Competition Olympics, Leg 2

Do you remember the days when tayto crisp wrappers and teabag boxes had competitions on them? You'd answer some cryptic question about cheese and onion flavours and then you'd have to come up with a really good way to finish the sentence "I love Tayto Crisps because..." or "Lyons Blend is the only one for me because..." in less than ten words. Many of us tried, and just couldn't summon up the creative genius for the project. It was our Waterloo.

Some people were really good at it. They won cars and holidays in Majorca. Their children became copywriters.

Of course, at that time, there were no copywriters in Ireland. There were competitions for slogans on the back of Cornflake boxes. The whole country was full of amateur enthusiastic copywriters hoping to get a free car or holiday in a time when Ireland was not the fourth wealthiest country on the planet.

Others, and this flavour is definitely in the general air in Ireland, wrote any old shit in blue biro and saved their tokens, sending them in with the cheery expectation that "if you're not in, you can't win". I love this aspect of Irish consciousness. It really gives the country its character. It's the same kind of spirit that will see my parents donning their wings to go and swim in the hotel pool in Majorca later this month.

My mum is in her fifties and my dad is in his sixties and there they'll be, swimming around happy as larry in their wings. They're becoming stronger swimmers with each sun holiday they take, I think. And they didn't win their holiday from a teabag box. They paid good money to get out of the rainy Irish summer for a week or so. May it shine on the island of Majorca that week.

Clearly my opening competition was too much for you, because there has been only one guess posted in the tumbleweed zone that is my comments section. Well it's just a good job I'm not crippled by a need to be popular, is all I can say.

So here's another competition. It will be combined with the first and maybe further ones, and we're gonna have winners dammit! I repeat: there's going to be three plinths, one high one in the middle with the number ONE on it, and two lower down ones saying 2 and 3, like the trains that take me out of here. There will be flower garlands, medals and I may well don a bathing suit to present the thing, should such a need arise.

Drumroll drumroll drumroll drumroll

Complete the following sentence in ten words or less:

"Lucy Takes Off is the only blog for me at the end of a hard day, because..."

Bated breath. Arched toes.