Speccie Comp Take Six
Competition: Take six
LUCY VICKERY
SATURDAY, 12TH NOVEMBER 2011
In Competition No. 2721 you were invited to supply a short story incorporating the following: ‘rebarbative’, ‘solipsistic’, ‘lapidary’, ‘consequential’, ‘plangent’, ‘gibbous’. It was an impressive postbag with only the occasional stilted moment — you displayed considerable ingenuity in weaving the given words into a plausible and entertaining narrative. I was sorry to have to disqualify Adrian Fry’s amusing portrait of a village literary festival on account of a technical slip.Commendations, too, to Max Ross, Susan Therkelsen and John Plowman. The winners get £25; the bonus fiver is Brian Murdoch’s.
Suddenly made redundant, James was one very angry lexicographer — he was furious, enraged, livid, wild, SEE: mad. Solipsistic as he was, his entire self demanded revenge. Should he burn down the Press? No, why destroy all his hard-won definitions from A to F? A more subtle long-term sabotage suggested itself. He opened up the files and crabbedly went to the entry for ‘rebarbative’, the sense of which he swiftly amended to ‘having the laxative quality of rhubarb’. His new definition for ‘lapidary’ was positively lapidary: ‘pertaining to French rabbits’. Defining ‘gibbous’ he deleted everything lunar and substituted ‘(1) monkey-like; (2) coll. “kindly pass to me”’. ‘Plangent’ became ‘coming off at the flat edge of a circle’, which would certainly make some poor mathematician weep, looking it up in the future. The imagined consequential ructions when, in 20 years time these were noticed, gave him great satisfaction and present solace.
Brian Murdoch
Coming out of a somewhat solipsistic retirement to teach Classics again for a term, I gladly lost myself in school life, and was delighted to have a sobriquet bestowed — not the tediously trite ‘Loony’ (my name is Moon) but the literate Gibbous, with its apt allusion to my now hunched and possibly rebarbative appearance. Less pleasing was to hear it reduced to Gibbo, although that was to have a diverting consequential effect. One day I apprehended a young scapegrace capering in the corridor and ululating in mimicry of the plangent tone I adopt for reciting Virgil. Asked what he was doing, he said, ‘Being a gibbon, sir;’ adding helpfully, ‘That’s you, sir. Gibbon.’ ‘Doubtless with reference to the lapidary style of my reports.’ ‘No, sir. It’s the way you walk, sir, I think.’ Impudent, yes, but disarmingly honest. I dismissed him. He’d learn the better policy soon enough.
W.J. Webster
‘I do rather like that “o”,’ said Henry. ‘It’s positively gibbous.’ ‘Cyril,’ interrupted Alice, ‘you still haven’t answered me; what is so damned patronising about an aesthetically pleasing font?’ ‘And look at that “r”,’ murmured Stanley. ‘It’s...’ ‘Rebarbative!’ yelled Cyril. ‘Oh, come off it, Cyril, the whole thing looks as if it was chiselled by a three-fingered lapidary on barbiturates.’ ‘Alice,’ snapped Cyril, ‘we’ve got to have something edgy for young people. Aesthetics is so last Olympics.’ ‘Well, that’s just it, isn’t it,’ retorted Alice. ‘It’s the Olympics — not a Nuremberg rally.’ ‘Oh, spare us your plangent whinging, Alice,’ said Ramona. ‘At least this is consequential.’ ‘I’d rather be plangent,’ spat Alice, ‘than a solipsistic son of a —’ ‘Right,’ interjected Henry, a bit too chirpily. ‘So, let’s vote – who’s for the London 2012 typeface? Oh, good. You can come down off that ledge now, Cyril.’
Frank Osen
Many think of the layabout community as ignorant slobs. Wrong. (We’re not community-minded, either — too solipsistic.) The fact is I decided while still at Oxford that I was too intelligent to work, gaining the consequential status of an élite dosser. So I’m not your average foul, rebarbative Frank Gallagher workshy type. I’m clean, smartly dressed, articulate and highly cultured. I can appreciate the haunting, plangent timbre of a Mahler symphony, translate lapidary inscriptions on monuments in Greek and Latin. I am also a wine-bibber and connoisseur of fine food, a regular diner-out at the best restaurants: so much so that my figure has become somewhat gibbous.
How does an idler live so well? Simple. I do have my arm’s-length contacts among the Frank Gallaghers, so I know what they’re up to. I also have an understanding with the Daily Mail. I sell them benefit cheats.
G.M. Davis
‘You are dim, half-illuminated, practically gibbous,’ remarked Simon’s English teacher in a consequential tone, ‘despite your lapidary style. Your supposedly perfect prose betrays only your solipsistic streak. Frankly, I find your attitude and presence rebarbative.’ She put down her red pen, and sneered. A plangent bell rang out, summoning everyone to Evensong.
‘Must I pray for my soul, ma’am?’ remarked Simon.
‘You may do as you see fit. I should pray for the salvation of your ego, which I long to crush.Social workers who dealt with Simon’s case found him pretty unpleasant as well. But they had to admit that his mother, who was found with a dictionary rammed down her throat, lost for her final words, and his father, who appeared to have dressed as a cleric before being battered to death by some spare clappers, were far from innocent.
‘So much for home education,’ remarked the psychologist.
Bill Greenwell
Worshippers of Schistianity quaked before the rebarbative Reverend ‘Rocky’ Gneiss. Nice, no; homophonic, yes. He was a convert of the geologian Dr Ian Pompei whose Ulster tones put the ore into oratory. Rocky’s plangent voice would boom out ‘Lava thy neighbour’ with consequential hardening of relations. Supplicants would walk barefoot over rough pebbles of green malachite until they were jaded. This was supposed to be lapidary for the soul. The only other religion was Carbolicism led by His Ropiness The Soap and which sported jokey priests named Lather Ted. Even the most solipsistic non-ablutionists warmed to its promise of everlasting Lifeboy. A sect would deliberately rub the bars into gibbous shapes. They were known as the over-half Moonies. At an ecumenical conference Rocky and The Soap found common ground in pumice. They merged completely as the Church of Mineral Cleansers for Exfoliating the Faith.
John Samson
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