In Competition No. 3301, you were invited to delete one letter in the title of a well-known novel and provide an extract from the new work.

This one pulled in the punters. Highlights included Russell Chamberlain’s All the Pretty Hoses and Ralph Bateman’s Bleak Hose:‘Water everywhere. Water up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; water down the river, where it rolls defiled by untreated sewage. It was the wettest of times, it was the driest of times, it was a time of floods, it was a time of drought, it was the age of incompetence…’. There were also entertaining twists on George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, which saw Winston Smith transported back to the Roman Empire.

But in another fiercely contested week, these excellent offerings were elbowed out of the winning line-up by the entries printed below, which earn their authors £30 each.

To Stank, a Wiltshire hamlet, to officiate at a Tribunal Witchfinder Praisegood hath convened in pursuance of a coven thereabouts. ’Tis customary witches be of dry and spinsterly aspect, yet these women, long if unenthusiastically espoused, proved garrulous and of an unsettling fleshy demeanour. Witchfinder Praisegood bade them bare their swollen bellies, declaring them parodic of motherly gravidity. Further, the Tribunal heard them gurgling in what Witchfinder Praisegood did inform us was a wordless, almost masculine Satanic tongue productive, at every utterance, of a foul gas. Before Praisegood could proceed to humiliating himself further by raising such matters as the excessive physical clumsiness and licentious sensuality of these women, I did intercede, observing they were merely drunk, an allegation they denied with incriminating slurs. The brewing of beer proved their sole alchemical achievement, its gluttonous consumption their only sin. I freed them, sentencing that pious fool Praisegood to seven pints.

Adrian Fry/‘The Old Wives Ale’

There were other men in the field, there had been other men before, but now Connie had eyes only for one. She caught the faint, grassy scent of the outfield. And then, being so still and alone, she seemed to slip into the current of her own proper destiny. She had been fastened by a rope; now she was free. She thought back to those evenings in the nets, when far in front of her the stumps parted and rolled asunder, in long, fair-travelling curls, and ever, at the quick of her, the bails flew further and further, till suddenly, in a soft, shuddering convulsion, she was gone. She was gone, she was not, and she was born: a bowler. As she approached the climax of her run-up, she remembered Mellors’s advice: ‘It’s all about the way you curls your fingers about the balls.’

A.H. Harker/‘Lady Chatterley’s Over’

The world of zoology was dumbstruck: surely this could not happen in Britain? Yet it did, in late August 1889, near Kingston upon Thames. Were the facts not so macabre, the scenario might have been thought darkly comic: a trio of young fellows – well-mannered, middle-class types, keen for a ‘lark’ albeit clueless in practical matters, hired a modest craft for their adventure. Fundamentally good-natured, they pooled their inadequacies amicably. Attempts at catering were disastrous; combined navigational skills, negligible. Their particular prowess lay in mooring, and epic sleeping, which latter proved their undoing. One night, a four-metre reticulated reptile boarded their floating home and, coiling itself around the slumbering crewmen, crushed then swallowed each victim whole.

Next day’s newspapers could not believe their luck: ‘Crunch, You’re Lunch!’ screamed one headline. ‘Triple River Tragedy!’, another. A national tabloid triumphantly declared: ‘Three Men in a Boa!’

Mike Morrison/‘Three Men in a Boa’

It was my day for attracting females with problems I could do nothing about. The dishrag blonde who swore her Chinese neighbour had abducted and eaten her dog, the elderly Mrs Pulaski, who wanted the FBI to switch off the time machine that ruined her cooking, the gum-chewing secretary with a ‘suggestive, Mr Marlowe, know what I mean?’ boss. These I managed to bat away, but just as I hailed the thought of a lunchtime Gibson the shockwave walked in.

There were already three strains of economy-grade scent in the room, but hers trumped them all, the rich, penetrating aroma of high-grade marijuana, probably from south of the border. I was halfway to viper heaven myself in five seconds flat. Then there were her looks: a natural temptress, didn’t have to try. They meant trouble even before she asked me to find her husband’s killer.

Basil Ransome-Davies/‘The High Widow’

One summer afternoon a young couple approached the village of Yokelbury Morchard. Egdon Heath loomed above them, dark, gloomy and menacing. The couple looked dishevelled, tired and hungry from their journey. It was the day of the fair and festivities were in full swing. Doomed maidens danced around maypoles. Equally doomed young men sat on gates chewing straw, while older folk watched the grass grow, counting the days until their death. The two strangers approached a stall selling ‘Furmity, Meade, Cyder and Big Chunks a’ Bread with Ham ’Atween’. They ordered and the man munched heartily while his good lady picked at hers with reticence. ‘Some salad cream for your wife?’ asked the host. ‘Done!’ answered the young man at once as, eminently satisfied with the transaction, he bade his good lady farewell and skipped away alone towards Casterbridge clutching the fateful jar of dressing.

David Silverman/‘The Mayo of Casterbridge’

No. 3304: Bard thoughts

BBC Radio 4’s Taking Issue With Shakespeare explores whether the Bard might help us resolve some challenging contemporary issues. You are invited to submit Shakespeare’s reflections on a pressing issue of your choice (16 lines maximum). Please email entries to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 14 June.