[Jayne Osborn]

Congratulations to Adrian, Chris, Bill and Bazza (x 2); these are excellent and I kept laughing out loud as I was copying them from the magazine – yes, I’ve gone back to typing out the results page when The Oldie pops through my letterbox. By the time I receive the pdf version by email from their office, and fiddle about removing columns etc, it’s actually quicker to just do it all manually.

(Next comp is a good ‘un! See new thread)

Jayne

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxThe Oldie Competition
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxby Tessa Castro

In Competition no 177 you were invited to supply definitions for a Devil’s Dictionary of the words: pension; MP; holiday; Europe; HS2; Christmas; estate agent; love; meeting; television.
You were all in devilish mood. Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914) in his own Devil’s Dictionary did not define most of the words required, but he did define love, and add observations: ‘A temporary insanity curable by marriage or by removal of the patient from the influences under which he incurred the disorder. This disease, like caries and many other ailments, is prevalent only among civilised races living under artificial conditions; barbarous nations breathing pure air and eating simple food enjoy immunity from its ravages.’
Some of you were tempted to give the same definition, no doubt unwittingly, but I liked Fay Dickinson’s best among the new suggestions, although others had cynical appeal too.
Those below win £5 for each definition printed, with the bonus prize of a Chambers Biographical Dictionary going to S L Clare.

Pension: a means of providing the government with an assured income for the rest of your life.
Holiday: a period of aimlessness, usually involving the disappearance of a significant sum of money.
Europe: a mythological land of peace and cooperation based on a democratic ideal (Brit); a training ground for spies (US).
Meeting: an officially sanctioned method of wasting time.
Television: an archaic form of communication now used largely to create ambiance in an empty room
S L Clare

Television: instrument in the house on which most of the cooking is done.
Adrian Fry

Estate agent: one who binds his victims in broken chains.
Meeting (he’s in a): your cheque wasn’t in the post.
Television: a device that relies upon visual effects to distract its viewers from mediocre content.
Chris Randall

Christmas: season when those who never see each other meet, and remember why.
Estate agent: someone who is compact and bijou with the truth.
Margaret Thulborne

Estate agent: a person who makes up 2 up and 2 down equal 5.
Love: emotion felt by a couple who haven’t known each other very long.
Meeting: wasted time recorded in minutes.
Fay Dickinson

Pension: an income sufficient to cover all the necessities of life except nourishing food and adequate housing.
Holiday: a period of time spent away from home, during which it is customary to engage in activities that promote skin cancer, cirrhosis, obesity and bankruptcy.
HS2: a scheme for conveying travellers from London to Birmingham so rapidly that they will have no time for second thoughts.
Love: a state of mind conducive to over-estimating one’s own sexual attractiveness.
Chris O’Carroll

Pension: a bet placed by an amateur punter against professional actuaries.
Love: an emotion that deceives us into thinking that we are not alone.
Bill Webster

Pension: money paid to someone after they are too old to do anything enjoyable with it.
Mary Hodges

Christmas: a short pause between two major sales bonanzas.
Estate agent: a conversationalist guilty of sins of commission.
Bill Greenwell

Holiday: time spent abroad working on your emails.
Paul Holland

Pension: income from a source that hopes you will die soon.
Holiday: a temporary change of Hell.
Basil Ransome-Davies

Christmas: the season of peace, goodwill and flying pigs.
GM Davis

MP: someone who stands to gain.
George McGilvray Wilson