gray valance hiding the mountains and you know the rain won’t hold off for long and the idea of an omelette floats into your mind. So you get out the eggs. They sit there, smooth as a real-estate salesman’s patter, and if you’re good enough you can crack the shells one-handed, whisk them with the cheerful dexterity of a drum-majorette and decant them into a pan where a dollar-sized lump of butter is already sizzling.
That’s when the real work starts. Now you’re a croupier using his rake to push the yellow mush from the circumference to the centre so the liquid overspill flows to the edges. Kill the heat, flip and fold and you’ve got it.
An omelette is one way with eggs. Most days, I prefer mine hard-boiled.
(from the Raymond Chandler Cookbook)
Basil Ransome-Davies

Free will and determinism. Bit of a hot topic, what? Gets those French chappies madly worked up. Makes me thirst for a cocktail for that matter, sharpen up the old grey matter for this article. Deuced good of the Home Counties Journal of Philosophy to ask me really, unless they mixed me up with someone else called Wooster.
Well, to the point, Bertram. The record on this one is pretty fuzzy. Everyone piles in from Plato onwards, yet somehow from the general scrum of Big Thinkers no answer emerges. You wouldn’t think that but it’s true, so you have to make up your own. Aha, but are you free to do that?
Frankly, I’m in a bunker with this one, and without a bally sand wedge, but my manservant says someone else deals the cards, we have to play them. Clever chap. Makes a blitz of a martini, too.
G.M. Davis/P.G. Wodehouse

There was a solemn, hushed moment in the old cock-fighting days when the antagonists, spiked and spurred, entered the pit blinking, fierce but fearful. So it was yesterday as City and United faced each other over the Tom Tidler’s ground of the centre circle. By common consent all depended on Meredith, ready as Saul facing the Amalekites, and within minutes the ball fell as pre-ordained to his feet, enabling him to release his thunderbolt.
The goalkeeper raised both massive hands palm outwards in a gesture that might have signified submission, admiration or supplication as much as simple defence. But the trajectory curved steadily upward, like Hector’s spear-thrust diverted by Pallas Athene before the walls of Troy, eluding both keeper and crossbar. A classically trained referee might well, in foro conscientiae, have awarded a corner kick for the divine deflection. But the Gods had spoken: Meredith would not score today.
Noel Petty/Thomas Hardy

Knitting is a woman’s game. It’s easy and keeps her useful and busy at home. All it takes is needles and wool. And time. Women have endless time so they knit. Yet I did once know a fellow down Sonora way who made a poncho. It was a damn fine poncho. A guy from Frisco stole it and bust Sonora man’s ass. He never knitted again.
This is how it goes: you pass the wool in front of the needle for a plain stitch. Run it behind to purl one. Knitting can be done in sleep, in dreams. Dreaming kills thinking and that is good.
After countless hours the wool has grown, it hangs down. The piece may even be something. With sleeves, a sweater. Without, a muffler. At only treble the store-bought price. And every the hell stitch will be taut with effort, time and love.
Mike Morrison/Ernest Hemingway

Thank you, thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for this — award. And when I study the figure closely I think I can even sense a hint of pride in his grim, set features. But is it pride? And when I look again I wonder if it is merely a trick of the light, a flicker caused by, perhaps, a bird soaring into flight, its shadow for a moment caught in the frame of the window over there. How easily we turn from the moment to consider — what? I consider the inspiration of the maker of this icon as he moulded and shaped these proud lines. And yet that expression — it is not pride at all: what if our knight has for an instant felt some distress, second thoughts — for what? A regretted indulgence at table, perhaps?
And then again it is an award, a token. Indeed, yes. Thank you.
Carolyn Thomas-Coxhead/Virginia Woolf at the Oscars