cats mean credits

two black cats
I’m travelling at the moment, and only intermittently connected to the web, so it’s tricky to find time and opportunity to update the blog, especially as there are all too many other priorities when there actually is a connection.

One of the things I’ve been trying to research during my intemittent interconnectedness in the last few days is postgrad writing courses.

The idea of going back to (semi) formal study is a subject that has cropped up again after a long period when I was sure it was the last thing I wanted to do. I’m not going to go into the ins and outs here, but I will quote from a course handbook I was reading yesterday:

Assessment
A portfolio of 10,000 words (45 CATS), or 8,000 words (36 CATS) 6,000 words (30 CATS) or 5000 words (20 CATS).

I might manage to write 45 poems with cats in them – indeed, perhaps I already have – but I thought poetry was a condensed form. In which case, surely more words isn’t necessarily a Good Thing?

(Additionally, I am reminded of those “binders full of women”, not to mention that even 20 cats are almost certain to be very smelly.)

states of uncertainty

cat in a box
cat-in-the-box

The box is open and the beast in the photo is certainly alive, but other questions remain unanswered:

  • Why do cats like boxes so much?
  • Which of my three near-identical cats is it?
  • Why didn’t I think to call them Schrödinger, Heisenberg and Planck?
  • Why do we bother to name cats that can’t be told apart and won’t respond anyway?

    • poetry on the bus

    small town bus station, Spain

    The village bus station looks quiet in the photo. Not so the journey into Madrid this morning.

    En el autobús,
    las viejas cotillean;
    sólo los hombres casados
    pueden dormir.

    Roughly translated:

    On the bus
    old biddies gossip;
    only married men
    can sleep.

    I swear you could tell which guys were used to nagging wives: they simply closed their eyes and nodded off as if the screeching voices were a lullaby.
    Continue reading “poetry on the bus”

    perspective

    So much depends

    cement mixer & white chicken
    on whether it was
    a red wheelbarrow
    or an orange cementmixer

    on whether it was
    glazed with rain water
    or shaded
    from the setting sun

    on whether there were
    several white chickens
    or just the one, escaped
    from the neighbour’s yard

    on whether it was
    early twentieth century
    industrial America
    or rural Spain in 2012

    on whether it was
    William Carlos Williams
    who saw the scene
    or me.

    For the chicken in question,
    much more depends
    on whether my cats find her
    before the neighbour does.

    food for thought

    BBC GoodFood HeaderIt’s autumn, and cool enough, at last, to think about putting the oven on and preparing something other than salad for lunch.

    Looking for inspiration, I ended up on the BBC GoodFood site. Immediately, an alert box appeared on the screen:
     

    Alert box: how we use cookies on bbcgoodfood.com

    Sadly, although it’s a recipe website and claims to use cookies to provide “the best user experience”, we clearly don’t have the same idea of how cookies could improve my internet browsing: they don’t send out samples to frequent visitors.

    I admit to being disappointed.