Niche writing competitions

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Battle of Britain, British Czech & Slovak Association, Czech, Czechoslovakia, Freedom, Liz Kohn, Niche, Rodean, Show trials, Slovakia, Space, Speedway, Tereza Pultarová, The Final Incarnation, Velvet Revolution, Writing competition

Maggie Davies and Sarah Dawson do such sterling work for us each month listing writing competitions for us to enter.  Some of them are quite niche – some nicher than others.   

You may wonder how these comps actually work out.  Well, here’s the inside story of one of them last year. It certainly categorises as niche – perhaps it’s the nichest – and it’s the one I’m most involved with, the annual comp of the British Czech & Slovak Association.  The subject matter for entries can be either (1) links between Britain and the Czech and/or Slovak Republics, at any time in their history or (2) society in those Republics since the Velvet Revolution of 1989.  Each year there’s a suggested (but not compulsory) theme.

Freedom was the suggested theme in this year’s BCSA writing competition – freedom in any of its forms.   The entrants showed their usual ingenuity in interpreting that. We took to the skies with a Czechoslovak pilot fighting for freedom in the Battle of Britain.  In another entry we mused on the excitement and the hopes in Czechoslovakia when freedom was restored in 1989, and on the reality and disappointments since that great time (but ending, I’m glad to say, on an optimistic note).  In a third entry we saw how the son of a well-off family in pre-war Czechoslovakia found his freedom working in a squalid farmhouse in southern Bohemia and then in a quarry in Derbyshire.  In a fourth we joined an alcoholic gambler pondering the meaning of freedom in a Czech bar.

Non-freedom entries included our very first venture into the world of speedway, and a comic playlet showing a Czechoslovak Jewish refugee talking her way into a job at Roedean School in 1939.

Deciding on the winners is always difficult.   But the judges managed it.  Thank you, judges!

Second prize, winning £150, went to Liz Kohn, with a piece called Two Worlds.  Liz has been researching her family history and in particular that of her father and his first wife, Alice Glasnerová.  Her current research is into Alice’s trial and its relationship to the Slánský show trials of 1952 in Communist Czechoslovakia.  Liz’s entry tells some of this story.  

This year’s winner – taking home £400 – was Tereza Pultarová. Tereza is a London-based science and technology journalist, originally from Prague.   She has degrees from Charles University and a Master’s in Science from the International Space University in Strasbourg. Her winning entry was The Final Incarnation – Chapter 1.  It is the first chapter of a novel Tereza has written, whichdeals with growing up in 1990s post-communist Czechoslovakia, and explores how traumas from the Communist years live on through family dysfunction and alcoholism.

It was so good to be back in a proper setting for the presentation of the prize this year.  In 2020 we presented the prize via Zoom, during one of the BCSA’s other events.  Last year we had to do it by post.  This year I had the privilege of marking Tereza’s success at our resumed Annual Dinner at the May Fair Hotel in London on November 23, as in the first photo above.  (Thanks to Erik Weisenpacher for the photos.)

The winning entries (and a selection of the others) are published in the Assocation’s magazine, the British Czech & Slovak Review.

We’ll run the competition again in 2023.  Watch our website, social media and the Review for details. 

Witches

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Bonfire, Czech, Hallowe'en, Historic injustice, James VI & I, Scotland, Slovak, Spring, Witches

There must be a story or two here.

On 30 April the Czechs have a custom called Burning the Witches.  It’s a custom that’s alive and well.  April 30 is six months after Hallowe’en, and comes right between between the spring equinox and summer solstice, so on this night Czechs say goodbye to winter and welcome spring by burning “the witch of winter” as an effigy on a bonfire.

In the best Czech fashion this has lost its magical appurtenances and is a good excuse for people to gather round the bonfire, listen to live music, cook sausages and – would you believe it? – drink beer.

The photos are of this year’s celebrations at Klánovice, on the easternmost edge of Prague.

Queues for the beer tent

Irish musicians got this gig

Their neighbours the Slovaks have their own tradition of marking the end of winter by burning the effigy of Morena, the goddess of death and winter, and then hurling her into a river.   (See the kafkadesk.org website for more info.)

It’s interesting to reflect on the comparison with the current campaign in Scotland to obtain pardons for the estimated 2,500 women who were executed under the Witchcraft Act between 1563 and 1736.  For some reason the Scots killed five times more ‘witches’ than other European countries.  King James VI & I was especially enthusiastic in this regard.  (For information on the petition to the Scottish Parliament see https://petitions.parliament.scot/petitions/PE1855.)

Witches don’t have to be just for Hallowe’en … Any story brewing?

Photos: Ed Peacock

Imagine things Czech or Slovak …

Tags

British Czech & Slovak Association, Czech, Freedom, Me-Too, Slivovice, Slovak

The closing date for the British Czech & Slovak Association’s 2022 writing competition has been extended.  It is now midnight on Sunday July 31.  So that gives you and your writerly friends and relatives another month to come up with 2,000 words that will interest, amuse, irritate, educate or otherwise entertain the eminent judges. £400 lies the other side of those eminent judges – plus publication in the British Czech & Slovak Review. The runner-up gets £150 (plus publication).

This year’s suggested (but not compulsory) theme is Freedom – in any aspect.  The interpretation is yours.  Personal freedom, freedom in relationships, the freedom of nations, democratic freedoms, or just the ending of lockdown?  You choose.

The 2021 competition brought in some impressive creative writing, including such gems as:

An entertaining account of a Scot’s postgraduate year in Czechoslovakia in 1972, which included a wedding missed because he was drinking slivovice to celebrate the release from prison of the father of a hitchhiker he had picked up en route.

A topical entry on the Me-Too theme that took us to a trial of a celebrity accused of sexual assault, with the simultaneous thoughts of the judge and the two victims.

A moving account of a young Englishwoman’s visit to Slovakia for her Slovak father’s funeral. (This won a runner-up prize.)

You can feature here!   Fiction or fact – either is welcome.  What is essential is that all entries must deal with either (1) the links between Britain and the lands now comprising the Slovak and Czech Republics, at any time in history, or (2) describing society in the Republics since 1989.  Topics can include, for example, history, politics, sport, the sciences, economics, the arts or literature. 

Entry is free.  Submissions are invited from individuals of any age, nationality or educational background.  Entrants do not need to be members of the BCSA.

Entries should be submitted by post to the BCSA Prize Administrator, 24 Ferndale, Tunbridge Wells, Kent, TN2 3NS, England, or by e-mail to prize@bcsa.co.uk.  The closing date is now midnight on July 31 2022.

The submission guidelines can be seen on the BCSA website at https://www.bcsa.co.uk/2022-bcsa-writing-competition/ , or on application to the BCSA Prize Administrator at the addresses given above.

Books you’ve lent

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friends, Lending books, Margaret Atwood, Nerdishness, Ownership, The Penelopiad

What is the etiquette about getting back books that you lent someone a long time ago?  Asking for a friend.

My friend used to think that he would never forget which book he had lent to whom.  But it was the disappearance of a prized hardback copy of Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad that undeceived me him.  None of the people to whom he might have lent it remembered (or admitted) that they had it.

So he started to note loans down in a special notebook.  But that has created its own problems.

For rereading it recently he saw that one book (signed by the author) had been lent to a friend a full five years ago.  

Put yourself in this situation: various embarrassments can arise. 

Does asking for it back after so long make you seem nerdish?  Untrusting?  In some way accusing your friend of carelessness?  Best to have some specific reason for needing it, rather than just wanting to reclaim a piece of property for the sake of having it at home and not in their house.

Your friend might deny having got it.  If it’s left at that, then the book will never be recovered.  If the denial is challenged – well, do you suspect them of lying?  Surely not – but that corrosive thought is in your mind now. 

Do you ask your friend to check their shelves to make sure?  If they do, and it can’t be found, why not?  Have they in turn lent it to someone else?  Have they lost it – left behind, perhaps, on some Spanish beach?  Has a zealous spouse bent on clearing space given it to a charity shop? 

If it is found – aha!  They may claim (genuinely, let us hope) that it is their own copy.  How to resolve this?  Writing your name in your books is the obvious answer, but is that also nerdish?  Something schoolboys do (or used to, when they still read books rather than looked at screens)? Obviously the worst thing you can do is to write your name in the book in the presence of the person you’re lending it to …

Let’s hope that this ownership problem doesn’t arise.  It’s yours, and they’ve got it, and they’re giving it back.  Do you make the mistake of asking them whether they liked it?  For if they haven’t actually read it, how awkward ….  Would you agree to their hanging on to it so they would sometime get round to reading it?  Then you might have to go through the whole sorry performance again – but how can you politely say no?

This whole area is fraught with difficulty.  And when you look round your house, and see books piled on windowsills and on the floor, because there is no more space on your shelves, then maybe that’s the perfect excuse for letting this particular sleeping dog lie.

Neither a lender nor a borrower be …

Christmas book presents

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A Glass of Blessings, Barbara Pym, Boris Johnson, British Library Crime Classics, Calamity in Kent, Death in Fancy Dress, Death Makes a Prophet, Excellent Women, How Novels Work, John Mullan, Marital harmony, Mystery in White, National Coal Board, Rumpole of the Bailey, The 12.30 from Croydon, The Division Bell Mystery, The Sussex Downs Murder, Whisky, William Hague, William Pitt the Younger

How do you make sure you get the books you want for Christmas?  Asking for a friend.

The friend in question has a birthday in December, so this is something that looms large for him at this time of year.  He is known to like detective novels, especially from the Golden Age, so if things are just left to chance there is the risk that he will get any number of the excellent British Library Crime Classics series that he already has.  How many copies of Death in Fancy Dress and The Sussex Downs Murder can his bookshelf stock, when what he’d actually like is The Division Bell Mystery or The 12.30 from Croydon?

One answer is to drop hints.  But not everyone has a good ear for hints, or takes the further hint to pass these hints on to other potential donors.  This form of chain letter can easily get broken, or turn into a game of Chinese Whispers, in which what started life as William Hague’s biography of Pitt the Younger materialises under the Christmas tree as the National Coal Board’s Yearbook for 1975.

So my friend has adopted the practice of making no bones about it but distributing to his nearest and dearest a list of the presents he would like to see in December.  This list is mostly books, but the words ‘good whisky’ do appear there, as does a box set of the Rumpole of the Bailey TV series.  It is then left to the nearest and dearest to liaise, so that the aforesaid NCB Yearbook doesn’t jostle under the tree on Christmas morning with three copies of How Novels Work by John Mullan.

The list has to be specific.  For example, my friend has recently been introduced to Barbara Pym by a ninevoice, so the list reads, “Any novel by Barbara Pym except A Glass of Blessings or Excellent Women.”  This gets rather strange-looking (and off-putting to anyone getting the list who isn’t in the ‘nearest and dearest’ category) when we get to the aforesaid British Library books: “Any in the series of The British Library Crime Classics: I already have Mystery in White, Calamity in Kent, Death Makes a Prophet … [etc etc]”.

You may say, this prescriptive approach eliminates surprise, and the chance of being given something quite new.  In fact it doesn’t quite work like that.  Present-givers still do make their own decisions, which can prompt the “Why did they think I’d like this?” question.  And this way my friend’s library can get unexpected additions, like a biography of our present Prime Minister last year …

There is a related problem.  Asking for books mean that you get, well, more books.  You may run out of bookshelf space.  I find My friend finds that books he has recently been given have to share floor space with box files, unhung pictures, shoeboxes of what were once thought to be essential photos, and the like.  This can lead to friction in the marital home. 

How do you do it?  What advice should I, er, pass on to my friend?

The Mask

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Champion the Wonder Horse, Corona virus, Masks, The Lone Ranger, Wagon Train

When I was little, watching The Lone Ranger, Champion the Wonder Horse, Wagon Train and the like, it was the convention that when a baddie pulled a kerchief over the lower half of his face he became unrecognisable.  Sheriffs, neighbours, even relatives would have no idea that it was he who was holding up the stagecoach or stealing the miners’ payroll or threatening the tellers in the bank.

Dutifully wearing my anti-covid mask I was therefore surprised on entering my local Waterstone’s the other day to be greeted with “Hello Mr Peacock”.

So either bookshop staff are unusually prescient, or the scriptwriters on those 1950s westerns were taking a short cut …

[Other bookshops are available.]

Help when writing

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Unsolicited advice

I’ve started to get helpful messages from Mr Microsoft on improving my writing.  Little unsolicited bubbles appear when I’m hard at it composing on Word.  Sometimes, he thinks he can punctuate “better’ than me.   Most frequently he offers to help me be more concise, be more succinct, have a more condensed style, say what I want in fewer words, ramble less.  Such impertinence. 

More coronatime reading

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18th century, Alaska, Corona virus, Cotswolds, Czechia, Lake District, London, South Wales, Sussex, Zatopek

So, corona virus restrictions are being reimposed.  Less socialising, less going out of the house, maybe worse to come.  But the upside of all that is, you can top up your lockdown reading …   Your Books To Be Read pile might have shrunk in the past six months, but why not add to it now?  Why not choose something new, maybe something you wouldn’t normally touch?

Taking some books at, er, random – you can enjoy historical fiction, thrillers, comedy, romance, novels exploring relationships and the human heart; revel in the settings of London (in the 18^th century and today), modern Czechia, Sussex, the Lake District, Alaska, South Wales, Devon and the Cotswolds.

Or you can read biography and moving memoir; and if you are a manager and your staff are all working from home, why not take advantage of their absence and bone up on management thinking?  And if you’re a parent or doting grandparent, get a lovely book for the little one.

Last, but not least, there’s poetry.  What better way to cope with today’s vicissitudes than settling down with some great poetry ‘the best words in the best order’, as I think someone said.

Happy reading!

 

 

 

Books lent long ago

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bookshelves, friends, Lending books

How do you ask someone to return a book you lent them literally years ago?  Without making them feel awkward, especially if they haven’t read it yet?  And if the reason you want it back is only because you don’t want to lose it, you just want to refill that gap in your shelf?  Asking for a friend.

Alphabetical stories

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alphabet, policemen, Twitter, xylophones

Can you write a 26-word story?  In alphabetical order?  That’s one game being played on Twitter during lockdown.

Here’s one, in reverse order.  Let’s have your better examples? If 26 words is too short, how about 52?

Zorba’s yellow xylophone was very ugly.  The squat, really quirky police officer never much liked kissing jaundiced instruments:  he groped for every dubious caveat before acting.