The Village Mag Awards
WHAT A NIGHT! Over Community Centre may not match the venue of the Brit Awards but it had its own colour and magic. It was a room with more than 120 budding editors, tables covered with copies of 57 magazines, and side tables bursting with fine food and drinks.
We looked, we drank, we talked, we ate - until the great moment when the winners were announced. The tension was high. There were two divisions - those with an over-1000 circulation and those with a circulation under 1000. We were only concerned with the latter for which there were 32 entries. How would the Crier fare with so much competition? Caroline was especially excited and wondered whether she would be needing the boa in her handbag for the photograph. And I had a tie in my pocket so that I could change from the nonchalant open necked Cameron style into a smiling Blair type The judges were an outstanding disappointment. The Crier did not receive a mention and while we clapped the winners a number of us were muttering sedition.
The winner was the Parish Pump of Alconbury, Alconbury-cum-Weston and Buckworth. The runner up was the Village News of Arkesden. These two magazines were quite outstanding in exactly the same way. Both were sumptuously produced, with a mass of colour, printed on high quality gloss paper. And both appeared just FOUR TIMES PER YEAR. And what about the content you ask. Well, it was alright as far as it could be for quarterly papers. Inevitably upto-date information was a bit short and the apparent reaction from readers was minimal. However for Production Quality both magazines won hands down with the Pump beating the Village News possibly because it was twice the size.
After the awards the judges circulated and having collected a body of likeminded revolting editors we converged on one judge just like footballers jumping on to some hapless referee. We successfully made all our points without getting a red card or even being threatened with a yellow one.
Was this poor behaviour? Was this just the response of a bad loser? Was this very unEnglish? Not at all. Why be a pudding and just mutter and complain afterwards. Apart from that it had been a jolly good party, prize selection is always open to controversy, the people awarding prizes always like feedback, and we had interesting conversations with the two winning editors - and gave them our fulsome congratulations.
PS. A selection of the 57 magazines : Prickwillow Messenger, Abingdon and Hildersham News, Orwell Bulletin, Stansted Mountfitchet Link, Huntingdon About Town, Meldreth Matters, Comberton Contact, Sawston Scene, Little Paxton Village News, Fulbourn Mill, Holywell and Needingworth Villager, Brampton Parish News, Everdens Tail Corn and so on.