We have had a wonderful afternoon, the NSW and I, a good lunch followed by a pot of coffee and a glass of brandy in front of a roaring log fire as the afternoon darkens around The Cave and the temperature drops outside, reviewing all the wonderful contributions of cherished colleagues for the January comps which closed this morning. The subject for both the poetry and photo comps was “Happiness” and I am genuinely astonished by the variety and quality of the responses. Make no mistake, there are some very talented and sensitive people out there.
All the links to the original entries <a href=”https://charioteers.org/2013/01/05/12th-night-joint-pome-and-piccie-comp-january-2013/”>are here</a>
After the initial Bluebird stramash, first out of the blocks was Janus with the cleverly constructed “Happy, darling?”, which I presumed to be a pome entry as the piccies were obviously not original.
Next up was Low Wattage with “Beyond My Reach” accompanied by a gentle photo of The Creek.
Then FEEG pitched in with “Happiness”, none the less serious for being light hearted and deftly pitched.
On the 14th, Pseu’s “Deep Contentment” struck a chord as apparently my piccie of Fogo did last time with LW, then the day after she gave us a haiku and a puddle full of sunset.
Janus then gave it another go with “Happiness is…”, a sort of Charlie Brown meets FEEG.
At last, I thought, but not least was our resident fracking genius, JW, and I mean that most sincerely folks, but then Araminta did a ‘mea culpa’.and Sipu slid a blinder under the wire two hours before the portcullis finally dropped.
As I wrote earlier, it has been a real pleasure to judge this joint comp. Having read all the entries several times the NSW and I withdrew to our respective corners to come up with two lists over which we could do battle. Problem is they are both the same, so the pome comp goes to LW for the touching “Beyond My Reach” and the piccie winner is Pseu for her remarkable ‘Puddle of Sunset’
Thank you all and over to LW and Pseu for the next ones. Does anyone want to restart the creative wtitiing yet?
OZ
Boadicea's Chariot 
Thanks for the considered judging, both of you!
Congratulations to LW for the poem.
And oh, how very exciting! I won the photo competition with the photo added to illustrate the haiku 🙂
And now, a chance to set another photo competition! Thank you
Congratulations to Nym and LW.
Thanks for the mention, OZ, but quite undeserved. I have been a little distracted since Christmas but I won’t bore you with the details.
Well judged. 🙂
Greetings, wolf cousin.
Solomon would have been proud of your judgment. Well played Pseu and LW.
Nice job, OZ and winners! 🙂
PS if it’s ok to enter pomes for creative writing, yes! Backside feels an epic coming on…..
Thank you OZ, sorry it was not a very happy pome, it just took a left turn as I was writing it.
Congrats Pseu for the great piccy.
I will give some thought to the next comp.