Monthly Archives: April 2023

Chips, Kites and Memories

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Today we drove down to Peterborough and met my sister in Dobbie’s Garden Centre. It’s one of those big modern centres, which is more groceries and giftware than actual gardening stuff, but they do a great fish & chips.

The actual ordering system is a little chaotic and features those buzzing things that are very popular these days. Not as popular with me as actually having a member of staff bring to food to the table, but still popular. The chips are large and well cooked with great tartare sauce. The first was succulent and the mushy peas were good. The bread was a nice seeded variety, though the presentation – two slices thrown on a plate with two butter pats, was not quite as well served as the elegant triangular slices shown on the picture.

All in all it was a very good meal and one that reveals how times have changed. A couple of years ago this was the garden centre we stopped at to have tea and cake on our way back from Suffolk in the week lock-down was announced. There ere only a handful of people there that day and we were unable to see my father as the nursing home had already gone into lockdown. Things did not work out too well.

I really must start taking the camera around with me.

After we finished, we saw a red kite over the car park, a really good sighting at low altitude. Mt sister tells me that as the population increases they are taking more live food as their is not enough carrion around, a problem increased by the spread of buzzards into the area. On the way home via the scenic route, we saw another dozen buzzards, one of which was even closer than the car park bird.

On returning home, I found I had an email accepting more poems and we had beans on toast to make up for the calories ingested at lunch.

In summary,

Red Kites

it was an excellent day and a joy to be out, despite the sad memories.

The Red Kites are from our visit to Wales in 2017. 2017? Time flies.

Cake Forks and Poetry

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I’m not sure what the header photo is going to be, but the top photo in the blog is a cake fork. It’s old-fashioned, superfluous to modem life and can often be found going cheap at Antiques Fairs. Julia has a collection of such things. I think we can safely leave it there without adding more comments.

A Cake Fork

I tried to polish it, but the photo still came out like it was smeared. The marks on the back say “Stainless Steel Korea” which, to me indicates quite a late date – somewhere between now and the 60s.  They also suggest low production standards.

They belong in the same category as bread forks, fish knives and sugar nips. Cake slices and long-handled pickled onion forks (with and without spring plungers) hover slightly above them, but I suspect their days are numbered too.

Today has been relaxing. I have now relaxed for two days. Thoughts have passed through my head. Some have been noted and some forgotten. One of the thoughts is that I am going to write a villanelle. It wasn’t my smartest thought, as they are tricky to write. I finish around one in six that I start. I know that because I have started six and completed one. It is here in case you didn’t see it first time round.

A villanelle is a bit like painting by numbers. Instead of inspiration I have a rhyme scheme, which I wrote down. Once you have that done you can write the A1 and A2 lines, which are the repeats. That takes care of 8 of the 19 lines. Now I just need 5 “a” lines (rhyme with A lines, but don’t repeat) and 6 “b” lines – rhyming with each other and no repeats. It’ simpler than a Sonnet and a lot less frustrating than a haiku.

I’m going to bed now. I hope that when I wake up I’m still happy with the repeating lines. If I’m not it will be a fatal fault with the planned poem.

 

 

 

 

Monday Off and a Freewheeling Mind

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I don’t know if it happens in America but on UK Quiz Shows they often ask contestants about themselves instead of getting on with the questions. And the contestants seem, these days, to find it almost impossible to answer without starting “So . . .”

It’s something I have noticed over the last few years. I assume that either they didn’t do it a few years ago, or that I didn’t notice it. It is very irritating. To start “Err . . .”  as the brain picks up speed is human frailty, but starting “So . . .” just signals membership of a pervasive fellowship of irritating TV contestants.

Talking of irritants, I see that there has been a large number of complaints about bad language an episode of Love Island. I would have thought that the language was one of the least offensive things about the show. I’ve only seen clips of it on Gogglebox but the concept, the contestants and the general level of conversation is all dreadful too. Coming from a man who watches a TV programme about watching people watching TV, this concern with quality content may seem out of character, but I assure you, I do have standards. They are low standards, and Love Island fails to meet them.

I will leave you with a couple of poems. They were first published in Eucalypt 33.

the letter
from the lawyers
on the mat
lit by a sunbeam
—floating dust

that morning
in the coffee bar
I had no plans
to meet my one true love
—you said the seat was free

They could be reversed and read as a pair, I suppose, but that’s not how they were written. As the exotic beauty of the second poem has just given me a coffee and two fig rolls for elevenses approximately 42 years after the events described in the poem, there have clearly been no lawyers involved. For the sake of accuracy, may I add that there was a mutual friend sitting at the table too, I am not the sort of suave lounge lizard who finds it easy to approach strange women in coffee bars.

Coconut macaroons and hilarity in Bakewell. Can you see a theme developing?

The Same Old Trap

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Sorry, I have let things drift over the last few days. I need a plan. This is, of course, the same thing you have heard me say over and over, hence the title, so won’t be a surprise, or a revelation of much importance. I have a few days off next week so I will make myself a plan for the rest of the year. Things seem to go better with plans. I should have that made into wall paper for the ceiling of my bedroom so I can indoctrinate myself each morning as I wake up.

I have probably covered my great planning success for junior rugby several years ago, when I sat down, planned and actually carried out more work than I have ever managed before or since. Same goes for my great poetry plan a few years ago. It seemed to work. It may work again this year. I am going to set a half day aside to do some planning. Of course, I will then have a decision to make – whether to keep it secret so that nobody knows if I fail, or to announce it to make it harder for me to fall short. Both plans have their merits.

I follow the SMART Model, which is . . . er . . . Something, Measurable, Something, Something and Timely.  The “T” is hard to fit in to the general plan. If I can’t remember what it all stands for this could be more of a problem than I was thinking. Looking it up I find it is Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Timely/Time-Bound. As I said, it’s hard fitting in the “T”.

The process starts with me saying I must start planning tomorrow and proceeds as I write out some sheets with space for times and targets. Then the fun begins when I start making up numbers to fit. They have to be higher than the ones I am already achieving, but not so high that they prove impossible. I’ve had 22 poems accepted  in the last six months, but am faltering at the moment. I need to plan for another 33 in the next nine months just to keep the average going.  It’s already looking like hard work . . .

When all else fails, turn to cake!