The Scribbler Tie-Breakers

Some of you may be aware that the competition had been infilitrated by a fictional version of Jasper F(f)forde who was using the scribblers you wrote to stitch together various ‘best bits’ he had stolen from classic literature to make his own book The Great Samuel Pepys Fffiasco.  Thanks to the efforts of many of you working out what he was up to online, hunting for blanked classics in bookshops and libraries over the country and finally gathering in Swindon to thwart his launch, the fictional Ffforde was defeated and the book (which turned out to have a mind of its own) tamed.  So tame in fact that a copy of it is now available here for you to download, although as a precaution we have locked it away for safe keeping. There is a key to this 'safe' hidden on this website.

That Ffforde’s purposes in setting the Scribbler were nefarious does not invalidate your entries.  Everyone must have prizes, as was once said.

But judging these was an impossible pleasure. There were very many brilliant contenders but in the end the following entries from Sam de Smith, Katherine Annis and Sarah Kinder squeaked home with the laurels. Or rather a complete signed set of the Thursday Next series.

 

 

Sam de Smith
Glasgow

I proved myself perfectly unworthy of one, so to have a further two was certainly a surprise. The early symptoms – the tenderness, the soreness – I of course put down to, well, being of that age (don’t we all?) But to find myself pregnant again, having finally got the house back (Sarah only too glad to have escaped the parental home for the dreaming spires of Hull), was more than I could take. And twins? Perhaps, perhaps, I could have convinced myself that one was just a mistake (Sarah, of course, wasn’t an accident – she was a surprise), but two seemed like a bit of a hint from on high. No menopause for you yet, m’dear, I’m giving you a shot at maternal redemption – double or quits.

“I’ve got pants!”

“Yes Jilly, that’s lovely.”

Charming and disarming, at the age of three (and four months three weeks five days and a MINUTE!), Jilly was as far removed from her brother as she was from her distant sibling. Toby frowned and continued to chew on Spooky Blue.

Brian sighed, “She will never be easy till she has exposed herself in some public place or other.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Katherine Annis
Glasgow

'You have said quite enough Madam', was my name.  I was the closing line of the book, the witty retort that wrapped up this vicious satire of the Roaring Twenties.  He was the opening line.  I was young and foolish then, vulnerable to the kind of macho wager that leads good syntax astray.  I took his wager, and the contest was on.  From the first chapter, we raced from page to page, leaping and ducking to avoid paper-cuts, stumbling on loose similes and metaphors.  Neck and neck into the final pages, a minefield of sharp dialogue between the maitre d' and the loud American tourist, scything at our legs as we
ran through and chopping the tails off our p's and q's.  We did not even notice, lost in the pattern of our own ragged breathing.  Into the closing passage, and I was ahead!  So close to glory, when suddenly…what the hell?!  A stray tilde right in my tracks!  I stumbled desperately down the paragraph, but it was no good.  He was past me in a flash.  I watched helplessly as he reached THE END, and the bright promise of the story was spoiled and the novel closed, inexplicably, with the line 'Once upon a time there were three sisters'

 

Sarah Kinder
Australia

...His face was flushed and his cheeks burning with excitement. Not like
sun-toasted pear in hue. More toffee-apple left in a hot car, after the
carnival’s gone.

He ran off after the other kids, and didn’t look back, and I had to find a
new Friend. He didn’t need me any more.

Sometimes it’s harder to be an Imaginary friend than you’d think.

I shouldn’t really tell you this, but most Imaginaries aren’t as lucky as
me. Most only get one shot at being a friend to a real-worlder and then fade
again back into nothingness- little bundles of vague recollections drifting
about on the wind. I was lucky enough that when I lost my first Friend I
didn’t diminish. I found a new friend, but it’s a wrench, when your first
Friend forgets you. Still, each Real-worlder friend I made added to me,
altering appearance and strengthening my mind. Making me better.

That’s why I survived. Luck, then practice.

As far as I know, I’m the strongest Imaginary there is. And I need a new
friend.

You.

There is no choice in this, for either of us, you understand, but you aren’t
crazy. Although I'm beginning to think I might be by now. But on that, well,
it would not be proper, for some reasons, to trouble you.