Competition No 3745
Set by John O'Byrne on 19 August
Lavinia Greenlaw wrote that "hell has lost its capital letter . . . [to] become the cipher for our worst . . . earth-bound fears". We asked for descriptions of Hades.
Report by Ms de Meaner
I'm back, after a diving holiday on the Red Sea, followed by dehydration and a spell in hospital on a drip. Last year, it was a surfing holiday in Cornwall, followed by a spell in hospital nearly having my leg amputated. Hmm. I was sorry to lose Watson Weeks ("I'm trapped, hermetically sealed, in a cubicle in the gents of a motorway service station. . ."), Will Bellenger ("Justin explains the plot of the film of The Lord of the Rings . . .") and Richard Forshaw ("dinner with Lauren Booth"). £20 to the winners. Paul Brummell also gets the vouchers.
Hello. Do you mind if I sit here? My name's Dave. Me and Emma were in New York last month. Emma is my girlfriend. She's working tonight. We saw the Empire State Building. It doesn't look that big when you're beside it. In Vermont, we visited the International Lint Museum. Lint is exhibited from tummy buttons and clothes pockets. The museum was free of charge; it's open six days a week. We also saw the Trash Museum in New Jersey. I forget the name of the town. I think it's near where they shoot The Sopranos. SHOOT! That's good, isn't it? They call that a pun. Did you know there's a Mustard Museum in Pennsylvania and a Potato Museum in Idaho? Believe it or not, there are two barbed-wire museums in the US - the Barbed-Wire Museum in Kansas, and the Devil's Rope Museum in Texas. I wonder why they call it "devil's rope"? . . .
John O'Byrne
You wake up on the floor with a splitting headache, and smell bacon and eggs, but feel too sick to eat breakfast. You wonder whether to take a walk, but you are in pain after an age of waiting for a hip replacement. You decide to stay in and read a book. There is only ever one book: it is A Life of John Prescott. Meals are always Bombay duck and undercooked potatoes, and when you decide to sleep you find the mattress has been stuffed with conkers. After a glass of methylated spirit, you fall into an uneasy sleep on the floor among a cloud of malarial mosquitoes. You wake up with a splitting headache.
Every day in hell is exactly the same.
Peter Lyon
The man in the suit is there to meet you. He tells you that you must get the next bus back to Pittsburgh. He thinks it departs tomorrow. He leaves.
The air-conditioning has broken down again. The restaurant is boarded shut, as it always is. The only source of food is the chocolate bar vending machine. You insert your three quarters. The machine retains two, and spits out the third. You repeatedly feed in that third quarter. Each time, it drops back into the returned coins tray. Defeated, you look for somewhere to spend the night.
You prise out a little bench space, forcing grudging, sweating bodies to budge up. You are exhausted, but will not sleep. You never do. You know the bus will be late. You will finally make it to Pittsburgh. The man in the suit will be there to meet you.
Paul Brummell
No 3748 Set by Gavin Ross
A pub in Sheffield is to be converted into a church. Can we have some improving quips/messages to display around the bar or outside the premises to inform/warn people of this fact. Max 100 words by 20 September(to appear in issue dated 30 September). E-mail: comp@newstatesman.co.uk
