Ok, I didn’t win, I didn’t even make the long list but there were some 500 entries and only 10 in the long list, of which one, my good friend Robert Duffy was chosen. I enclose his entry after mine (lol – this is my blog, sorry Robert, lol)
So we were given the task of writing about Dublin, and it’s uniqueness, in just 100 words. I came up with this:
Freezing winter nights, laced with Dublin particulars, and hazed with orange lights around the Green. Slipping into a warm hostelry, sipping cold stout, the antithesis of comfort yet warming within. Oh, go on, a whiskey chaser then. Spring days come stretching slow. We are green because of our rain, ample amounts of it and temperatures mild and cunning. Sudden sunshine too, rainbows over the Spire. Tourists take quick pictures in the glare. Summer, because of calendar dates not weather, gushes over us and more green. Tourists loving it. Autumn, sometimes Indian, more often not. More rain. Repeat!
It didn’t cut the mustard!
But Robert’s did – go Robert!
What about the wonderful gush of imagination surging from the slabs of Westmoreland Street? Bright book upon book, our declamatory Pat, standing in the rain or lovely snow with his trolley and cat. Roll up; roll up for the remarkable greydraggled Mr Ingoldsby selling his pomes. He’ll cheer you up. (You’ll cheer him too.) Don’t pass by before you buy a slice of Dublin brain from yer man on Westmoreland’s pavement. He didn’t die years ago. Maybe the people who govern these sorts of things will cast him in bronze and put him back when he’s gone.
I actually think we are writing the same book – funny that!
The two short listed entries are listed on here: http://www.uniquelydublin.ie/ Well done!
