Marilla and I spent yesterday putting in some short stories for a competition. Yes, competitions are a fundraising lottery for the journals, but it's good for us to smarten up a few pieces.

The three I submitted:.

- Sandbox. A small boy is being beaten up because he has started pointing out holes in his father's paranoid delusions, The school sees he's disturbed and puts him on Sandbox Therapy, His mother acts more forcefully - she grabs the kids and runs.

- Dreaming the Sublime. A spectacular, lost first kiss is repeated in a dream 50 years later, within a context of Hindu cosmology.

- The Editor. An incompetent internal editor, a general menace, can only be removed when he hits on the girlfriend of the Institute Director.

Marilla's piece was "Fusion and Nightingales" her experiences in an aged care home, watching her mother and three other residents sink into senescence.