I have decided to do some research on where my time goes. Today I set a fifteen minute alarm and set to work with a plan in mind. I was going to us my first hour fully and the first 15 minutes were going to be writing a post. I can, if I get a move on, do a post in 15 minutes, though photos and tags can take another five or ten depending on how it goes.
The results so far. My first forty five minutes has gone and I have read and replied to the comments, drifted off on top Wiki to look at “Variations in Australian English”, eaten a bacon and mushroom sandwich (cooked by Julia, so no time lost there) and checked my emails. The good news is that these 120 words (approximately half my minimum blog target) have only taken four minutes.
The short answer to my question would appear to be that answering comments takes more time than I would have thought. However, there is no point in blogging if you don’t get comments I now know what sort of accent Tootlepedal has (I currently have a picture of Miss Jean Brodie, well Maggie Smith, to be honest, stuck in my head, though I’m sure I am wrong), I know how many blog posts LA has written (most of them more thought provoking than my ramblings) and am far better informed on the variations in Australian accents.
Left to myself I would merely have watched TV. Probably Murder She Wrote. I can therefore claim that my brain has improved as a result, compared to the undoubted atrophy that would have taken place if I had not been blogging.
I have now been going for about an hour (I forgot to reset the timer last time it went off and I have written a post, read and replied to comments and eaten a bacon sandwich. Not bad for an hour.
I will now throw in a few careless tags and recycle a picture and am good to go on my next keyboard adventure. That will be covered in Part 2.
The picture is Arkwright the Tortoise from May last year. I haven’t seen him recently, but it’s been a bit cold so far this year.
Here is something to test you. In regard to Australian English go and try this https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Songs_of_a_Sentimental_Bloke/V._The_Play
It is very old 100yrs but it is still good. And I used to start my teaching of Shakespeare with this – then next day I would show “West Side Story” and then we would ger stuck into Romeo and Juliet.
I am just off to work, but will give it a thorough reading when I get back. It seems to have a touch of the Sam Wellers about it.
Take your time. There’s no rush. Or to put it another way, ‘Don’t bust ya gut”
🙂
I am sorry to disappoint you but being born and brought up by exiled Scots parents in London, I don’t have a Miss Brodie accent at all, just a boring English one. Answering comments does take a lot of time, I agree but it is time well spent as otherwise I wouldn’t know that you sound posh in Nottingham.
🙂 I had wondered about your possible accent when you revealed some Kentish history. To be serious for a moment, without comments and answers there would be little to interest me in blogging – I’m more interested in other people than I am in my own thoughts, which I can monitor at any time.
Don’t stop blogging. My life would be poorer without your reflections on life. And I enjoy meeting someone with whom I can politely disagree from time to time.
I had a phone call from the doctor today, they are trying to turn me into some sort of greyhound so I may need exercise tips soon. Or I may have to renew my old school cross country skills of skulking and skiving…
I am sure that you don’t want any advice but once a teacher, always a teacher so here is my infallible method. Eat a whisker less and take a whisker more exercise every day – nothing radical – and logic tells you that you must lose weight. The key thing may be to cut down on sugar. Half a teaspoonful on the porridge instead of a full one.
Good plan. One of my friends once had a conversation with his doctor about his habit of eating two or three packs of crisps a week. The doctor took 184 calories (in a bag of crisps), multiplied it by two, then by 52. Two bags a week for a year comes to over 19,000 calories a year for something you don’t actually need. 🙂
I take the point. I stopped taking two teaspoonfuls of sugar in my tea a few years ago and the amount of sugar that I haven’t consumed in my tea since then would make a mighty mountain. Of course I still eat a lot of jam, marmalade and honey so I am not going sugarless.
Yes, so much sugar is available elsewhere. That is part of the problem.
I try to avoid shop bought cakes and biscuits because they pack them with sugar. Fruit is not as good as it was either as they have been breeding them sweeter and sweeter.
Yes, it’s hard reducing sugar…
I enjoyed seeing Arkwright again. 🙂 Time seems to be moving a lot faster for me than turtle speed though. Not enough hours in my day, but the important tasks bubble up to the surface.
There is never enough time…
How much time do you spend counting the words?
I don’t – the machine does it for me. One of the advantages of my stone age editor. 🙂
🙂
Somehow, I always thought Tootlepedal would have a Scottish accent. 😉 Time is indeed a precious commodity. I am constantly thinking about how I use time. Recently, I decided to slice an hour or so from watching television so that I would have more time for other things. A good decision.
Yes, a decision I will be taking too. I’d always thought of him as slightly Scottish, though I knew he’d spent time in Kent, which is about as unScottish as you can get.
I like the Cabot Cove episodes much better than the others. Though really…shouldn’t the town population number be set in anything other than stone?
It’s a bit like Oxford over here – a murder rate that denies logic. The ones I really dislike are the ones set in “England£ and “Ireland”. Even if thy are on location they manage to turn them into parodies with the accents.
Completely agree!! What I don’t get is how she always has the exact right outfit for every occasion. She never seems to have anything larger than a carry on
Come to think of it, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen any of her books about apart from on TV…
😉