This summer, Stanfords teamed up with literary magazine Litro, asking for your wildest and strangest holiday, adventure or travel experience in less than 201 words. In other words, we asked for your story on a postcard…
Now summer’s over, the team at Litro have sifted through the drifts of electronic ‘postcards’ you sent in and these lucky writers came out on top:
• David Midgley with ‘Tobago Adventure’
• Graham Buchan with ‘The Fjord Question’
• Vanessa Woolf with ‘The Heights of Abraham’
Each winner will receive a copy of Martin Parr’s fabulous photographic book – Martin Parr Postcards, plus vouchers from Stanfords. In addition, the top winning story is to be published on Litro’s website and here on Stanfords’ website. So, congratulations to the winners!
Here you can read the three winning entries:
Tobago Adventure
Dearest Litro,
Had to tell you about this party I found in Tobago. I was with friends, and one was an expert at sniffing out adventures. He discovered a “foam and water party” out on the beach – to start at 2am.
We went – £15 to get past metal barriers – and the party was huge. There must have been a thousand people surrounded by tents selling interesting drinks, and reggae blasting from a live band on the sand. There was a central circle of young men dancing. After working up my Dutch courage, I joined them, my long white linen trousers and shirt-tails flying about me – not inappropriately, since I was the only young white man in the circle. Reggae is tricky to dance to, unless you’re an old man cradling a cigarette, looking to shuffle your toes. But that night, the beat was loud and heavy, and our dance was frenetic. Sporadically we were showered with foam erupting from fire-truck hoses around the beach. The most unexpected moment came around 5am: the foam was replaced with a stream of ganja for a few surreal seconds. So next time you travel, bring a friend with a good nose, and set it to work…
David Midgley
~
The Fjord Question
A long, long time ago I was a young man hitchhiking around Norway. Cars were few, but the big, bold sunlit landscape in the frighteningly clear air was so arresting that I was happy to bide my time.
An old American car pulled up. Door popped open: rucksack in the back; me in the front. The driver was a middle-aged Norwegian sailor. The car had an onboard record player under the dash which took vinyl 45s, really quite unusual. As we meandered along beside the intense blue water, the sailor played a selection of pop classics: Chuck Berry, Chubby Checker, Elvis.
Conversation was stilted, but I thought there’s a question every sailor would be happy to answer.
‘Where are the best girls?’ I asked.
‘Derry, for sure,’ he answered immediately.
‘Where?’
‘Derry. Londonderry.’
And I had been expecting somewhere exotic, like Yokohama, or Dar es Salaam, or Vera Cruz.
Many years later I was in Derry with a news team, witnessing one of Ian Paisley’s mad evangelical rants. The women in his audience seemed equally rabid.
Graham Buchan
~
The Heights of Abraham
The Heights of Abraham is a unique attraction; a duet of vertigo and claustrophobia brought together in a mighty sandstone crag. You get up there on a flimsy cablecar, dangling high above the trees. At the top, you will find the entrance to a series of caves. My children quickly tired of the educational joys of The Shop, but they were transfixed by the magnificent Punch and Judy show. After Mr Punch had got the better of the hangman and the devil, we went round the back of the booth to meet the
puppeteer. He was a very short burly Londoner with a strong resemblance to Mike from the Young Ones.
“Why do you stand on that little box?” My youngest asked him bluntly.
He winked. “So that I can reach the stage.”
“What’s inside the box?”
The man paused. Then he said “…the wife.”
“Why?” my son demanded at once.
He gave a small smile. “Because that was how she wanted it.”
Vanessa Woolf-Hoyle
If you enjoyed reading these short stories from Litro Magazineand if you want to get copies of the magazine delivered to your door to be enjoyed with your muffins in the morning, and at the same time help Litro to be able to continue to bring you great writers, you can now subscribe to Litro for as little as £17.99 a year. Visit Litro’s websitefor more information.