Thank you Culture Northern Ireland

Thank you Culture Northern Ireland for giving me a £100 Amazon voucher (for winning a writing competition completing a survey). And thank you Gerry Anderson and politician Gregory Campbell for helping me spend it. Well, to be more precise – they had a row. But

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The day I met… (Competition Time)

Did you notice the owl? An owl!

Drum roll please – It’s the all-star celebrity competition.

I said I’d do it – and here it is. Inspired by Rasjacobson, I would very much like to have your stories of celebrity encounters. There’ll even be prizes. But before you rush to leave a comment, breathless with excitement, read on…

It’s partly Jackie Leven’s fault. Now he’s what I call a celeb. Never mind his transcendant singing and story telling – just look at his picture. Looks both rugged and fey. Gazing into the distance. On a motorbike. No helmet. With an owl. An owl!

I got an email from him today because I’ve been trying to track down a copy of an album he made. Turns out it was a private limited edition and sold out. So he’s given my the go-ahead to think laterally (a euphemism). Which I will. But how lovely to hear from the owl-meister personally.

It’s a far cry from the unfortunate encounter I had with one of my favourite writers when I finally got to meet him. I was very silly. He wasn’t impressed.

And that’s the sort of tale I’d like to hear most – how you got to meet someone (need not be someone well known, though fun if it was) and it did not go as planned. Perhaps you finally got to speak to Robert de Niro and spilled gravy in his lap.

"Psst! Can you pass me some loo roll. I know daarling, I know, it's a little embarrassing. But at least it may make an entertaining blog post some day. Goodness daarling, this toilet is very comfy. I hope I'm in the right place..."

Perhaps Liza Minnelli whispered quietly to you… to ask you to pass some toilet roll into her cubicle next to yours. Or you nipped in ahead of another driver, only to find you’d just stolen the Dalai Lama’s parking place. It’s over to you.

This is how it will work (I hope).

1. Have a giggle or blush about that time when you met… yes, that time.
2. Doesn’t have to involve a celebrity/icon/politician/etc – but good if it does. (If you’re worried about getting into trouble, we can use a pseudynom for the celeb.)
3. Also good if it is funny.
4. Length? Up to you.
5. Write it down and email it to me at paulwaters99 at hotmail.com
6. I will put it on this blog as a guest post – with a link back to you.
7. You will bask in the satisfaction of seeing your story on a highly prestigious, critically acclaimed, hugely popular blog – er… this one. And if that’s not enough…
8. I’ll also send you something lovely in the post  if you’d like (probably a book to be honest, I’ll give you the options,  you can choose). I’ll email you back for your postal address and won’t tell it to anyone else.
9. Hang on – doesn’t that mean everyone who enters could win. Er… yes, I suppose so. I better buy in some stamps.

I’ll post on my embarrassing celeb encounter, but I’d love to hear yours. So have a think.

But in the meantime do leave a comment to let me know if this tickles your fancy, whether I should be bracing myself for overseas postage – or whether I should join the Foreign Legion to avoid having to look at an empty inbox for the next few years.

Have I left anything out? Any vital piece of information? Tell me.

But more importantly – tell me you’re joining in.

Yeeow - that hurts!

Here’s another prompt. It’s audio. It’s got me in it. (Oooh!) It’s an episode of a podcast on life in the UK that I used to do for a German media company. I’m interviewing Tanya who reveals how she accidentally assaulted Donald Rumsfeld

What do you listen to when you write?

The Siren by John William Waterhouse. She's saying: "Ah come on, have a break, have a wee cup of tea. And would you like a biscuit to dip in it too?"

In an effort to keep myself in my seat, at my keyboard and editing the latest draft of Blackwatertown, I put on some music.

It’s been one of those days. The outside world was calling – fresh air, sunshine, forest. In other words – that four letter word distraction was singing its siren song. So I needed to drown it out.

I’m all for getting outside. But with the paying job on hold today, it was an opportunity to do some necessary book editing. Hence the music to keep me tapping along.

But is music a good idea? If I cast my mind back through the mists of time to the prehistoric age when I was revising for school exams, I doubt the late great John Peel‘s contribution helped at all. (Helped me be more human perhaps, but not to remember chemical formulae.)

And does a desire for musical accompaniment suggest that my book is insufficient in itself to hold my attention? Anyone’s attention? Aargh, I’m doomed. Though, to be fair, I have read it a few times. And I tend to multitask anyway – lots going on at once.

But if music be the food of editing – what tunes?

The Romans? Were they Italian?

What I want from a musician is a bit of chat between songs. A bit of meandering banter. Destination digression. And does anyone lead into a song better than

Still got it

Just back from the Rhythm Festival.

But how to describe it?

• It’s where I go to feel young and clean shaven (compared to the rest of the crowd).
• It’s where you look at the stage and say: “I thought he was dead ages ago.”
• It’s where a blues band announces that the bass player has had a stroke, lost the power of speech except for swearing, but will sing the next number anyway. (Not good.)
• It’s a lot better than I’m making it sound so far.
• And it’s where you find out if past greats still have it… Or not. (And you meet the next wave too.)

S0 – Who has still got it?

The Truth About Pandas

Finally - the truth about pandas. All these years the Chinese have been fooling us. According to Fuxing Man they're really just dogs in disguise. Click on the pic for more.

Got a letter yesterday. Personal, important looking. But not a bill. Could it be… a book response? Too small to contain a returned manuscript. Good news? Bad news? Palpitations…