Set by Didier d'Argent
Do our sports personalities need more accomplished ghost-writers?
Report by Ms de Meaner
David Silverman. Again. He just seems to be on a roll at the moment. Hon menshes to: Josh Ekroy (Zidane/Henry James), Neil Stone (Roy Keane/Raymond Chandler), El Basilio (Wayne Rooney/Edgar Allan Poe), Laurence Goldstein (Wayne Rooney/Wittgenstein). The winners get £20 each, the best of whom (D A Prince) also gets the Tesco vouchers.
Beckham with Jane Austen
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that any young Premiership star in possession of a large fortune, must be in want of a country seat.
"Mrs Beckham," I remarked one Sunday, "that excellent house, Rowneybury, is for sale. Do not you think we should visit it? Hertfordshire is much in vogue among the more polished elements of society."
On reaching Sawbridgeworth, we found the mansion greatly in need of redecoration. However, I remarked that with onyx and silver-gilt fittings throughout, it might yet exhibit an air of sophistication. I envisaged stone-carved footballs on the gateposts; England flags in the entrance hall; my first United shirt in a glass case in the drawing room.
My wife changed colour. "Such modifications are matters of taste. Long ago I visited a mansion . . ." she said wistfully.
"And you would have its style reflected in our own house?"
"It was called Graceland."
Anne Du Croz
Zidane with Albert Camus
Today, mother was insulted. Or maybe it was my sister, I don't know. The sun was in my eyes. It was too hot. The crowd was making too much noise. There had been a dead rat in the changing room before the match. Then we played. Up and down we ran. Like Sisyphus we kicked the ball towards the Italians and they kicked it back. An Italian came towards me. "Hey," he said. At least I think it was "Hey". As I said, the sun was in my eyes. And anyway it was in Italian. Makes no difference, though. I knew what he meant.
Reader, I head-butted him. The papers said he insulted my mother. It could have been my sister.
David Silverman
Beckham with James Joyce
Then with the illogic of dreams and their ballplay of ineluctable consequence except that she was like the best breakfast in bed he'd never had there was the woman. A plum, spicy, broth of a woman to be enthroned and ennobled and OK!-ed and wed. Wed, wed. The wedding of a lifetime's bedding, with a world a-watch, snapping it up, dribbling it across the cool black and white of the nation's envious breakfasts. Bootless this once, in the booty of a blistery bed.
Time to set aside the offside rule, the Friday faults, the penitence of penalties, so he could return to the pitch gianting the rest. Spiceless, back row runts, no-shooters. A colossus, a booted be-Jasus: victorious, uxorious, not a man for words but for the style of the world. He would be Captain.
D A Prince
No 3954 A stitch in our time
Set by Valerie Yule
Explain some forgotten skill to today's teenagers in words they understand, eg, sewing on a button.
Max 125 words by 2 November
Email: comp@newstatesman.co.uk
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