00:00Good morning, David. Good morning. How are you coping?
00:05I'm good. I'm keeping myself busy writing.
00:08Has your son inherited your talent for writing?
00:11He's coming up with ideas for stories all the time. I mean, they come thick and fast.
00:16So he's really into that, really into stories. He tends to choose other writers rather than me.
00:24So we're going to talk about the Commonwealth Essay Writing Competition.
00:30Brilliant theme this year, which is the environment.
00:33You can tell it by poetry. You can write an essay. You can write a story.
00:37Really be as imaginative as you can.
00:40There's millions of children that could potentially enter this competition.
00:43They have got a chance, haven't they, until June to submit their stories online at the Royal Commonwealth Society website.
00:53I actually launched it in New Zealand this year.
00:56Well, it wasn't. It was, God, I've lost track of time.
01:00It was last year, the year before I launched it in Ghana.
01:04And it's very interesting, the response I had.
01:08The entries after I was able to say something about it, they doubled.
01:13So that was very exciting.
01:15I hope this year they might have trebled and quadrupled.
01:18But it's never a better time, I think, to be writing or reading than this time.
01:24And I find, personally, that when I do creative work, it passes the time beautifully.
01:29We just want lots and lots and lots of these aspiring young writers to enter.
01:34Because, you know, as you said before, some of their stories really are verging on brilliant, aren't they?
01:40They're brilliant.
01:41And I know that this theme is really going to get them going.
01:44So I can't wait to read the entries.
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