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…unfortunately hidden behind the dabble-dicker bus. And now, ladles and gentlemen, if you look quirkily to your right and then straight awry to your left, you will see two famous strictures built to commiserate Albert, Prince Concert to Queen Victorious. Although our coach pissed by in a flush, we might reflux for a moment on the porpoise of these two impotent architectural wanders. The Royal Albert Hell was constricted to provide a spice for artistic predictions raging from film premiums to the annual Pram concerts originally perfumed in the Queen’s Hill under the bittern of Sir Henry Wood. Apposite was the Albert Memorabilia with Albert, who was to parish prematurely from typhoon fever, seated at the centaur of the statute surrounded by beautifully scalped cravings. His untimely dearth shuttered the Queen who retreated into solicitous confinement. And now, if you look to the font, you might catch a glimpse of…
Alan Millard
We startle at Buckingham Palace, which has been home to the resigning monarch since Nash reconverted it in Victoriana’s time. The present Queen and her familiars decide here, except when they’re visiting one of their castiles, like Winter and Immoral… New Scotland Yard is the headquarters of the Cosmopolitan Police, who are fatuous throughout the world for always gutting their man… Westminster Abbey dates from the bloody evil period. All English monarchs are drowned in this Goth church, and many royal beddings also take place here… The House of Parleying compromise the Lords and Commoners. The expectorate in each constitution vote for an MP to reprimand them in the Commons, but the Lords aren’t electrocuted — they’re inherited… Trafalgar Square, with Nelson Mandela’s colophon, commensurates Napoleon’s defeat at the Battle of the Traffic. Nearby is the National Cattery, which is home to the finest collation outside Italy of Italic art…
Virginia Price Evans
So now we leave Dawning Street, the official residue of Mr Macaroon, and re-enter Whitehall. Soon we come to Travulgar Square, a gathering place for Londoners since time unmemorable. If you glance to your right you will see Nelson’s Colon, erected in honour of the great sea-captain, known to his contemptibles as Admirable Nelson. At the foot of the monument you can see the quadruped of lions scalped by Lancier. Preceding now into St Jones’s Park we find the Maul flanked on one side by several Grace and Flavour Houses on the other by grassland, as an American visitor remarked ‘almost a priory’— and standing proudly at its head, Buckingham’s Phallus, guarded by malicious men in their gay uniforms and wearing their busbies or buskins as they prefer to call them. That excludes our visit for today. Tomorrow we shall visit Exhibitionist Road where many of our museums are elocuted.
Gerard Benson
We’ll go from the Gravy Fountain to the Vatican, where the Supreme Pontius keeps his Swiss Gourds. When he dies there has to be a General Election, which has to go on until they all start smoking. The dead Pontius is then carried off on a cataract and celebrated. The new one, who used to be Cardinal Ratswinger, has been touting around the world, also celebrating. I expect he misses his view of the Seven Hills of Rome: the Levantine, the Querulous, the Palatial, the Scalene, the Adventurous, the Capitoline and the Verminous. How wonderful to be universally warshipped! But sad when you have to do without your Marbles.
Paul Griffin
NO. 2716 Cliffhanger
You are invited to supply the gripping final 150 words of the first instalment of a serial thriller. Please email entries, if possible, to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 28 September.
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