Winner!

Maybe it's these austere times, but I've found myself entering a lot of competitions recently. I lack the dedication of the full time comper - the person with a house full of toasters and tea towels, three cars in the drive and the promise of four foreign holidays a year. All because they are on first name terms with lady luck and have a punning way with 10 words or less tiebreakers.

Having spoken to a few compers in my time, I realise that it's practically a full time job for some (the retired mainly). But I also know from past experience that many competitions don't attract that many entries. I worked on a magazine once that had a monthly prize draw for a travel prize. The prizes were pretty decent - spa weekends, hotel breaks, travel vouchers, tickets to sporting events - yet regularly failed to get into double figures of entries. At the same time, we had several regulars who would enter every month and sent in elaborate hand made postcards to increase their chance of being pulled from the presumably bulging postbag. My favourite was one entrant whose postcards were in the shape of teddy bear's heads, complete with fake fur, beady eyes and a sound chip in the nose that played the Teddy Bear's Picnic when squeezed. She never won!

But I have, thanks to my good friends at Hackney Hive. We will be attending this weekend's Lollibop, a big outdoor event for kids in lovely Clissold Park. I'm not quite sure what to expect, but the lineup looks good, so if the weather holds - Sunday looks the better bet - it should be great.

Now all I need is to find a local website that's running a competition for High Voltage.