A Good Idea at the Time

In addition to the impish Oldie, de rigueur  reading 'neath the corfucian bower is the sprightly Spectator, edited with scary aplomb by the youthful Matt d'Ancona .

Even when the actual articles go over my head, I have Japistos' excellent back-page competitions.

A recent one invited readers to submit a poem or prose ending with the phrase, 'It seemed like a good idea at the time', words 'applied in retrospect, jocularly or ruefully, to anything done impulsively with disastrous consequences, whether or not those were foreseeable at the moment of action.'

Runner-up (and shoulda been the winner) was this hilarious entry by one Brian Murdoch.

'Course, at the time  there wasn't any, just an infinite amount of, well, infinity, but I gave Myself a week and got creating.

After I'd done the heavens and got the earth sorted, I called in the lads to help - not Lucifer, of course, who'd gone off in a huff, never found out where.

We had some laughs with the animals.

When Gabriel did the walrus I thought I'd rend the firmament!

It was Uriel - he was a right piss-artist - got Me to do a teeny-weeny version of Myself, only less effable, and then I did another one with not so many bits and not as hairy.

I can't remember who came up with the reproduction idea - we'd all been on the cocktails for aeons by then.

In the end we buggered off and left them to it.

But it seemed like a good idea at the time."