A funny old game

I suck at football. I suck in so many ways, you can’t even count them - and believe me, people have tried. I suck so bad, I even suck at spectating. But that’s OK - my son thinks I’m Maradona on the field, but then he’s six, and I can still dispossess him without resorting to (excessive) barging.

The sorry thing is, I do like football. I’m just not built for it. Heck, I’m not even built for football apparel - the recent developments vis-à-vis slim-fit shirts has not combined well with recent developments vis-à-vis this man’s middle-age midriff, and it’s only due to the stress of lockdown that I’ve dropped enough timber to get back into the last top I won.

All that, however, is by the by. A few weeks back, Sure was encouraging Joe Public to show off their lockdown football skills by chipping a ball into some household receptacle or another. The prize was a Chelsea shirt signed by the first XI - and in case you’re not into the whole beautiful game thing, that’s damn sweet.

As it happens, refining one’s skills is only half the task - finding a suitable pitch and camera angle in your average terraced house is easier said than done - especially for someone like me who is as likely to smack the ball into their phone as the laundry basket.

Nevertheless, I set the stage and scored the shot. It wasn’t exactly what I had in mind, but as any striker will tell you, they all count. And count it did - out of a field of less than a dozen, my silly shot was apparently judged to be the best. For the first time in my life, my soccer skills had netted a win, and the second-born was once more in awe of his old man’s flair play.

So far, so excellent, but I’d scarcely had time for a celebratory cup of tea and a sit-down when Pukka Pies launched a similar lockdown soccer comp. Normally, of course, I am awful at recycling my endeavours - not least because my filing technique is so poor. On this occasion, however, I barely had to scroll through my phone to find the right clip. Fate or blind luck, I’ll let you be the judge, suffice to say that barely a handful of people fulfilled the entry criteria for this one either, and thanks to my action replay I poked a second one into the onion bag.

The short man was again delighted - not just because it’s great to have such a winner as a dad (I know, I know) - but also because we got a brand-spanking football and fridge full of pie. There was also the matter of the apron and water bottle, but since they were neither pie nor football, they passed him by.

What also passed him by were the takeaways from this performance - so in true pundit style, here they are:

• If the opposition don’t turn up, the game’s yours for the taking.
• If you’ve got something in the locker - use it.
• Football’s a game of two halves, but there’s nothing to stop them being identical.
  (Which is another way of saying the previous point)
• Goals win games.
  (Which is another way of saying the bleeding obvious)
• Oh, and always give 110%
  (Which is another way of saying complete nonsense)

Prize unboxing May 2020

Yep, it's been a while. What can I say - I dipped out ... but then I dipped in again! Please excuse my, erm, deliberate error towards the end - the Walker's-Pepsi promotion is of course Perfect Match, not Match and Win ... oops!

Be lucky!

Prize unboxing February 2020

It's back! Yes, I know I haven't done an unboxing for a few months, but things have been quiet, and who wants to watch tumbleweed, right? This month has been a much better ride on the win wagon - in addition to the prizes herein, I've also had a win on the Malteaser bunny Daring Days Out comp.

I also want to give a special shout out to two of my local comping buddies who have been entering the Cadbury's Premier League comp on behalf of my lad, with the result that Davina has won him a MASSIVE heap of stickers, and Oriana is sending me to watch Norwich v Everton in a few weeks time - THANK YOU SO MUCH!

But enough chat - enjoy the video ... and be lucky!

Stick it to the man

In January, I mostly won stickers. Actually, I only won stickers. Hundreds of them. More than I’ve bought in my entire life. In itself, that’s hardly surprising - I’ve never been a completist: I got two-thirds of the way through my ET album, one-third through my Return of the Jedi album, and no more than a dozen stickers into any of the Smash Hits albums. That’s the trouble when you’re too tight to pay out - the desire for closure doesn’t so much fade as surrender to the economic imperative.

My first-born is currently hovering around this point. He was all into his Norwich City album while people were gifting him stickers, but nothing on God's earth was going to make him lift a finger to earn the money for more.

The younger one, however, enjoys greater indulgence - to which end, this season alone has brought him not only Norwich City stickers, but also Match Attax Champions League cards, Panini Premier League cards and Panini FIFA365 cards, all of which he files carefully according to no system whatsoever, all over his floor.

100 packets of Panini stickers: more than any rational human would ever need
AND THEY ARE ALL MINE!

And yes, to this heap he will shortly be adding the 100 packets of Panini Premier League stickers I won from Cadbury the other night.

This ton-box of stickers is, if you like, the entry-level prize. These boxes are currently retailing on Amazon for upwards of sixty quid and Cadbury is giving away two thousand of them. So, as entry-level prize pools go, this one carries a soupcon more swag than the tsunami of drawstring bags and keyrings that Cadbury has given away on previous occasions.

The next prize tier, naturally, is even grander: the album plus complete set of stickers - in other words, the finished article.

ALL THE STICKERS! ALL OF THEM!

For some people, a prize like this would be off the scale of insane. I, however, am conflicted. I mean, there’s no doubt that these sticker-books are legit rackets - case in point, the last Panini World Cup album would have cost a bare minimum of £109 to complete, assuming you bought 137 packets without a single duplicate, but more likely pushing £400 - and more still if you had no mates to swap with.

And yet! It’s the heat of desire; the thrill of the trades; the satisfaction of completing a page, a team or even an album.

It’s all about the experience.

A completed album, straight off-the-shelf, is an artefact devoid of emotional journey. To be sure, there’s mindfulness to be found in fastening millionaires to boxes, but in terms of experience, it’s like studying the Skywalker family tree before watching Star Wars for the first time.

Comping’s not so different. Yes, the prizes are nice, but sometimes they account for such a small fraction of the experience that you start questioning why you bother. This is why you’ve got to enjoy the ride. As my dad regularly used to say, sometimes it’s better to travel than to arrive.

There are many paths to happiness, and so far in 2020, this one I’ve barely trod. The fact that I’ve still managed to win something, however, is a nice reminder that it’s OK to take it easy. There’ll be plenty more when the time is right.

Comping is DANGEROUS

Last summer, I took a tumble at Go Ape. Had I not won vouchers in the Cadbury’s Freddo comp, I wouldn’t have been there. So, really, I guess, this whole sorry saga starts with Freddo. It’s thanks to Freddo that I upset my pinkie, and it’s thanks to Freddo that random klaxons of pain started tearing though my ribs.

Freddo has a lot to answer for.

Things quietened down over the coming months, however, and by December the pain train was paying only irregular visits. That is, until we reached peak advent.

You see, looking down, aggravates the old war wound. And using your phone for a couple of thousand Instagram comps involves a lot of looking down.

Next week, I’m going to the physio.

Don’t mug yourself people: comping’s not for fair-weather players. It’s an extreme sport, NO LIE.

Take it easy.

2019: A year in numbers

1017: Estimated prize value (£). What a difference a year makes: 2018 was my most successful year by some margin; 2019, the least. There are reasons for this, of course - building works, for example, are always highly disruptive - but the main issue was a lack of focus. The year didn’t start well and I ended up taking my foot off the pedal. In fact, the only reason my score tipped over a grand was due to an administrative error in my favour. That’s not to say I had a bad year - how can something be bad when you’re enjoying yourself?!

300: Highest-value prize (£). Prize of the year has to be my PS4. A quick look online suggests that I’ve over-valued it here, but prices have a tendency to yo-yo, and I’m pretty sure Amazon was listing the bundle at £300 when I got the winning notification. RRP is just a number - what counts is the quality time I plan to have with this little sucker!

70: Value of vouchers won (£). Amazon (£50); bar tab (£20). Just as that Amazon voucher eased the pain of Christmas shopping, that bar tab is going to ease the pain of Christmas school holidays…

39: Number of wins. Not even a win a week - must do better!

18: Number of Instagram wins. While Insta is still my most fertile source of wins, the luck is drying up. The problem isn’t fewer comps - if anything, that number is on the rise. The real problem is the number of entries. Note: that’s not necessarily the same as the number of entrants, although I suspect this number is on the rise too; rather, it’s the number of comps permitting unlimited entries. Sure, I might chuck in a token tag for a bottle of scotch, but some people are tagging twenty friends for a share-bag of lentils, and that makes no sense at all.

15: Cash won (£). 15. Blew it all on my Mastercard bill.

4: T-shirts. I’ve outgrown the best one too. Lay off the pies, Neill!

3.3: Prizes still to arrive. To be fair, one of these prizes was a Christmas Day win (a Shreddies stormtrooper cereal bowl - woo!), so it’s unrealistic to expect that to have arrived already. By contrast, my box of Walker’s Crisps and Cadbury’s beanie are, for shame, overdue, but the fulfilment logistics for huge giveaways seldom run smoothly, so I’ll worry about those when I get round to it. As for that errant one-third of a prize, well, I guess we’ll see what we’ll see…

1: Comping son. It took a whole bunch of nagging to get him to knuckle down, but no one unboxes like my second-born!

How did your year go? Let me know in the comments below!

The wider world in 2019

After the bedlam of the advent season, I enjoy the relative calm of January, when the promotional calendar doesn’t so much expire as get a bit of a stitch, and anyone who wants to beg off for a month doesn’t really have to worry about missing out, because the big prizes are done for the next few weeks, right?

Well, that would normally be the case, but this year was different. This was the year that a non-conventional promoter disrupted things by promising to make one hundred retweeters into yen millionaires. OK, so a million yen is a fraction as exciting as a million dollars (less than one-hundredth, if we’re splitting hairs), but it’s a sweet prize pool by any measure. Shame the odds didn’t work out so well - the original tweet hit 4.5 million retweets, making it the most retweeted tweet ever.

Still, with odds like that, no one really expects to win, so no one’s really disappointed. It’s not like being told you’ve won a VIP trip for two to attend the Champions League Final, only to find the promoter has inadvertently told every man and his dog that they’re winners too. As Zavvi will testify, mistakes happen. 

In their defence, Zavvi did at least want someone to win their comp. Contrast this with Numatic, who ran a comp soliciting selfies from anyone attending Glastonbury with their Henry vacuum cleaner. Number of entries meeting the entry criteria: nil. That I won some colouring books for my ostentatiously Photoshopped effort was a complete bonus as I’d have been hard-pushed to find a legitimate use for a two-metre FloMax hose, crevice tool and tapered adaptor.

When bad photoshopping wins also-ran prizes

Of course, where there’s yin there’s yang. While one company is rolling out comps with nigh-impossible entry criteria, another is making ones so easy a baby could win. At least, that’s what one Edmonton couple found when they left their toddler unattended with the TV remote and ended up with an expenses-paid holiday to Tokyo. Fat chance me enjoying similar luck - last time I left children in the same room as my consumer durables, their primal grunting landed me with an Amazon Prime account.

Finally then, let me leave you with 10,000 reminders about the importance of reading the terms and conditions. Most people wouldn’t expect to find a competition embedded in the small print of their travel insurance, but that’s exactly what one woman found, back in March, and she ended up $10,000 richer. Will this encourage me to study my documents more carefully next time I buy insurance? Absolutely. Will I read the Apple media terms and conditions next time I update iTunes? Are you insane?!

If I’ve missed any of this year’s big stories, do let me know in the comments below! Hope you had a lucky one!

Stay on target

Winning’s nice. Makes you feel all warm, doesn’t it? A few days ago, I won a Gleam comp. That’s not something that happens every day. To be honest, for me, it’s not even something that happens every year. But happen it did, and that's what's important.

It also happened to be my biggest prize of the year too - a PS4.

Thanks Geek Pride! 

Getting a winning notification like that is the kind of thing that makes you jump out of your seat and squeal, as indeed I would have, had the great dollop of offspring occupying my lap at that moment not cut off the blood-flow to my legs. But restraint has its own rewards: while a few muffled squarks might not be quite as cathartic as a squeal, they don't result in an hour of what-is-it-and-can-i-have-it earache from your weans. Which also is nice.

For some people, of course, a games console is a fundamental utility. My brother in law, for example, owns every major console produced since ever, and would rather have his water disconnected than be denied access to his tech-babies.

Me, less so. I’ve acclimatised. It’s about 15 years since I bought my last proper gaming device as I’ve frankly been unable to justify the outlay.

For this reason, I’ve had PlayStations, Xboxes and the like on my comping wishlist for, well, since first getting my act together and making a wishlist, actually. And as my children have been growing up, I’ve been thinking, gawsh … It won't be long before I’m going to have to spend actual folding money on one of these doohickeys or they - like me - will risk dropping out of the cultural loop. I know, first-world problems, right?

To be sure, dropping out of the cultural loop isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Case in point: I don’t think me banning them from watching the X-Factor is going to compromise their prospects in life. That said, I also suspect that the X-Factor does little to improve reaction time, problem-solving skills, multi-tasking or hand-eye co-ordination.

There’s also the fact that the video games sector now accounts for more than half of the UK’s entire entertainment market, so there’s worse career options out there.

The thing is though, for all I’ve been wanting to immerse my kids in this world of infinite exciting possibilities, my understanding of the field has shrivelled to the point of imbecility. The winning notification didn’t tell that I’d won a PS4; rather, it told me I’d won a PS4 Pro or an Xbox One something or other, and then asked which I wanted. They may as well have asked my cat whether it preferred Visa or Mastercard.

Fortunately, the extremely well informed Nikki Hunter-Pike stepped up to the plate at short notice and made my decision for me (Thank you Nikki!).

I thought that was it, and spent a minute feeling all smug about my win, but then the promoter pinged back, asking what game I wanted, which - to revert to the previous analogy - was like asking my cat whether Facebook’s Libra is really a cryptocurrency or just a global digital currency based on blockchain technology. So, again, thank you Nikki for selecting something on my behalf - I look forward to playing once the advents are out of the way!

Until then, however, I will be thrashing the guts out of my comping engine. That’s not just because of the base comping orgy that is December, but also because big wins are so emboldening. Or, to put it another way, they stop you being able to think straight.

The comps on Prizefinder and the Competition Database will have been entered by thousands of people. I know that. Yet what was the first thing I did, after winning the console? Enter every damn holiday and big tech comp listed. Because you got to be in it to win it, right?

Well, yes. In a sense. But wouldn’t time be better spent hunting for better leads and smaller odds?

Whether it’s comping or poker or playing the horses, there’s a reason why the wiseguys do so well - they maintain their game and don’t turn into headless chickens at the first whiff of success. There’s also a reason why I’m not a wiseguy…

Where my peoples at?

Asgard has fallen! Well, perhaps that’s a little overwrought, but #SuperluckyLive is definitely over. On Saturday I was surrounded by my spiritual brethren and hugging it out with legends. Today, by contrast, I am huddled alone in a cold box-room, scowling at my in-tray.

Me, my goofy mug, and 1x bona fide legend

Spending all that time team-comping and chin-wagging about stories both winning and otherwise was one long sugar rush … Monday, however, was the drop. That feeling of belonging dissolved into one of isolation, of PUT ME BACK! TAKE ME HOME!

But even the sunniest days have to throw shade somewhere. And now that my laptop’s out of the glare, I can see my virtual peoples all the more clearly. Hello all you SuperLuckyLovelies! Don't be strangers!

Double down

Things don’t always go according to plan. That’s not to say they’ve gone wrong, of course; it’s just that the outcome, the journey, or possibly both, have diverged from expectation. Parenthood is a case in point. Well, sort of: parenthood is a largely thankless travail where anything and everything you do will be criticised by someone at some point, and the only way your predictions will pan out is if you expect to balls up everything in the first place. But still, just because you’re permanently in the wrong, that doesn’t mean that the whole thing has been a catastrophe. (It’ll still feel like it, sure, but legally speaking, only a small minority of cases are unequivocally catastrophic.)

In terms of prizes, for example, it was barely a fortnight ago that my coffee turned up a few months late, but buddied up with another half-pound friend. Likewise, today, my biggest win of the year pretty much doubled in size thanks to an admin error.

How so? Well, just before Instagram called time on its ‘following’ tab, I found a small-odds competition to win a case of reds from the Sunday Times Wine Club. Within a week of pulling my name from the hat, a dozen bottles turned up at my house. The only problem - and let’s be quite clear, this really wasn’t a problem - was that these weren’t the bottles I was supposed to have won.

Mindful of the fact that someone had kindly just given me a hundred quid’s worth of wine, I most definitely did not complain.

What I did do, however, was thank the promoter, but point out that the bottles weren’t the ones I was expecting, and that while this was absolutely not an issue for me, I didn’t want one of their paying customers to be upset because they were waiting for the box on my hallway floor.

The thing is, while I did prefer the look of the original prize, most promoters reserve the right to substitute prizes, in part or whole, with an alternative of equal or greater value - and I’m cool with that. Had the promoter offered to replace the wine, I would have been happy; had they not, I would still have been happy.

12 of the best

What I was not expecting, however, was for the promoter to say, hold up, that ain’t right - tell you what, hang on to that box and we’ll send you the proper one right away. Truthfully, I’m still rather taken aback.  I mean, if things had gone to plan, I’d have been able to stick all the booze in the cupboard under the stairs. As it happens, I now have a dozen bottles of sauce obstructing the passage through my kitchen. But then, some problems are nice to have, aren’t they?

Hard copy light reading

I was humbled at #SuperLuckyLive yesterday when the little box of books I'd taken along sold out in minutes! If you were hoping to buying one, I'm SO sorry I didn't bring enough - I really thought that anyone who was interested would have downloaded it already! 

If anyone is still hungering for a genuine paper copy, send me a PM, and if there's enough interest, I'll be able to make a bulk order and get you one for less than the Amazon price! If you really want, I'll get the unboxing king (aka my son) to sign it too 😂🤣

And in case you're wondering what on earth I'm talking about, you can read all about the book here!

Forever Chasing Supernovas

Some competition entries take seconds; others take hours - but if you're getting into the zen of the endeavour, that's no bad thing. Well, it might be a bad thing if you're in the middle of your manager's PowerPoint presentation, but you get the point.

By way of example, Fortnum & Mason have recently been running a short story competition, with a shedload of gourmet chocolate being awarded to the winner. By any measure, that's a nice prize. It's also a nice challenge.

The brief? Write a 500-word story for their chocolate library. Said story must be inspired by one of three starting points vaguely related to a specific F&M chocolate bar.

I've gone for the Forever Chasing Supernovas (milk chocolate and passionfruit) bar - based on the brief that "for the last 1707 years, four passionate astronauts have hurtled through space, on the hunt for a peculiar portal to a spell-binding dimension".

Science fiction is not my forte, however, so I'm really hoping the stories are being judged by a Beatles fan. Not that the Beatles are my forte either... Anyway, here's my effort - let me know how many songs can you identify therein!

Forever Chasing Supernovas

Happy birthday, Captain! You’re 1,740 today, but you don’t look a day over 64!

“I’d not look a day over 33 if you’d only leave me in stasis.”

Lieutenant Harrison’s baked a cake!

“I sincerely doubt that.”

OK. I baked the cake. But Lieutenant Harrison gave me the recipe.

“You woke up Lieutenant Harrison just to bake a cake?!”

Well, technically, she was already awake…

“You’re saying she disabled the hibernation protocol from the bridge while cryogenically frozen inside a locked stasis pod?”

Yes. I mean no. Um. It was an accident.

“You brought her out of stasis by accident?”

Yes. An accident. I was lonely so I accidentally pressed the off button.

“Ringo, you’re a robot.”

Android.

“Whatever. You’re programmed aren’t you?”

Correct.

“And what is your prime directive?”

To safeguard the crew as we traverse the Kanaloa nebula and pass through the Māla wormhole.

 “So, why are we having this conversation?”

Because it’s your birthday!

“This isn’t about me is it? Last week you thawed me out for World Stationery Day.”

But you love pens!

“I’ve not seen a pen in 1,700 years!”

But everyone loves pens!

“Who’s ‘everyone’, Ringo?! Everyone we ever knew died centuries ago! Heck, for all we know, civilisation itself died centuries ago. It’s not like Earth’s been in contact for, I dunno, the last thousand years or so!”

You know what you need? A proper blowout. You know, sit back … let the evening go. Live for the moment. Enjoy the show.

“What I need is to be put back into cryostasis.”

I’m sorry Jean-Paul, I’m afraid I can’t do that.

“What do you mean you can’t do that?! Your prime directive…”

…is to look after you, yes, and that includes not letting you sleep through dangerous astronomical phenomena, such as Phi Mu 217-9300 going supernova.

“I’m sorry, what?”

In approximately 90 seconds, Phi Mu 217-9300 will go supernova.

“What?! Where’s Georgia?! Where’s Mack?!”

Lieutenant Harrison is on the bridge, transmitting data back to Earth. Mr McKenzie is … not at his post. I think he’s unwell.

“Why didn’t you wake me earlier?! We’ve got less than five minutes before we’re toast – I should be on deck with my crew!”

So, I’m not crew any more? How’s that supposed to make me feel? I thought we were friends…

“You know full well what I mean! I can’t leave Georgia up there all alone!”

I brought chocolate.

“You did what?”

Milk chocolate. Filled with passion fruit. I thought you might like it. Just a little token of appreciation, you know, from me, to you.

“I haven’t tasted chocolate for 900 years. I thought we’d run out?”

I was saving it for a special occasion.

“Like my 1,740th birthday?”

Or the end of a long cold lonely winter, perhaps.

“1,707 years is a long winter.”

Yes, but the sun’s here now.

“Yep, here it comes.”

And how’s the chocolate?

“It’s all right, Ringo – everything is. It’s all right.”

My party piece

As much as I love a novel entry mechanic, especially a collaborative one, the absurdity of Twitter parties is something I just can’t escape.

Semantics, of course, is a classic stumbling block: I’m not a “party” person. For a start, I get nervous when backed into social situations and am expected to maintain fluid conversation under pressure; for a second, I’m still processing the trauma of being forced to play postman’s knock at my sister’s sixth birthday.

I’m also unclear about terminology. Are Twitter parties something one attends, partakes in or just does? Am I an invitee, a delegate or just a passer-by?

But these are just personal hang-ups that I need to work through. The really absurd part is the party itself. In real-life, the closest approximation would be a launch party for some intricate widget, where the host is up on stage, elaborating on the finer points of said widget’s exquisite filigree detail, while the guests are all tangentially gibbering among themselves, hashtagging their every burp. Case in point: I’ve just sat through a Twitter party about temperance, and before you could say virgin martini, the secondary conversation had slurred into a bonding session for milk-loathers.

Half an hour of gratuitously hashtagging jibber jabber is normally quite enough to get a hashtag to trend. For the promoter’s marketing team, this ticks a very important box; unfortunately, it also leads to gatecrashers hijacking said hashtag in an attempt to hawk snake oil and penis pumps. That’s when you know the show is over. That’s when the promoter pulls down the shutters and literally starts paying people to leave. To be sure, I’ve been to worse parties - I’ve hosted worse parties - but not ones planned to pan out thus.

But comping isn’t real-life; it makes you do things you wouldn’t normally do. And in that respect, it’s not unlike Special Brew - albeit Special Brew with prizes. For example, in this instance, moving outside my comfort zone won me a £50 Amazon voucher - my biggest prize this year, and exactly what I need now that the Christmas shopping season beckons.

 [16/10 filed late]

Never too late

Setting a new record, a prize that I've been looking forward to receiving since March arrived today - that's a wait of seven months, give or take.

It's a bag of coffee, worth no more three pounds, so was it worth the chasing? The answer's in the question, ie: coffee.

I've weaned myself off coffee before; truth be told, I even spent a few weeks completely caffeine-free, but that's not something I'd recommend. At least, I'd not recommend doing it like I did, which is to say, cold turkey, as the experience is not unlike someone hammering your eyeballs with the heel of their boot.

But withdrawal symptoms aside, one thing that reducing my caffeine intake has taught me is that without coffee, I'm not actually human. I mean, obviously I'm unbearable, but that aside, I just like it too much. Between the children waking up and going to bed, my morning joe is invariably the high point of my day. I don't mean that to sound like I love coffee more than my children, but ... then, maybe I do ... you know, I've never really thought about it like that ... so let's just say it's less demanding than my children and leave it there.

Indeed, the whole point of this story is that today, I received gratis coffee. But the story doesn't stop there, as the promoter chucked in a second bag too - and a fancier spec of coffee at that. So forget better late than never; sometimes things can be better late than punctual too.

Match & Win

Kicking myself because I failed to click that this year’s Cadbury’s Match & Win promotion used the same mechanic as last year - in other words, the barcode and batch code on one bar of chocolate are good for two entries a day, for every day of the promotion. With one week left to get entries in, the chances of me scoring Norwich tickets are looking wafer-thin. Especially if I’m going to need Chelsea to lose 2-4 to Newcastle at home just to make it through to the prize draw.

The Consolation Prize

Last Saturday, Norwich City took - to use the vernacular - one hell of a beating. About ten minutes from the end, however, they scored a consolation goal. As second-born is currently keen as mustard to expand his football-related vocabulary, he asked what ‘consolation’ meant. A friend explained, you know when you don’t win but someone gives you a prize anyway… I had to stop him right there. That’s second place mate. That’s runner-up. That’s on the podium and in the prizes.

The idea that not winning outright is not winning is flat-out toxic. You see the same thing at the end of any football cup final when the runners-up receive their medals. Those chaps are not happy bunnies. Watch how many take off their medal rather than wear it for another second. They’d rather carry it all screwed up in their sweaty palm than make the zero effort required to wear it to the dressing room.

Sure, they’ve had a gruelling day, and sure, there’s still room to do better next time, but placing second isn’t losing! Losing isn't even getting knocked out in the first round; losing is not getting up for more.

After not winning the other week’s poetry competition on account of being a numpty, I didn’t quit. I dusted myself down and made nice with the promoter. I didn’t complain, and I certainly didn’t ask for a prize, and yet here we are: my ‘consolation prize’ of a couple of paperbacks arrived today - a treat better than I deserved, better than I was expecting, and way better than many things I have acumulated as a so-called ‘winner’.

A consolation goal makes no never mind to the result. A consolation prize that is a prize, is a prize, full stop. It’s all in the mindset.

The fool or the fool who follows the fool

What?! How dare you remove the "Following" tab! How am I supposed to stalk now?! Instagram,  you're dead to me.

Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes

Knee-deep in form-fillers today. The worst kind of comp - for me at least. I usually give these a wide berth, but you’re hard pushed to win a holiday off a basic like-tag on Instagram. Truth is, you’re hard pushed to win a holiday full-stop, but if you don’t try, you don’t prevail.

I nurture this fantasy that, with enough rest and recuperation, my brain might grow back. I don’t imagine I’ll ever be able to conjugate beautiful French or discuss with confidence - or failing that, bluster - the role of women in nineteenth-century opera, but the idea of being able to recall a three-item shopping list retains a certain allure.

There was a time I could manage a passable approximation of the above. That time, however, has passed. I can remember to get two children to school - usually on the right days, and sometimes even in their own clothes. I can remember to vacuum the carpet. And goodness knows I can remember to sob into the perpetually spewing laundry basket. But these are the squeaky wheels. Can I remember to touch up the wood-stain on the dining room floor or to dust absolutely anything? Not a chance.

So, that’s why I’m filling in forms today. Not because I’m hopeful of winning a holiday - no, I’m under no illusion about the likelihood of that - but rather because I’m imagining what it’d be like to have a week in Mauritius without children; without arguments; without people asking me questions then interrupting my answers with bullshit. I’m imagining what it’d be like to have informed opinions. I’m imagining what it’d be like to have a head inside which it wasn’t raining anvils. I’m imagining what it’d be like to have half a brain.

I imagine it’d be nice.

Raincheck

Some days you enter 300 comps; some days you spend just as long on one. But when it combines with your other favourite hobby, it's way more than twice the fun, and even if you don't win, you've got something to show for your efforts - something far more interesting than a load of random tags and emojis, which is basically what 80% of my communication on Instagram entails.

So, after 20 mins of those random tags and emojis on Instagram today,  I switched focus to a short story comp, and then spent  hours, literally hours, writing about astronauts, in the hope of winning an obscene amount of fancy chocolate.

Theoretically the job is now done, but I've learned from experience not to hand in my homework the moment I've completed the first draft. With this in mind, I'm afraid you'll have to wait a few days to see what I've been up to. Sorry!

Dividends

At last, the winning feeling has returned! After weeks of nothing, followed by one win that self-destructed, one that wasn’t mine, and one that I’ll never see because, well, you know what they say about the road to Hull, two winning notifications arrived on the same day - both riding in on the crest of my (ahem) unique talent for verse..

I’m no laureate, let’s be clear about that. But comps on poetry-based hashtag days are so under-subscribed, that I can’t resist them. Well, I can resist the ones run by anyone who takes the poetic arts remotely seriously. Partly that's because my doggerel would wound their very souls, and partly because they’re unlikely to be giving away anything as mundane as pet food or shoe polish.

Yes, the comps do take a bit longer to enter, but the odds are usually so much shorter than standard RT comps that one ignores them at one’s peril. Especially as so many of them are either judged by whichever member of the marketing team pulled the short straw that day, or not judged at all.

I’m as yet unsure what my Typhoo “goodies” will entail, but I’m guessing teabags will be the centrepiece. And who doesn’t need more tea? Even people who don’t drink it have to buy it - have you ever tried fobbing off a plumber with camomile? Good luck with that.

And so, with this in mind, I leave you with the least bad of my efforts:

“What starts with Tea and ends with Tea?”
“A wonderful day,” I replied.
“Six letters long, fourth letter P …
Teapot, of course,” he sighed.