[John Whitworth]

My Old Mother Merkle failed to win unsurprisingly but Chris O'carroll and Bill Greenwell kept things decent with a couple of goodies.

This week it's strictly prose (unless you imagine a verse novel).

NO. 2732: seeking closure
This is a twist on the annual Bulwer-Lytton contest, which asks entrants ‘to compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels’. You are invited to submit a comically appalling final paragraph to such a novel (150 words max). Please email entries, if possible, to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 25 January.

[Roger Slater]

And then he woke up in his great big bed, not naked but in thick woolen pajamas. It had all been a dream. He had not given Andrea Merkel a wedgie in the Bauhaus or smoked a joint with Barack Obama on the White House lawn as Secret Service Agents stood lookout for Sasha and Malia. He had not done shots with Putin or bet a nuclear warhead on high card or gone on television to confess his secret fear of being swallowed up by a prematurely flushing commode. But the butler delivering tea to his bedside was real. And so was Downing Street. And so were the responsibilities facing the nation. He was David Cameron, dammit, and he was in charge.

[Ann Drysdale]

Not sure about the butler - it seems to continue the fantasy a bit - what about Samantha snoring at his side? And I'm afraid you'll never creep past Lucy in woolen pajamas. Woollen pyjamas, however, would be a different matter.

I thoroughly enjoyed this. Wicked of me, but I like the idea of DC's public school image being carried to extremes of laddish prank. Wedgie indeed!

[Susan d.S.]

Go Roger! If anything it's too well-written. Enjoyed, Susan

[Gail White]

IRRELEVANT BUT URGENT MESSAGE: Jayne, I need you to send me your mailing address. Check your PMs.
-Gail

[R. S. Gwynn]

While it may be true that our story has had no middle, one may choose its beginning point and ending point with some exactitude, yet both have grown so extenuated as to preclude the existence of that part which should connect them, in the way, say, that a single strand of spaghetti may be engaged upon and nicely finished up, with only a long passage of embarrassment and social uncertainty in between, dripping sauce on one’s chin and shirt front and leaving no doubt, amongst the gathered dinner partners (who did not, mercifully, appear in the intervening chapters) that the object of their approbation was, in fact, you; thus, I must conclude this unsatisfactory narrative with the bald information the Geoffrey did successfully prevail upon Madge to relinquish the hair-clasp that was assumed to have been stolen but was, happily, only misplaced and recovered in the barest nick of time.