Only a couple of days to go and we have five entries. You still have time.
A while, ago, one of us suggested that it might be a nice idea to vote on the stories. I’ve been playing around with the poll facility in WordPress and I’m minded to try having a readers’ vote on the entries. I really like Bearsy’s ‘Packing Room’ prize as a concept and I personally see no harm in everybody else sticking in their oars as well. I could, of course, be wrong.
So, as an experiment, I’m trying to set a poll up. It might go horribly wrong and it won’t matter if it does because I still intend to select the winner myself , whatever the result of said poll.
Rules:
A work of whatever length you wish and in whatever genre you choose on the theme of looking forward or looking back.
Prescribed words: ‘party’, ‘permanent’ and ‘accident’.
Not essential if you choose not to work them into your effort but I will give serious weight to their creative use in the event of a tie.
Deadline: 12 midnight GMT on 31st January 2011.
Entries to Date – please click on the author’s name to read their entry
- Janus – ‘ A Permanent Reminder’
- Araminta – ‘The Political Wife’
- The Royalist – ‘Canvasses and Mattresses’
- Pseu – ‘Perfect Conkers’
- OZ – ‘Mores! O Mores! (II)’
Boadicea's Chariot 
Evening JM,
To paraphrase the profound Christina Osborne “The only good poll is …”
Nobody can predict the public’s voting habits and such polls are rife for vote-rigging. Take last week’s Dancing on Ice for instance. I spent the best part of £5,000 keeping Dominic Cork in the competition.
Mind you, it is quite exciting.
PollDaddy prevents multiple voting – you only get one chance. JW. 😎
Rats.
Hi, JW. Is Cork a Hun?
Thanks to Bearsy for sorting out how to post the poll. I was struggling.
One caveat. There is still time to enter, so please don’t vote until you have the chance to read all the entries.
I will award the prize as soon as possible after 5 pm on Tuesday 1st February 2011.
Not likely, not with a name like Dominic Gerald Cork. However, as you know, when we are talking about cricket, all bets are off. Come on England, three lions and all that. I’m sure you’ll agree with me that Corky was an unconventional player but great to watch. I’m topping up my phone as we speak.
Bearsy, I would not vote for myself as I’m not sure if John can access who votes for who. He would make my life even more hellish than what he’s done already if he found out.
I couldn’t help myself. I-I-I- won’t get any sleep tonight.
No JW, he can’t. 😎
Well this does look like fun, JM,and well done you for trying it. Obviously you still pick the winner yourself, but this gives one a feeling of participating. Thank you.
Good morning Sheona,
I’d like to wish you a Happy New Year.
A splendid idea, John.
It will be interesting, and it could catch on. 🙂
Great idea John – thanks for investigating the WordPress facilities and coming up with this! 🙂
JM – I can, if you like, change your poll so that it appears in your post. It’s very easy to do. It won’t upset the voting to date, or anything else. Your call. 😕
Hi, Bearsy. Just back from a really enjoyable evening of completely failing to play mah jong with friends and on the wrong side of one or more glasses of red wine.
On the other hand, on the right side of a couple of seriously strong espressi and now staying up for the ODI at 3 am.
Moving on, quite clear to me that you will do a better and quicker job of embedding the poll than I could. So, yes please. Go ahead and do it.
Just one thing. If it is possible, could you please expunge the votes to date so that we can start from scratch? When in testing mode, I voted for each of the posts once and twice for Janus and JW before I disabled multiple voting and I think that those votes have carried over. Still hoping that at least one AN Other will post entries before the deadline and I would not want the latecomers to be at a disadvantage in the popular vote.
Hmm – I cannae do that, JM. Polls are not interferable with, not by no-one, not no-how. Or if they are, I haven’t found the secret. I can leave it as it is, and you’ll have to make allowances for your experimentation, OR I can make a new poll (or you can), but then everyone will have to vote again, if they have already, that is.
For now, I will just move your poll into your post. If you want it in a different format, you will have to edit it, for I cannot touch it; it’s yours, not to be dabbled with by others. Left sidebar, Polls, Edit. Whatever you do there will be reflected in your post, automatically, when it’s next refreshed or opened (but not for a minute or two). 🙂
Your evening sounds most enjoyable.
I hope the 5th ODI is, too, although you and I may have different criteria. There may be rain at the Gabba – we’ve had a sprinkling within the past hour – but it shouldn’t be too severe. I hope. 😕
Fair enough, Bearsy.
My solution, and I could be wrong, was to enable multiple voting, square up the votes and then disable multiple voting. If you now click on results, everybody has 20%. If there any new entrants, I will do the multiple voting trick, vote for them four times and then disable MV again.
Probably an overlong, contrived, complicated and convoluted way to arrive at a solution but I did have legal training, to be fair.That’s what I’m good at.
No worries, JW, whatever turns you on. Branch-stacking comes as second nature to Aussies. 😆
Had to google ‘branch-stacking’ as I had never heard the term before. Up to speed now.
We do it as well, of course, in all its many forms. We just don’t have a catch all expression for it.
As hmb would tell you, if he was here, the slogan on either side of the ‘tradition’ in both Ulster and large parts of Scotland was always ‘Vote early and vote often!’
“Vote early and vote often” is also an Aussie expression, no doubt with its roots in Gaelic tradition. I’m sorry I gave you problems with “branch-stacking”, I sometimes forget which dialect I’m speaking, or indeed which terminology belongs to which country. 😦
Almost time to watch Clarke get another duck!
Good morning john
Disagree with the competition ‘voting line’ (unless of course we can charge for votes and make a bit of money out of it!)
Smacks of ‘forming a committee’ a quango if you like, passing the buck possibly.
I’m all for dictatorships, one party states, the judges decision is final, no correspondence will be entered into etc. (Just not planning to visit the Pyramids any time soon!)
Quite happy to vote on important issues like who’ll win this years Currie Cup but voting on in house competitions not for me, smells too much like democracy and look where that idea got us 😉
By the way can ‘non-members’ vote?
Morning Soutie. I think that I might have to wish you a good New Year because it’s there, I don’t think I’ve done it yet and it will get right up JW’s nose.
For the avoidance of doubt, the vote will not matter a pile of fetid gannet’s droppings. I will still be picking the winner and passing on the baton without fear or favour and without any reference to the popular vote. It’s just a bit of fun and playing with WordPress functionality.
Six Nations coming up next week. I know it’s only Northern Hemisphere but it could be a good one.
For the further avoidance of doubt, the Sharks will, of course, win the Currie Cup and the Super 15 this year.
Thank you for that, royalist, and a good New Year to you as well.
You’re welcome Sheona. I’m not usually as late as that with the greeting but there you go.
JM
You gazumped my Jan 29 greeting with a few Jan 30 greetings of your own. Bully for you.
Going back to the post, I’ve backtracked my thinking on polls again. I voted on your original poll and now find it has been erased. After all the time and trouble I had casting my vote. I refuse to vote on your new poll. (raspberry face thing)
Corky might have gone, the treble is still on.
In France the tradition is that you can wish people a Happy New Year the first time you see them after the 1st. January. even if it is the 31st. Since I won’t be back in France till next month, I’ve had to e-mail. The other nice tradition is celebrating the Feast of the Kings any time from Epiphany to the end of the month. Since this involves cake – the “galette des rois” – and either champagne or sparkling cider, the month of January can pass very happily if one is invited to enough such celebrations.