don't confuse the narrator

pussyfooting II

It’s been suggested – via email and phone calls rather than comments posted here – that the cat in the photo used for last week’s post could not possibly be mine.

It is true that although I have been on close terms with many cats – black cats and greys, tuxedo cats, tabbies and tortoiseshells – there has never been a white one.

Had I found it sooner, this is the photo I would have used to illustrate pussyfooting:

pussyfooting

Over the years, I’ve given a lot of feedback on a lot of manuscripts, both poetry and prose. I’ve also been grateful to receive commentary on my own writing.

It’s never very nice to be told that your work has failed, that your scansion is all to pot and that your grammar and spelling need major revisions. But how are we to improve if no one points out the weaknesses in our work that we are too blind to see for ourselves?
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persuasion

This morning, the sun is shining and the sun is clear. It’s a little windy, but most people would think it was a perfect day to wrap up warm and go for a walk. Here I am, though, sitting at my computer updating my blog with a picture taken earlier in the week.

It was a couple of days ago and it was the first real snow I’ve seen this season. Those wonderful, slow, downy flakes that fall when Mother Carey shakes up her feather mattress.
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I could care less

This week I had to fill in a form to register for a new doctor. Last time I registered was when I returned to the UK after 25 years living abroad; that was a fairly painless process, the only confusion being when they asked for my National Health number and I gave one in a format that they stopped using last century.

This time, although I had the right format number, I had to fill in a ten page questionnaire with all sorts of slightly bizarre questions. The one that caught my attention most was:

If someone cares for you, what is their name and telephone number?

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like it or not

I started writing this blog back in 2007 and there are currently 875 published posts. At the beginning I didn’t tell anyone I was blogging and the readership grew very slowly. Even now, although there are usually a few people who press the ‘like’ button each time I update, the posts don’t inspire many comments.
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