Samurai

March 11, 2026

Apparently they are more commonly referred to as Bushi in Japan? We went to see the British Museum’s exhibition which explains the long history of the Samurai. Beginning as medieval warriors, they effectively became the Japanese upper class until their abolition in the late nineteenth century, when the rule of the Emperor was restored and the Shogunate brought to an end.

Like their aristocratic counterparts in Europe, the Samurai retained an affection for swords and suits of armour. One set of Samurai armour here was sent to King James (I and VI) who would surely have understood the double significance of the compliment and warning it embodied. Another suit was later sent to Queen Victoria. While they retained a sense of themselves as warriors, the Samurai developed an interest in drama and culture generally, which may have helped while away the days they were required to attend the court at Edo (rather the way Louis XIV made the French nobility come to Versailles?) As a whole social class they naturally included valiant women, and it seems gay and/or cross-dressing young men were not unknown.

The exhibition features a wide range of fabulous and illuminating artefacts, but it is those extraordinary helmets that are really the stars. They are elaborately decorated with dragons, birds, and a finely worked butterfly, and there is one with leaves that Katharine said resembled a pixie hat. One Samurai seems to have been unable to decide between horns and a massive fist – so he got both. These all seem rather impractical: European knights had fancy tournament armour with decoration and crests, but when it came to an actual fight they were inclined to switch to the plain, streamlined steel that best deflected blades and points. It seems that in Japan being visible and showing high status was more important than guiding weapons away from your cranium. The followers of each Daimyo (top Samurai) had a different style of cover for the heads of their spears, and apparently there were actually spotter’s reference books, so you could identify which great lord was passing by on the weary trip to or from Edo.

Very interesting.

Perfection

March 6, 2026

I read Vincenzo Latronico’s book Perfection, about a young Italian couple who move to Berlin, where they live a highly fashionable life, working as web designers, going to trendy bars and restaurants, making friends with an international community of highly mobile young professionals, and above all, owning a series of beautiful objects that help create stunning pictures for their Instagram feed. It’s inspired by Georges Perec’s Things. The book is clever and very readable, and I recommend it – it was shortlisted for the International Booker and received well-deserved praise.

It’s a very believable account set in a specific time and place which Latronico must surely have experienced, full of neat, exact references. The theme, lightly but clearly outlined, is the contrast between a life that looks perfect ‘in the pictures’ but as lived falls a little short of ideal and becomes subtly unrewarding in a way the couple find hard to address.

Stylistically, it is highly unusual, consisting entirely of generalised descriptions of the sort of thing the couple do, the kind of meals they eat, what types of people tend to become their friends (few Germans) and so on. There is no dialogue or directly described action, and we are frequently told about feelings and moods they often felt. The narrative stays at this high level of generality throughout. It works fine, but I can’t help thinking how the tutor on a creative writing course, or some publisher offering feedback would respond. Why not have someone murdered, they might suggest, then the reader has a story to draw them through all this lovely description? Could you relate an argument they have over soft furnishings or something, just to bring these brand references to life? Have you ever heard of Joseph Campbell and the Hero’s Journey?

This is a very successful, celebrated book, but you and I could never get away with writing like this. You have to ask, how did Latronico ever get a literary agent to take this on? The answer seems to be – he married one.

Seurat

February 19, 2026

We went to the Seurat exhibition at the Courtauld. It is a small, focused show, featuring a series of paintings he did of ports and landscapes along the Channel coast, including some preparatory sketches. This gives a good opportunity to make comparisons and see the development of his technique.

Seurat of course was the leading exponent of pointillism, in which the picture is built up from hundreds of dots of unmixed colour. One aspect of the method that I hadn’t appreciated is that dots of the opposite colour are always included, so for example in a blue area there will be some dots of orange. This is meant to give a special vibrancy to the colour. Often it really does, lending a unique luminosity to the paintings, but I thought in other cases it was less effective. Seen from a distance those less successful works look very much like straight, accurately realistic pictures.

We’ve seen Seurat’s pictures before, and in fact the Courtauld itself has several on display that are not part of the current show. But the consistency of subject and the interesting sketches here make it an illuminating exhibition.

Mozart at the RFH

January 26, 2026

We went to an enjoyable concert consisting of the Overture to the Magic Flute, Piano Concerto no. 21, and the Requiem. Music this popular is often used as a lure to get audiences to listen to something more obscure, but this was pure pleasure.

I remember being shocked when I first discovered that the usual version of the Requiem is a completion of a work Mozart never finished himself. Whether or not he really came to think of it as music for his own funeral, it’s impossible not to be reminded of his early death, which certainly deprived us of some of the greatest classical music never written. Imagine the results of an extended rivalry between Mozart and Beethoven, each needling the other into constantly raising their game, like some Romantic era Lennon and McCartney…

February 2026 Competitions

January 20, 2026

I have now collected the competition details from previous months and put them all together on a new page, which I will update rather than making separate posts. February’s info is already there. You’ll see there’s also a direct link from the front page to the new one. I think this will make the list a little easier to find and consult. The idea is also that in due course there will be a full rolling twelve months on the page, which should make it easier to look at old details to get an idea of what’s probably coming up beyond next month.

I hope this is helpful. Feedback is welcome, (but don’t write to say you’d like all the competitions to be free, for I am powerless in that respect).

January 2026 Competitions

December 21, 2025


Here is another monthly round-up, covering competitions with deadlines in January.

As always, these are contests I may enter myself, so generally no poetry or flash and no competition that isn’t open to an elderly bloke in the UK. Prizes and entry fees vary a lot, so check the benefits to see whether they appeal to you. There is no point in entering a competition if you don’t even want the prize! In some cases the entry fee amounts to a large slice of the prize, though there may be other benefits such as publication, trophies, free books or courses, etc.

Merry Christmas!

ContestWord CountFeePrizeDeadlineDetails
Exeter Novel  Prize 10k + synopsis£20.00£1,000.0001/01/2026
Disquiet Literary Prize25 pages$15Lisbon Program or $1,00005/01/2026First prize is a week-long lit program in Lisbon, but you can opt for cash
Storybottle10,000$15$1,00015/01/2026
Cai Emmons
 		25,000 word min
$25
$5,00015/01/2026
Georgia ReviewLess than 9,000$25$1,50015/01/2026Winners of story and essay sections compete for the top prize.
The Page is Printed1 A4 page£5£100 voucher19/01/2026
LISP3,000£14.50£10026/01/2026You can enter later but it costs more
Thomas Wolfe Fiction Prize3,000$25$1,00030/01/2026
Parracombe2,026£5£15031/01/2026
The Ghost Story flash1,000$15$1,00031/01/2026
Bristol Short Story Prize4,000£14.00£1,00031/01/2026
Askew’s Word on the Lake2000$15(Ca)$200(Ca)31/01/2026

Special Christmas Tree

December 15, 2025

Our potted miniature maple is beautiful when in leaf, but during the winter it’s a bit bare. So I have made it into a Christmas tree inspired by Charlie Brown’s threadbare one. I used green strinsel, a kind of tinsel made from recycled string.

Woman In Mind

December 11, 2025

We went to see the new production of Woman In Mind, the Alan Ayckbourn classic, staring Sheridan Smith as Susan and with Romesh Ranganathan as Bill Windsor. It’s a great show and I recommend it: funnily enough my only reservations are about the play itself. There are some spoilers in what follows.

The story is in essence about a woman losing her mind. In the early stages her delusional and at first ideal life contrasts with the depressing reality, as she switches between the two. I would have liked a neat resolution to all this, but we don’t get one: instead the delusions get stronger, less controllable and less pleasant and eventually swallow her up.

I said one side of the story is the depressing reality of her life, but in fact our faith in the reality of even the ‘real’ parts is gradually undermined (or at least, mine was). Bill Windsor seems to move across gradually from sensible reality to florid delusion. Muriel the sister-in-law seems like a caricature, too completely awful to be a real person. The behaviour of Susan’s son is not depressing in normal ways but bizarre, and seems to revolve around her, even if in a most negative way. So perhaps in the end we are to realise that the entire play is the record of a set of growing delusions that reflect reality only in a distorted way. That can still be interesting, but I think a little less than a play that does engage with real life effectively.