[Jayne Osborn]

Comp results below. Sorry they're a bit late.

Jayne

[Jayne Osborn]

I'm just back from holiday in hot Fuerteventura, where I woke early one morning to find a giant cockroach walking across my chest - aarrgghh!!!

Congratulations to Peter, Alison and Brian and to Bazza and Peter G for HMs. This comp was tricky, I thought.

Next comp on new thread.

Jayne


The Oldie Competition
by Tessa Castro


COMPETITION NO 167, in memory of Oliver Bernard, invited you to compose a verse dialogue between his two heroes, Hamlet and Piglet. Honey, bees and so ‘to be or not to be’ figured in several entries, as did Poohsticks, which, in Basil Ransome-Davies’s dialogue, Hamlet agreed to play into the bridgeless Oresund in another bid to establish his madness. David Beanland approached his punchline ‘Is it two b’s or not two b’s?’ by way of the spelling of ‘mobled queen’ in The Mousetrap, a play, we learn, that was written by Piglet himself.
Peter Goulding gave Piglet’s remarks as a sort of echoing chorus, thus responding to Hamlet’s mention of the pale Ophelia with: ‘Drowned, alas, by heffalumps and woozles.’ Not surprisingly, Hamlet all in all had the prince’s portion of the dialogue, and showed more pluck. Una McMorran established their characters in her first two lines: ‘Zounds! Who comes this way? Is it that ghost again? / No! It is I, Piglet. Did you say ghost? Again?’
Commiserations to them and congratulations to those printed below, each of whom wins £25, with the bonus prize of a Chamber’s Biographical Dictionary going to Peter Wyton.

‘Let’s try role reversal,’ said Hamlet to Piglet,
‘You be the bad guy and I’ll be the good.’
‘OK,’ replied Piglet, ‘I’ll murder Poohlonius,
‘You frolic with Tigger in Hundred Acre Wood.’

‘So I get to cavort with Kanga,’ quoth Hamlet,
‘I’ll be, or I’ll not be, with Christopher R.’
‘I’ll duel Laertes,’ squeaked Piglet, ‘whilst you
Get your head firmly wedged in a big honey jar.’

‘Rosencrantz, Guilderstern slain,’ chanted Piglet,
As the body count rose in a worrying way,
But Hamlet trailed Woozles all round the spinney,
And babysat Roo at the end of the day.

Then Piglet and Hamlet scoffed haslet in Hunslet,
Drank toasts to portraying alternative parts,
And sang a rude ditty about their creators,
Titled, ‘Milne and the Bard were a pair of old farts.’
Peter Wyton

‘To be or not to be, you baby pig?’
‘For sure I’d be,’ cries Piglet, doing a jig.

‘It’s what a happy pig must choose, though he’s
Been written out compared with Socrates –
Who chose to take the hemlock and so died.
No pig would ever opt for suicide!
With friends like Pooh, Eeyore and Tigger,
A little pig feels bolder, braver, bigger.’

‘We men are cursed with conscience and remorse
Unlike the pig, which knows no sinful source.
While men and pigs each draw a final breath,
It’s only men who dread what’s after death.’
Barbara Smoker

‘Do you see yonder cloud that’s almost in
shape of a camel?’ ‘Or a Heffalump?
Or a great big WOOZLE! Help! ’ ‘Foul sin
makes weasels of all men.’ ‘Woozles can jump,
but Pooh says they like honey. We could dig
a Woozle trap!’ ‘A trap! How now, a rat?
Dead for a ducat, dead!’ ‘And put a big
honey jar in. Pooh has got one.’ ‘The cat
will mew and dog will have his day.’ ‘Pooh’s not
a dog. He is a bear.’ ‘It matters not. To be
or not to be, that is the question. What
would you advise?’ ‘We’d better go and see
Eeyore,’ said Piglet. ‘He’s path-something, too.’
‘Ological?’ ‘No. Shorter.’ ‘Etic?’ ‘Yes.’
Hamlet took Piglet’s paw. ‘Thank you.’
And they walked on in Woozling friendliness.
Alison Prince

Piglet: Is this a pikestaff that I see before me?
Hamlet: No, little friend, ’tis but a bare bodkin –
Piglet: I know a bear who’d like to borrow it
To help him hoik the honey out of hives.
Hamlet: O, honey! ’Tis a dainty-sweet confection
Devoutly to be wished, like fair Ophel...
Piglet: With this, he wouldn’t need to get so close;
He’d poke it in while staying out of reach.
Hamlet: No reason for the bear to grunt and sweat
When probing for the undiscover’d pantry.
Piglet: He’s used balloons to float him to the spot
Where honey’s to be had, but ends up stung.
Hamlet: The stings and arrows of outragèd bees –
Piglet: He’s tried disguises, but they never work;
A bee, or not a bee; that is the question,
And somehow they can always tell he’s not.
Brian Allgar