[Chris O'Carroll]

No 4275
Set by Leonora Casement
We asked for writing that includes the words: sparrow, destiny, diva, pizza, don, gecko, blog, gestation, Luger and judge.

This week’s winners
We were sad to lose the newbie Keith Giles’s comparison of Édith Piaf to Alex Ferguson but, although it began so very well, it rather tailed off in the second half. We also noticed that some of you were using words somewhat imaginatively: “Take a quick gecko at her blog and judge for yourselves . . .” (Alanna Blake); “No gestation of affection . . .” (Jane Coy). Just a bit too imaginative for us, my dears. Apologies for the two detectives but the Luger rather dictated that direction. The unexpected poem was oddly moving. The winners get £25, with the Tesco vouchers going, in addition, to Ian Birchall.

Fair play
If you’re invited to judge the pizza competition at your local fair, think twice before saying yes. Everything changes once you don that judicial wig and robe. (Not literally. I would have looked daft.)
I suppose it was my destiny. This review blog started as a small, local affair, then blew up after my “extreme round-up” went viral. (No, gecko does not taste like chicken and anyone who tells you sparrow is as good as quail is not your friend.) It was only a matter of time until fair organisers reached out to me. Sorry, does that makes me sound a bit of a diva?
When I write, I set my own pace. Some reviews have longer gestation periods. But at the fair, they want your verdict now. It’s like trying to assess an array of flavour sensations as someone holds a Luger to your head.
Chris O’Carroll

Death of the critic
Morse looked at the corpse lying on the kitchen floor, a Luger bullet in its forehead.
“It seems he was a law don at Lonsdale who became a High Court judge,” Lewis informed him.
Morse surveyed the room. On the table a pizza ready for the microwave; on the sideboard a caged gecko stared at them curiously; on the radio a diva was singing of the death of Tristan.
Lewis went on: “Apparently, he had a blog . . .”
“Second-rate mind,” growled Morse. “The internet allows no time for the gestation of ideas.”
“Last week, he said the Home Secretary had the brain of a sparrow.”
“Case solved,” declared Morse with satisfaction. “The destiny of anyone who criticises this bloody government.”
Ian Birchall

Judge dread
Downing drank a large whisky and felt it emerge as sweat. Could you believe in God in this heat? They taught you that God knew every sparrow that fell, every mote of human destiny. God knew what the unblinking gecko on the wall felt, what decision Judge Grissini would come to. When they’d last met, over a bad Montepulciano and worse pizza, the judge had explained that 24 hours in custody was the “gestation period” of a confession.
He’d been left to consider that, alone. The police had taken his computer as well as his phone, so he couldn’t blog or email. The local don who had corrupted and could save him was in Rome with a diva on his arm. Downing eyed the Luger on his desk. Could he use it if they came back and trade 24 hours of torture for eternal damnation?
Basil Ransome-Davies

A curious case
“You may remember, Watson,” he said, “the incident of the Italian diva, who shot an Oxford don with a Luger?”
“Certainly, Holmes,” I replied. “A bizarre case; she claimed on her blog to be showing off, trying to hit a sparrow in the nearby bushes. They were having a quiet pizza together in an open-air café and discussing the destiny of their relationship.”
“Apparently, the real cause was that he toasted her, saying, ‘What ho!’ and she, being Italian, thought he said ‘gecko’ and was insinuating that her handbag was not real lizard! Touchy people, these Italians (I’ve written a monograph on the subject), but these affairs often have a long gestation.”
“I wonder what the judge will make of it all?” I replied.
“It was a case of the gecko that did not croak in the afternoon,” said Holmes.
John Kirkaldy

Mind your pizza
When every Luger lurges
and every gecko gockes,
it’s time to don a thinking cap
and think outside the box,
for words said in gestation
are often true and many,
and every judge and diva
must sometimes spend a penny,
and destiny a sparrow is
that keeps us flying blind,
so why not end this dire old blog
and keep your pizza mind?
Dave Sissons