It's the weird trajectory that bothers me. I'd have been happy with just steady accretion of readers, a slowly spreading ripple. Not the crazy rollercoaster based on clearly faulty data mechanics.

And the massive influence of the boost - coupled with the arbitrary and unskilled way it is often handled by the curators, in my opinion - just makes it worse. Knowing that each time you write something, you hand it over to a teacher who decides on a whim if they put it on the school noticeboard, or just set fire to it with their cigar lighter.

Even if you get made a prefect and supposedly are a privileged member of the set-up.

That main street piece (FFS - I even prostituted myself by putting Main Street instead of High Street just so the dumb Yanks would understand!) was better than a couple of pieces I recently had boosted - no idea by whom - on Peregrine Journal, that I just dashed off. Similar topic of 'different ways they do stuff abroad - interesting to compare', but with more relevance to a wider readership, given the explicit suggestion of taking this idea and employing it elsewhere.

None of them great works of literature, all three much of a muchness. And all the exact same style and (I like to think) quality of writing.

Either none are boosted, or all three. Or else the system is arbitrary. That piece was whatever comes after your last throw of the dice. I've just submitted another - which is now my last chance this month, as my second self-nom - about fish and chips.

If they reject that, which I know is significantly better than some of the crap I've had boosted, it's game over. There will, apparently, be 'changes' to the whole boost programme in October. I'll just kick my heels until then and see what happens.