"I'm a 28 year old graphic designer currently working at internationally renowned Spanish fashion house ZARA. I've been living in Spain now for 5 years and keeping up with fashion can be difficult, but keeping ahead of it is another story!

Although gratifying, it's a very intense way to make a living and I try to keep myself sane by coming up with some crazy projects of my own. I illustrate my own unique brand of wordplay and cartoons and have a series of books which I'd like some day to have published.

My work takes me all over the world and I'm never without my camera. Photography has been a very important aspect of my life. My father is local photographer Anthony Pugh of Rhyd-y-felin. I have dedicated a good part of my life to teaching him everything he knows!!

Writing, however, was something that I'd not done since I was a child in school and once I'd read an article by the Cambrian News on Ceredigion Museum's World Book Day competition, I knew that there was another project in the air.

I'd come back from work at night ( yes it's a long day here in Spain, I sometimes finish work at 10.00pm ), I'd shower and sit myself at my laptop to explore the possibilities that Hepsibah chapel house could offer. I'd get into every nook and every cranny and really get to know that place as if I were living there myself, I knew it well and could feel it's history as if it were my own.

I wrote from the little wooden table in the corner of the Chapel House. My chair, ricketty and old, would be the only company that I kept until the sweep came to be. He sat with me for much of time it took to write 'Cinders'. He'd tell his tales in front of the fire, we'd make out figures which would flicker their shadows in the flames.

I was of course, thousands of miles away at the time - the wooden table was my kitchen table, the parchment - my laptop, the sweep - my imagination.

I sent the story off by mail to my dad who kindly took it to the museum himself. He phoned me later and told me I'd no chance!

The winning entry was read out on the radio, and posted on the BBC web page, I had to send my parents to claim the prize!! A great day out they told me, I'd like to thank by Jeremy Turner of ' Arad goch ', for reading 'Cinders', and I'd also like to give my thanks to Sue Jones Davies for an autographed photo which I will always cherish as a token of the day."

Written by Simon Pugh.

Read Simon's Cinders story...