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‘You just resigned, Blofeld,’ Bond said. ‘Call off the shrubs!’ But Blofeld wasn’t beaten yet. ‘How was the chateaubriand?’ he asked, smiling.
Richard Ellis
Day 12: Enjoying glorious evening moonshine off Mariana islands when hit by sperm whale. Fatally holed on port side. Struggled to get ashore. Sat on beach weeping bitter-sweet tears of disappointment and relief.
Day 13: Wreckage washed up. Case of provisions and carpenter’s chest — possible lifesavers.
Day 18: Found promising shrub by lagoon. Tubers like Jerusalem artichokes, but inedible, even with last spoonful of Harvey Nicks arrabbiata sauce. Tried to punch hole in Dundee cake tin with screwdriver. Handle disintegrated. Spirits sinking fast.
Day 23: Take a Cambridge rowing blue, double first, Lloyd’s name, plonk him back in the wild, and he’s as useful as a bishop at a bar mitzvah. No fresh water for two days. May be beginning to hallucinate.
Day 31: Sue Lawley came to rescue on blue Royal Enfield motorbike and sidecar. Failed to salute. Will send strong protest by bottle to RAC. Rum do altogether.
E.J. Davidson
The bishop was in high spirits. He was in the middle of a joke as they passed. ‘“…I thought it was your screwdriver!” as the actress said to ….’ As we watched them, Algy became increasingly bitter. ‘He’ll be whisking her off for a spin in his sidecar next,’ he grumbled. His Grace was now inviting Lucinda to bend down and sniff a shrub. As she did, the inevitable happened. ‘Ooh, what sauce!’ she squealed. ‘Hang on!’ I said. ‘That’s rum. Is he really a bishop?’ ‘Moonshine! They’re all like that — can’t keep their hands to themselves. Got a girl in every port, or parish, or whatever.’ ‘No, it’s his gaiters. They’re the wrong way round.’ And Algy was off like a flash. Any scruples about not socking a clergyman vanished. A right punch, a left and the impostor fell to the ground with a most unepiscopal plonk.
Nicholas Hodgson
Any port in a storm, as they say, but this place was only for the desperate. Next to the scrofulous back door a sad shrub mourned its own passing and a single blown rose slumped in a sauce bottle on the sill. A motorcycle sidecar of the old police type rotted in the yard. Nothing to lift the spirits there, and there was worse in the kitchen. A screwdriver is a good murderer’s weapon. Just punch it into the throat. The corpse had bled his life away but was still warm. It was a hell of a bitter failure to be just too late. But the really rum thing was that the story I’d called moonshine must have been true enough to get him killed. Back home, I planned to replay one of Capablanca’s classic games, but I hadn’t the motivation to plonk down a pawn, let alone a bishop.
Basil Ransome-Davies
Watson was repairing the abused violin when Holmes delivered such a punch to his newspaper that Watson dropped his screwdriver. ‘Seen this, Watson?: Cathedral Crisis! Dean Succumbs to Evil Spirits.’
‘A rum do, certainly.’ Holmes lifted a finger and cocked his ear towards the window. ‘It’s journalistic moonshine of course, but the Bishop believes it, or he wouldn’t be here.’ Watson was already frantically collecting dirty plates and flapping at the bitter fumes from Holmes’s latest ‘smoke’. ‘But how can you possibly know…?’
‘Our most senior clergymen favour the sidecar carriage, Watson. The click of its door is quite different to the plonk of the hansom cab. Kindly stop fussing and admit him! We are, after all, a welcome port in this ecclesiastical storm — he will not notice either the remnants of Mrs Hudson’s ham with mustard sauce or the ash of a few coca shrub leaves.
Robert Kingston
It was a rum do: the Bishop lurking behind a shrub, screwdriver in hand, attempting to attach a sidecar to my Harley-Davidson. How he avoided the gin trap I do not know. Moonshine glistened on his mitre, and despite his bitter expression I could see that his spirits were high. ‘My Lord,’ I said — for I believe in the ancient courtesies — ‘you’ve got a bloody sauce. I’ve a good mind to punch you.’
His screwdriver fell to the ground with a satisfying plonk. ‘Forgive me,’ he bellowed in a voice suggesting that he had just caught a high ball in cricket. ‘I have to go to the port to pick up a consignment of communion wine from a man in a white van, and the Episcopal limousine is in hock.’
‘I forgive you, Father,’ I replied. It was the first time that I had given absolution to a bishop.
Hugh Morison
No. 2431: Occasional verse
You are invited to write a poem (maximum 16 lines) commemorating the death of the whale in the Thames. Entries to ‘Competition No. 2431’ by 16 February.
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