'Our Just Back competition has inspired pieces on everything from a 'death' on the Nile to the view from a window in
The Just Back competition has now been running for almost a year. No thanks to me.
I was against it at the start. There wouldn’t be enough entries of a sufficient standard for us to keep it going, I argued. There wouldn’t be enough variety in the accounts to keep people reading it, week in, week out, let alone spur them to do better by entering it.
I’ve been proved wrong. Entries arrive at the rate of 10 to
All of the above-mentioned were among the winning entries, earning their writers £
First, obey the rules. “No attachments,” we say, yet entries still arrive attached to an email rather than pasted into the email itself.
Second, check your spelling and grammar. We will make allowances for the odd lapse, especially if you have been “struck by lightening”. That can be bad for the spelling as well as the rest of your faculties. But we’ll grow tetchy if there are literals every few lines. If you haven’t read your own copy, why should we?
Third, if you can’t surprise us, don’t make us nod off. “Travel can broaden the mind” is no longer news in these parts.
If you are the sort of writer whose breath is literally taken away by a whistle-stop tour through the maze-like lanes of a bustling market where a poor child in an immaculately clean school uniform held your arm in a vice-like grip – well, perhaps you should be entering another competition.
The five articles below show how it’s done.
Pam Tibbetts might have spent a lot of her time in
Lynda Bailey’s article is a lovely exercise in miniaturism: a recording of the sights and sounds in one quiet courtyard in
Mary F Barrett, by comparison, is reporting on one of the world’s great natural wonders,
David Allen, with a suspected death by the
Instead of “Tourist eaten by crocodile”, Richard Lakin had “Day at the beach” to report on. Not the most promising of raw material. Most people who have grown up in Britain have had at least one day out at the seaside that was much like Mr Lakin’s – but not many of them would have been able to write about it as well as he has done. That’s why he is our winner. Congratulations again to him and good luck to anyone planning to enter next week or next year.
Our winner
COMPAQ 367759-001 Laptop Battery
HP COMPAQ 360482-001 Laptop Battery
TOSHIBA PA3284U-1BAS Laptop Battery
TOSHIBA PA3399U-1BAS Laptop Battery
The great British seaside
By Richard Lakin
The tide retreats, tugging at emerald rocks and sucking footprints from the sand. Kids in football shirts pose for family albums holding lines of mackerel caught with milk-bottle tops. A queue for 99s snakes past the rock emporium. A man with a mermaid tattoo and eyebrows like a Scottie dog barks out times for the next boat trips. Punch and Judy starts at two, according to the hands on a chalk board. The easy-listening stall plays Billy Fury’s Halfway to
I’m sipping nuclear-hot tea. Tracey prods me. “I can get you a tartan travel rug if you want.”
There are two age groups on this beach. Toddlers run with arched feet across ridges left by the retreating tide. They prod jellyfish with spent lollipop sticks and skim pebbles into the surf. Beyond the high-tide line, grandparents empty packet sugar into orange tea and nibble at cold sausages and muffins liberated from guest-house breakfasts.
I’m stuck in between; an irrelevance. My feet are making troughs in the sand. Joe and Jacob are digging, hacking at the shells and shingle that lie beneath. Joe holds the spade like a pick, bringing it down in an arc over his shoulder.
“Some working-class throwback. Not from your side of the family, then,” Tracey says. I tell Joe to carry on digging. He’s a good 12 inches down. He’s learned about the world being round in reception class.
“Keep going and you’ll reach
He frowns, unsure, but keeps digging. The spade strikes something brittle. He reaches into the hole and pulls something out. It’s a splintered mussel shell.
“Did you hear about the shrimp that went to the disco?” I say.
Tracey groans in anticipation.
“He pulled a mussel.”
She’s always been a difficult audience. “You know what they say about blokes becoming their dads.”
She’s right, of course. We’re here because my dad brought us here as kids. I turn to answer as the first heavy raindrop detonates against my forehead. Tracey clips Jacob into the pushchair and crams the blanket and spades and juice cartons into pockets and carrier bags. I grab Joe and we run. The beach clears in seconds. We find the last table in Forte’s coffee shop. Rain drums on the glass.
“Go on, you know you want the cream tea,” Tracey says. I pull a face.
“To go with your tartan blanket.”
The runner-ups
A window on Warsaw by Lynda Bailey
The perfect picture of Mount Fuji by Mary F Barrett
'Death' - apparently - on the
How to enter the next round
Win £200 spending money in the currency of your choice from Thomas Cook. Email your entry of no more than 500 words (no attachments) to by midnight on Wednesday, December 23.
Thomas Cook offers a comprehensive foreign exchange service at highly competitive rates at more than 800 stores nationwide, at zero per cent commission and with no minimum expenditure. It will also make refunds to customers who have bought foreign currency but who are prevented from travelling by the failure of a tour operator or airline.
No comments:
Post a Comment