That said, I had completely forgotten this version, which I think must have been written some time last year for a sonnet competition and abandoned when it wouldn’t conform to the formal constraints. Since the sloe trees are in full bloom this weekend, it seems a good time to post it:
Continue reading “writing it slow”
The past week has been less than positive in many ways and, judging from the screenshot below, I’m not the only person to feel that way.
Whether the local election results (stories 1 and 2) have anything to do with the BBC readers’ apparent morbid obsession, I don’t know.
Perhaps they’ve been unable to get through to the new NHS 111 service (story 10) and while waiting for their urgent but non-life-threatening health problems to be attended to they have felt the need to console themselves with reading how things could be worse.
The screenshot is from a couple of days ago (“thanks!” to the reader who sent it to me) and it suited this week’s aura of negativity.
I was beginning to feel things were never going to improve.
Continue reading “of death and celandines”
Despite all succeed-in-social-media advice, I don’t have a regular schedule for blog updates, but this hiatus of nearly a fortnight is not the norm.
While travelling last week, I found I was doing my own impersonation of the Seven Dwarfs: puffy, sniffy, whingey, dozy, grumpy, busy… well that’s only six, but I tagged coffee onto the list, and kept going.
I grew up thinking the seventh Disney dwarf was Dock – a very dwarf-like name; listing my symptoms in an email, though, I had a moment of clarity: I was missing Doc.
So I went to the doctor and discovered I was rather more poorly than just a “stinking cold”. Dosed up with three types of antibiotic, I am now beginning to get back on track.
This means I’ve been out of commission for most of the initial furore surrounding Thatcher’s death, but am still just in time for all the fun of the funeral.
Although there’s little to be added to all the keen online wit and repartee, I do want to raise a few points:
Continue reading “life, death and points arising”
The rain continues unabated so how could I resist clicking a link on the BBC website that said Met Office advice was ‘not helpful’?
On reading the article, though, I find that it refers to ‘not helpful’ to the government. Specifically:
The Met Office has admitted issuing advice to government that was “not helpful” during last year’s remarkable switch in weather patterns.
I am reminded of George Mikes’ comments on the weather in his book How to be an alien; specifically:
Continue reading “wet weather, wings and wishes”
My past has caught me up: this afternoon
I checked my e-mail, as I always do,
and found a message from an old flame who
I hadn’t seen since school. Out of the blue
a bolt that sends me tumbling through the years
to adolescent angst and teenage tears,
to poems scrawled in chalk while classmates jeer
and playground fights that fade when Sir appears.
I was his One True Love, there’d be no other.
At sixteen I was far too young: I fled.
But now he’s tracked me down; who needs the men
from Pinkerton’s when Google is your friend?
(Though Google’s failed me time and time again
in my attempts to trace his younger brother.)
don't confuse the narrator 