Comping on fumes

The last few months have been lean. A perfect storm of distracting obligations and disobliging extractions (to say nothing of the distracting ablutions and obligatory excretions) has left me with little time for comping, and - inevitably - even less time for winning.

In many respects, that’s cool - me and comping enjoy an open relationship these days, so we know we’ll always be there for each other, even if only to pick up the pieces after one of us (ie me) has an extended but ultimately unsatisfying fling with, say, work or school holidays. But on the other hand: prizes.

To be sure, this blog has never been based on winning stories alone. Until this year, however, that was an editorial decision. This year is three-quartes done, and so far my biggest wins have been a set of imploding headphones and a football shirt that I’m currently too fat for.

Meanwhile, at the other end of the scale, there was a Peperami Fanimal, which lost its arm after five minutes with my youngest, and tickets to one of the pre-season friendlies at Carrow Road, where my view of the pitch was perfectly impeded by one of the scant few barriers in the stadium and the aforementioned child dragged me to the lav at the exact moment of the only goal.

For this reason, I’ve had to dig deep this summer - which is to say, deep into the pot of prizes past
(it’s not literally a pot, of course; it’s a punched pocket full of unredeemed gift cards and vouchers, but you get the point).

As you may have picked up from previous posts, we’ve blown our every last penny on a loft conversion. We’re now in the process of blowing other people’s pennies on it as well. Financially speaking, this kind of thing doesn’t pair well with having a family holiday, and for this reason we’ve foregone that pleasure this summer.  Well, the kids have gone without; I redeemed one of last year’s prizes so the grownups could enjoy a night in the Sheffield Jury’s Inn. I’m well aware that’s not everyone’s idea of the vida loca, but as any parent will tell you, a night sans enfants is a night sans enfants.

For a minute, it looked like it might be sans enfants but avec leaky aircon, but the staff were having none of that, and upgraded us to an executive room, complete with biscuits and fizzy water. There was also a mini-fridge, but my wife forbade me to touch within, just in case of punitive minibar sensors. For the record, I don’t think two Coke cans and a couple of Kit-Kats constitutes a minibar, but I am an obedient spouse and this bridge remained uncrossed. I did, however, pocket the stationery while she wasn’t looking.

Yeah, you read it right: Executive Room!

Sadly, all good things must come to an end, and we were repatriated with our issue the next morning, although not before I breakfasted with admirable restraint, in the hope that I might somehow squeeze back into the aforementioned football shirt before the start of the 2023 season.

So, that was our summer treat, but what about the kids? Well, let’s not beat around the bush: I was never going to waste a night out on them - I’m yet to recover from their last hotel experience. But equally, I wasn’t going to see them go without either. To that end, I dug up the two Go Ape vouchers I won from Cadbury last summer, and took the lads up to Temple Newsam.

For the uninitiated, the whole point of Go Ape is to take a nice walk in the woods and inject it with a suggestion of peril by elevating it 20 feet above the ground. It’s the sort of thing I would have loved as a boy, back before I learned that being scared of heights is actually one of the more sensible phobias out there. In this respect, it turns out that my youngest is rather precocious with his fears, and after beginning the course in a state of abject dread, managed to get three-quarters of the way round before being over-faced, breaking down into freakin’ shriekin’ nuts-off wails, and having to be rescued by one of the staff. Thankfully children have short memories and he appears to have forgiven me.

Making the little one eat peril for breakfast ... or afternoon tea at any rate

As for my own wire-fu technique, I fluffed my first two attempts with the zip-line, resulting in a puffy pinkie and intermittent musculoskeletal chest pain, but that aside, I was blazing aces.

You see, the great thing about a being a comper is that you can be a winner even when you’re not winning. This year might well have been my worst ever for wins, but it hasn’t been at all bad for prizes!

How has your year been going, and how do you cope with the dry season? Let me know in the comments below!

The only way is down?

I’m in decline. You may have noticed that my blog posts are getting fewer and farther between. I’m likewise entering fewer comps, or to be precise, I’m entering fewer interesting comps.

A competition to win a £5000 holiday is, of course, interesting. But that’s not the kind of interesting I’m talking about. Most big-ticket competitions are tediously straightforward to enter and consequently have thousands of entrants. In other words, the chances of winning are very, very small.

That’s not to say impossible - I once won an iPad Mini from a pool of about 2000 entries, but that kind of success has since eluded me, and goodness knows how many comps I’ve entered since then. Not as many as some hardcore compers, I’ll admit, but a healthily obscene number all the same.

As I’ve mentioned previously, I prefer competitions with smaller odds. It’s not just that the likelihood of winning is greater (like, duh!), but the ones that are more challenging tend also to be more interesting.

Unfortunately, my wit has gone somewhat out the window of late. The spike in my first-born’s challenging behaviour is presently celebrating its six-month anniversary and I am wiped out. I used to be smart. I’ve got certificates and stuff. These days, however, I can barely operate a spoon.

Me, when I still had brains. By which, I mean hair.

As a result, I’m failing to enter so many of the effort comps that I’ve bookmarked that I might as well not bother with them at all.

But that’s not to say I’m thinking of quitting this game. Rather, I’m cutting my crack to fit my clock, or however the saying goes.

In my case, that means sticking to Instagram. To be sure, tagging and following is a pretty mindless way to enter comps, but (a) you can do five-minute micro-sessions when you’re grabbing a breather between arguments; and (b) the random draws are less opaque than those for Twitter comps (see Di Coke's post on the subject).

That last point is particularly salient, as it puts Joe Average Comper with 100 followers on the same footing as a comping blogger with 5000 followers. Well, theoretically, anyway. As with any prize draw, there’s nothing to stop a promoter from pulling names out of the hat till they find one they like, but I can’t imagine there’s that many bad eggs out there to make that worth worrying about. And in any case, I’m still managing enough wins to keep it interesting.

The bottom line is that this hobby is fantastically scalable.

If you want a hardcore comping session, then go for it. Enter hundreds a night if that works for you - it’s a numbers game after all. But if all you want is a bit of fun, then go where the odds are smaller. There might not be as many tellies and games consoles, but everyone needs protein bars and gin, don’t they?

How do you change your comping game when life gets the better of you? Do you focus on the big stuff, the fun comps, or simply pull down the shutters? Let me know in the comments below!

Mindfulness for compers?

The Mayday Bank Holiday was the hottest day of the year, and while I was out basking in my mum’s garden, I noticed myself enjoying a warm, if slightly unfamiliar, fuzzy feeling. It wasn’t just the sun radiating positive vibes - although that always helps; the long overdue family reunion helped too. But the clincher, if I'm honest, was firing up the coals for the first barbie of the season.

I hate cooking. And yet I love to grill. It’s not just that there’s something primal about it, or that my life zenithed when my first-born was ten weeks old and we barbecued for 20 days solid. There’s also fact that I love reconnecting with my prizes - in this case, the cute little Weber barbecue that I won a couple years back.

Every time I set it up, I smile to recall how it was, until recently, the largest object I’d ever won, and how it arrived on the same day as the least physically imposing prize I’ve ever received: a font.

Sadly, I must confess that said font (Thistle Creek) has had precious little impact on my life. Unlike, for example, the swanky watch I won from a 2015 Warner Bros promotion, which I was using to time the cooking, while sipping my prize lager from the last advent season, and wearing one of the brand-spanking shirts I won less than a fortnight prior.

And while I watched the children guzzle the fizzy drinks we’d fixed with the strawberry purée I’d also won over Christmas, I thought to myself: I’m so glad I decided to be lucky.

In the same vein, when I first started writing this post, I was wearing the sweater I won at Christmas, having just packed away the football shirt I won during the last World Cup and boxed up the night’s leftovers in the Happy Jackson pots I won that same year. This was after making my first-born stop reading his Roald Dahl book and put away his X-Men headphones, both of which I won in 2016, and washing up my wife's flask (won 2017). I’ve also just finished off the chocolate I won last month, and before I pass out tonight, will be applying the fancy eye serum I mentioned a couple of weeks back.

Am I a premier league comper? I doubt it. On the off-chance that I do somehow qualify for the top-flight, I’m very much a Huddersfield - standing under the armpits of giants.

Indeed, I’m in perpetual awe of the many fantastic - and more importantly - dedicated compers out there, whose drive to win the big-ticket prizes is plainly inspirational. People like Di Coke and Nikki Hunter-Pike, for example, spring to mind - and not just because of their success, but also because of all the work they do to support the wider comping community.

Next to these guys, I’m a blatant also-ran. But that's also cool. Comping isn't a sprint race; if anything, it's a marathon. I’ve been in the game for about four years now, and despite a few episodes of mojo fatigue keeping me on the sidelines, the wins have slowly but surely stacked up, and I can confidently say that my “winner’s luck” has manifestly embedded itself into my life. That translates to a constant reminder of what it feels like to be lucky. It also translates to feeling good about myself.

Some might call my win rate unremarkable, but that’s no bad thing! Unremarkable, means replicable. It means that anyone with half a mind to “be lucky” can make it happen! And once you've made it happen, soak it up as much as you can. Every prize is a happy moment made concrete.

To be sure, this isn't mindfulness per se. Nevertheless, if you take time to contemplate each episode of joy that literally passes through your hands each day, then you'll find an awful lot of cheer coursing through your brain. And that's definitely good for your stress!

Does comping make you feel like a lucky person? Do your past wins blend into the wallpaper or do you keep an active eye out for how they weave their way into your everyday life? How does that make you feel?

Luck Is Where You Find It

Why do you comp? That’s the question I like to ask my fellow compers. Me? I enjoy the validation.

My eldest child has reached that phase of confrontational belligerence that I was led to believe started at puberty (he’s seven), while my youngest continues to scream in my face when I put him on the toilet; so much for the life-affirming nature of parenting. As for the vocational side of things, I’m self-employed, so the best praise I can hope for is that the decision to offshore my work is postponed for another few months. So, if I’ve found a hobby where folks I’ve never met tell me I’m a winner or congratulate me on my creative endeavours, then yup, you bet I appreciate the love.

In truth, it’s the creative comps that keep me in the game, as the sport itself is half the fun. The recent #NationalPoetryDay (much like #WorldPoetryDay and #NationalLimerickDay) is a case in point. Such hashtag days are a gift to promoters looking for something a little different from another mindless follow-RT comp.

As challenges go, it’s easy enough to quote a line of poetry or write a little (usually tweetable) poem - yet, bizarrely, the comping community at large seems to swerve such competitions, meaning that there’s the additional bonus of really low odds.

With this in mind, I was feeling pretty hopeful on last week’s #NationalPoetryDay, but sadly it passed without a prize. But that’s not to say I didn’t get lucky…

Bloomsbury Publishing was one of the promoters running a poetry competition, and while I might not have been a winner per se, my entry got a retweet from none other than one-time Children’s Laureate, Michael Rosen. Now that’s what I call validation!

Have any of your near misses been as good as a win? Let me know in the comments below!

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Dry Season

The last few weeks have been dry, which is to say I’ve had, six, maybe seven weeks without a wining notification of some kind. Some folks might call that bad luck. I say pish: there’s a world of difference between bad luck and the temporary absence of good luck.

Anyone who thinks it’s bad luck not to keep winning may as well jack it in right now because, as any comper will tell you, you’re always going to lose more than you win. Dry patches may not be fun, but they’re built into the game - as statistically inevitable as night following day.

Grumbling fixes nothing. Worse still, it’s a heinous waste of time and energy that could be better spent in so many ways!

Relying on the odds alone isn’t enough; success also requires a positive mental attitude. In other words, when you find yourself in the midst of a dry spell, see it as an opportunity to improve rather than waste it dwelling on the perceived failure.

For instance, if you’re not updating your spreadsheet or sending thank-you messages to promoters, you’ll have more time for other comping-related activities. For starters, you should be chatting with your comping buddies (if you’re shy, then just think of it as networking!). While you’re at it, invest in all those other comping groups you’re a member of: share comps, notify winners, discuss best practice - whatever's appropriate. This karma pays back!

More practically, learn a new skill to improve the technical side of your comping. If there’s a social media platform you don’t use (such as Snapchat, Instagram or even Twitter), now's the time to learn the ropes (see, for example, the guides by Lorna Beattie [Snapchat] and Di Coke [Instagram]). Alternatively, build on your existing knowledge to raise your game to the next level; for example, Nikki Hunter-Pike has a brilliant guide to Twitter lists.

Remember also that being lucky isn’t confined to your track record with giveaways - celebrate any and all luck as it finds you, and if that includes being reunited with your lost luggage, then so be it!

Finally, while there’s naught to gain from mourning what might have been; there is everything to gain from reflecting and persevering. For example, if you haven't won a creative competition, ask yourself: What went well? What could have gone better? Is there anything you can learn from the winner? In short: keep calm & carry on!

How well does this advice work? Who can say? But since starting this post yesterday, I've had two winning e-mails! :D

How do you cope with the dry season? If you have any advice, let me know in the comments below!

Oh Nuts!

Just because I’ve had no wins to celebrate these last few weeks, doesn’t mean I’ve been without opportunities to own my luck - it’s just a case of knowing where to look. And in the present case, it’s about 150 yards from my house.

There’s a house on the main road with a hazelnut tree, and I’m guessing the owner has had his fill because you can grab a handful off the pavement every time you pass.

Freshly gathered hazelnuts, as modelled by my first-born

A couple of streets further on there are also cobnuts, but since these seem to require a 16-oz hammer to crack open, let’s just say that the yield has been less bountiful.

My first harvest is now roasted and waiting in the freezer for an opportune moment. Last year, that entailed grinding them up and mixing them into a crumble topping for a really awesome flavour boost. This year, I’m trying to lose weight … but I’ll probably do it again, anyway.

And when this little harvest season passes, it’s time for the chestnuts - and there’s a whole bunch of chestnut trees just a short walk from my place. That’s when the weight-loss programme really goes out the window, as there’s not much to beat roast chestnuts and hot chocolate when you’ve spent too long outside on a chilly autumn day!

Are you a forager (or even a scrumper!)? What fresh and free edibles do you have around your way? Let me know in the comments below!

The Great Bag Debacle

The worst thing about my holiday was that not everything returned with me. Oh, I had the essentials, like socks, jocks and a broadly adequate number of children, but not my black holdall.

The holdall in question contained a whole bunch of things, such as toiletries, dominoes and sunglasses, to name but a few. There was also the matter of the 400 cigarettes.

For the record, I don’t smoke - I’d just bought them for my hopeless addict of a mate. Whether that made the loss worse, I couldn’t say. But I was steaming.

You see, I remember wearing the bag; my wife watched me fasten the shoulder strap onto it once I’d retrieved it from the carousel; and I recall exiting the terminal and slinging a holdall into the back of the taxi.

I also know that once we’d reached home, our eyes were on the children as the cabbie emptied his boot, so it took a couple of minutes to notice the absence of the bag, by which time he was well on the road.

My wife called the cab firm right away, but the casual disdain with which they denied everything hardly inspired confidence. Nevertheless, my wife took them at their word and returned to the airport.

The bag had not been seen.

This struck me as odd, because if I saw an unattended bag languishing in an airport, I’d be straight onto security. But no.

So we called the taxi company again. This time they dropped any pretence of sympathy and said, quite bullishly, that we’d just have to speak to the police.

So we did. Not with any expectation that they would solve the mystery, you understand, but the motions are prescribed and through them one must go.

Now, there are of course two sides to every story. To this end, the officer called the taxi firm for their statement. They refused to provide one - not unless the investigating officer turned up in person. Subsequent to this, their extraordinary cooperation was duly noted by the police, who, when they next updated us on the sorry situation, described the company as “obstructive”.

It all stank, but what could we do? Their story was consistent, there was no CCTV footage of me loading the car, and still no one in the airport’s lost property department had seen anything. The only remaining course of action was to file the insurance claim.

As anyone who has ever filed a claim will know, the phone calls last hours; the paperwork longer. The receipt hunt alone can turn nuns into nihilists. Finally, destiny brings you to the one absolute truth: all life is futile.

For me, that process took a couple of weeks, spread around the heaps and heaps of work that arrived while I was on leave. And then, just ten minutes from sealing the envelope, my phone rang. It was the airport. They had found my luggage in the carousel area, and thanks to the left hand eventually talking to the right, decided to contact me.

Flabbergasted was definitely the word.  That, and emotional. When the very helpful chap at the other end offered to courier it to me - at no cost - my eyes moistened and my voice cracked.

Still, a bird in the hand and all that. I resolved not to get too excited until I got my paws back on the bag - surely there had to be some mistake?

But no: by lunchtime the next day, I was hugging the holdall. As you can imagine, I felt like a bona fide winner, so it seemed only right to set up the camera for my first unboxing video of the month. The sense of wonder, I think, is palpable.

I know we were all exhausted when we landed (getting up at 2 am in order to fly with children seldom gets the best out of people), but when a story has more fishy bits than Grimsby Docks, no one in their right mind expects a happy ending.

Sure, I’d love to know how come my bag was also returned with someone else’s shoulder strap, but in the grand scheme of things, I’m still a winner, right?

For most compers, prize-winning is the most tangible form of good fortune, but it's important to recognise - and own - the good luck in all aspects of your life. To this end, I'm expanding my scribbles to include stories celebrating luck more generally. If you've got any you'd care to share, please add them to the comments below!