[John Whitworth]

Do you know for the first time I actually forgot to send in my entry. But the winners were better anyway. Bazza was as good as he usually is, our Australian associate, Janet, won again. Janet, this is becoming a habit. And Robert Schechter was mentioned in dispatches. Well done those people. And now, obviously just for me. I have no idea what 'you are invited to supply' means.

I've got a new computer with Wndows 7 which is the work of the devil. Get me some more of the old. But my old machine was getting confused, according to a technowhiz. I know how it felt.

NO. 2718: medical record
James Michie (Jaspistos) wrote a poem entitled ‘On Being Fitted with a Pacemaker’. You are invited to submit your own account, in verse, of a medical procedure undergone (16 lines maximum). You are invited to supply. Please email entries, if possible, to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 12 October.

[FOsen]

You don't suppose she meant supply "a specimen"? Or was she just taking the piss?

Anyway, Sam's already written a better one - as I recall, it was published in the Hudson Review a few years ago.

Frank

[John Whitworth]

Well, if I were Sam, I'd give it a whirl. As the great Les Murray said, publication n different continents doesn't count.

[R. S. Gwynn]

Somehow I don't think Ms. Lucy would care for "Before Prostate Surgery."

[Chris O'Carroll]

Originally Posted by R. S. Gwynn

Somehow I don't think Ms. Lucy would care for "Before Prostate Surgery."

Perhaps not, but my deplorable mind immediately defaulted to rubber-gloved, orifice-probing comedy. I predict a plethora of entries about dentists and medicos who work the other end.

[John Whitworth]

Procedure

It goes like this, the doctor said,
You must lie down upon this bed
Erected in a place apart
And we will open up your heart.
I asked, re-buttoning my shirt,
But will I die and will it hurt?
He laughed, don’t even think of it.
It will not hurt one little bit.
And for the other, my oh my,
I guarantee you will not die.
A month or two, you will be fine.
I signed upon the dotted line,
He seemed a pleasant sort of bloke.

It did hurt and I didn’t croak.