Last week I talked about choosing love poems to read at a local event. In the end, I think I found nine short pieces that I ran together to produce a story of a kind, which seemed to go down reasonably well.
One of them has a dog in it, albeit unseen and at a distance, so makes a good piece to include in this first blog post of the new Year of the Dog.
Continue reading “dog days”
This weekend sees the last full moon of the year and, once more, the papers are full of articles about supermoons.
I was wondering why no-one ever bothered about such things when I was a child, and then I happened upon this page on the time and date website, which says the term wasn’t coined until 1979, when astronomer Richard Nolle first used it.
Continue reading “what’s in a name?”
I miss living en el pueblo, where the skies were clear for so much of the year and I was always aware of the phase of the moon.
There, unless it was full moon, I had to remember to carry a torch to walk back from the village if I was coming home after dark. The Milky Way stretched high across the dark dome of the sky and we saw plenty of shooting stars even when there was no talk in the news of meteor showers.
Continue reading “unawares”
The problem with taking photos at a classic car gathering is not just the hordes of people who jostle your elbow or wander absent-mindedly into the frame.
Even when you get there before anyone else, there are far too many polished surfaces: you end up as the main feature of at least half the pictures you take, which might not be quite so bad if the surfaces didn’t act as distorting mirrors.
Another problem is that too many of the cars there are altogether too familiar and you start to reminisce…
Continue reading “squaring the circle”
I’ve been stuck indoors most of the week with a stinking cold, so haven’t had the chance to go looking for inspiration for things to write, and I haven’t taken any any serendipitous photos.
I don’t think I’ve ever written a poem about the common cold, and my head is too fuzzy to write one now, which means I’ve been racking my brains all day about what to post.
Then I remembered this photo of Hamlet. Although we all know he is actually about to break into speech – “Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio…” – he looks as uninspired as I have been feeling.
At one point, I thought that would have to do for today, but, on the off-chance I’d find some ideas, I went on clicking link after link.
Continue reading “three for the price of one”
don't confuse the narrator 