Returning

So long since i added anything to my blog. Of course the longer I wait, the more guilty I feel and and the less I am inclined to actually do something about it,

Here’s one attempt at a solution: start small. And I really do mean small. Not 1,000 words a day, not even 500 – but from now on, at least 100?  Just a thought what about the days when I don’t even open my blog? Perhaps I should build up a sort of writing “debt” and if I don’t manage 100 words today, try for 200 tomorrow? Or is  that just too complicated?

Something I’ve noticed since I started to have problems with arthritis is that I need to take life in small pieces. The 30-minute rule. (compare the British parliament’s  10-minute rule) My strategy is a bit different: I do various jobs and activities in half-hour sessions. I can spend half an hour in the garden, pulling out weeds or harvesting peas and not feel too shattered at the end. If I try to have a  whole day, or even a whole afternoon working in the garden, I just can’t manage it. So I do my 30 minutes and then spend 30 minutes cleaning the floors or tidying my desk or even writing my blog.

This approach works – for me, at any rate. Even if I don’t get everything finished I do get some of it done, I can look at the small bag of peas or beans that I’ve harvested or the 20 yards of path that I’ve swept and see that I’ve achieved something , however small.

I may never write a million-word epic, but I have written several limericks!

Anyway, how often have you been put off reading something because it was pages and pages of densely-packed prose? I’ve often turned from a long article or story to choose instead a short “filler” a snappy paragraph or a  four-line verse.so who knows writing shorter pithier blogs might actually get me more readers,

ESME

Words I can’t stand

What are your least favourite words and expressions?

 

Here are a few of mine. They annoy because the misuse the language and don’t mean what they say. Yes, I do know  that English, in fact all language, is in a constant state of evolution and what something means today may be quite different from what it meant a century ago and in a hundred years’ time it will probably have an entirely different meaning. Even so, there are some words and phrases that set my teeth on edge.

STAKEHOLDER

This word should mean someone who is unbiassed in a dispute, a neutral observer who takes care of the cash – the stake – and makes sure it goes to the right individual at the end of a conflict. Nowadays it is used to mean one of the participants in a dispute, someone who is involved and does have an interest in the outcome.

 LIFELONG

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen someone described as a “lifelong” member of a political party or a “lifelong” advocate of free speech or freedom of religion. This conjures up a picture of an infant in its pram waving a rosette and shouting party slogans. It’s just not possible – you can’t be a lifelong adherent of some system that requires you to make a reasoned choice before you have the ability to choose. The only truly “lifelong” conditions are inherited defects – ie someone can be a lifelong paraplegic if they have been born with that condition rather than developed it as a result of an accident or illness,

 SITUATED/LOCATED

Why do so many people use this as an over-elaborate way of saying “is”? Wordsworth’s cottage isn’t  “situated” or “located” in the Lake Districr it simply is there.

 

ESME

Pam Ayres – Tribute Verse

Written in response to people who won’t admit that someone like Pam Ayres can merit that title “Poet”.

 

Is Pam a proper poet?
From what I’ve heard and read,
She isn’t intellectual
Or drunk or mad or dead.

How can she be a poet?
Her verse has sense and rhyme.
And I understand the meaning,
After reading just one time.

She even earns good money
From the poems she’s made so far.
She’s not starving in a garret
A poet? She’s a Star!

ESME

 

Scriptus Interruptus

Something I wrote many years ago about the difficulty of combining writing with looking after a small child. The child is now grown up – the novel is still unwritten!  

She writes the first three lines of her novel,
her magnum opus, Booker prize material at the very least
Its Nobel phrases ring across the world.
Then the baby cries.
She feeds the brat, burps him, changes a nappy.
Making, meanwhile, a few mental notes about Shit:
its colour, consistency, smell, feel, and how babies manage to produce so much
when all they consume is milk.
Then back to her novel,
her magnum opus. Ten pages done, four hundred and ninety to go.
She meets her protagonist, hears him speak
knows he likes cheese, can’t stand muesli
and keeps his socks on in bed.
The doorbell rings.
She fumbles for her purse to pay the milk,
chat about the weather, the state of the country,
and no, we’re not going on holiday this year.
Images of idyllic seaside retreats, deck-chairs,
imagined sand and wide empty stretches of time.
Back at last to the book. Sets herself a goal
– a thousand words before elevenses.
Fingers rattle on keys, pages pile beside her feet,
dialogue snakes down the page
The phone trills
She grunts “Hello”
a smiling girlish voice,
extolling double-glazing and the bargain price
on offer this week only, is told
to go to Hell and sell her bargains there.
Back to the desk. Another page or four
a word-count – that all? not more?
disappointment seeps in, at nine hundred words
she stops for coffee
at nine hundred and two words
she stops………………………………………………….. for good.

ESME

Surveys

I admit I’m a sucker for surveys. Questionnaires in magazines that purport to show you whether you are introvert of extrovert, an optimist or a pessimist, how strong your relationship is with your spouse, whether you are a good parent etc…etc. I enjoy ticking the little boxes and choosing between answers a) , b), c), d)…and so on. Of course it is all a bit of fun, isn’t if? I don’t really think filling in few questions on a piece of paper or a computer screen can tell me anything significant about myself or my life.

(Just thought “on a computer screen” google has a nasty habit of targeting adverts on my bookmarked websites to reflect what I was reading in the last day or so. Why else would I get ads for ironing boards when I log in to the weather forecast?) Somewhere, someone is keeping track of what I am reading on the web.

Then there are so-called consultations. With these a body such as a local authority “consults” the users of their service, For some reason I’ve never been able to fathom these are referred to as “stakeholders”. Which we aren’t. “Stakeholder” ought to  mean a person not involved in some dispute who holds the prize – cash or whatever – until it is agreed who should get it.  Back to consultations. Often I’ve found these are simply an excuse for the organisation – local or central government to tell us what they intend to do. Oh yes, we have a chance to object and say why the massive development proposed should not be built in an area of outstanding natural beauty. The powers that be may even read our comments and thank us for taking the time to make them – but there’s no chance they will alter   their pre-determined plans because of what we say.

ESME

The North-South Divide

North South

Is there such a thing? You bet there is! Some of the differences are slight but they are there. Speech patterns for instance. Someone brought up in Lancashire and studying in Yorkshire would,  you’d think, keep the same basic accent even after emigrating to the South of England. Not so. My son now talks like a southerner. He uses the long ‘a’ sound in words like “bath” and “glass” and his children knowing no other usage will follow suit and no doubt think of their gran as “talking funny.”

At one time we lived in Wales and at different times two of our children worked in Scotland. I didn’t develop a Welsh intonation, though it did take me some time to appreciate the local accent. When we first went to South Wales we asked directions from a local man.  He said something in reply , though it sounded more like singing at us. We smiled and thanked him. Then my husband and I looked at each other “What did he say?” We hadn’t a clue.

I noticed too that people seem to talk faster in the south. I don’t know whether it is stress, the pressure of work or just an age thing, but my grandchildren seem to talk about one and a half times as fast as I do. Can we blame it on modern technology? All the i-phones, i-pads, i-pods, lap-tops and tablets seem to devalue the spoken word. I mean why speak to your friend  if you can send him an email or a text, even if he is sitting at the next desk?

ESME