[Jayne Osborn]

No poem required this time. Oh well, never mind; this kind of thing can be fun and I'm sure some of you witty Spherians will feature in the winning line-up!

Jayne

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxThe Oldie Competition
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxby Tessa Castro

Competition no 177
Someone wrote in demanding a competition not in verse. I can’t remember him distinguishing himself in Competition 172, which drew plenty of amusing entries. No matter, here’s another chance. Ambrose Bierce drew up cynical definitions in his Devil’s Dictionary, eg ‘Architect: One who drafts a plan of your house, and plans a draft of your money’; ‘Outdo: To make an enemy’.
In a similar spirit please define: Pension; MP; Holiday; Europe; HS2; Christmas; Estate Agent; Love; Meeting; Television.

Entries to ‘Çompetition no 177’ by post (The Oldie, 65 Newman Street, London W1T 3EG), fax (020 7436 8804) or email comps@theoldie.co.uk by 30th May 2014. Please include your postal address.

[Chris O'Carroll]

Once, at a used book store in Memphis, Tennessee (or possibly across the river in West Memphis, Arkansas), I asked for a copy of The Devil's Dictionary. The clerk regarded me with horror and said, "Oh, we wouldn't have anything like that." Clearly, she assumed I was looking for some sort of companion volume to The Satanic Bible.

[Gail White]

They'll never beat Bernard Shaw's definition of Christmas as a conspiracy forced on a reluctant and disgusted public by the shopkeepers and the press.

[Rob Stuart]

I have heard Christmas described as 'sitting round a dead tree eating nuts out of your socks'.

[Adrian Fry]

I like this comp and will have a go, though it is impossible to match Bierce on form. I think Beachcomber attempted something similar with his Dictionary for Today articles.

[John Whitworth]

Christmas: The Celebration of the birth of Santa.
Love: The triumph of hope over experience.
Pension: A paltry award made to someone who is good for nothing else.
HS2: How green was my valley?
MP: Male Prostitute, though this includes some Females of the more raffish sort.
Europe: Rag, Tag and Bobtail raped by bureaucratic bullshitters.
Holiday: A short unhappy sojourn among rapacious foreigners.
Estate Agent: An enemy destructive of your peace of mind. See Secret Agent.
Meeting: Journeys end in bloody meetings.
Television: A device that brings to your living room people you would never invite to your house.

[Adrian Fry]

Pension: the pittance given retirees to guarantee the supply of letters to the Editor of the Telegraph.
MP: one who, having spent years making animal noises in Parliament, can still express surprise at being discovered nose in trough.
Holiday: eventless interlude it takes fifty weeks to pay for but only the return bucket flight to erase.
Europe: a province of Germany.
HS2: algebraic term describing the slowest, most expensive route between two points, one of which no-one wants to reach.
Christmas: commencement of the 365 day gift selling season on ebay.
Estate Agent: salesperson with the ability to see the potential igloo in every puddle.
Love: the emotion all songs described before The Beatles started taking LSD.
Meeting: the formal gathering of all those in an organisation without whom the job will continue to be done perfectly well.
Television: the box Ray Gosling buried himself on.

[Roger Slater]

Television: Entertainment instantly available in one's living room after approximately thirty minutes spent locating the remote.

Holiday: A period of time during which one ceases doing nothing at one's desk in order to resume the same activity in a remote location.

Love: An emotion that binds us to those we find most annoying.

Christmas: The celebration of a day more than two thousand years in our past when the world had three more wise men than it does today.

Pension: The modern equivalent of an Alaskan ice floe.

Television: An electronic device emitting flashing lights and sounds that facilitate the loss of consciousness upon one's couch.

Meeting: A group of people engaged in surreptitious texting while pretending to listen to someone with nothing important to say.

Europe: A place where everyone speaks a funny language but no one is funny.

MP: Someone who has attained such importance in life that his sexual peccadilloes are deemed by the tabloids to be newsworthy.

Love: To place someone on a pedestal in order to look up her dress.

[ross hamilton hill]

Estate Agent
Someone you buy a home from...who then writes every month asking if you want to sell it.
Pension
Something begining with pee as in poverty, pissed off, pauper, paid off, put out to pasture, pained, perplexed, pitiful, and poor.
MP
Acronym for Misbeggoten Porker.
Holiday
A delusion everybody falls for until they try to squeeze into their plane seat.
Europe
30 countries always looking for a war.
HS2
You mean H202, said to cure everything but just makes your hair turn yellow and fall out.
Christmas
A bunch of old farts pretending the turkey smells delicious.
Love
3 years of fire followed by 30 years of ashes ( not original but that leopard new a thing ot two).
Meeting
Never met a good one yet.
Television
a boob on the tube means a slouch on the couch

[Douglas G. Brown]

Pension; A monthly payout to a “ground floor” subscriber in a massive corporate or state Ponzi scheme which may collapse during his lifetime.

MP; Member of an exclusive Old Boys Club, whose objective is to guide the decline of British civilization, while simultaneously keeping that nation’s worst criminals off its streets.

Holiday; Traveling to a foreign place to be fleeced by the natives; thereby paying penance for one’s own fleecing of vacationing foreigners in his homeland.

Europe; A motley assortment of western barbarian states which wielded considerable influence for about 20 centuries, before China resumed its place of world dominance in the 21st.

HS2; The brilliant concept of the Concorde, shorn of wings, and at far higher cost.

Christmas; The ancient Roman feast of Saturnalia, hijacked by Christians to celebrate the birth of Jesus, which occurred in the springtime. ( Jews observe it by dining out in Asian restaurants.)

Estate Agent; A professional who combines the worst qualities of a prostitute and a banker.

Love; An intense emotion which, before disillusion sets in, ensures the propagation of humanity.

Meeting; Top management’s demonstration to the lower strata that the cream always sours after rising to the top.

Television; An electronic cause of brain rot which is currently being eclipsed by the cell phone.