Monthly Archives: November 2020

PW Crigglestone

The Email I Cannot Send

25 Replies

I had an email a couple of days ago. It looks like we have finally settled the boundary dispute at the bottom of the garden.

In my final email, which was sent the day before, I had apologised for being terse but explained that I was working on the basis of “least said, soonest mended”. The neighbour didn’t work on that basis and I received a long email detailing,amongst other things, my failings as a human being, the fact that “everybody” is on their side and the fact that now it is all over they will be able to sleep at night knowing they have done the right thing (the implication being that I haven’t).

It’s very tempting to write back, set out the legal case, defend my character and point out the reason it ended as it did. In the end. it isn’t worth the effort. So, I’m going to resist the temptation. It is done and I would like to leave it that way.

Much as I would like it, I don’t need the last word. And, annoying as it is, I will let them walk away with victory in the war of words.

This also, frustratingly, stops me indulging my passion for sarcasm and deprives me of a great deal of material for detailing my life of tedium. However, there is a virtue in knowing when to stop.

And, at this point, I will stop.

The header picture, depicting Number Two Son after a hard day leading with his face. It represents the thought “bloody but unbowed“.

Yes, I’m a weak and feeble man, and that is my veiled reply to the traductions of my character.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Publication and Practical Poetry Problems

43 Replies

I’ve just had a haibun published in Wales Haiku Journal. You can find it here. I have a previous one published here.

I noticed, when re-reading The Duckpond (published about two years earlier) , that I seem to write about ponds a lot. Am I in danger of becoming type-cast, possibly even being known to posterity as The Pond Poet?

It’s another possible problem to add to running out of ideas, losing my ability to write and being found out. Because the problems of writing something good enough for publication aren’t enough, I need more fears to fill the time as I lie awake at night.

With coronavirus I can now fill that time with thoughts of death, losing my job and the collapse of society, but once we have a vaccine I can start worrying about how I will be seen by future generations.

However, this isn’t a post about worry, it’s about haibun. I’m currently in the middle of reorganising my computer files, as they had degenerated into chaos and I have been having difficulty finding things. This led to me submitting four poems to a magazine, then wishing I hadn’t.

One was an accidental double submission (which I think I mentioned before) but fortunately the other editor rejected it. Two of the others were not final versions. When I looked at them again, I realised that one was an incomplete version of a revision and one was a fully revised version but, unfortunately, one that had been further revised and improved.

I’m now waiting to get them back. It’s easier, I think just to get them back and suffer the ignominy of looking unprofessional, rather than try to explain and resubmit.

Hopefully the new system will stop this happening.

Then all I need is a way of filing haiku. Tiny little poems with no titles. I have hundreds of them, and they are refusing to cooperate. It’s like grains of sand pouring out of a hole in a bucket. They are all over the place and I have completely lost track.

They don’t tell you about this in haiku books. They tell you about lightness and simplicity and all that stuff but are completely silent on the subject of indexing, storage and finding them again once you have written them.

The New Furlough

19 Replies

Starting on Thursday I will be starting my new furlough – four weeks of working one day a week. We will take turns to go to the shop and lock the doors so the public cannot get in. That way we can keep the eBay site ticking over and obey the law at the same time.

Julia will still be working, despite the inability of the organisation to provide a safe environment. It turned out today, for I think the third time, that one of the clients turned up when they were supposed to be in quarantine. No point in worrying now – they had been there most of the day before they let it slip. What’s done is done.

I went shopping to buy a few things in Aldi so we don’t need to do an online shop this week (we are backed up with so many vegetables and tins of beans that we need a rest). I managed to buy everything we needed for £18, instead of the minimum spend of £40 online, and resisted the urge to buy a few extras for the store cupboard.

Shopping is just like it used to be before Covid, apart from most of the shoppers wearing masks. They are back to shopping in groups, blocking gangways and letting kids run wild, Quite a few, sadly, aren’t wearing masks and two of the three cashiers had their masks pulled down under their chin. However, that’s so common when I go shopping I may just as well cut and paste it.

Tomorrow I will make a list of things to do in lockdown, as I don’t want to waste any of this bonus time. Decluttering, as Julia has said, with a slight edge to her voice, beats writing to top place on the list. In her dreams…

 

November 1st 2010

11 Replies

I started the day by throwing back the bedclothes, shouting “It’s grand to be alive!” and running about in a frenzy of activity. Now, with my teeth cleaned, my hair brushed and my cheeriness at dangerously high levels I am sitting at the computer and preparing to blog.

Well, a blog can be many things, and if I want to start the day with a touch of fiction what is to stop me?

The truth, as regular readers may have guessed, is slightly different.

I actually started the day by peeling back the bedclothes and muttering “2.32 and my first trip to the bathroom.” This was followed by a couple more trips, a ten minute stint writing notes for a haibun idea and finally, by noticing that my clock said 7.47.

It seemed like an auspicious time to start the day, and as my night had already been fractured. I decided to get up. There wasn’t, to be fair, a lot of frenzy involved. Now, sitting at the computer with my teeth gleaming and my hair looking like I’ve just had a shock, I’m preparing to blog.

I currently have my levels of cheeriness under control and they are unlikely to pose a threat in the near future.

Do you sometimes wish you could write yourself a new life?

I was thinking this a couple of days ago when idly daydreaming of that elusive lottery win.

My first action on winning would be to rent cars and park them in front of the houses of people who have annoyed me with their inconsiderate parking in the past. In particularly annoying cases I may even fill them with concrete after parking them.

After that I move on to the good stuff, where I see myself as the anonymous benefactor to friends, neighbours, family and local charities. That often results in moral tangles about who to help and how best to do it, or if I should even try to help at all.

As an example – you give someone money to buy a decent house and bring their family up in a nice area with good schools. Do you make their decisions for them? Or do you just give them the money and set them loose. In five years time, after they have spent the money on drink and drugs and the kids are all in care how do you feel then? Or when a robot comes back from the future to kill you just before your big win because it turns out they used the money so well that they sent all their kids to Oxford University and they went on too rule the world in a despotic fashion? It could happen. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen a documentary about it. Though it might just be that I fell asleep whilst watching Terminator. Sometimes it’s difficult to tell.

Tricky stuff, helping people. I may just buy a private island and live in sunshine for the rest of my life. I’d feel guilty about being selfish, but at least I won’t have ruined any lives.

Alternatively I could carry on buying a lottery ticket now and again and failing to win anything. As plans go, that one seems to be progressing quite well, and is definitely on target.

One person who seems to think I am already a lottery winner is my car insurance company. I’ve been nowhere this year, I’m way under the mileage I insure it for, and yet the cost seems to have leapt up. Again.