Damn, a freebie holiday on a Greek Island sounded good! I could just see myself there being all cosmopolitan in a Greek taverna, whilst also getting on down with the locals. If these things were contradictory during the course of a week in real life, they could easily be brushed aside in my dreams. Not speaking a word of Greek didn’t feature as an obstacle either.

There was one small hitch. I was going to have to write a winning story to get that seven nights free stay at the Limnisa Writers Retreat near the town of Methana on the Greek Peloponnese Peninsula (okay, so it’s not quite an island, but talking about a holiday on a Greek Island just sounds better). Whilst I’m not too bad at spinning a yarn, it’s mostly about events and happenings. I find it very difficult to pull a fictional story out of my head.

The theme of the competition story is ‘A Room of One’s Own’, after the book of the same name by Virginia Woolf. The story would have to be original, of course, and not merely a 1,500 word precis of the book. To do that, one would actually had to have read it, though, so I’m quite safe there. However, being original is where I draw a blank, which in all likelihood draws blank looks right back at me from those whose imaginations are already going into overdrive.

Not to be deterred from at least dreaming about it, even though travelling there from New Zealand was going to be neither cheap nor easy, getting over the first hurdle – i.e. my new(ish) cat, Phoenix – was a breeze. She would go and spend the time at my sister’s place, and have a room of her own – i.e a pet playpen.

Phoenix is not very sociable cat around other cats, to put her attitude politely. My sister does cat rescue and rehoming, and also has a bunch of her own cats, which is why I was initially asked to foster Phoenix prior to her being re-homed on behalf of an acquaintance of my sister’s. And we know how that went. She’s not very active, either, so spending time in a playpen in the lounge wouldn’t faze her much at all. There would be some outside-the-playpen time here and there, but as an older cat, mostly she would sleep. Give her a duvet, and she’s under it until her tummy rumbles.

Well, Phoenix having a room of her own gave me an idea for a story about a room of one’s own. I thought it was quite brilliant to write a story about a cat having a room of her own. But that’s where it stopped. Nothing else came to me. Although I could see the ghosts of ideas flitting around in my head, none of them would stay still long enough to manifest into something I could grab and turn into a story. Probably just as well.

For anyone else, though, who has no trouble drumming up a story out of thin air multiple times before breakfast, and wouldn’t mind trying for a stay of seven nights at Limnisa Writers Retreat, here’s the link for the competition. Oh, and also if you don’t think that having vegetarian/vegan meals for a week would take away your will to live. Naturally, for me, that’s right up there as a reason for going.

Maybe one day I’ll get there without bothering to try for a freebie stay. I think it would be fabulous, but I couldn’t promise to be terribly earnest about using the time wisely for my writing. The promo pictures of the guests on the website show them all to be very diligent, whilst also relaxing in the sun – which is the whole selling point, of course. But I’m finding that the older I get the more ‘rogue’ I get – if such a thing is even possible for me in any meaningful way😊 However, it’s still rather intriguing to observe this emerging ‘rogue’, whether or not I ever get to Limnisa to see what kind of stuff, or puff, it’s really made of.