The next Post Of The Week will be announced on Sunday evening.
Please note that nominations for next week cannot be accepted until then.

If YOU would like to vote on this week’s shortlist and be part of the decision making for the Post of the Week this week, please pick your favourite posts from the list and award them 5 points for the favourite, 4 for the next etc, and mail your votes to peacharse@yahoo.com no later than 6pm on Sunday night.

Bank holiday’s over, Bojo’s the new mayor, booze is illegal on the tube come 1st June, summer’s cracked open early (for a few days at least) and the nominations were ripe for the picking. Good times abound!

Here’s this week’s shortlist:

1 - The Cat Girl Speaks: Tell it Like it Is

Nominated by missym

How can it be that I am only 25% as fertile as I was six years ago? I didn’t wake up on my 35th birthday earlier in the year looking or feeling older. Did another quarter of my eggs suddenly become sub-standard during that night?

2 - Please Don’t Eat with Your Mouth Open: If you’re not going to exeed the speed limit, at least make it in the first place.

Nominated by nuttycow.

I do see the same woman every morning who drives a car which is the same make as mine, with an almost identical registration number. I always want to like wave at her or something and start a morning routine of mutual car acknowledgement but having tested the water with a manic grin in her direction, I don’t think she’s keen to play.

3 - Get Mummy’s Purse: Up Town

Nominated by nuttycow.

I was just having my third mini cinnamon swirl when it dawned on me that I may have to speak to people. Now I don’t generally like having to speak to people I don’t know, especially if they have polyester suits and the afore mentioned little cases on wheels and hail from a part of the country where it’s more usual to make small talk.

4 - Naked Pete: Pistol Pete Will Hang ‘Em High

Nominated by Mike

You could hear a pin drop. You could even hear the schemietwat next to me using his MOBILE PHONE! There he sat, legs apart, going text, text, text. I tried to catch the policeman’s eye, but he blanked me. Seemed I was sitting next to a felon rather than a potential juror.

5 - Reluctant Memsahib: Letting in the Light

Nominated by missym.

The rape seed flowers are brilliant; they cast a neon luminosity upwards - as if somebody had switched on a light somewhere beneath shallow soil. It looks - from where I sit in a small Northamtonshire village - as if somebody has tossed enormous yellow picnic rugs upon the countryside all around.

6 - Status Anxiety: You were beautiful.

Nominated by nuttycow.

I heard your name - your full name, your middle name, our mother’s name. A reminder of the gaping hole. I remember our brother-in-law delivering his reading with less gusto than is normal for him. His voice faltered, his eyes glistened - we sympathised.

The next Post Of The Week will be announced on Sunday evening.
Please note that nominations for next week cannot be accepted until then.

If YOU would like to vote on this week’s shortlist and be part of the decision making for the Post of the Week this week, please pick your favourite posts from the list and award them 5 points for the favourite, 4 for the next etc, and mail your votes to peacharse@yahoo.com no later than 6pm on Sunday night.

Aw, a really teeny shortlist this sunny bankholiday weekend, but worth your snooping nonetheless:

1 - Real E Fun: Humph RIP

2 - The Blue In The Air: Radiohead with Humphrey Lyttelton

3 - The Unbearable Lightness of Banishment: They Say It’s Your Birthday

The next Post Of The Week will be announced on Sunday evening.

Please note that nominations for next week cannot be accepted until then.

If YOU would like to vote on this week’s shortlist and be part of the decision making for the Post of the Week this week, please pick your 5 favourite posts from the list and award them 5 points for the favourite, down to 1 for the 5th favourite and mail your votes to peacharse@yahoo.com no later than 6pm on Sunday night.

1. The Blue Skies Blog - Accentuated Emptiness (with crisps)

But you weren’t prepared. You didn’t know that was the last crisp. If you had known, your enjoyment would have been more pronounced. Perhaps you would have stopped staring out of the window and looked at the last crisp, really savouring the taste, knowing it would be the last one.

But you ate it, just like all the others. It didn’t get the special treatment it deserved.

Nominated by One Fine Weasel

[Read more….]

2. Equine Obesity - The Truth Will Out

Everyone has experiences in their past that have defined them, fixed their opinions or messed with their minds. For some, these experiences are very drastic. For others they are more subtle, almost insignificant in the grand scheme of things (whatever that is). I fall into both categories, but I find the latter harder to shake. Things are trickier to address if they don’t seem to matter, because your eye skips over the small things you can’t see.

nominated by Betty.

[Read more….]

3. The Hesitant Scribe - On Reflection….

I have seen how fragile and precious this thing life is, and it pains me to see people in pain, stressed, struggling about things I now know to be wholly insignificant; how we give ourselves roles and labels: I was all those things I listed above and now I am what? Cancer Patient?! I throw away the labels - they do not define me. I refuse to let them.

Nominated by Zinnia.

[Read more….]

4. A Lard Off My Mind - Cunts: They’ve Got Our Garage Forecourts

“Fuck you.” He turned his back on me.

“Yes, I’m sorry about that. If I’d realised what an appalling cock you were I wouldn’t have bothered.”

Nominated by LizSara

[Read more…]

5. Thomas Dolby (yes, that Thomas Dolby) - More Radiohead….And Shane MacGowan

At my previous school in London I was good friends with Shane MacGowan, of The Pogues. He and I used to sit together in the back row of English Lit. He was extremely smart. On one occasion during a boring reading of some classic novel or other, the teacher spotted me and Shane nattering. He singled me out saying something like ‘what figure of speech is “indubitably”…. Robertson?’ Shane whispered under his breath: ‘It’s an onanism.’ Ha. ‘IT’S AN ONANISM, SIR!’ I blurted out. Deadly pause. ‘Robertson, please come up to the front of the class, take down the Oxford English Dictionary and read out to the class the definition of the word onanism.’ Which I did. Much to the delight of Shane and the rest of the class.

Nominated by Scaryduck

[Read more….]

6. 123 I Love You - Strange Bedfellows

“Were from?” he bellowed.

“CELINE DION!”

Nominated by Alex.

[Read more….]

[The nominated posts for Edvard Moonke and Tired Dad are both great, but they’re Hall of Famers and so aren’t eligible!]

Results on Sunday. Get voting!

The next Post Of The Week will be announced on Sunday evening.
Please note that nominations for next week cannot be accepted until then.

If YOU would like to vote on this week’s shortlist and be part of the decision making for the Post of the Week this week, please pick your favourite post from the list and award it 4 points, down to 1 for your least favourite and mail your votes to peacharse@yahoo.com no later than 6pm on Sunday night

1. A Lard off my mind: Hello?
(Nominated by LizSara )

Since my house began to look noticeably tidier and less cluttered, I’ve become less inclined to snack. I say that, actually, having eaten quite badly yesterday, but it was one day out of a month of relatively sensible eating and I really can’t be bothered to have a go at myself. But whereas it’s fine to sit down in a cluttered, messy room with crappy food and apply it to your face, there’s something about a beautifully organised space that makes you want to eat properly. I don’t want to sit down on a clean cream sofa in a quiet, neat room with an orphanage-sized Pepperoni Plus. It doesn’t feel right.

2. Home Thoughts Weekly: Life with Ma
(Nominated by Zinnia Cyclamen )

So there she was; shining, resilient Ma. Even when Dad died she refused help and went straight home to an empty house. The trouble is that lately I’ve been wondering if it’s suited me to see her that way, proud and independent. What if she’s just being brave?

3. John’s blog: Talking about grief…
(Nominated by One Fine Weasel )

Guys see themselves as invincible and all-knowing - probably why we won’t ask for directions. Boys ridicule those who cry and victimize those that seem weak and that social conditioning carries through to adulthood. Which leaves us invisibly disabled, wary of showing weakness and incapable of sharing pain. “Suck it up!” the coach yells. We did and we do.

4. Parwich.org: When is a neighbour not a neighbour?
(Nominated by Mike)

Will the thickness of the wall affect whether Alan and Barbara are still my neighbours? Good friends now for over ten years, it is a shock and a great disappointment to find out that since March last year they may not have been my neighbours, even though I continue in planning terms to be their neighbour.

The next Post Of The Week will be announced on Sunday evening.
Please note that nominations for next week cannot be accepted until then.

If YOU would like to vote on this week’s shortlist and be part of the decision making for the Post of the Week this week, please pick your 5 favourite posts from the list and award them 5 points for the favourite, down to 1 for the 5th favourite and mail your votes to peacharse@yahoo.com no later than 6pm on Sunday night - thank you.

With apologies for the delay, here’s this week’s shortlist:

(1) 123 I Love You’s: Black Men with Wings - nominated by Alex

“I know because, most nights, instead of sleeping, I am sitting in the corner of my room, quaking with rage, tracking his coughs with a mechanical pencil and a piece of foolscap. You see, I am trying to calculate – from the frequency of these coughs – the speed with which his death is approaching.”

(2) Betty’s Utility Room: Ennui Rule the Dance - nominated by Mike

“There’s been a lot of stuff and nonsense in the papers about, um, how the festival has gone downhill in recent years, what with the exorbitant ticket costs and our determination to stop yobs scaling over the fence and ruining it for the likes of genuine music fans such as Sadie Frost, Sienna Miller, Danny Dyer, Peaches Geldof and other esteemed celebrity guests who for me embody the real spirit of Glastonbury.”

(3) Exultations and Difficulties: And so … - nominated by Mike

“Third is Emma Peel, the Avenger (pictured below) who gave this wandering soul an anchor in a sea (nay, an ocean) of watery flow, as it were. Some people have said to me that any philosophy based upon the mumblings of a fictional Emma_2 character, however delicious, has to be fundamentally flawed, but it’s them what’s flawed, because Emma Peel is no fiction.”

(4) Non-Working Monkey: Day 635: I Write to my Bank - nominated by Alex

“If a French message kicks in, don’t be afraid - we speak French in this part of Canada. Just leave a message. It’ll be nice to hear from you. ”

(5) Planet Me: Never Forget - nominated by SwissToni

“Because I remember the songs that saved my life. And I will hear their voice in my head, and think of them kindly. Forever.

(6) Random Burbling: The Five Ring Circus - nominated by Missy M

“Except of course that they seem to have missed one important point. London is not on a route between Mount Olympus and Beijing. Paris is not on a route between Mount Olympus and Beijing. San Francisco might be, if you go the long way.”