THIS WEEK'S NEWS  from... OLDIE TOWERS It's been a week of surprises hereabouts. Surprise lunches, surprise deadlines, surprising amounts of endeavour and achievement.     Most surprising of all however was a call on our door-phone this very Thursday. The call was followed by a silence followed by a tap on the door followed by some wheezing followed by the entry into our office of a reader who may or may not have been called Frances but who certainly came bearing a bag. She had come, she said, bearing gifts. She had brought our gifts from Cyprus, via Kew and our staircase. She handed us a bag. "Here you go," she said, delightfully. "There's one for each of you", she added cheerfully. "Village halloumi", she explained. And with that and an enchanting smile, she genuflected at our altar and disappeared into the darkened vortex that is the Oldie Towers staircase.   Very surprising indeed.

Competition No 30, 2012 Win a night at Bath’s most stylish address To celebrate its transformation and launch as a prestigious MGallery hotel, Francis Hotel Bath is inviting one lucky winner and their guest to experience for themselves the hotel’s new found glory.  Enjoy a weekend of relaxation and pampering in the UNESCO World Heritage City of Bath withan overnight stay in one of Francis Hotel Bath’s superior rooms, plus breakfast and afternoon tea for two. To be in with a chance of winning, send an e-mail to comps@theoldie.co.uk heading your e-mail LOVELY NIGHT OF GORGEOUS LUXURY.   To find out more about the hotel, please click on the following link: http://francishotel.com/home.html Terms and Conditions The prize is as stated and with no cash alternative.  Accommodation is subject to availability and at the manager’s discretion.

Competition No 31, 2012 MARINE QUARTERLY Earlier this month, we did a swap with Slightly Foxed. It went down a storm so we thought we would do it again, this time with the very beautifully produced Marine Quarterly.  Would you like to experience the happiness of seafaring without getting wet? If so, you might enjoy the Marine Quarterly. We have just published our sixth issue, and the response has been wildly enthusiastic. So far we have printed articles on (among shoals of other things) Britain’s last coasting fleet, Thames barges, How to Row an Ocean, Dickens and the Sea, One Man and his Tug, zero-carbon fishing, stalking the Scharnhorst and the private life of the Manx shearwater. We have revived seagoing authors like Hilaire Belloc, Ernest Gann and Tristan Jones. We have scooped the BBC, foretold the future, celebrated Britain’s marine painters, and brought blasts of salt air to firesides from South Georgia to the North Cape. All of seagoing life is there. The MQ is 112 pages of excellent reading, printed on thick cream paper, illustrated with charts and line drawings. Alexandra Shulman, editor of Vogue, says: ‘Beautiful … such lovely objects in themselves, and I loved the piece on How to Swim the Channel – not something I’m planning to do any time soon!’ ‘A splendid journal,’ says Quentin Letts in the Daily Mail. Paul Ash, in the South Africa Sunday Times, goes (if possible) further: ‘I like ships. I love the sea. . . . but I had not even begun to plumb the depths of nautical weirdness and pleasure until the first copies of the Marine Quarterly began to arrive. The MQ is a journal like no other.’ We hope you will agree. If you’d like to investigate further, visit www.marinequarterly.com. If you would like to win a free copy of the latest issue of the MQ and a copy of Sam Llewellyn’s Black Fish, a sea thriller in the great tradition, please send an e-mail to comps@theoldie.co.uk heading your e-mail BLACK FISH   Subscription rates £40/year UK, £45 Europe, £55 rest of world.

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