Fungi tree*

Donnington Road

Sphagnum

* Fun Boy Three? Ed

Who are these people?

At film premieres in Leicester Square, London this year

Pictures: Alex Suarez

Honouring the Land Girls

BBC - Radio 4 - PM

"A badge commemorating the service of the Land Army and the Women's Timber Corps will be presented to surviving members."

An interview with Hilda Gibson, who was one of the Land Girls, and a poem by her. This is a somewhat horrifying at first, then funny and ultimately touching interview and poem, which has inspired a big reaction from Radio 4 listeners. Well worth a listen.

Ossian

Beverley Knight - The Queen Of Starting Over (Live)

This is the company song here at Herald House. Star jumps to this every morning. This live (official) version is better than the record, I think. The divine Beverley is held back somewhat on the record, as if some nerd in the background has said, "Whoa! tone it down." Death to that nerd.

Here's an official Beatles release from the new DVD of "Help!", You've Got to Hide Your Love Away. I think you'll find that, like Wilfred Bramble [He's not in Help, duh. Ed], it's "very clean".



You don't get this with your other boring newspapers do you? All the official artist releases right here. Check my other favourites here.

Jacintha Pucka

Willesden prize results 2008, a Liars' League production

Writers write. Actors read. Audience listens. Everybody wins. Liars’ League is a monthly night of new short stories by rising authors, read by professional actors. With 90 minutes of fiction for only £3, literature as entertainment has never been so good. (Liars' League)

Announcing the Willesden short story prize results event 2008 in association with Liars' League. [How strangely appropriate. Ed] The results event will take place from 8 pm on Thursday, February 28, 2008 at The Space, Willesden, with actors from the Liars' League line-up reading excerpts from the winning and short-listed entries. Details to follow.

Ossian

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Skip.



The Willesden Herald
International
Short Story Prize 2008

Judge: Zadie Smith

Closing date for receipt of entries: 21 December 2007.

The competition is open to all aged 18 or over, regardless of nationality or country of residence.

The prizes for 2008 are: 1st place £5000. For nine runners up, publication* of their short-listed stories in the anthology “New Short Stories 2” together with the winner. In addition, up to four commended entries may be announced, which will be eligible for inclusion* in the anthology.

Entry is free.

Entries must be in English, and accompanied by the official entry form.

There will be a prizegiving ceremony at The Space, London NW10 early in 2008.

Thanks to our generous sponsors, including Willesden Writers' Workshop, the London Borough of Brent Arts and Libraries Service, the Willesden Herald, and Pretend Genius Press, this competition is free to enter. All for love of the short story. This is the first literary entity since Shakespeare to offer both love and immortality.

There is no theme and no word limit other than the highly variable attention span of our short-listing team.

Full rules, entry form and address for entries: New Short Stories

* Update (29th of October): Inclusion in the anthology is optional for runners-up and commended. We understand that you may want to save your story's unpublished status. This is now the same as in previous years.

Advertisement by Gombeen™

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Copy of competition entry form

In case you are unable to download the official entry form, copy and print out the following, which is not as fancy, but has the same details.:

_______________________________________


Willesden Herald and pretend genius [press] present
The Willesden Herald International Short Story Prize
in conjunction with the anthology New Short Stories - 2
1st Prize: £5,000


ENTRY FORM

Post to: Willesden Short Story Competition
PO Box 61437
London U.K.
NW10 2YJ

I wish to include the following short story in the above competition:

Title:

Page Count:

I have read and I agree to abide by the rules of the competition:

Signed:

Dated:

Name* [block letters]:

Pen Name:

Address*:




Telephone:

E-Mail*:


* Name, Address, and E-mail are mandatory


We would like to send you emails or letters from time to time about this competition and other Pretend Genius Press and Willesden Herald events. We will not share your details with anyone outside of Pretend Genius Press and Willesden Herald, unless required to do so by law. Please add me to your mailing list: Yes (____) No (____).

Copy of short story competition rules (2007-8)

(From: www.newshortstories.com)

Closing date for receipt of entries: 21 December 2007.

The competition is open to all aged 18 or over, regardless of nationality or country of residence.

Entries must be entirely your own work and never previously published or broadcast, online or offline.

Entries submitted on behalf of somebody else will not be eligible.

One entry per person only. Subsequent entries, including revisions, will be omitted from the competition and will not be read.

If you would like acknowledgement of receipt, please send a stamped, self-addressed postcard or sealed envelope. If you are outside the U.K. either forego acknowledgement of receipt, or send an "international reply coupon" obtainable from your local post office together with your postcard. We will not be responsible for any failure of posted items to arrive.

Entries must be in English, printed or typed, single sided, double-spaced, with pages numbered and securely fastened. Entries must show no name, address or identifying marks other than the title of the story.

We cannot return any manuscripts, so please do not send your only copy.

The address for entries is:
Willesden Short Story Competition
PO Box 61437
London U.K.
NW10 2YJ

Worldwide copyright of each entry remains with the author, but Willesden Herald will have the unrestricted right to publish the winning story in the anthology "New Short Stories - 2" and to include a reading of the story in a podcast by Willesden Herald and Pretend Genius . Inclusion in the anthology and podcasts is optional for runners-up and up to four commended. We understand that you may want to save your story's unpublished status.

We will not enter into any correspondence about the selections or results, and we cannot provide any feedback on individual entries.

Judging will be impartial and anonymous. The entries will be reduced to a long list by a number qualified readers, who are published and/or prize-winning authors and editors. The initial selectors will not know the identity of entrants, except that the chairman will be given the identities of short-listed authors, in order to confirm their details before forwarding to the final judge. The final judge will not know the identity of entrants until after the results are decided.

Members of Pretend Genius and Willesden Herald and this year's judges are excluded from the competition.

The prizes for 2008 are: 1st place £5000. For nine runners up, publication (optional) of their short-listed stories in the New Short Stories anthology together with the winner. In addition, up to four commended entries may be announced, which will be eligible for inclusion (optional) in the anthology. Short-listed and commended authors will receive 2 complimentary copies of the anthology.

As in previous years the winner also receives the legendary Willesden Herald mug inscribed "The Willesden Short Story Prize 2008" and for the first time this year, a bottle of Sloe Wine.

The short list and winner will be announced simultaneously on the Willesden Herald website and here, early in the new year. The prizewinners will be notified by email at the same time. Accordingly, it is essential to provide a working email address.

Upon notification of winning, short-listing or commendation, it is a requirement of these rules that you provide an electronic copy of the entry as an attachment, by email. This is essential for the preparation of the anthology. If we are unable to confirm details by email or phone, we reserve the right to disqualify the entry and select a substitute.

There will be a prizegiving event, scheduled tentatively for February 2008 in Willesden (details to be confirmed). We would certainly appreciate the attendance of the winner at this event, however we are unable to provide travel or other expenses.

We discourage simultaneous submissions. Please let us know if something is published after entry so it can be removed from the competition.

We reserve the right to withold the prizes and/or reduce the short list numbers if entries of a sufficient standard are not received. In the event of a tie, the first prize will be split equally between the winners.

Thanks to our generous sponsors (including Willesden Writers' Workshop, the London Borough of Brent Arts and Libraries Service, the Willesden Herald, and Pretend Genius ) this is a FREE competition, meaning free to enter. All for the love of the short story. This is the first literary entity since Shakespeare to offer you both love and immortality.

There is no theme and no word limit other than the highly variable attention span of our editorial team. Please bear in mind that this is a short story competition and entries that are obviously not short stories will be a waste of your time and ours.

Entry implies acceptance of all the rules.

Failure to comply with the entry requirements will result in disqualification..

Download the entry form (required), print, fill in and post.

Notes on short story competition entries

About one in every ten is disqualified, mostly for including the author's name in the manuscript. Other reasons: no email address, no entry form, not a short story.

Please do not send novels or novellas, just because there is no formal word limit. If you don't know what a short story is, you're not going to win, are you? For rough guidance, imagine you are submitting it to the New Yorker weekly magazine. They are not going to put a novel or a novella in a weekly magazine. They have a story every week, sometimes quite short or anything up to about 8,000 words.

It has to feel like a short story. No matter how short it is, if it reads like a mini-novel it's no good. It doesn't matter if it's a little over 8,000 as long as it feels like a short story, not a mini-novel or novella. There comes a point where the piece is so long that it cannot possibly feel like a short story. To date, we have had industrially bound novels with prologues and chapters, one with 221 pages etc. These people are wasting time, postage, money and trees.

The real heart of the definition of a short story is a tale that can be told in one session. Too long and you lose your audience. The longer you make it, the better it had be. [Grammar? Ed]

Excerpts, examples and links to some stories we like are available on the New Short Stories website.

Please do not send requests for entry forms or result notifications, we cannot supply them. The entry form, rules and results are and will be available online only (www.newshortstories.com).

Ossian

We're all over the place

...like a very expensive, but baggy, suit.

"The Willesden Herald short story prize, judged by Zadie Smith & open to all, is a cool £5000. No entry fee; submit by 12/21." (Maud Newton)

"Budding writers take note; the Willesden Herald International Short Story Prize 2008 is now accepting submissions." (Brent Brain)

"Entry remains free, as does the ethos of a competition, which is designed to encourage emerging talent in the literary short story." (Guardian Books)

Open call for submissions: Willesden Herald international short story prize: There's no shortage of of short story competitions out there but not many have Zadie Smith selecting the winner. (The Elegant Variation)

The Willesden Herald and Pretend Genius Press present the 2008 Willesden Herald International Short Story Prize. $10,000 [approx.] goes to the winner. (New York Centre for Independent Publishing)

Another great new series: Learning to read

with Sean Brijbasi

lesson 1: reading fundamentalisms¹

as it pertains to reading, such as it is that it is important, it is important to use important terminology and cite important references deemed important by important people, in order to and not withstanding, understand and discuss those aspects of a work that are important to its understanding. although, as has been stated in one of this century's more aggrieved works on writing—the reader is expected to read on a basic level. that is what helps them buy products²—becoming or getting familiar with the important terminological countenance of a work's tangential references, allows the reader to read without cortexing nee oblongating the upper mammalary and if possible pappalary glands.

part 1 of lesson 1 highlights the importance of important terminology.

part 1: important terminology

1. ang

    pronunciation: 'a[ng]

    etymology: origin unknown

    date: 19th century

1 : a word, interchangeable with some other words, used to describe a piece of writing that can be described with no other word

2 : a tack that usually becomes or gets lodged in the cerebral cortex and causes much bleeding <the pain I feel is probably caused by that ang I rolled over the other day — Peter Poontwang>

2. plutarch

    pronunciation: %p[l]oot&archk

    etymology: danzini tribe, iron panties

    date: 3000 b.c.

1 : the tangent of vicissimilitude delimited by the intellectual context of something that has no reproductive qualities other than its own circumspection re: an unknown collective. <the pain I feel is probably caused by that plutarch I rolled over the other day — Peter Poontwang>

3. vicissimilitude

    pronunciation: whitbred

    etymology: old non-sumerian, from middle non-babylonian pistol, to read

    date: 21st century

1 : the act of looking at characters or letters or letters that look like characters and deciphering them in such a way as to make them a function of mutable linear nodes. <Charlotte, what does vicissimilitude mean? -- Henrietta Mcgillacuty (sic)>

2 : the symbol for manganese.

armed with these terms we shall probe the pipe-work of itty worbles³ that will time and again forthwith, ergo...secure them ang-like to the mutable non-/linear nodes.

note: the controversial influence of 3 dots on a reader's vicissimilitude is touched on in the caustic and currently unwritten chapter 4.

example:

I am lion. Watch me faint.

analysis:

in as much as and although these two sentences lack plutarch and vicissimilitude, the experienced reader sees ang in them. a reader who identifies this, enhances his/her function of the non-/linear nodes to a degree that itty worbles get or become impactful.

exercise 1:

analyze the following sentence vis-a-vis ang, plutarch, and vicissimilitude:

what is real is not as real as it was when it was real but it might accidentally be just as real as it was when it was real, although even then one can't be certain that that real was what was really real.

supplementary reading assignment:

masturbating in public by j. tyler blue©2001

coming soon: part 2 of lesson 1 - referencing for cocteau parties

____________________________

¹this is lesson 1

²chi chi, fronting the passive reversal voice (2002)

³in my controversial experiments on aphasiacs, this term, widely unuttered, means itty worbles

Filipino joke

For all our balikbayan readers

Bill Gates organized an enormous session to recruit a new CEO for Microsoft Europe.

Exactly 5,000 candidates assemble in a large room. One candidate is Mario Dimaculangan.

Bill Gates: Thank you for coming. Those who do not know JAVA may leave.

2,000 people leave the room.

Mario says to himself, 'I do not know JAVA but I have nothing to lose if I stay. I'll give it a try.'

Bill Gates: Candidates who never had experience in managing more than 500 people may leave.

2,000 people leave the room.

Mario says to himself, 'I never managed anybody myself, but I have nothing to lose if I stay. What can happen to me?' So he stays.

Bill Gates: Candidates who do not have management diplomas may leave.

500 people leave the room.

Mario says to himself, 'I left high school at 15 but what have I got to lose?' So he stays in the room.

Lastly, Bill Gates asked the candidates who do not speak Serbo-Croat to leave.

498 people leave the room.

Mario says to himself, 'I do not speak one word of Serbo-Croat but what do I have to lose?' So he stays and finds himself with one other candidate.

Everyone else has gone.

So Bill Gates says, 'Apparently you are the only two candidates who speak Serbo-Croat! Go on then, let's hear you have a conversation together in Serbo-Croat.'

Calmly, Mario turns to the other candidate and says, `Ano ba yan, Dong?'*

The other candidate answers, 'Ewan ko, Pare.' **

Bob Harmless

* "What is that?". 
** "I don't know, mate."

More government incompetence

The British government has not been tough enough with Sudan over the teacher incarcerated there on trumped-up charges. They should have exercised their full might to insist beyond all misinterpretation that the Sudanese goverment was sending that lady home forthwith, on pain of their lives. Instead they have adopted a watery milksop attitude and faffed around. Now Gillian Gibbons is in danger of being lynched by the benighted mob over there. Google this, David Miliband, you dozy timeserver. My old mother could drive a better bargain than the whole lot of shabby pen-pushers in the Labour party put together. She would never accept injustice without a fight.

Zoz

Who do you say I am?

"Thomas the Tank Engine, you shall be with me this day in Heaven."

Zoz

I want to copyright my own DNA

DNA database: Will your DNA get lost, too? - Telegraph

"People want to know, 'Who has got their hands on my genes?',' she says."

A person owns himself or herself and all components thereof. My DNA is my own property, copyright © me, all rights reserved. No use of any kind without prior permission in writing from me or my estate. No barber shall take a hair I left on his floor and use it for cloning customers with thick, fast growing hair like me, for example. No employer shall extract my DNA from a lousy plastic coffee cup and clone little duplicates of late-working-without-pay versions of me. Etc.

Zoz

whiskey river

whiskey river

"...supposing you were given the power to dream any dream you wanted to dream every night." (Alan Watts)

And some night you might just decide to sleep without dreaming at all, and that would be the end of you.

Ossian

Clods

Saudi Arabia defends sentence for rape victim - Telegraph

"Saudi Arabia has condemned Western interference in the case of a rape victim who was sentenced to 200 lashes and six months in prison."

I hate those seedy, hypocritical slobs who run that country and their numbskulled witch doctors. The day their country is run by the ordinary people instead of those money-grubbing lardarses, and their voodoo nonsense, the better. The same to the Bush regime, by the way.

Zoz

Impressive list*

That's the best thing we've read all year | Review | The Observer

"...writers and other cultural figures choose their favourite books of 2007"

Fascinating to get in concise form what each of these people found new and compelling this year. Then again some of the selections reflect what I find myself, that it's not always new books that are discovered in a year. I have bought a few books this year, the new edition of Shakespeare, a great doorstop/combines weight-training and reading, actually a marvellous book. Some others. A limitation of this sort of survey, like any Top N items list, is the tendency to say "My favourite books this year were the books I read this year."

Imagine being Literary Editor of the Observer and having this lot in your CC list:

David Hare, Nicola Barker, Margaret Drabble, Toby Litt, Alain de Botton, Michael Chabon, Jan Morris, Shere Hite, Salley Vickers, Brian Friel, MJ Hyland, Ian Hislop, Peter Carey, Charlotte Mendelson, John Banville, Anne Tyler, Michael Ondaatje, Joanna Briscoe, Andrew Marr, Hanif Kureishi, Angela Hartnett, Lisa Appignanesi, Irvine Welsh, JG Ballard, Simon Callow, Hari Kunzru, Iain Sinclair, Oliver Sacks, Beryl Bainbridge, Adam Phillips, Philip French, Peter Conrad, Alan Warner, Saffron Burrows, Geoff Dyer, Hilary Mantel, Charlie Higson, Edward Lucas, Kate Mosse, Jane Stevenson, Andrew Motion, David Kynaston, Romesh Gunesekera, Gerard Woodward, Colin Thubron, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Adam Mars-Jones, Nicci Gerrard, Diane Abbott, Michael Dobbs, Caroline Michel, Jonathan Sacks, Ali Smith, John Kampfner, John Mortimer, Ralph Steadman, Owen Sheers, Mohsin Hamid, Peter Ho Davies, James Lasdun, Rachel Seiffert, Maggie O'Farrell, John Burnside, Philip Hoare, Gautam Malkani, Phil LaMarche, Russell Hoban, Jackie Kay, Kele Okereke, Glen Baxter, Jeremy Paxman, Chris Huhne, Katie Melua, Benjamin Zephaniah

Just to quote the last one, which happens to be pithy:

Benjamin Zephaniah

Derek Walcott's Selected Poems (Faber)

"Walcott's Selected Poems is the only book I've read this year. I just haven't felt the need for another. The world is here, every emotion, thoughts you've had and thoughts you are yet to have. I have a copy in my house and a copy in my luggage. Nuff said."

Ossian

* Good thinking O. That'll bring the Googlers in, then they can buy merchandise. Ed

New TV show format: Little Brother

The high concept is "I'm an Earthling Get Me Out of Here" or "Fort Boyard" meets "Land of the Giants". Contestants have to survive in a set where everything is of such a huge size that they are only equivalent to the size of mice there. They have to find ways to live and get the food from the cupboards etc. They are not safe staying on the floor, because, periodically, monster-sized creatures—rats, insects, cats, giant sweeping brushes etc—appear and carry stragglers away and out of the show. It may lend itself particularly well to a children's show for older kids. A great advantage to this is that the set can become a theme park. Similar theme parks could be franchised around the world.

Format © Willesden Herald 2007. Send millions.

The pathos of things

An economy of means, a sense of stillness and transience (Guardian Unlimited Books)

Transcript of a talk by Seamus Heaney comparing poetry in the Japanese, English and Irish traditions, with examples. It also describes the influence of Ezra Pound and others and of translations from and into Japanese.

Ossian

Dry hump

Posting writing online and not getting any money for it is like simulated sex, worse than nothing at all. (Discuss.)

Zoz

Goodbye Dolly

Dolly creator Prof Ian Wilmut shuns cloning - Telegraph

"Prof Wilmut, who works at Edinburgh University, believes a rival method pioneered in Japan has better potential for making human embryonic cells which can be used to grow a patient's own cells and tissues for a vast range of treatments, from treating strokes to heart attacks and Parkinson's, and will be less controversial than the Dolly method, known as 'nuclear transfer.'"

The new method sounds very promising, exciting. Will we live to get the benefits?

Zoz

Fencing Palestine

Homes in Israeli settlements for sale at London expo

"At the Israel Property Exhibition at Brent town hall, North London last Sunday, one company, Anglo-Saxon Real Estate, was offering for sale properties in Maale Adumim and Maccabim. Both West Bank settlements lie on the Palestinian side of the so-called green line, the pre-1967 boundary and often cited as the border between Israel and a future Palestinian state." (Guardian)

From West Bank to Swiss Bank

Zoz

Gift ideas

Only so many days left

In the garden today*

Clockwise from top left: Mahonia, Callicarpa Bodinieri, Japanese lanterns, Echinops Bannaticus "Taplow Blue" (globe thistle). The latter was supposed to flower from July to August, yet here it is still flowering in mid-November! Is it the end of times, I wonder?

A. Mullane copyright © 2007

* Your pictures remind me of this, though it's perhaps not so mellow, rather more tempestuous this year. Ed

SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease;
For Summer has o'erbrimm'd their clammy cells.

From Ode to Autumn by John Keats (1795-1821)