[John Whitworth]

The results of the McGonagall Competition can be found on the appropriate thread. Congratulations to Bill Greenwell who has a well-deserved top spot. You will note that the prize money has been increased in the last few weeks to £30 or £5 for Bill. That will not quite make up for the spectacular slide in the pound. What you want, my friends, are Australian dollars. They are the international currency of choice. It's probably down to that nice Mr Rudd, eh?

Now to this week's competition. A goodie I say.

No. 2627: Forward thinking
You are invited to submit a rhyming prophecy for 2010 (16 lines maximum). Please email entries, where possible, to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on Wednesday 9 December.

[John Whitworth]

And here is my set of prophecies. They may need annotation here and there for some of you foreign lot. But then few audiences are as well read as Sphereans. But I'll give you a start. UKIP is the United Kingdom Independence Party whose policy it is to leave the EU. As far as I know it has no other policies. Spud-U-like you will just have to google.

Forward Thinking

In January six-foot drifts of snow will block the Strand
And packs of wolves will howl in every corner of the land.

In February polar bears will stalk through Aberdeen
As Scottish Terror Squads invade Buck House and shoot the Queen.

In March Her Majesty, revived, a Second Good Queen Bess,
Will halt the English armies at the walls of Inverness.

In April, Bess on horseback celebrates, to rousing cheers,
A Kingdom of the English that will last a thousand years.

In May the Caledonian Brown Bear and all his crew
Of rogues and fools and nobodies will meet their Waterloo.

In June the UKIP Government will ban all minarets
And halve the hellish tax on petrol, booze and cigarettes.

In dank July the English clad in raincoats and galoshes
Renounce the Evil Empire of the Frenchies and the Boches.

In August an XI of old England’s stalwart sons
Will whack the Pakistani side by seven hundred runs.

September: now the English start to trade at special rates
With Australasia, Canada and the United States.

October: caped crusader Boris Johnson on his bike
Rescues four and twenty virgins from a London Spud-U-Like.

Come wild November, Boris, with his Midas touch of drama,
Flogs the Twenty-Twelve Olympics on to President Obama.

In drear December arctic ice will close the Channel ports
Leaving Santa Claus to perish under skidding juggernauts.

[Orwn Acra]

It's 8 lines over but who cares. Sometimes the poems you write are so good I feel like giving up on trying to write poetry all together.

[John Whitworth]

Damn! In the heat of composition I clean forgot. Well, THAT is the poem. I shall send Lucy an abbreviated version. Thanks for liking it, Orwn. It gave me much pleasure to compose but sometimes that's a BAD sign

[Gail White]

Spectacular slide in the pound, eh?
Since I'm hoping to be in England next summer, I'd like a weak pound and a strong dollar scheduled for about July 5, please.

[Donna English]

Good one, John! The bit about Boris Johnson cracked me up!

I've had to toss several of my own drafts so far--they were all too predictable!

Donna

[John Whitworth]

Gail, if you weant a REALLY weak pound then you must pray for a Gordon Brown victory in the polls. But please don't. He's the Scotch answer to Robert Mugabe.

[Cally Conan-Davies]

This is what you do so magnificently, John: forward thinking. Your lines push onward with irrepressible momentum.

I predict more Whitworth wins in two thousand and ten,
heralding eleven when he’ll win his weight again.

[Janet Kenny]

John, does reviving Her Maj save you from charges of lèse-majesté?

My own predictions are probably too parochial and I couldn't ever hope to match your galoshes and Boches.

That's a permanent poem.

[R. S. Gwynn]

After Nostradamus

He with the hornéd helm returns to vex us.
G.W.B. will venture out of Texas.

The kilted one shall cringe beneath the steeple.
"God's will is Simon!" say the joyous people.

The Whore of Babylon shall dress in glory.
The Pope decides gay priests are hunky-dory.

The sinking ship is one in which to bail in.
We haven't heard the last from Sarah Palin.

Seek everywhere, in all the nooks and crannies.
Don't try to make much sense of the Afghanis.

A tongue unleashed is but a spitting llama.
Declining polls vex President Obama.

Gaul's vintages are tannicy and nosy.
Another term for Nicolas Sarkozy.

Green raiment augurs April's wealth of asters.
Tiger rebounds and wins another Master's.