Monthly Archives: August 2022

Senior Moment – forgot the Title!

I’m sitting at my work computer, it’s 9.26. I have read my emails, done something for Julia online, replied to a couple of emails and am now going to use 10 minutes to do the initial work on tonight’s blog post. It’s amazing what you can do when you are fresh.

One of the emails I had to reply to was one from an editor who normally accepts my work. This time he didn’t. Not sure how I feel about that. Everyone needs a wake-up call from time to time but I can’t completely escape the feeling that it’s part of a worldwide plot to stop accepting my work. It’s a tricky one to reply to. I’ve never fully grasped the etiquette of writing to editors as they are busy (and unpaid) people and don’t necessarily want me burbling on. On the other hand, it seems rude not to reply when somebody writes to you.

So I waited a few days to compose a suitable message. Later that day I was sent the results of a competition and found that I had failed to get into the top ten. To not get a prize is expected – competition is tough. I’m always ambivalent about competitions but every so often I have a go, generally unsuccessfully. However, they count as a submission towards my target, even if nothing good happens, and count as a rejection if I don’t get a mention.

So, misery piles on misery.

Then I got another email telling me about two acceptances. I already knew about one because I’d been asked to accept an alteration to it. I had assumed at the time that they only wanted one. It seems they want two. I’d mentally categorised the remainder as “available” and thought of sending them out again. It’s a good thing I didn’t, as it’s embarrassing to make multiple submissions.

This all shows the advantage of waiting a few days – I was in a much sunnier mood when I eventually replied than I would have been if I’d replied right away.

I now note that I have a note from WordPress – You are currently using PHP 7.4.30 which will no longer receive security updates as of November 28, 2022. Please update to PHP 8.0.0 or higher by changing your hosting configuration. In other words “You are doomed. Change something, make your WP experience worse and keep paying through the nose.”

Or am I wrong? Will an update finally improve my life? There has to be a first time for everything.

Tonight, Julia went to visit a neighbour. She took plums and came back with figs.

Meanwhile my WP spellchecker keeps trying to make me spell like an American. I’m hoping this is just a phase it’s going through as I start on the new computer.

Hate is a strong word, but I definitely don’t love Microsoft

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The acid test. I switched on the new laptop and . . .

Let’s just say that things did not go quite as well as they could have done. I forgot my PIN number, then had to recover it. That was when I forgot the password to the new email account I had set up to use this machine. After that it got slightly trickier. However, it finally came right and I have stored the passwords, even though this sort of misses the point of passwords.

I really must get myself sorted out, but after what happened last time I set a computer up I don’t want to take any chances. What happened, you ask? I wish I knew. Somehow I got locked in a circle that I couldn’t break out of. Eventually Microsoft refused to recognise me at all, wouldn’t allow me to access any features and the only thing I was able to do was to pay. I corrected that by cancelling the payments via Paypal. That’s why I started using Apache Open Office, and, eventually, lost all my work. I can only blame myself in the end, but Microsoft and its intransigence played a part.

Something else I noticed tonight was that it is no longer possible to select a default browser with one push of a button. I’m used to using Chrome, so that’s what I want to carry on with. To replace Microsoft Edge as the default browser you now have to sect it a dozen times, once for each confusing thing that it apparently now does. If I was a cynic, and if I’d ever read Inside the Nudge Unit, I might suggest that Microsoft is trying to manipulate me.

All in all, I think it’s time for a revolution. Half of me wants to stick to Apache, but the other half of me wants the easy life of rolling over and surrendering to Microsoft. I am going to have to do some serious thinking.

That’s not me in the picture, but it’s the only picture of a laptop in my media file.

Two Parcels Arrive

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It’s been a quiet day, just a blood test and a visit to the jewellers. The new computer has been delivered and is now charging. That’s it. It has not been a particularly active sort of day. To be honest, none of my days are. I was listening to Giles Brandreth on a podcast recently (I really am starting to embrace the 21st Century) and he said that he was once told by a successful businessman that the key to success was energy. I’m not very energetic, and this is reflected in my success rate.

There was one small wobble when the post arrived. There was a parcel for me, which should have been delivered to the shop. This would have covered up my delinquency in bidding in an auction last week when I am supposed to be economising. However, the vendor got this wrong and the parcel ended up in Julia’s hands. If you look in the dictionary under “caught bang to rights”, you will see a picture of Julia holding my parcel from the auction. Look under “shifty, guilty husband”, as she pointed out, and you will find a picture of me. She actually used a different word, but “husband” is accurate and politer.

We’ve agreed that I will now start my economy drive. It wasn’t a difficult decision as the car and lap top have emptied the reserve I keep to allow for this sort of thing. It’s also not difficult to give up spending when the evidence is delivered to your wife.

Anyway, that’s enough for now, I want to go and test the new laptop.

Newark Siege Coin 1645

Customer Service . . .

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I have ordered a new computer. This will give me time to consider my options with the old one. It should, according to what I read online, be possible to restart my old computer and retrieve the information in my files by use of a simple free download. Having read the instructions several times I can now refine that sentence and add a little accuracy.

It should, according to what I read online, be possible to restart my old computer and retrieve the information in my files by use of a simple free download, but it won’t be. It never is. It might not quite be free and it definitely won’t be simple. If it were simple, dare I suggest that it wouldn’t need a video tutorial and there wouldn’t be quite as much discussion about it on the support forum. However, having tried everything on the computer and come back to blue screen each time, I definitely have to try something that needs a download.

As a bonus, I have had a lesson on why it is important to back things up and why I need to learn more about using computers.

The loop where I do things and, twenty minutes later, end up with the same blue screen I started with, is mimicked perfectly by the so-called “customer service” phoneline at Curry’s. I have no doubt that if you have a computer it works well. However, if your computer refuses to start, and you buy a new one, it is a nightmare. You ring the number, it asks you to select numbers. You select numbers and after three steps it tells you to contact your carrier and disconnects automatically. This is repeated, with variations, when you try different combinations. I ended up ringing the repair line, where I was told that the service might be slow due to Covid. After 15 minutes of being told they would be with me soon, I hung up. I suppose that every cost-cutting measure for the next 20 years will be due to Covid. Quite honestly I’m beginning to think that the main casualty of Covid wasn’t the hundreds of thousands of deaths or the thousands of fearful recluses – the main casualty has been truth and customer service.

Fortunately, when I eventually coaxed the stone age laptop into action I was able to get some answers. Does it not occur to them that someone buying a new computer may not have access to working technology, or want their phone linking to the internet?

In time, we will recover out courage when we hear a neighbour cough, we will haul ourselves out of the stone age which Putin’s war looks set to return us too, and we will become used to living in plastic bubbles as the Earth fries, but we will never again be able to see a doctor face to face, pay for a pizza by cash or talk to a human being on a helpline.

For some reason, I felt drawn to finish with a quote from Brave New World – “A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude.”

That is our future – tethered to the internet by a mobile phone, dating by Tinder, politics by fake news . . .

Aldous Huxley died on the same day as C S Lewis and J F Kennedy. Nobody noticed. Just like nobody notices our slide into a society of willing servitude.

Unknown Stories – a haibun

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This is an example of a haibun, following on from yesterday’s post. The eldest (tallest) daughter is my grandmother. She isn’t holding his hand, as mentioned in the poem, but it is the last photograph. For more information see The Carus Brothers at War (Part 1), or The Carus Brothers at War (Part 2) or The Carus Brothers at War (Part 3).

It was first published in The Haibun Journal April 2022.

Unknown Stories

last photograph
in it my grandma holds
a soldier’s hand

In 1920 the Great War was over, but the grieving continued. The British Army exhumed four unidentified bodies from the major battle areas of the Great War. After four years of fighting there was no shortage of choice. There are differing stories about the secretive process, and nobody knows exactly what happened. However, we do know that on the night of 7^th November 1920, a General, either blindfolded, or with his eyes closed, selected one of them.

That body became the most celebrated British soldier of the war – the Unknown Warrior. He lies in Westminster Abbey – the only tombstone in the Abbey where nobody is allowed to walk. He is buried with a Crusader’s sword, a gift from the King, in a coffin made from an oak tree that once grew at Hampton Court. The Americans gave him the Medal of Honor and, in 2020, his hundredth anniversary, the Poet Laureate wrote a poem for him.

The remaining three were reburied by the roadside under cover of darkness. They were eventually found by a Grave Registration Unit and moved to a cemetery, as were thousands of other wayside graves. For them, there was no grand ceremony, just a stone marked, like thousands of others, “Known unto God”.

a poppy cross
each year her eyes filled up
two minutes pass

What is a Haibun?

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I was asked recently, in the comments, for a definition of a haibun. The quick answer is that it’s some prose with a haiku. As answers go, that’s accurate, but not particularly useful.

It’s likely, if you look back at old poems, that it doesn’t actually have to have a haiku. However, try convincing an editor of that.

A haiku is a very short poem that, over the years, has attracted a lot of rules. In Japanese it has 17 “on”, which are sound units. They are not the same as syllables, though they were originally treated as if they were. In Japanese “haiku” has three “on”., but only two syllables in English. Originally we were told to write haiku in three lines of 5, 7 and 5 syllables. If you check on the internet, you will still be told that. This is wrong.

We are now allowed to use lines of different length and told that 13 syllables is probably about right. We aren’t supposed to include ourselves or poetic devices in haiku and they are supposed to have a season word, talk of nature and a cutting word to differentiate the two parts of the haiku. They like to have two parts – one being what you saw and the other (usually the last line), something that acts as as a contrast. If they talk of human nature, they are senryu, but for haibun purposes they are much the same. They also have simplicity and various sad, wistful feelings attached to them. As I say, short poem, a lot of rules.

Strangely, a lot of the “rules” started off as guidelines and, in the minds of various editors, become rules.

My Orange Parker Pen

Then you get the prose. It should be terse and haiku-like, because it then mirrors the haiku. Or if you read another well-respected poet, it should be different in style from a haiku, as the same style will make it boring.

The haiku should be different from the subject matter, and should “link and shift”. Or, according to another well-known haibun writer, that’s not correct. and is based on a misunderstanding. No, I can’t explain “link and shift” properly. And considering the experience of all the poets and their different views, I can’t tell you exactly what a haibun is either,

Tanka prose is slightly easier to understand. It’s a tanka (five line poem) and prose. There are fewer rules and less discussion about tanka prose, so it’s easier to write. You can concentrate on the writing instead of worrying about hitting the targets imposed by various, contradictory, rules.

Finally, the poem and prose can be placed in different ways. This can be poem and prose or prose and poem. It can also be prose, poem, prose or poem, prose, poem. Or other ways. As usual, there are Japanese words for all these things. And, as usual, I can’t remember them.

That’s a vey short, simple and not exactly neutral explanation. I’ll post a few poems and links over the next few days.

Orange Parker Pen

Back to Titles

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Well, I managed 220 days, but then my computer died. I am trying not to take it personally but can’t help feeling that it died of boredom. I really should try to become more entertaining.

There was no warning. I left it, had my tea, watched a little TV and pottered back into my library, where the computer is installed on my desk. Or, to be more accurate, I pottered back into the dining room where my computer sits on our dining table, amongst various piles of papers.

The screensaver was stuck. I had to switch off and start it again. It was blue, which is never good news. I tried everything I could (mainly prodding a few buttons and hoping) but it remained broken. This is still the situation. This post is being typed on an ancient borrowed laptop.

The full story of my technological incompetence will probably never be revealed. My full catalogue of ineptitude is, I hope, going to remain under wraps. But my hatred of the 21st Century will be reported in full.

An example? To use this computer, I have to put up with notices from Spotify and Microsoft about doing things to get full access. Why? All I want to do is use a computer, I don’t need outside help. Similarly, when I tried to download Apache Open Office it won’t let me. I need the permission of the Administrator, as it calls Number One Son. He can’t give permission, because he’s forgotten the password and I, as a result, can’t do any word processing.

It shouldn’t be like that. We paid for these computers, we should be allowed to use them.

Day 220

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I’ve just been watching a couple of programmes on Philip Larkin. There are four on tonight but I can’t take so much concentrated culture. I hadn’t realised that he died when he was 63. I may have left it a bit late to become a famous poet, as I am now a year older than he was when he died and nobody has heard of me.

I was finally able to talk to a doctor about my adverse reaction to the medication. They hadn’t been able to fit me in for a telephone consultation yesterday and the receptionist was in the middle of fobbing me off again when I stopped her and told her I was confused as I’d been told I could ring about adverse reactions to medication at any time. The words “adverse reaction to medication” worked like a charm and a doctor eventually rang me to discuss it. It seems it’s a well known side effect. I already knew that. They are going to change my medication to slow-release capsules, which should, with luck, solve the problem.

Backlit Sumac Tree in the MENCAP garden

At work, there were a few parcels to sort and the normal phone calls to answer.. Julia rang in the early afternoon to ask me for a word she couldn’t call to mind. It’s normally “sumac” because she has a blind-spot concerning that particular tree. They have one in the Mencap garden so it does crop up in conversation.

This time, however, it was “name a motorway services in Cumbria”. She meant Tebay. Fortunately I am a husband of many talents.

They are known for their pies. Most of my pictures which include Tebay in the title feature pies.

Lamb and Mint – Tebay

Day 219

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Two acceptances today – one where the editor told me they thought a touch of punctuation might be in order. I agreed with them – I had looked at putting a dash in that very place but then decided, in the interests of simplicity, to leave it out. Nice to find I’m synchronised in my thinking with and editor. I bet if I’d put it in they would have suggested leaving it out. That has happened before.

The second was for a members’ anthology. They asked for 3-5 submissions. If you send five you are guaranteed that one will be accepted. I didn’t see the point of that, as I send them in to be tested, so I sent three. One was accepted, so I passed the test.

So far, so good. I still have a couple waiting for decisions, and really should get on with writing more. My literary legacy won’t write itself.

I had what I though was probably an adverse reaction to medication last night. If I say it was a digestive upheaval you can fill in the details for yourself. I didn’t get a lot of sleep and still felt actively ill in the morning so, regretfully, I took the day off. It was lunchtime before I got downstairs and after 2.00 before I felt like doing anything. That activity took the form of writing a rather dull explanation of what a haibun is (I was asked a couple of days ago) so I left it when Julia returned home in favour5 of drinking tea and watching TV.

Mint Moth

I’m feeling better now, though slightly resentful that I told the doctor I didn’t want to alter the medication. I don’t think their medical education, despite being long, is very flexible. When a patient tells you he doesn’t want more pills as a known side effect is digestive disruption, and he already has trouble like that from another set of pills, I think it might be a good idea to listen and work out a different solution. But what do I know?