[Graham King]

Originally Posted by John Whitworth

Thank you, Graham. Actually, though I have come across many people with childhood memores of the phrase, I came across it quite lately, in a novel I think. Lovely evocative phrase that makes Bedfordshire like Timbuctoo. Whereas in reality (huh!) it is nothing of the sort. It's like pleasantly finding that Whitstable is redolent of romance to somebody living in New York.

John, I can quite imagine that Whit+stable would evoke romance for a New Yorker (or any American) - by suggesting Walt Whitman; homely horsiness (with all that the horse has meant to American history and culture; and also 'stable' as in serene, placid, equable, dependable - someone to lean on in a crisis and draw comfort from...

Thank you too for your commendations of my adopted home county, Fife.

[Jerome Betts]

Recline and decline

Is yours a spine that bends like willow,
Strength sapped by eiderdown and pillow?
Long lie-ins waste both wit and muscle,
Life’s prizes come to those who bustle.

When prone, the outlook’s horizontal,
And mouse-sized snags grow mastodontal
So wimps who linger under sheeting
Will fail and flop and take a beating.
.
Ah yes, young business push and shovers,
Beware the place a duvet covers.
No boss or parsnips will you butter
In bed, that road towards debt and gutter!

Such sound advice! I beg you, take it!
Get up, and out, and on, and make it,
Like me, a whizz-kid tired of whizzing,
With time, at last, for good long zizzing.

[FOsen]

Tonight, when I am nearly to cloud nine,
I dream a picture-word and see that 'bed'
resembles what it means: the b, whose line
is like a headboard by a drowsing head;

the sheet and mattress that transect the e;
and feet against d bedpost—what’s the word
for this? A machicote? A soldanry?
Lie still! Pretend those thoughts have not occurred . . .

Just be the bed, the thing, that word, the . . . hell.
Opisthognathous? Mazard? Pseudoblepsis?
Pantopragmatic, frammis, casquatel,
rhabdosophy, kememe, omphaloskepsis?

Perth Amboy, tergiversator or wyke?
By five, with half the dictionary read
I know it’s none of those, so—feeling like
an ideogram—I send myself to bed.

Frank

[Susan McLean]

I love yours, Frank. What a novel insight, and the last line is killer!

Susan

[FOsen]

Thanks, Susan - back for tweaks - won't vouch that all of those words exist outside the OED, but it was fun hunting them. Perth Amboy's a nod to Thurber's "More Alarms At Night" - I made the mistake of rereading it in a quiet library the other day, and it had me spluttering in admiration.

[Graham King]

Originally Posted by FOsen

Tonight, when I am nearly to cloud nine,
I dream a picture-word and see that 'bed'
resembles what it means: the b, whose line
is like a headboard by a drowsing head;

the sheet and mattress that transect the e;
and feet against d bedpost—what’s the word
for this? A machicote? A soldanry?
Lie still! Pretend those thoughts have not occurred . . .

Just be the bed, the thing, that word, the . . . hell.
Opisthognathous? Mazard? Pseudoblepsis?
Pantopragmatic, frammis, casquatel,
rhabdosophy, kememe, omphaloskepsis?

Perth Amboy, tergiversator or wyke?
By five, with half the dictionary read
I know it’s none of those, so—feeling like
an ideogram—I send myself to bed.

Frank

Fantastic, Frank!
And thanks for providing those words, which I expect will reward my reading up on later ...

[Terese Coe]

I put together two quatrains, but they don't actually belong together. So here's one.

Are you lying in your bed?
Expect a little prying
from newsmen who would else be dead,
and not for want of lying.

[Jayne Osborn]

"My darling, I have a confession -- "
he sighed, as they lay there in bed.
She thwarted him, "Shh... yes, I know, love;
you talked in your sleep." Then she said,
"You bedded my friend, and my sister,
and one of your secretaries too."
He cried, "Will you ever forgive me?"
She kissed him and said, "Course I do!"

The truth was, she'd only suspected,
but risked it by calling his bluff,
expecting an outraged denial,
but now she had proof. Fair enough -
his honesty would be rewarded,
she thought to herself: he can keep
his Beemer, a duvet... and that's it!
She grinned as she dropped off to sleep.

[Brian Allgar]

Ooooh, that's wicked, Jayne. I must remember to gag myself before going to sleep.

[Jayne Osborn]

Ooh, Brian, do we have a bit of a guilty conscience, then, eh?

(When they say "by December 14th", do you reckon that on the 14th, just after 9am, is OK? I hope so, otherwise I'm not even in the running!)

Has anyone ever won with a last-minute, on-the-deadline entry? The Speccie always says "by midday" on the given date, but I'm not sure about The Oldie and other comps.

Jayne