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Unread 06-05-2014, 01:34 AM
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John Whitworth John Whitworth is offline
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Default Speccie groundwork by 18 June

I know. They are the first seven batsmen in the new England Test team. Mike Oolite's cover drive is sheer delight. Damn! That rhymes.

No. 2853: ground work

You are invited to incorporate the following words (they are real geological terms) into a piece of plausible and entertaining prose so that they acquire a new meaning in the context of your narrative: Corallian, Permian, Lias, Kimmeridge, Oolite, Cornbrash, Ampthill. Please email entries (wherever possible) of up to 150 words to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 18 June.
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Unread 06-05-2014, 08:18 AM
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Douglas G. Brown Douglas G. Brown is offline
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Indian scout Running Antelope peered around the side of a large Ampthill on the crest of Kimmeridge. In the valley below, U.S. Cavalry troopers were swilling a keg of cheap Cornbrash. Although it was merely Cornbrash Oolite, they were so drunk that they couldn't mount their horses, which were penned in a makeshift Corallian enclosure.

"Those who say that White Men drink responsibly are a bunch of Lias!", Running Antelope reported back to Chief Thunderhead. Seizing the day, the Chief led his warriors on a charge which annihilated the Cavalry brigade, effecting a Permian solution to the encroachment of their tribal lands.

Last edited by Douglas G. Brown; 06-05-2014 at 07:08 PM. Reason: made into 2 paragraphs
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Unread 06-05-2014, 08:38 AM
Roger Slater Roger Slater is offline
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My friend Cora Kimmeridge never tells the truth. She's one of the great lias, oolite, but Corallian is more fun than most people telling the truth. I've had ampthill opportunity to hear her old-fashioned cornbrash falsehoods, and they've made a lasting and permian impression on me.
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Unread 06-08-2014, 04:31 AM
Adrian Fry Adrian Fry is offline
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Four days into our torrentially rainy cottage holiday in Devon and we’re still indoors playing Kimmeridge. It’s a tiresome game of Nigel’s devising, thus incomprehensibly complex. On day one, the wretched man appointed himself Permian – a role somewhere between pettifogging bureaucrat and capricious God –and hasn’t stopped explaining, elaborating and enforcing arcane rules since. We’re all supposed to be competing for the oolite, a tiny plastic ovoid no-one could conceivably want. Kate walked out on day two, unable to play Danny Boy on a three-stringed cornbrash as the rules – punctiliously extemporised by Nigel - supposedly demanded. For three days, Geoff relished the game, amassing points – Lias, Nigel calls them, pronouncing the italics - before being disqualified for not knowing that an ampthill was a fourteenth century alchemical flask. Now, Sally and I face the Final – the Corallian, Nigel calls it – an Esperanto riddle. Why go on? It beats watching television.
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Unread 06-08-2014, 11:08 AM
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Looks winnerish to me, Adrian.
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Unread 06-11-2014, 03:13 PM
Charlie Southerland Charlie Southerland is offline
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I looked forward to celebrating Jimmy Crack Day, (a long Scottish tradition) by eating a heaping Corallian plate of cornbrash, and washing it down with a cold bottle of Oolite beer. Helen had a Permian appointment at the hairdressers somewhere around ten o'clock am, so I was excited to settle in and watch Captain Kimmeridge deal with the Lias clans on the newest Star Trek spin-off, "Ampthill." Rotten Tomatoes gave it a 87 score for originality. It appears the show will become a huge hit focusing on Kimmeridge and the thousands of Lias he has to conquer. I can't wait for the second episode; Lias, Lias, or the third episode; Damn Lias.
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Unread 06-12-2014, 02:16 AM
Jerome Betts Jerome Betts is offline
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“G’d arvo! Too right, cobber, it was grand in the old bush times round Wonga-Wonga, with the surprisingly loud silvery song of a little cornbrash (Pseudave luciensis) in your ears as you took the Holden over to your neighbour to see his Corallian carpet-wool mob being sheared and maybe take the oolite out of some rubber-necking raw Pom over a few tinnies. Up above would be the laughing lias birds doing their Kimmeridge turns, our feathered friends’ equivalent of Great War pilots’ Immelmann turns, as they waited to snaffle some dags for their nests. Named after that drongo who strangled the last aquatic marsupial ampthill with his bare hands when up Excrement Inlet without his Permian double-barrelled croc-croaker. Those were the days!”
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Unread 06-16-2014, 06:02 PM
Graham King Graham King is offline
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Corallian Kimmeridge - fancy name, fancy dame! - twenty-three and confident with it, sashays into the cocktail lounge with that wilful bold elegance of her Southern clan; cornbrash purty, to coin a phrase. The hairstyle is undoubtedly something elevated: a permian tour-de-force, sustained aloft by indomitable will-power… plus a little coiffeuse’s artifice. This lady’s detractors (in her glossary of dismissals, ‘bahstuds’, ‘beaches’ and ‘lias’, all) regard the breathtaking awe she engenders as shallow, ersatz… ‘Oo-lite’, I’ve heard it cynically termed; jibers also (distantly) allege ‘glamawkishness’ and ‘pseudazzle’. Hey, those who have it, flaunt it; those who don’t, mock - powerlessly jealous. Any rare time those little people do manage briefly to bug her, she with one glance or apt rejoinder targets lightning into their midst, electrifyingly spot-on; cauterising criticism, turning the social anthill into (I’ll coin another) an ampthill. Zappo!

[My own 'Corallian Kimmeridge' was conceived and submitted as an entry before I read Roger's entry above. I guess those two words just evoke names!]
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Unread 06-16-2014, 06:07 PM
Graham King Graham King is offline
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On the upper Mian river, near Kim-Me Ridge, imperial officials observe pink-complexioned farmgirl ‘Coral’ Li, a notional concubine for their solemn Emperor. She carries baskets of rice (China’s staple, equivalent to Western corn) brashly, with jaunty step and laughing eye. ‘The Emperor craves spirited maidens’; she accedes, curious to behold capital and ruler. At the palace, she is bathed in a scented pool; items of toilette are employed, bemusingly unfamiliar. Finally she is ushered to audience. The Emperor bids Li - a supposed great honour - to approach. At close sight of him she exclaims: ‘Old man! You’re less regal than I am. Pth! I’ll return home, where village men are hearty, not wizened; straight like bamboo, not crooked as a crane’s neck.’ Courtiers gasp, horrified. Silence holds, for a breath. Then, a roar - a gale unpent; breaking long precedent, the Emperor is laughing.

[I wonder if such deconstruction of the given words will be allowed?]
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