Peter

Susan O’Neal

May 25, 2024

My old writing chum has an elegant new blog – check it out.

Our new kitchen has one cupboard door which merely covers a piece of wall. So I have covered the wall with shelves of fake books, all literary classics except the names have been changed into food puns.

The full list, if you can bear it, is as follows.

The Handmaid’s Kale	Atwood, Margaret
Mansfield Pork	Austen, Jane
Wuthering Bites	Brontë, Emily
Burger on the Orient Express	Christie, Agatha
Tart of Darkness	Conrad, Joseph
The Red Batch of Porridge	Crane, Steven
A Christmas Carrot	Dickens, Charles
Barnaby Fudge	Dickens, Charles
Grape Expectations	Dickens, Charles
Martin Chorizowit	Dickens, Charles
Olive Twist	Dickens, Charles
Leek House	Dickens, Charles
Silas Marinade	Eliot, George
The Grated Gatsby	Fitzgerald, F Scott
Lord of the Fries	Golding, William
The Crumpet Major	Hardy, Thomas
Cress of the D’Urbervilles	Hardy, Thomas
Food the Obscure	Hardy, Thomas
The Bun Also Rises	Hemingway, Ernest
The Old Man and the Brie	Hemingway, Ernest
To Ham and Ham Not	Hemingway, Ernest
Finnegan’s Cake	Joyce, James
The Trifle	Kafka, Franz
Lady Chatterley’s Liver	Lawrence, DH
To Grill a Mockingbird	Lee, Harper
Cider with Roasties	Lee, Laurie
One Hundred Beers of Solitude	Marquez, Gabriel Garcia
Loaf of Pi	Martel, Yann
Life of Pie	Martel, Yann
Scone with the Wind	Mitchell, Margaret
The Cabbage in the Rye	Salinger, J.D.
Beans and Nothingness	Sartre, Jean-Paul
Midsummer Night’s Cream	Shakespeare, William
Much Ado about Stuffing	Shakespeare, William
The Taming of the Brew	Shakespeare, William
The Winter’s Ale	Shakespeare, William
Of Mince and Men	Steinbeck, John
Vanity Pear	Thackeray, William
Banana Karenina	Tolstoy, Leo
War and Peas	Tolstoy, Leo
Fried Bread revisited	Waugh, Evelyn
Vile Butties	Waugh, Evelyn
The Island of Doctor Merlot	Wells, H.G.
The Thyme Machine	Wells. H.G.
The Pitcher of Durian Gravy	Wilde, Oscar
Salami	Wilde, Oscar

(The shelves are not correctly alphabetised, I know. That’s just realism.)

June 2024 Competitions

May 20, 2024

Here again is a look at writing competitions I might enter during the coming month (including two for older writers like me).

· The Salamander Prize is for stories up to 7,500 words. Entry is $15, top prize $1,000 and the deadline is 1 June.

· The Writer’s Digest has a word limit of 4,000. Entry is $35 and the top prize is $1000 – awarded in several categories and lots of lesser prizes are awarded to good entries. An overall winner gets $5,000 The deadline is 3 June.

· New American Fiction’s competition is also open to non-Americans. They are looking for a full-length work, but it could be a collection of shorts, novellas, or even flash as well as a straight novel. $25 entry, $1,500 prize and the deadline is 15 June.

· The excellent: Stories Through the Ages, from Living Springs, is for baby boomers plus (people born in 1966 or earlier) They will accept up to 5,000 words, charge $20 and award a prize of $500 as well as publication. The deadline is 15 June.

· Writefluence is back. This year they want stories that begin ‘What?’ No prize except publication, but then entry is still only Rs. 199/- ($2.25 approx). Enter by 15 June.

· The Uncharted competition is for cinematic stories (ones that are easily imagined in film form), of up to 5,000 words. $20 entry and a prize of $2,000. The deadline is 16 June.

· Write by the Sea looks for up to 2,500 words, entry is €10 and the winner gets €500 plus an elegant trophy. You’ve got until 16 June.

· If you’re a Bardsy member, their Spring Anthology competition is $20 with a prize of $500 – the word limit is 2,000, and the deadline 24 June.

· The Imagine 2200 competition invites you to do just that, presenting a climate-fiction vision of how a greener world might be flourishing by that year. They want 3-5,000 words and the top prize is $3,000, but entry is free! The deadline is 24 June.

All the rest have a deadline of 30 June.

· WriteTime is another one for the oldies – over 60s, in this case. Only 1,500 words is required, £5 to enter and a £50 prize – not huge value for money.

· The Wells Festival of Literature looks for up to 2,000 words: entry is £6 and the prize is £750.

· The regular Henshaw competition, ow run by Hobeck Books, has word count of up to 2,000, entry £6 and top prize £200.

· The Moth is back, looking for up to 3,000 words: entry is £15 and first prize £3,000.

Do let me know if you achieve recognition in any of these!

Still Super

May 18, 2024

We went to see Jesus Christ Superstar at the the New Theatre, Wimbledon. It’s still a great show some fifty years after it first turned musicals upside down. This is a lively production based on the Regent’s Park version, with a single set remaining in place throughout. There are nice touches – at the Last Supper the apostles strike the poses they have in the famous Leonardo fresco – but giving Christ a guitar (and baseball cap) doesn’t really work.

I’m always slightly surprised by how much many religious people like JCS, because it is a pretty agnostic account. No resurrection, no miracles, and Christ as doubting and kind of burnt-out. There are many references to his teachings, but they don’t get much of a showing. In fact when there’s an argument about principles it’s hard not to feel that Judas wins (‘people who are hungry, people who are starving, matter more than your feet and hair’). But I suppose the title warns us up front that this is about celebrity more than holiness.

It is certainly a great evening, and the audience loved it: some were just a bit too keen to start applauding when the show really required silence. But this is probably the outstanding example of a show where you don’t just leave humming the tunes: you’re doing it on the way in, too.

Spirited Away in the theatre

May 16, 2024

My daughter Elizabeth kindly organised a trip with her sister and me to see the theatrical production of Spirited Away. You probably know the film, Miyazaki’s most famous, which has become a much-loved classic here as well as in Japan. It’s about a girl navigating the dangers of a spirit bath-house, filled with strange but sometimes friendly creatures. Above you can see the Radish Spirit in the cartoon and in his theatrical version.

Being full of magic and weird beings, this is not a story that is straightforward to present on stage, but the designers have done a great job. They usually allow us to see how the tricks are done, but the effects are none the worse for that. The story is delivered pretty faithfully, following the film very closely, and it helps that probably everyone sitting in the Coliseum knows and loves the film.

This is, I think, the original Japanese cast, and the dialogue is in Japanese with the Coliseum deploying the surtitles it is famous for using with opera. It’s a deservedly popular show, and elsewhere in London you can already see a theatrical version of My Neighbour Totoro, another Miyazaki film. Someone must surely be thinking about doing Howl’s Moving Castle, though perhaps that one is a more complex business. Rather than the film being an original work, it is a significantly rewritten version of the story by Diana Wynne Jones, which has itself already been turned into a stage show…

Ann Pattinson prize

May 13, 2024

My story ‘The Salamander of London’ came third in this year’s Ann Pattinson memorial prize, a contest run by the good people at Sutton Writers.

Merry Olympics

May 12, 2024

Can’t help thinking this fan in the Eiffel Tower hat might be moonlighting from his winter job.

Pond life

May 2, 2024

We’ve had a go at setting up a mini pond in an old Belfast sink. We’ve started with a little water lily, water crowfoot and a pickerelweed. We’ll see how it goes.

The Labour Party Bazaar 1926

April 22, 2024

Looking through my late mother’s papers I found a souvenir of the Peterborough Labour Party’s Bazaar of 1926: a reminder that my grandparents were keen supporters in the early days. I should hate to introduce any politics here, but it is an interesting document.

It consists of a series of rather flattering cartoons of prominent local party members, drawn by the prospective parliamentary candidate J.F.Horrabin. It is no surprise that they are rather good, because Horrabin was a professional newspaper cartoonist, responsible for the largely forgotten strips ‘Adventures of the Noah Family’ (later known as ‘Japhet and Happy’) and ‘Dot and Carrie’, a cartoon about two secretaries. He went on to win the next election and was MP for Peterborough for two years under the leadership of Ramsay MacDonald.

In 1926 the Peterborough party was only eight years old. Labour had overtaken the Liberals and was slowly growing into its future role as one of the two main parties. The Bazaar looks very respectable, which may reflect the party’s nervousness about seeming Communist or revolutionary. The General Strike had happened only months before, but without Labour’s official support, and there are no echoes of it here. (Interestingly, Ellen Wilkinson, who opened the Bazaar, had worked tirelessly in support of the strike.)

One little detail that slightly puzzles me is that in the list of stall-holders and helpers, a distinction is drawn, not just between Miss and Mrs, but also the ‘Mesdames’. I conjecture that ‘Madam’ meant you were a widow?

I must say I also wonder what Messrs Doodson and Perkins had on the ‘Men’s Stall’.

May 2024 Competitions

April 20, 2024

So here I am, back again with a list of competitions I might enter during May. I’ve included ones with a deadline of 30 April, since I didn’t do an April list. Here they are first.

F(r)iction wants up to 7,500 words: entry is $10 and first prize $1,000.
The Plaza Prizes include a category for short stories up to 5,000 words: £15 to enter and a prize of £1,000
Desperate Literature again offer a prize which besides €2,000 includes a residency and consultation. Up to 2,000 words, €20 to enter.
Free Fall takes up to 3,000 words. Entry is CA$25 and top prize CA$500
The Ironclad Creative short story competition has the unusual theme of ‘7:12 am’. £7 to enter and the prize is £100.

Moving on into April…

The Cheshire novel prize is back – send the first 5,000 words plus a synopsis. It’s a full £29 to enter and the top prize is £1,000, deadline 1 May.
With the same deadline the Tom Howard/John H Reid competition offers $3,500. $22 entry and up to 6,000 words are accepted.
Letter Review will take up to 5,000 words, you win a share of $1000 and it’s free to enter. Deadline 1 May again.
Leapfrog is looking for longer works – minimum 22,000. It’s $35 to enter and your main prize is publication, though all finalists get $150. Enter by 5 May.
Another novel competition is the Goldfinch one- again your first 5,000 plus a synopsis are required. £10 to enter, prize £300, deadline 15 May.
Lush Triumphant from sub-Terrain looks for 3,000 words, entry $30, prize $1000. Again, the deadline is 15 May.
I don’t normally do very short pieces, but the postcard competition from Geist looked interesting. You have to send them a postcard and a 500-word piece which relates to the picture. It’s CA$25 to enter and the prize is $500: deadline 20 May.
Do not forget the mighty Bridport competition, with its prize of £5,000. Entry is £14 and the word limit is 5,000. Last year I was shortlisted – so close! The deadline for this one and all the rest is 31 May.
MTP want up to 3,000 words. An entry fee of £8 gives you a chance of winning £1,000, and a decent chance of featuring in their chunky annual anthology, which is always named after the winning story.
Finally the good old Frome Festival is back. 1,000 to 2,200 words, entry is £6 and the prize £400.