I'm a retired civil servant in Surrey, UK. and long-time blogger at Conscious Entities. These days I'm spending more time writing stories and doing other creative stuff
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.
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.
I am not really posting any cards this year, but here is my little Christmas painting instead – it is an adaptation of one by Lin Fengmian, but obviously I lack his skill with the brush.
This year’s sloe gin is ready!
Plus… gin-infused sloe berry chocolate!
I made a multi-coloured set of container candles in glass goblets, each with a different fruity scent*. These need a quicker-melting wax than pillar candles. No skill at all is required, but they are quite practical (they never dribble) and look especially good when the wax is molten.
*From the left: passionfruit, grape, strawberry, mango, banana and watermelon
Here is another monthly round-up, covering competitions with deadlines in December.
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.
If you do get anywhere with any of these, please do let me know.
| Contest | Word Count | Fee | Prize | Deadline | Details |
| Breakwater Review | 4,000 | $10 | $1000 | 01/12/2025 | |
| St Louis Writers Guild | 3,000 | $15 | $50 | 01/12/2025 | Poor value? |
| Neilma Sidney | 3,000 | $20 | $5,000 | 05/12/2025 | Travel |
| Chaotic Creators | 1,250 | £10.00 | £50 + pub | 06/12/2025 | Small prize? |
| Leopold Bloom Prize | 5,000 | $10 ($15 quicker) | $500 | 08/12/2025 | ‘Risk-adept narration’ |
| Masters Review Chapbook | 25-45p | $25 | $3000 +50 copies | 15/12/2025 | |
| Globe Soup | 8,000 | £16.00 | £2,000 | 16/12/2025 | |
| Ruth Rendell | 1,000 | £15.00 | £1,000 plus performance | 21/12/2025 | Interact Stroke Support (upbeat stories) |
| Letter Review | 5,000 | $20 | share $1,000 | 30/12/2025 | |
| Anthony Veasna So | 9000 (3 pieces) | $20 | $200 | 31/12/2025 | To become an ‘Anthony Veasna So Scholar’ |
| Boulevard | 8,000 | $18 | $1,500 | 31/12/2025 | |
| Danahy | 5,000 | $20 | $1000 | 31/12/2025 | |
| Lascaux Review | 10k | $15 | $1,000 + medallion | 31/12/2025 | |
| Write Time | 1,500 | £5 (£3 for £10) | £100.00 | 31/12/2025 | Older writers |
| Farnham First Five Pages | 5p + syn | £10.00 | £1,000 | 31/12/2025 | For draft novels |
| Inkitt Love at First Kick | Min 20k No Limit | Free | $300 + various | 31/12/2025 | Soccer Romance. Linked with Galatea. |
| ASP Anthology | 2-7k | £5.00 | £0.005/word | 31/12/2025 | UK only, no horror or disturbing content |
| Henshaw (Hobeck) | 2k | £6.00 | £200 | 31/12/2025 | The old warhorse, still going. |
I’ve been waiting patiently for the official announcement of my poetry win at Writer’s Digest, but it turns out I missed it and it has been up for over a month… it’s here.
I made sparkly candles. It must be about sixty years since I last used glitter. It still gets everywhere.
November is coming, but there will be no NaNoWriMo…
You may know that this was the annual exercise in which people attempted to write an entire novel (well, 50,000 words, a bit skimpy actually) in a single month. You could register your progress, meet up with fellow writers and so on.
There was always something a little strange about this. It seemed designed for people who didn’t really enjoy writing, but wanted to get it off their bucket list once and for all. Arguably it encouraged bad writing because quality was not important, just quantity. And while it was meant to be encouraging, most people always failed.
Apparently there had been several problems. There were claims that its forums were misused, though the organisers were quick to act. It weirdly decided to allow the use of AI, which most people thought rendered the exercise pointless (it even claimed that denying AI to participants was ableist). Somehow it ran out of money.
My feelings are ambivalent, but they include a big element of regret. I entered (and succeeded) in 2008 with a story about, what else, someone entering NaNoWriMo. I polished the result up afterwards, but it’s still medium bad with a few good lines. Probably my biggest mistake was to make my hero, the narrator, pretentious and verbose. Humorously, but still.
Nevertheless, in a spirit of commemoration and for what it’s worth, here it is.
Seen and Done 