birthday ?

What a profusion of absolutely spiffing ideas, chaps! I'll certainly be purchasing me copy of 'Z' (Holland's equivalent to the BI, although not, as yet, so good - give 'em time) as usual from outside me local supermarket. See, Mr Bird, you even made it to The Continent...

I suppose that - for financial reasons - some sort of printed celebratory volume, along the lines of "The Best of the First Year" would be out of the question? Yeah, thought so. I'm certainly in favour of some sort of gathering, though the recent response to such events isn't exactly encouraging. Just to be awkward, I can't see how any sort of separate voters' list would work. With prestige at stake, it's just too open to abuse. And no, I'm not saying that anyone on this thread would abuse it, but we all (and this certainly includes the editorial staff) know that such practices as self-hitting and voting manipulation go on. If there's to be some sort of celebratory collection, I'd let the editors choose. It wouldn't be my choice, or any other contributor's, but it would be free from suspicion of fiddling.

Oh Roy, and I thought the age of innocence and trust was dead!

Mississippi, old man, do I detect a slight note of sarcasm? Surely not!

These are great ideas. I'll see if I can find a sponsor for any of them cos it would be brilliant to do something like this Cheers Em

Moi?

Only extracting the urine, Missi. I don't really count anyone in my "age group" as old. I hope I never do.

it is indeed a Very Good Thing.

any excuse for a party, is in fact A Marvellous Thing.

How about the Asylum Club for a celebration? It's about time we had another night down there.

would that be a fitting place for me then Karl? :o)

could also pass the hat round for abc / its social development fund or something, anyone think?

One idea I had was putting together a Reader's Choice alphabet set. I originally thought of having readers vote for their five fave stories, but compiling a prose and poem A-Z of the stuff here is better - fits with the site and gives exposure to those odd little letters of the alphabet. I suppose some short of shortlist for each letter in order for people to vote on would be in order, controversial as that would be. I'd prefer it to be stories and poems that touched people, rather than just the obvious most-hits. (Except where these two things coincide). Is this doable ? We've got a few months. And damn, I'm still giving these ideas for nothing...

ooooh yes let's have a marvellous shindig ... also i was thinking ABC might like to visit some literature festivals and flaunt its wares ... i see that Mslexia magazine are doing that with some success ... all proceeds to blah blah etc.

We will be visiting the Cheltenham Festival of Literature (and sponsoring one of the events) so if anyone's going to be down there, let us know and maybe we could meet up. We wanted to do Edinburgh but the launch of youngABCtales is taking up too much time for us to escape the office. On a cheeky note, if any of you are going to literary festivals and are up for helping us promote the site (ie, handing out postcards or just telling people about the site), that would be great. Re: birthday/events, we've been talking about running another event and Lisa (our Communications Director) will no doubt let you know when it's happening. I only started in January, so couldn't pin our exact birthday down. However, we say in our media pack that it launched in December 2000 so our birthday will probably be sometime then. Not sure if we're planning anything but we'll have a chat in the office and keep you updated. Cheers Emily

am up for flaunting ... handing out postcards etc. ... but can't help thinking the ABC stable ought to be doing readings and whatnot too ...

Yes sorry folks, I've been up to my proverbials in youngABCtales of late, but there will be another Asylum gig soon (watch this space) and we will indeed be 1 on the 12 December this year and an event to mark it is a damn fine idea....unaccustomed as I am to having a good time. Will have a think and talk it through with the big honchos here..ie Tony! In the meantime it's The Big Issue's 10th birthday on September 10th. Pick up a copy in suport of this amazing social business that has saved the Government £40 million in benefit payments, provided £24 million direct to street vendors and sold 48 million copies!!! Bye for now Lisa