Hello everyone,

General:
Back from an invigorating holiday in Italy – we walked around 65 miles, and climbed one good mountain – and read a couple of books. I also found time to judge the entries for David’s challenge for which I took a printout. My Italian has also improved by a few words.

Membership:
We had all hoped that Margaret would be able to join back fully into our activities after her health checks, but they haven’t been quite finished. So we’ll look forward to having her contributions shortly. In the meantime, I hope she’s enjoying our emails (though perhaps not analysing all our elisions too much!).

Assessments:
I’m not proposing to change the rules, but I’ll pick up again on a point I mentioned earlier, and one which Chris raised again.

If something is written in an off-beat way – it will be difficult for it to be accepted by everyone – in fact, probably by not more than a few, no matter how good it is. Innovative ways of presenting anything in words needs time to get appreciated as a ‘vogue’. But it is good to have an outlet for experimental ideas in writing and using words, and it may be that we might include something to recognise this in a future year (as, I suspect, there will be one).

However, I believe, and I am sure that most of you agree, that writing in a conventional way with your own slant, should be the priority – and that is best attained by writing as much as possible under some kind of ‘demanding’ conditions. Writing for a Challenge is ‘demanding’ in that context.

I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this before (but if I did it was at least a couple of years ago), that I once wrote a piece ostensibly by an African with limited vocabulary (so he had to keep repeating the same phrases) who was trying to come to terms with the various interventions of Bob Geldhof saving millions of children who would grow up to have yet more children, the Pope saying it was good for people to have children, and the fact that without continued help, there would never be enough food to feed even the original population. I was pleased with what I wrote, but the adjudicator for the competition sent it back with the comment ‘too much repetition’. He clearly didn’t understand what I was trying to achieve. But you can have some sympathy for the adjudicator: he has lots to look at, and mostly in a conventional vein, so he is bound to be looking at things in a conventional way. So an off-beat entry for a big competition is almost bound to fail. The only way to progress such a work is either by getting it published (and it will have to be good to get that), or by getting accepted and approved in a small group such as ours. Yet even with a dozen or so judges, you will be lucky to get it liked by half of them.

So, if there are new kinds of writing that you want to explore, perhaps we can do this not only through our challenges, but also perhaps by email correspondence.

I learn from David that this story is working its way through the list of those who have signed up to contribute.

This week’s Challenge:
This week, membership duties are now creeping up on our newer members. Rosemary is setting this one, and I anticipate nothing trivial. As Tara is on duty for the 10th and last challenge, I don’t expect anything easy there either. But Betty and Les will have their turns in a future year.

Communication generally:
There are relatively few emails which don’t arrive, but as we are dependent entirely on such communication, such occurrences are sometimes annoying. That is why I sent round the description of the timetable for the challenges, including the marking. It is up to you, as members, to question when you haven’t received anything that you were expecting. Equally, if you are responsible for sending a missive to everyone on a certain day, and that deadline can’t be met, please circulate a message with the revised information.

Leaderboard Update:
Quickly including the results which David has sent around, Sally gets 3 points for her superb Gwendoline: David, Clare and Zena get 2 points each and Betty 1 point. I thought it was a brilliant piece, Sally, and what’s more, I’m pleased to see that there’s so much agreement amongst members. What’s interesting to note is that despite Sally’s runaway win, no entry failed to get recognition: that’s an indication of a general high standard.

The leaderboard now reads:

Zena	19 points
Sally	17 points
Clare	16 points
Geoff	15 points
Rosemary	15 points
David	13 points
Christine	12 points

You may be interested to know that - with my statistician's hat on - I see the potential for a statistical exercise on deciding when 'The best of the bunch' becomes 'A winner out on its own'. What ideas you start, Sally, when you're out on your own like that.

Telephone Story:
Progressing.

Discussion topic (2):
I think Christine’s last comments on Elisions are excellent – but there’s a lot of things to ponder over in what she’s said, and I’m not sure that I agree with them all. But a plea to everyone – keep up discussions on topics like this!

Best wishes to you all - and thanks for all the inspiring writing in the challenges.

- Olaf