…Cranford
A few weeks ago I entered The Bristol Prize: “an exciting, new, annual writing competition that offers writers a great chance to get into print”. This week they released the forty-story long list and much to my chagrin mine was not on it. I had tried to put it out of my mind (and not mentioned it on the blog) because I was trying not to get my hopes up, but I was still surprised how disappointed I felt when they published it. Isn’t that silly? James tried to cheer me up: “how do you know that you weren’t number forty-one?”, but it really didn’t take the edge off it (don’t you love that he tried, though? He’s so sweet). You spend days, weeks, months, even, creating something that you are proud of and then you don’t even get a mention; it’s still a disappointment even if you were expecting it. Lucky for James, I loathe wallowing (I must blog about that sympathy bypass one of these days) so all you can do is suck it up and get back on the horse: next time I’ll do better.
Guaranteed to cheer me up: a visit from Clancy and Gareth. We love them and we always have a good time together. As usual, Friday night was a boozy, messy affair: Clancy and I watched BSG back-to-back for four hours until we were drunk enough to go to bed, only to discover that Gareth had fallen asleep in the whilst listening to show tunes with James, who hadn’t noticed his duet partner had passed out. They had finished off a bottle of Jim Beam between the two of them, which was probably why they felt so shocking in the morning. No wonder they weren’t as enthused about a trip to Cranford as Clancy.
Cranford, for the benefit of the US readers, was a BBC costume drama over Christmas, and was filmed in Lacock, a small village not far from our house, and just round the corner from where James grew up. Clancy is a sucker for costume dramas, so the chance for a photo outside Miss Matty’s house was too good to pass up:
After that, all there was left to do was get some lunch and play around in the stocks we found. What else are you going to do in a village the size of a postage stamp on a rainy Saturday afternoon?
Who cares if no one likes your stories when you can play around with your friends instead?
Next week: James runs the Bristol 10k, my boss leaves for a two-year cycling trip around the world, and I finally get my ass in the gym. No laughing: it’s the truth.
