I have spoken before about the way my blog posts often fail to reflect the realities of life. It’s just one of those things. Just as the characters in novels only go to the bathroom in order to overhear a conversation or escape through a window I rarely cover aspects of plumbing (either mine or that of the house) and similar things. I am now going to prove my point by burbling along with a pointless anecdote, some dull stats and a story of little importance. For some reason I am motivated to give an accurate picture of my life. Not that it’s 100% accurate, as I realise it misses out two kinds of cake and falling asleep in front of the TV when I should have been getting ready for my trip to hospital. (not because I’m ill, just because I needed some injector pens after the latest problem).
Grape vines in October
A few months ago I wrote a haibun which covered the events of an evening in Preston 45 years ago. The main aspect was a pain in the eye which I suffered whilst walking through a darkened park towards the bright lights of a riverside pub. When I entered the pub with three friends they recoiled in horror at the sight of me. My eye, they told me, was full of blood. I had to go to the toilets to use a mirror and found that the entire white portion of my eye was indeed bright red, and quite off-putting. It was, according to the doctor, a spontaneous subconjunctival haemorrhage. It was common, he said, in people of my age, and was nothing to worry about as it would clear up on its own, though he did say it was a fine example of one as they were usually not that impressive.
I’ve had a few since then, but nothing anywhere like that size.
Anyway, looking for subjects to write about, I put the story together, trimmed, edited, polished and, eventually submitted it. It has been out three times and it has been returned three times. I think, rather than pruning and polishing, I may expand it this time. Modern haibun are, in my opinion, getting too short and I am making an effort to write some longer ones.
Medlars
On two of the outings, I had one of the accompanying poems accepted, so it isn’t wasted effort. This time I sent two. One was accepted. It was the second time that one had been submitted. It’s often the way – a lot of my poems are submitted two or three times before acceptance. A significant number are let to fester after three or four unsuccessful attempts. Some, I break up to use the good lines elsewhere, others I allow to wait a year or so and rewrite them. There are some, probably about 20% where I lose confidence in them and allow them to fade away.
However, that’s not why I’m writing. I’m writing to say that I had another spontaneous subconjunctival haemorrhage. This one was less spontaneous. My eyes felt sore a couple of mornings ago, so I gave them a good rub. Yes, I know you shouldn’t. There was a small stabbing pain and when Julia walked into the room about ten minutes later she immediately started fussing. On checking with my phone camera, I was able to establish that although the coverage is not quite 100% the dark red is much more menacing than the bright red I had last time.
Cape Gooseberries, Inca Berries, Physalis, Ground Cherries, Golden Berries – a plant of many names
My sister, when she saw it, suggested an eye patch and admitted that she was very close to making several jokes about pirates. I don’t blame her, I would have done the same. It’s clearly a matter of heredity. She gave me a lift to the hospital this afternoon where I was able to pick up my new medication in a matter of minutes – impressively efficient.
When she returned to pick me up a mini-bus taxi with tail ramp was taking up a lot of the room in the parking bay and the driver was struggling to wind the ramp up manually as it had malfunctioned. Meanwhile some silliness and double parking caused a traffic jam and she was actually stuck in the queue trying to pick me up longer than it had taken me to walk through the hospital, pick up the pills and walk back. You couldn’t make this up.
And so, what I’m getting round to saying is that the actual banality of my life, which is represented here, rarely makes it to the page. I tend to dwell on my successes and fulminate on the annoying failures, which isn’t truly representative of my life,
A truly representative picture of my life would involve reviewing a succession of lightweight crime novels, historical non-fiction texts and quiz and antique shows. The TV reviews would be punctuated by gaps where I nodded off.
Cat – Day of the Dead style – dome by one of Julia’s past groups. I believe I should add a note on the technique – felt tip pen on reclaimed plywood. It’s not exactly John Constable, but I have always liked it.
Meanwhile, if anyone wants to see a picture of a really red eye, let me know. Julia says I can’t post it without warning people.
Not sure what pictures I will use, but they won’t be as good as the eye. On the other hand, they will be more socially acceptable.
After all that, I forgot to add a title. I hate it when I do that.
