Hi Alphas,
Welcome to Alphaday 10. I hope you’ll make the most of it as this is the last one this season with a full agenda. There are three more Alphadays left: partly to wind up to the grand finale – and partly to wind down towards the well-deserved rest we get after a season well spent.
I’ll try not to keep using that word, but the last challenge of the season is coming up. Let’s see if we can get everyone to sharpen their pencils and their wits to take part in this one.
After that I’ll ask you some pertinent questions as usual. We may be way above such petty concepts as ‘customer satisfaction’ but we can still try to assess the success or otherwise of the season’s activities. So have a look at today’s agenda and start getting ready with your critiques and suggestions for improvements.
Here’s the agenda for Alphaday 10. As usual it’s packed full of enticing goodies:
- This bulletin from me
- The results of the poetry challenge from me
- The collated entries for the phobia challenge from Stephen
- The brief for challenge 10 from CCG
- The Writers’ Reads column from Morgen
- The Log, edited by Sally
- Perhaps a showcase piece from Suzanne’s collection of your contributions? (6 / 17 writers have shown up so far. There’s still time for lots more!)
That should keep you entertained for a while and as usual we look forward to your reactions as you absorb the Alphaday 10 news.
Alpha news:
I’ve got delightful news for you this time. Get the confetti and the bubbly out and congratulate Rose on her marriage. All our best wishes to you, Rose, for a long and happy future!
Rose was married last Alphaday to her fiancé who hails from Mexico. They were married in Tokyo in the first of three wedding ceremonies. There will be another one in Mexico, and yet another one in Rose’s native Canada. After that I believe she will be well and truly wed to her husband… how wonderful is that?
General news:
I’d like not to dwell on the fact that this world is becoming a frightening place to live in. Where can we find happy places to visit?
Literature is the answer, of course: real books that you can pick up and browse through before turning to the person next to you to ask for their opinion.
We’ve all seen the jokes about youngsters meeting sociably in coffee shops where they immediately reach for their mobiles and amicably text. We had a publicity entry along those lines, too, you may remember.
Now they’ve opened a bookshop in London called ‘Libreria’ where customers are not allowed to use their mobile phones and tablets. They call it a ‘digital detox zone’ and the idea is to encourage conviviality and the love of physical books. There are talks and displays arranged in unconventional ways to cause ‘serendipity’ or ‘creative collisions’. It’s a reaction to the ‘digital deluge’ we’re submerged in and a triumphant contradiction of the wet blankets who claim that the printed book is dead.
It most certainly is not.
Accessibility? Now there’s the rub! It’ll be a while before there’s one round the corner from where most of us live. So we’ll have to cheat and create a similar convivial space here in Alphaland.
Christine