Monthly Archives: June 2023

Coleridge, Clickbait and Capsicum Spray

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In a way, the title offers more than it delivers and, being deliberately sensationalist, is itself an example of clickbait.

I see it’s three days since I last posted. Unfortunately I can’t tell you what I’ve been doing in the last three says, because I don’t know. If pressed I would say that my main activity has been letting three days slip by. In Victorian times I could at least have excused myself by saying I’d been hitting the laudanum, but in these sanitised days of the 21st century it’s just been TV and reading clickbait on the computer. I can’t help thinking that my life as a poet is not quite on a level with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, or even Dylan Thomas.

Talking of which, I recently discovered, to my confusion, that there was also a man called Samuel Coleridge Taylor. Life can be full of interest, but also very confusing. One thing that occurs to me, now that I know, was why didn’t I know? It seems an interesting bit of general knowledge that should have cropped up before now.

I’ve also been thinking about bears recently. They aren’t a problem in the UK because we don’t have any. We have reintroduced beaver as part of a re-wilding plan and accidently reintroduced wild boar, but that’s as far as it goes. We are trying to preserve wildcats too, but they are probably doomed in the long term as, even if we can prevent habitat loss, they keep interbreeding with domestic cats.

It will be harder making the case for lynx and wolves, and I’m sure that bears will definitely be a step too far. Someone was killed recently in Italy by a reintroduced bear, which is more serious than worries about wolves or lynx taking a few sheep.

Bears first came into my mind a few months ago when I read an article on the killing, and returned last night after I spoke to Number Two Son on the phone and Bear Spray came up. I’d seen it on Race Across the World and wanted to know if it was something he’d come across. It was. He’d carried a can while he was hiking last year. Life in Canada is much more adventurous than it is here. The biggest wild animal I generally see is a squirrel.

(It’s capsicum spray, which allows mw the three part alliteration I needed for the title.)

Squirrel in MENCAP gardens, Wilford

 

Back to Work and a New Book

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After the unexpected Saturday, the Bank Holiday Monday and the Crafty Tuesday (which linked the Monday to my normal Wednesday off, I have just managed a short holiday. It was OK, but I didn’t actually do anything apart from fill the car (which ws cheaper than last time – a welcome development) and have a blood test.  That, as I have said before, is part of the lasting damage done by Covid and Lockdown – I still haven’t got back in the swing of going out, though the recent cost of fuel also contributed to this.

Julia has suggested that I need to get out more as she thinks I need exercise and sunlight. Since yesterday, she also thinks I need to get out and see things to recharge my desire to write.She is probably right. She normally is.

Work was much the same as usual – people wanting to sell us junk, a nuisance caller wanting to offer us a good price on block-paving our driveway (which, being a shop, we don’t have) and a handful of parcels to send in the post. It wasn’t interesting or profitable, but it wan’t stressful or hard either, so I have no complaints.

A book arrived in the post – it’s about the parish of Slaidburn and the Great War.  My Uncle tom provided them with some photos and details and I was pleased to learn something new as they have a picture of my grandfather’s Agricultural Exemption Certificate – after volunteering in 1914 when he was under age he was held on the farm for a few years before being released in November 1916.

I’ve ben through it looking at the bits that relate to the Wilsons – tomorrow I will read it properly.

The header picture is the Slaidburn War memorial as it was when we last visited. I’m sure the scaffolding will be gone by now. The lower picture is the war memorial in Clitheroe, a few miles away. Sharp-eyed readers will notice that they are identical statues. The bases differ, but Clitheroe had a lot more men to commemorate. It’s strange to know I have relatives remembered on both memorials.

War Memorial – Cliheroe Castle

Running out of Steam

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At the moment, I feel a bit empty and devoid of inspiration (see my last post).. After days of worry and effort I decided not to submit anything this month because I didn’t have much to show poeope, and what I did have didn’t seem very good. There’s no law that says I have to submit every month, so I relaxed. For a few hours I felt much more creative, but after that the difficulties returned.

Unfortunately, I’ve been doing less and less over the last couple of years, particularly the last few months. In fact, this is the second time in four months I have decided not to submit anything. At first I put it down to Covid and the infection I had a month before Covid (I always forget the actual name, but I managed to struggle through that.

The current problem is, I think, that I am trying too hard. I’m worried that I need to up the quality and it is making it harder to write. Plus, as I worry about quality, my internal editor kicks in and things I would have considered acceptable now seem sub-standard.

It’s like the pottery students.

I’m sure I’ve told this one before, so sorry if you remember it. As I get older I ramble more and repeat myself. It’s an internet story, so it probably isn’t true. Even if it is true I doubt they would be able to do it these days.

Anyway . . .

A lecturer told half his pottery students that their marks for the year wo0uld be based on the weight of pottery they produced. No mention of quality, subject or technique – just weight. He told the other half that their marks would be based on them making one superb pot.

Guess which group produced the highest quality pot? That’s right, the ones who had been told they would be awarded marks based on weight.

It seems they set to, producing pots in a relaxed manner and, concentrating on quantity, became good potters because of they gained a lot of experience. The other group, trying for one perfect pot, never managed to work to the full extent of their abilities because they over-thought it.

I used to work by throwing words onto paper and then shaping what I ended up with. I always had work to submit and it seemed to be OK as plenty was published. Now that I try to write better poetry, with more technique and complexity, I am finding it much harder and nothing much seems to measure up.

Tomorrow I am going to clear out a lot of my work in progress and then I’m going back to my old ways – lots of words and less self-criticism. Let’s see what happens.