What I Did on my Holiday plus some Hysteria
Other people’s holidays are boring but I’m writing this anyway to show you that I am a real person and not just a continuous, automatic loop playing ‘buy my book‘!
So here’s a bullet point gallop through my seven days in Suffolk last week:
We stayed at the aptly named (for me) Old Library in Wickham Market, almost directly opposite the current library – which is actually open on a Sunday!
The best cup of tea of the week came from the Tea Shed in Walberswick. They serve loose leaf tea in a proper teapot with a jug of hot water on the side plus a timing device to indicate how long the tea should be brewed for.Full marks to senior National Trust ranger, Andrew, at Orford Ness for his talk about the rare breed sheep on the site. And even better than Andrew, was his trainee sheepdog, Sweep. Sweep did a great job of rounding up the herd and keeping them together during the talk.An unexpected highlight was watching the shipping containers move around the Port of Felixstowe. 
They were ferried from giant ships to railway line in perfect synchronicity. I was in awe at the size of everything and at the behind the scenes computer system that must be ensuring that everything is in the right place at the right time.The weather gods were smiling on us and overturned a dismal forecast to provide lots of sunshine. We went walking everyday and only got wet once.As a reward for politely reading through all of the above, here’s a reminder about the Hysteria Writing Competition.
The categories are: Short story – maximum 1,000 words, Flash fiction – maximum 250 words and Poetry – maximum 12 lines.
The theme is MAGIC and the prizes are: Overall category winner for each category – £300 plus publication in the Hysteria 10 anthology and the 9 runners up in each category will also be published in Hysteria 10.
Entry is a modest £3 and if you sign up to the competition newsletter, you’ll receive a free copy of Hysteria 3 so you can check out earlier winning entries!
Closing date is August 31st 2023. As always, make sure that you read the full rules before submitting.
