The whole point

This is why we do it, isn't it?!

Back of the net

Number two son’s prize arrived today already - that’s the kind of prize fulfilment that most compers can only dream about. Case in point: I’ve been chasing one of my prizes since March.

Unboxing will be tomorrow’s treat. The longer he lets me sleep in, the sooner he gets the parcel. I’m not being deliberately obtuse, but if my Sunday starts like my Saturday, that is, with him shoving Match Attax cards into my grill before 7 am, when I plainly have scotch to sleep off, then tossing more cardboard footballers into the mix is really not in anyone’s interest.

Wading not leaping

Some days the motivation is hard to come by. Today, we were looking at excuse #3: ill health.

Nobody likes a cold. I mean, I can cope with snot and sneezes, but those ones that fill up your cavities with phlegm just make me feel slow and lead-headed, and all I can focus on is the countdown to the next hit of pseudoephedrine.

I flicked through Insta, Facebook and Twitter, and dropped each with a dirty great portion of can’t be wazzed. So I thought I’d try work instead, and couldn’t be wazzed with that either. Coffee, by contrast, I could definitely be wazzed with. Likewise lunch. And another coffee. That gave me enough grist to take some pictures of things to sell on eBay, but not enough to actually upload them. But half-a-job is a more or less a family motto, so my conscience was sufficiently clear for me to have no problems justifying another look on Facebook, just in case there were any holidays out there waiting to be won.

There were probably a whole bunch, but a couple of forms later the lack of wazzedness overcame me once more, and that was me done.

Fortunately a pair of pick-me-ups popped into my DMs in quick succession. First, yesterday’s verse had won me some golf balls. So far so good, but sadly they had to be collected from Hull, which is approximately 150 miles out of my way; in other news, my father-in-law is not getting golf balls for Christmas. Still, the validation was nice. Following this, my second-born scored third place in a competition to net football cards. By the looks, there were only three entrants, but I can’t imagine he’ll care. There will be football cards; anything else is by the by.

I’m also hoping that first-born will be sufficiently motivated by (read: be sufficiently jealous of) his brother’s success that he will up his comping game and start realising his potential. He’s an enigma that one, so whether this will have the desired effect, I couldn’t possibly say. But if I can stumble across any more kid comps with more prizes than entrants, it certainly wouldn’t hurt the cause.

Moving on from yesterday's hashtag day, today is World Smile Day. A quick search of Twitter found a few themed competitions, including one exclusively for webcam girls. It's pretty niche so I'm guessing it won't have many entrants. On the other hand, it would appear to be a voting comp, so obviously I'm steering well clear...

A good day

Today was a good day.

No, I didn’t win a wedge of cash or new laptop. In fact, it started with the same routine disappointment as ever - a quick look at the day’s Lucky Patch. I don’t expect to win on Lucky Patch, especially since having been so close a couple of years back, but having started, the only way I can stop now is if the site goes out of business; that or Russia knocks out this entire sceptred isle with a massive EMP strike, so that everyone is equally done over. Obviously, neither of these eventualities is remotely desirable - but there’s always a bright side, right?

Today, the bright side was literally waiting for me on the next app, as my first win in weeks, possibly months, popped up in my Instagram messages: some body scrub. Not everyone’s idea of a bonza cop, but considering that two nights this week I have been torn from my slumber by children in pisswet pyjamas, all things are relative.

As if a morning without urine-soaked bedding wasn’t exciting enough, there was also the Norwich comping cell micro-convention, which is to say, nine like-minded souls (and infant affiliates) grabbing one last coffee before Brighton. I should say ‘SuperLucky Live’, but since the event is the Woodstock of comping, every last delegate has unilaterally annexed the host city’s name - gotta love the hive mind!

The only downside to knocking work on the head was that the postman was unable to deliver the proof copies of my comping book, so it’s going to be another day before I can get my paws on them. Considering that my uptightness with paper is matched only by Queen Zabo, I can’t wait to see how disappointed I will be with Amazon’s production quality.

It’s also National Poetry Day today, of course. I say ‘of course’ but I didn’t know until I switched on Twitter, then tossed off a few couplets and recycled a verse I wrote a couple of years back. Whether any of it will pay dividends remains to be seen. However, these competitions are not only fun, but they also have fewer entrants, so the odds aren’t so bad, even if the poetry is.

In fact, for a few minutes, I did win a poetry competition I’d entered a few days prior. Unfortunately, the notification had barely pinged up in my Twitter messages when the promoter noticed I’d failed to use one of the five words I was supposed to have included as part of the challenge. What was especially gutting there - apart from the fact that it was a pretty decent prize - was that I *had* originally included the word, but had accidentally edited it out during the final read-through. So there’s a lesson right there - never write poetry after bedtime.

The promoter was, however, very sympathetic and promised to pop a little consolation prize in the post.

Like I said: today was a good day.

Regime change

Things are gonna have to change around here. The distinct lack of noise in these parts over the last few months has been offending my flabby blabbermouth so I’m going to see if a fresh tack can relight my fire. To put it another way, picture this blog as a magazine … Well, I’ve just sacked the editor and given the reins to the 16-year-old copy-runner. Over the next few weeks, things will be curt and things will be choppy, but on the other hand, there will at least be things. A diary of things, you might say. The secret diary of a part-time winner…

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!

Prize Unboxing July/August 2019

High in errors and interruptions and low on prizes - it's my roundup of the last two months!

Hope you're having a lucky summer!