Plenty of entries for Berwick Rotary Club's short story competition

Winners and their families and friends crowded into the Guildhall on the Saturday morning of the Berwick Literary Festival to hear the winners read their stories and see them receive their prizes and certificates.

Taking part were Holy Trinity, Prior Park and Tweedmouth West first schools, Berwick and Tweedmouth Middle schools, and Berwick Academy, and speaking for the club, event organiser Stevie Crozier warmly thanked all the teachers and parents for encouraging the young writers to take part.

He added: “Judging the entries was very difficult given the very high standard in all age groups and the huge number of stories, and everyone who wrote a story should be congratulated.”

All stories centred on Berwick Bridge in this 400th anniversary year – writers aged nine and under sent in stories entitled ‘Who’s that crossing my bridge?’; the middle schools wrote about ‘Life before the old bridge’ and the Academy’s topic was ‘How the old bridge changed our town’.

All the winning stories combined suspense, humour and history, and the judges commented on the clever use of vocabulary.

The winners from first schools were Anna Cooper (Holy Trinity), Noah Scott (Prior Park) and Heidi Rodger (Tweedmouth West); from middle schools, Danielle Pottage, Janet Sam (both Tweedmouth Middle) and William De Vere (Berwick Middle); and the senior group Zack Richards, Morgane Guerin and Lauren Jeffrey (all from Berwick Academy).

Some of the winners had entered and won before and in presenting the prizes, Club President Hazel Bettison urged everyone “to keep on writing”.