So the time has come to honour the winners and put the non-winners out of their misery.
Looking back over the comments posted in response to my competition, I feel it was well worth running. At first, I thought you needed to look quite carefully to find contributions that could truly be considered entries. But I was wrong. The competition drew a healthy postbag.
Apologies, first of all, to the nearly men: Bill Taylor, Pete Sixsmith, Steven E Bushnell. All took funny, imaginative or pertinent shots at the prizes. Bill even sent a gift, a book of his own choice (Stephen Foster's tale of woe as a Stoke City fan: She Stood There Laughing: A Man, His Son and Their Football Club), to await my return to Europe; was this a blatant attempt to influence the outcome or simply a nice gesture?
Steven came up with the idea of an entry as a scene from a play. Bill refined it. But in the end, with apologies to the runners-up (and especially Bill, who worked his socks off for a prize and probably deserved one too), I nominate the following as winners:
In third place: Will Buckley, for his early burst of irreverence -
I start each day with Salut! It's brilliant. Sometimes I click on it a thousand times a day just in case I miss something. I'm sorry to hear that you're leaving Abu Dhabi but delighted to learn that your column, Words Fail Me, will continue. If anyone can restore some measure of normalcy to American English it's you.
In second place, Roads of Stone for this mixture of nostalgia for competitions in cereal boxes and measured praise for Salut!
"I love Salut! because..."
Hey - doesn't that sound like the tie-breaker question on all those competitions I used to try my hand in as a boy?
"Win a family tent with Weetabix!"
"First prize: a trip to Longleat with Corn Flakes!"
Sadly, I must confess to being something of a cereal competition entrant in my youth.
In true Match of the Day style, though, I have to say that I love Salut! because of Goal F. Not because it's the best of all the goals you've ever seen, but because it's the only one you can look back on clearly when it comes to making that decision.
And in first place was Louise, for lots of witty stuff about the sport she hates - and for cleverly spotting the idle blogger's recipe for seeming active:
I very much liked Colin's courage to allow 'followers' to write on his blog and in sheer desperation he even asked me! (the text was totally rewritten, of course!). This is something I might develop on my new blog which would enable me not to write anything. Blogging is extremely time-consuming and being a lazy blogger, I much admire his ability to continue despite being on holiday most of the time!
I'm sure your experience in AD has been fun, and as you said, you have had the possibility of visiting places we only dream of ... however I sense you are a Provençal at heart and that your return to Europe is eagerly anticipated. And it is easier to get to Sunderland from the South of France. Isn't it?
Each of the winners will be sent a copy of the following book, as supplied for the competition by Continuum Books:
French Cinema: From Its Beginnings to the Present
Author : Rémi Fournier Lanzoni
Published: April 2004
Will, Roads and Louise - congratulations and please provide postal addresses by e-mailing me using the link at the top right of this page.
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