[John Whitworth]

Bill was the biggest humbugger and won the fiver. Bazza was back on form with a splendid atrabilious effort. I won again - am I on a roll, or is it too early to say? And Chris O'Carroll just missed out. Bad luck Chris. Now for the New Year.

After all that bah-humbuggery, how about an acrostic poem of which the first letter of each line spells HAPPY NEW YEAR. Please email entries, where possible, to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 5 January.

[Roger Slater]

This is a tough one. I hope to do better before the deadline, but for now this is all I could come up with:


HAPPY NEW YEAR

How can it be?
Another year gone?
Plainly somebody is
Putting me on!

Yesterday, wasn't
Next Saturday June?
Ending the year now
Would be way too soon!

Yet if we must end it,
End it with grace:
At midnight exactly,
Rejoice, kiss, embrace.

[basil ransome-davies]

Hope is the thing with feathers, Emily wrote,
And I would add, to amplify the quote,
Perhaps Hope flies, but does Hope ever think?
Plans that are launched on Hope are prone to sink.
Your local Pangloss, blissfully insane,
Numbers his blessings with an addled brain,
Expecting each routine New Year to bring
World peace by magic. What a dingaling.
Yet leave out Hope, and what have you got left
Except a lonely ego – chill, bereft?
A tribute, therefore, to Pandora's box:
Reason may shape our judgement, but Hope rocks.




[Roderic Vincent]

Have you ever had that feeling
As you rise to toast the telly,
Perhaps watching Scotsmen reeling,
Possibly Jools’ Hootenanny:
You’re the only one whose plight is

Never planned by party planners
Even when the special night is
Welcoming a whole new annus?

Yes, it’s certainly a bummer
Every year leaves as it came.
And you’re dusting off your glummer
Resolutions all the same.

[R. S. Gwynn]

From Emily:

How happy is the little stone!
Anemone and bell
Propounded but a single term--
Pink, small and punctual.

You cannot put a fire out--
New periods of pain.
Earth would have been too much, I see--
With badinage divine

Yet never, in extremity
Enacted upon Earth--
A precious, mould’ring pleasure ‘tis.
Remain thou as thou art!

[John Whitworth]

I hope that is not TOO GOOD for Lucy. It appears that Tessa of The Oldie (I will put this up tomorrow) does not know who William Dunbar was. But perhaps Lucy is better read!

I laughed however.

Bloody difficult to know what to do now.

[Alison Webber]

I sent my entry to Lucy. Should I post it here? I hope I am not behaving like the uninitiated uninvited guest (who grabs a beer and flicks on the TV), being new around here.

I am partial to that happy stone.

[John Whitworth]

No, Alison, you don't have to post it here. Two stalwarts of the comps, Bill Greenwell and Chris O'Carroll, don't post. They just win. And the best of luck.

[Alison Webber]

"they just win"


And best to them, both!

(my last line needs to be/has been
altered, at home. If not, I have not
a rope in "bell")


sim-subs, then?

[George Simmers]

Here's my version, but maybe it's turned out too dismal for Lucy's purposes.

Hardy once heard an aged thrush whose song
At the dreary end of one more uphill year
Persuaded him not everything was wrong.
Pessimist Tom half-raised an almost-cheer,
Yet we today can't follow him in that;
Now turdus philomelos is under threat
(Efficient farming's junked his habitat -
Wild and protective hedgerows, thickly set).
Yesterday's common songbird's now so rare,
Experts predict that he might disappear;
And only a heart of stone, I think, would dare
Request him to proclaim a blithe new year.