F- F- F- Saturday Photo

I love Chinatown.

A short story competition at Five Stop Story

Please welcome my guest Ruth Heald who gave a talk at the recent Bangkok Literary Festival about her project ‘Five Stop Story.’

Welcome to my blog Ruth. Five Stop Story is an intriguing title; what’s it about?

A “five stop story” is a story you can read in five stops on the tube in London, or in about 10 minutes.

I started the Five Stop Story project to discover and publish short stories that can easily fit into modern lives. As people get busier and busier they find it harder and harder to find the time to read. At the same time, they now have the technology to read on the move. They no longer have to lug a book around in the hope that they will find somewhere to read it. They can read on a mobile phone, an ipad or a Kindle.

So people have less time, but they can now read anywhere. This means that they can fill their spare moments with fiction. They can read on the tube to work, or while they are waiting to meet someone for coffee. The ideal medium for these spare moments is the short story; fiction that will fill the time, but you won’t have to abandon half way through.

Five Stop Story aims to fill these spare moments with stories by new writers. We are running regular competitions to discover these writers and the competition prize includes publication on the website and our forthcoming mobile application. The mobile application will enable people to read stories by up and coming writers on the move. 

The Five Stop Story website launched in November 2010 and the first competition ran in January 2011. Five Stop Story is supported by the Arts Council and will be launching its mobile application in September this year.

The theme of the current competition is travel and we are looking for stories of 1,500 to 2,500 words. As well as publication on the website and mobile application, the overall winner will receive a copy of the book A Moral Murder & Other Tales from the Blue Hills by Sangeetha Shinde Tee. 

To find out more and read the stories by previous winners please visit our website. 

Thanks for the guest post Ruth and the very best of luck with the competition.

The deadline for short story entries is Sunday 26th June. Ruth's blog can be found here and you can follow her on Twitter @FiveStopStory.

Ewwwgh: Friday photo

Displayed on a taxi dashboard:

Narcissus

I found this fabulous chrome pillar – stay with me people – outside my apartment building last week. Yes, pillar; as in holding the building up… or simply looking elegant, I’m not sure. Or maybe it was placed there just for me…

As I ran past I thought, ‘who is that gorgeous, slender creature?’ I stopped and walked back to gaze into the chrome mirror. Gosh it was me twenty years ago. Just kidding; we'd have to go back a LOT further than that! I was never that skinny. But I looked and looked, just like Narcissus. I even took a photo for you lot.

And then I remembered where I was going: to the 7/11 for a snack.

Sigh.

The irony wasn’t lost on me.

I need a 12 step programme

I’m totally addicted. It doesn’t matter what time of day or night it is, I can’t get myself off it.

Back in March I downloaded two series of the old version of Upstairs Downstairs to keep me entertained during my travels in the UK. I’ve always loved period dramas and I’m sure I must’ve come across the odd repeat while growing up but I’d been too young to see the original airing.

I watched a couple when my travelling lagged but I found the style of acting and dramatization very dated; hammy and overacted, embarrassing. But back in Bangkok I began to watch the odd episode in the evening and before I knew what had happened, I was hooked.

I forgot that they’d irritated me. For some of the visual preparation of the NF book, I can work while plugged into the next exciting episode in the lives of Bellamy family and their servants. And then I see in the following episode Elizabeth and her husband of six months are spending Christmas apart because their marriage is falling apart, and honestly, I’ve got to watch it, haven’t I? Before I know it, several more episodes have been viewed and then Lady Marjorie is sailing to America on the Titanic and well, I’ve got to see what happens, haven’t I?

Then there’s the singing. For days now I’ve been singing the theme tune, which, oddly I can’t reproduce on command, rather it just appears in my head to irritate me (and my family.) And there’s something in the phrasing that makes it morph into The Teddy Bears Picnic so I sing that over and over too…

I do think I may be losing my grip.

But oh, Hudson (Gordon Jackson) is just wonderful (and not hammy at all) and Thomas Watkins (a very PHWOAR young John Alderton)… the beautiful lust-after John Alderton Edwardian clothes… And god, the horror of the way they lived… I love it all.

Now it’s no longer just the evening but the morning as well and sometimes even during the day; I’m just watching one episode at a time… Honest. Well, mostly.

Husband has rechristened it ‘Crackstairs, Smackstairs.’

And after the event...

What a lovely day we had at Neilson Hays Library yesterday. Saturday night’s big thunderstorm gave me hope that we’d have a dry day and we did; it was a scorcher.

I don’t have many pictures but this one makes me happy:

WordPlay: final programme

Tomorrow the Neilson Hays Library is hosting WordPlay, Bangkok's first literary festival.  The details below are the final programme. It's not too late to sign up for the workshops!

Further details are here.