Competition No 3870

Set by Margaret Rogers, 21 February

You were asked to pick one or two from your suggested list of seven deadly virtues and explain their deadliness.

Report by Ms de Meaner

Most of you opted for what we conventionally think of as virtues, and sought to explain their hidden deadliness. A few made up already self-defined "deadly" virtues such as "infantocentricity" (Josh Ekroy). Others tried to be a bit more 21st century and opted for such things as "supportive parenting" (Jan Clark). I was sorry to lose Bazza's spiel on "moderation" ("Auguste Blanqui used to ask his moderate critics if they would like their wives to be moderately faithful"). £20 to the winners, the best of whom (Anne Du Croz) also wins the Tesco vouchers.

Sensitivity

I was always the delicate, emotionally complex one. Mum said I had "finesse" . . . "grace" . . . I was easily touched. I'd weep for a stranded jellyfish. I have a special empathy with other people's suffering. It affects me so strongly that hospital visiting's impossible. I feel faint at distressing sights, sounds . . . and smells. You were always . . . robust. I had a natural fragile elegance . . . and an intuitively sympathetic temperament. Strange how different we are. I hid under the eiderdown during thunderstorms; you threw back the curtains and enjoyed them. You were not coarse exactly, but you laughed too loudly, and had . . . unsuitable friends . . . some quite vulgar . . . I could never have been a nurse. That goes for home nursing, too . . . now Mum's out. I couldn't clear up sick. I can't do long journeys either . . . I'm sure you'll understand why I'm not coming over . . . It's the way I'm made . . . responsive, tender-hearted . . . sensitive . . .

Anne Du Croz

Generosity

What use is generosity? It's a dead giveaway. All it does is to inculcate in others the idea that you are: (a) a soft touch, (b) a materialist, in terms of your goods as well as your spirit, and (c) a redistributor of wealth and happiness in a manner that undermines the egalitarian principle of taxation. The whole concept of generosity is philosophically inept, since it stresses the value of intellectual, emotional and actual property, when it would be more virtuous to play down the idea of ownership altogether. Give a dog a bone, and knick-knack, paddywhack, you'll attract a pack of hounds, which, once having congregated, will get it into their heads to attack innocent foxes. Generosity? Give it up. Where there's a will, there's a way to have others think of you as a provider rather than a person. When it comes to remembering others, forget it.

Bill Greenwell

Sobriety - deadliest of virtues: provoking suicidal despondency in declining wine-producing areas; fostering outrageous mineral-water prices and nightmare substitute recipes - "coq au cola", chewy lemonade-cheese fondue and berry trifle; prompting desperate binge tea-drinking - redundant classic malts poured surreptitiously (alas!) into exotic orchids. How noxious is the abstemious party bore, shunned because he might remember! Naturally he drives, piously contemptuous of his passengers' riotous alcoholic hilarity and, lethally competent, takes command at work as hangovers are slept off. Let us draw a curtain over the lacklustre launching of the SS Temperance - the flabby Tetra Pak of milk rebounding soggily from her bow, "May all who sail in her be sober, pompous and gloomy"; the embarrassing toasts to the wedding pair - popping of corks, the awkward pause, then "squelch" as the packet corner comes off. What sort of dismal message does that convey? Eat, abstain and be tedious?

Shirley Curran

No 3873 Set by Stan Knafler

Great men are said to have first discussed their momentous decisions with their wives/partners in the confines of bed. We want compers to "come off the wall" and tell us what they overheard. You can pick up to five great men, but stick to the word count.

Max 150 words by 24 March. E-mail: comp@newstatesman.co.uk