Graham Greene wrote in the New Statesman of 31 May 1968 (reprinted in "From our archive", 14 April 2008), of an excursion with Claud Cockburn: "We were, for obscure reasons, pushing a barrel organ across Hertfordshire dressed as tramps" - and left readers wondering why. We asked for the "obscure reasons" why any modern novelist of your choice and a companion might be undertaking an identical excursion, written in the style of that writer

Report by Ms de Meaner

Stunning. I had difficulty cutting your number back to three. I was particularly sorry to lose Anne du Croz's William Faulkner, but it wasn't quite modern enough. An hon mensh to John Griffiths-Colby for Douglas Adams ("Chance and the peculiarly random appearances of abstract barrel organs on this particular planet where they are no longer indigenous"). £20 to the winners, the best of whom (Ian Birchall) also gets the Tesco vouchers.

Martin Amis

Christopher and I had come to the awful human colourlessness of Hertfordshire for the usual reasons - drugs, junk food, money, galvanic sex with strangers, and especially drink. These are the stimulants that spur all human ambition. But when we strayed westwards to Luton we encountered a shoving, jabbing, jeering brotherhood of fanatic jihadis who hated all the humane values we held. You only had to look at their faces to realise they wished us disembowelled and castrated. Disguise was the only refuge; as tramps we would be protected by the sentimental puritanical leftists who infest the county, while a barrel organ symbolised the culture of Old England we loved so much. And if we stopped to masturbate, it would not seem out of character.

Ian Birchall

D B C Pierre

Fucken like - organ? Whose idea was that? Yourn, is the reply. Fuckern, I gainsay him, panting with the weight of it. The cops? he prompts. I call to mind sunthin to do with a bust, pressing need for deep disguise. He espies dawn in my sky-blue peepers. Are we ringing any bells? Do I scope a jingle-jangle morning dawnin nice 'n' bright? Blurred acid flashbacks of blue uniforms stab my retina. A tramp in a lane twanging on his instrument ferchrissakes. Right. Next stop? I ask. Hertingfordbury, is the reply. Time, I say, for some iced Stolly in the Hertingfordbury Arms, right? And tell me, who do I have the pleasure of - ? Inland Revenue, he announces. I feel the chilly metal on my wrists.

Josh Ekroy

Dan Brown

"Stevenage DC? Where the heck . . . ?" I asked, inquisitively. Sure as hell wasn't in the States.

"Try another country," suggested my publisher, helpfully.

"A what?" I queried.

"Like er . . . England?"

"Is that another country?" I exclaimed, incredulously.

"Could be."

Then it clicked. Stevenage DC! Sang d'Eve etc! A totally contrived anagram! Eve's blood, according to a blatant fabrication, was hidden in a barrel organ in your quaint English countryside, waiting for DNA to be discovered and Eden replanted. Heavily disguised as Fred Astaire and Judy Garland in Easter Parade, we saw clues everywhere: Welwyn Garden City, Letchworth Garden City . . . where better to repopulate Paradise than . . . Stevenage District Council! The literary possibilities appeared, to a wordsmith of my caliber, to suddenly be endless.

David Silverman

No 4031 Specialités du pays

Set by Leonora Casement

We want recipes for gastronomic novelties (grilled gorilla's foot is forbidden) to inspire jaded palates.

Max 125 words by 5 June

Email: comp@newstatesman.co.uk

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