optimism – Page 6 – don't confuse the narrator

reasons to be cheerful

Yesterday, around the world millions of people gave thanks for lots of different things. In a month’s time, it will be Christmas Day, and millions of others will also be counting their blessings.

Today, I haven’t a single poetical thought to share, no particular insights into life, and I have seen no particularly atrocious grammar in the papers to mock. I don’t even have time to go and find something odd or otherwise worthy of a photograph.

However, since today is as good a day as any other to be thankful, I’ve found two old photos from November last year of sights that were both bright and glorious and made me feel thankful, cheerful and just generally good about life, even if only briefly:

red wellingtons on a grey day

The poem I posted on Thor’s Day last week has never been quite what I wanted it to be.

The original notes are for a bullet-point poem with the things children love about rain contrasted with the things that it means to an adult – leaking window frames, wet washing draped everywhere, rising damp and higher prices at the green grocer’s.

It was intended to end up with the (adult) narrator adding a pair of red wellingtons to her shopping list. (As the photo suggests, I’m a great believer in bright boots and umbrellas for grey days.)
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positivity check

When I first moved to Spain, the country was suffering a drought.

shoe boxes left behind after a street market

I think that lasted for the first eight years that I lived in Madrid, and, understandably, I didn’t really appreciate how bad it was, as I had nothing to compare the weather to. Yes, it was sunny; yes it was hot; but wasn’t that what Spanish weather was meant to be like?

(We all have a tendency to fall back on stereotypes. When I tell people I live in Spain they assume I must live on one of those fictional costas where no one ever does any work but spends all day and all the long, hot night sitting at a terraza on the beach drinking iced beer or cheap vino tinto.)
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the bright side

Half empty wine glass with marina backdrop — Half empty?

I was at a writing workshop this weekend and one exercise involved writing about our childhood homes. When the first few pieces were read out they involved anecdotes of family arguments and illness etc.

Some of the people involved grew up during the War, so it’s not surprising that there were some bad memories, but the tutor commented that her experience shows the vast majority of people will write something negative. I suppose this ties in with the fact that first memories are often of some traumatic experience.
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