That Was The Week That Blogged #17

Narrowing this down from the seven posts on my shortlist to the three eventual winners involved an awful lot of head scratching and re-reading - I hope it's this hard to do every week. Please keep the emails and Tweets with recommendations coming; I read every single one, even if I don't necessarily pick them all.

TWTWTB is my weekly award to the three best things I've read in blogland in the previous week. Here are this week's winners:

1. 7 impressionists on my life (Part 6) by The Eternal Worrier

"A blue nylon rope lay untidily on a shelf like an offer of a way out. I must have sat staring at it for hours. I know I cried like never before and never since. This was it; the moment was there, on offer to me. This would teach them. They would find me black after a few days, hanging and stinking the place out."

Writing about depression is not easy. Writing well about depression is nigh-on impossible. But I didn't pick this because of its subject matter; that would have been too obvious a choice, especially this week when I've read so many excellent posts. Writing about depression like this, without a hint of mawkishness or self-pity, is truly an astonishing accomplishment, yes. But it's the writing and not the subject matter that I completely respect about this post, that's why it won this week. The Eternal Worrier is just getting better and better, and watching him so completely in control of his ideas and how to express them is an absolute joy, even if that's a funny thing to say about a topic so sad. I hope he, and you, will understand what I mean.

2. Oh!!! by Coffee Helps

"With very little in the way of explanations, she proceeded to grate potatoes and mix them with the flour until she had a gloopy paste that looked not unlike vomit. Then she tucked my t-shirt sleeves up into my bra strap and spread the stuff all over my arms and shoulders."

If you don't want to click on the link and read the post after that quote, I guess we probably don't have an awful lot in common. Coffee Helps is a new blog to me, and this post was a very welcome and extremely funny discovery this week. A great story, superbly told with a beautifully light touch. Highly recommended.

3. Billy by The Domesticated Bohemian

"He had a bizarre collection of hats. None ever seemed appropriate to the season, day, or weather. Cowboy hat, baseball cap, toy policewoman's helmet, santa hat, red cowboy hat with white fur trim."

I have a thing (as you can probably tell by now) for moving, unsentimental, clever writing. Writers who pull that off are probably amongst those I envy most of all. This is a lovely piece by Philip; it's moving because you totally feel the loss of someone you didn't even know existed a handful of paragraphs previously. When you think about that for a second, you realise it's quite an achievement. It's unsentimental because there is no manipulation, no technicolour mechanical tugging of the heartstrings to make you feel that way. And clever? It's clever because it's not really entirely about one man, but about the community he lived in. There's nothing showy about this piece at all; if there was it wouldn't be half as brilliant as it is.

Here's what you can do to support That Was The Week That Blogged. First, pop by and check all the winners out in full. Feel free to tell them I sent you, in fact it's practically compulsory.

Secondly, if you read (or write) a blog post you think would be a worthy winner next week, either comment here, drop me a mail or Tweet at me with the hashtag #TWTWTB. The best ones will be announced on the blog and on Twitter every Sunday.

Last of all of course, if you won this week: congratulations! Feel free to take the rather fetching picture at the top and copy it onto your sidebar. Of course, I won't be offended if you don't.