Monthly Archives: September 2024

Me, Boasting

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St Edmund’s Chapel, Hunstanton

Here’s the minutes from the Numismatic Society meeting last week. I will quote them so you can’t avoid seeing them. It’s an exaggeration, but as somebody else is saying it I am happy to let it stand.

May be an image of text

Yes, I used it before, but didn’t mention it’s the wolf from the legend of Saint Edmund, King of east Anglia, killed by the Danes in 869. 

I can’t get into the image to edit is, so apologies for the typos. Also apologies for the length, I would, of course have cut it down to just the nice bits about me if I could.

We went to IKEA this afternoon. It was nearly as crowded as last time, despite the schools being back, but we did manage to get a decent parking spot. As we were looking I noticed a couple take a mother and baby spot, even though they clearly had no child. She had turquoise hair and he had tattoos and a singlet. Yes, I know it’s bad to make assumptions, but I’ve never met anyone wearing a singlet (apart from in a sporting context) who didn’t also breathe through his mouth. Parking restrictions mean nothing for these people.

We then went for lunch as I chattered on in a generally reactionary, elderly way. They only do one size of meatball portion now, so as I secured a table Julia added a couple of strawberry slices to round things off. It was a pleasant meal and fell in that middle ground between not being expensive, but not being exactly cheap either. Considering that they have always plastered the place with signs telling you that their low level of service is to keep the meals cheap, they never seem cheap enough. There aren’t so many signs like this these days, they have gone over to lecturing about food waste now. It’s strange how the Swedes have a reputation for loving freedom and being easy-going yet their biggest furniture business lectures you all the time. It was the same in the toilets – lots of signs about water use.  It’s all greenwashing, or virtue signalling, or whatever the latest word is. It’s not the water or the food waste that’s the problem – it’s the building and heating of massive buildings, moving stuff round the world and tempting teens of thousands of people to use cars every day, but they won’t stop that.

Cliffs at Hunstanton. Famous for (a) being striped and (b) facing west even though they are on the East Coast. 

After lunch, we walked round checking on furniture we will need for the move. We need a proper spare bed instead of the bunks the kids used, a new three piece suite (we currently have four chairs – all second hand) and a few other bits and pieces. I bought a special tool for unscrewing lids. I will report on it later.

Altogether, quite an eventful day.

More September 2018 pictures today.

It is Done

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The Magpie, Little Stonham, Suffolk

I stuck to the rules and I have three new poems to show for it. I felt like I’d had enough after two, but three is the target. Either three revised or three composed. Being inflexible, and having started to write, I carried on writing, even if the rules would have allowed me to write two and revise one.

Silly as it may sound (I am, after all, talking about writing poetry, not cleaning out a hen house) I am now in need of a rest. This blog post is a rest. Just a change of pace.

Yesterday I deviated from the rules, and things went wrong. The gardeners arrived and did their job. I went out to avoid the first three hours then returned, made cups of tea for us all and got to work. I couldn’t think of poetry so I got stuck into an article I am writing – fact checking and constructing a biography from snippets. It’s coming together slowly. Very slowly.  However, it did fill the day so although I veered off track, I did at least spend several hours in useful pursuits.

Norfolk Flint Wall

Flexibility, as TP just remarked, is key. The rules and targets are to make me work with more focus. If I can fill a few hours with effort instead of frittering my time away all day, it is time well spent and proof that a few rules and targets can help.

I have set targets before, for junior sports clubs and for writing and in all cases I have achieved much more when I plan and write it down. The trick is to make sure you sit down and write something out. I’ve let things drift for the last three years and although some good things have happened, I have to say that more would have happened if I had planned.

I use the SMART model – that’s Specific, Measurable,, Something, Something and Time-bound or Timely (they struggle a bit with that last one). I always have to look it up because I can’t remember the middle bit.  It’s Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound.

Doesn’t really nee a title does it?

I will end up with a table that has magazine names with times and targets in boxes. It fits quite well. The names are Specific, the targets are Measurable because they are numbers of poems, the targets are Achievable, but I don’t actually need a column for that, Relevant is the type of poetry (they don’t all take the same sort of thing) and Time-bound is a good column for the submission windows, though I generally rely on my submissions calendar for that. There’s a lot more admin in writing poetry than the lives of Lord Byron or Dylan Thomas would suggest.

Pictures are from September 2018, a trip round East Anglia.

The contents of the bag

Quiz Night and I Do Quite Well

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Horse ploughing at Flintham

Second day under new rules and I’ve already deviated. This is the first writing of the day because I’m waiting for a gardener to arrive and I can’t concentrate when I know that I’m going to be disturbed. If I was going to be disturbed all day I would work round it, but just waiting for one knock on the door, for some reason, seems more disruptive. It’s the same with unexpected interruptions – I just deal with them and get on.  It’s the annual tidy.  I’m not able to cope with the steps and the slope and Julia has plenty to do without adding garden maintenance to the list. She deals with roses, fruit and vegetables and that’s enough. Hopefully a new garden on one level will reinvigorate our interest in gardening. It will be good exercise, and it’s about time I started moving more.

Horse ploughing at Flintham

There’s not much else to report. It was quiz night last night on TV. I did moderately well compared to the contestants in the general knowledge round of Mastermind (though it’s a lot easier sitting at home compared to the studio). In recent years I have started to drop back in comparison to them – I feel I may have peaked intellectually.

Only Connect set a new record for 1st  and 2nd round aggregate scores. They weren’t particularly good teams, they just had easy questions. I also set a record, answering four out of 12, two of them before the teams did. I then had a really good “missing vowels” round, which is unusual because that and anagrams are usually very bad for me. As I say, easy questions.

Horse ploughing at Flintham

Then on to University Challenge, where I also answered a few questions, including a couple the teams didn’t know.  Frustratingly I always forget the details so you’ll just have to take my word for it. However, in general I was, as usual, bogged down in questions I didn’t understand (maths, medicine and chemistry are all bad for me) being answered by people who are 45 years younger than me and know much more than I have accumulated in all my years.

Little Grey Fergie – men in Sheds

However, despite tonight’s success I realise I would be a lot less successful if I were in a studio and under stress. That keeps my ambition within bounds.  What I did notice, again, was that some questions seem to have come up a number of times in the last week. This has happened before and it always makes me wonder if the same people write the questions for all the quizzes on TV. I really should start to look at the credits. What I suspect is happening is that I watch so many quizzes that subjects simply come together by coincidence. Even if the same people were responsible for all the questions, and were guilty of recycling them, all the programmes work to different schedules so the questions would be scattered. makes you think though, the idea of one super-brained question setter sitting in the middle of a web with various strands marked “FA Cup Winners”, “Periodic Table” and “Pop Music 1980s” as they construct a massive web of questions.

And another tractor shot

Photos are more from past Septembers. It’s Flintham Show again . . .

Flower competition – Flintham Show

 

New Rules

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I have given considerable thought to my lack of poetic output recently.

Yes, some of it is due to illness, recovery and natural cycles of productivity. Some of it, illogical as it seems, is because of the worry, which makes me less relaxed and creative. That’s the downward spiral that posh people  call writers’ block. However, after much thought I have to admit that I’m doing more writing about collectables, and I enjoy that more than poetry. It’s easier and does not involve so much dredging through painful memories.  The best of my poetry is a greater pleasure than my best writing on coins or medallions, but on average the article on collectables are easier and involve fewer bad memories.

Recently I have written ten pieces for the Numismatic Society of Nottinghamshire Facebook page. I have also researched and written a slideshow, which took ages. It can take a day just to put the story of one man together. Despite having done a lot of the work previously, the first draft always reveals extra work that needs doing Sometimes, when it’s a new story, it can take the best part of a day.  There were 20 stories in the presentation, plus the general pages on the history and the nut and bolts of collecting. I’m also putting afew articles for magazines together, as some of them actually pay and I’d like to think I can make some of my subscriptions (WP and Ancestry specifically) pay for themselves.

Being naturally idle and disorganised, it is easy to start something new, but not so easy to find enough time. So I have several new rules, which should sort a few things out.

Number One, I am going to do nothing until I have worked on at least three poems. Today I actually did the washing up first, but I couldn’t concentrate with a stack of dirty plates needing to be done. Then I worked on three poems – tightening them up and getting them ready for submissions later this month. After that it was emails, WP comments and, finally, this post.

Next it will be lunch.

After that it will be an article I am working on, followed by planning. My best years as an administrator in junior rugby were always the ones where i planned properly. After a couple of years writing haibun I spent a couple of evenings planning things out properly, which was when I started to be published a lot more. It wasn’t talent. It wasn’t even hard work. It was searching out places I could submit to, and setting targets for how many submissions I was going to make. I need to get back to that. It’s too easy to tell yourself you are ill and you can’t be blamed for your slump, but it’s surprising how much more productive you are when you have a target.

So that’s the two new rules – 3 Poems before other work, and a plan with targets. Simple enough, the complication lies in making myself do it.

I thought the Alf Tupper pictures were well suited to today’s subject.

Pigs & Poppies

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Pig Gate Guard

Julia went for a walk yesterday. She came back with potato samosas and vegetable pakora from a vegan stall at the food market they hold monthly in Sherwood. That’s Sherwood, the Nottingham suburb where we live, rather than Sherwood the semi-mythical Forest where Robin Hood lived. The Wiki entry sells us a bit short – the churches section should include a synagogue and a mosque and we used to have two cinemas (the one from around 1912 is still standing) and a cigarette factory.

She stopped on the way back to add a Paneer Saag Wala and a lovely fluffy naan bread from a local takeaway. The Paneer Saag Wala was only pureed spinach, garlic and paneer but it was extremely good. I could have eaten more, and you don’t generally hear me say that about vegetarian food. I am going to look at ways of making something similar. I’m not sure I have the equip,emt for pureeing spinach, but will have to see.

Group effort at Lemon and Poppy seed biscuits in the shape of Scottish Poppies. The seed scattering technique varied in success. The poppy cutters were purchased from the Scottish Poppy Appeal – they are a different shape from the English ones which have a two-lobed design. The British legion, who attend to the English and Welsh Poppy Appeal, don’t do a cutter.

I also had trouble with my keyboard. I could still use the laptop keyboard but the other one stopped working. It has been giving trouble for a few days. The reason is that I have had to use an adaptor to give me extra USB slots. I have been charging camera batteries and the new charger works off a USB socket. As with so many cheap electricals, it has a hit and miss approach to working.

Perhaps, to be more accurate, I should say I have been using an adaptor because I’m lazy. It was on my desk so it was easier to use it than go and find a plug that would allow me to use a mains socket.

As I wrote adaptor for the first time in this piece, the new, irritating, spellchecker leapt into life.  Apparently, it’s wrong, so I looked it up. I always thought that adaptor was a piece of electrical equipment and adapter, not that I’ve ever felt to need the word adapter before today, was someone who adapted something. It isn’t. Nor is it just an American/British English thing, because adapter is the more commonly used word in both languages. Not that it means anything because the whole nation has had its education neglected for so long, and has watched so much American TV, that our entire lexicon has become corrupted.

Salt dough Poppies. We painted them for display. The cutter is plastic so it is OK for salt dough. The ordinary cutters, as we found, rusted after being used for salt dough shapes.

It appears that the Guardian style guide sides with me, though Fowler adopts his usual eay-going approach and is easy about such things.

I’m not sure whether that falls under “irritations in modern life” or “new things I learned today”. Whichever it is, the new spellchecker definitely come under “irritations in modern life”.

It also falls into the category of “poor educational standards in the Uk”. When I was taught English grammar teaching was considered a sin, I have grown up able to write grammatically because I have read good books and because i (unwillingly) did Latin. For some reason Latin grammar was fine, English was out.

Photos are more shots from past Septembers. Top one is a pig made from a silage bale – you can get coloured wraps, and Julia and the group applied a appendages.

Poppies on the windowsill – this one is from November – which is why we started them in September.

 

 

My Theory of Timing Submissions

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REsettling the plough

As it turned out, yesterday’s grand plan ground to a halt. With just sixteen days until the end of the month I need to start looking at haibun and tanka prose. I have, as usual, plenty of prose sections, but finding the right words for the haiku and tanka can be tricky. I have just about got enough for four submissions but |I need to get on with it as the final few short lines can end up taking a long time.

Just as I thought it was all coming back the hard facts indicate that I don’t have enough poems, and the ones I have, aren’t far enough advanced. There was a time when I used to have all my submissions queued up at the end of a month, waiting like caged greyhounds to hit the ground running as the new month  My theory was that if I was borderline but got in first, the later poems would have to be better than me to displace me and just being equally good would not be enough. Better, I thought, to be the first poem about getting old than the second, third or fourth. Poets are notorious for churning over the same few subjects, so if you can’t be original, or best, try being first.

Detail of the mouse

Now, as my energy declines, I find it hard enough just to scrape a few poems together by the end of the month. There is an advantage to this – the decisions seem to be faster and you have the rejects back in time to use them again in a timely manner. Using this system I have sometimes had a decision within hours, and the poems have been out again in a similar time span. I once had a poem that was rejected, submitted elsewhere and accepted within a space of days.

However, as things stand, I need twelve poems of usable quality. Time moves on, and those twelve are now my priority. The great recycling project will have to wait. editors often remark on the number of submissions they receive, but it’s also true that there are more editors out there than I can submit to. I just can’t write fast enough. October is a month with no haibun submissions planned, so the recycling can start then, as can the production of the next batch of haibun.

Two sizes of wheatsheaf loaf

Pictures are from September 2016 this time.

The Great Poetry Recycling Plan

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Apple Pressing Equipment – scratter mounted on top of the press

I’ve already discovered a snag. Some of the poems have been out three or four times, which isn’t  great problem, but the magazines I intended to send them to to have, in many cases, already seen them. I need a bigger list and some new poems.

So far this year I have had my work cut out just coping with haibun and tanka prose submissions. Talking of which, I also need to get them sorted for the end of the month, which is approaching fast.

The second snag is that on re-reading after six months, some of the poems are not very good. And that’s being kind. Depressing, self-indulgent and cliched might be  better way of putting it. However, some aren’t bad and some can be dismantled and used in other poems. It’s just a case of finding the time.  A lot of my time sinks without trace as I sit down with Julia on her return from work and spend the next three hours chatting, watching TV and cooking. There are worse ways to spend time. Unfortunately, by the time I see her I have already had a busy day of procrastination, displacement activity and false starts.

 

Apple Juice

There is also the question of research and manners. You should, I feel, always buy a magazine for research and to help their finances along. Editors often say that if everyone who submitted poetry also bought an issue, financing wouldn’t be an issue. It’s a strange model to work to – toiling away to produce poetry then buying a copy of the magazine you have helped to fill. On the other hand, vanity has a price, and as I am vain enough to crave publication I must pay the price. It’s not a snag, but all these magazines need paying for. Then I have to explain to Julia why I need an even higher stack of magazines . . .

To be honest, I wish they’d go online so I could avoid building up such a stack of glossy paper. It seems a waste. I’m going to see if our local dojo wants to broaden its view on Japanese aesthetics, but I suspect they will end up in an unappreciative charity shop, and from there to a skip.

So, it started with one plan to recycle, moved on to self-awareness and ended up back on a different sort of recycling. If I’m not careful people will start to think I’m planning these posts instead of what actually happens – type word 1, type word 2, repeat 250+ times and chuck some photos in.

The photos are from September 2015 when my life was much more interesting.

Plum jam

The Longest Yarn

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I should have added some links to the last post, but forgot. Here is a link to The Longest Yarn project, including UK dates. Here is an interview with one of the knitters. And here is a wayward link about a knitted WW1 soldier. It’s knitting, but it’s a different war.

These are also the remains of the photographs. There is a guidebook but Julia decided not to buy it’s just more clutter for us to move. It’s a strong-willed gesture but one that is rather undone by me buying a new book on the 3rd Afghan War – the one we fought in 1919.

Today consisted of a blood test, a visit to sort out the pharmacy, buying fuel and visiting some friends in a shop.  We all agreed that business is flat, old age is no fun and we are all coming down with a variety of cold symptoms.

Nobody, we concluded, is going to spend any money until after the budget. I can’t say I blame them, as I’m a touch worried about my own situation. However, as a politician you have a limited time to do unpopular things on the last lot.  I can understand their enthusiasm to push things through, but can’t help feeling there are overtones of smugness.

We have had 64 Prime Ministers since Walpole, many have been very forgettable. The first one to have  aphotograph on the list is Lord John Russell. He’s often a pointless answer on Pointless.

A project to knit 64 panels, one for each prime minister, would be near impossible. as most of them have no real character. Peel and the police. Gladstone with an axe.  Palmerston with a gunboat. Wellington with a big nose. Perceval with a blood stained shirt. Churchill with a cigar. Now I’m starting to run out of inspiration.

At least the stuffing would be a simple decision, no need for kapok or polyester, just fill them up with well-rotted farmyard manure of bovine origin.

The Longest Day

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It was an active start to the day, with both of us needing to do things today, in contrast to our normal relaxed Wednesday starts. Let’s face it, all my starts are relaxed these days, even the ones where I take Julia to work – even on those I amble down, eat the breakfast she has prepared and do a bit of cardio by shouting at other drivers on the road. This experience has recently been enhanced by a number of road closures, which gives me a lot more scope for vocal exercises.

Julia had to go to Southwell Minster with one of the neighbours. I had to go to the garage.

Julia’s day involved a queue to get into the Minster, followed by a slow semi-queue as she went round an exhibition, and another queue on the way back when they were stuck in a jam waiting for the emergency services to clear cars from a collision. They were stuck for an hour, but the driver made up time and they were only have an hour late getting back to town, though slightly scared by the driving.

On arriving home late, and finding me still out, she texted twice and rang once to see where i was. When she texted the first time I was just pulling out of the garage in my newly fixed car. When she rang, I was in a queue at roadworks with a police car behind me. Neither are good places to answer phone messages.

The story with the car (I think I told you about the neighbour knocking the housing off my wing mirror) is that they were able to use the original parts (last time someone hit it a following car ran the bits over before I could get back to them), reconnect the electrics, stick on a new mirror glass (£30 for a small bit of mirror glass!) and get me through the MOT. You can pass the MOT without a nearside mirror, but if the mirror is designed to hold your repeater indicator, you can’t. Madness in both logic and design, as I had a perfectly good indicator in each corner. I don’t know why you need side repeaters.

Julia, meanwhile, had enjoyed most of her day. It is the 140th Anniversary of Southwell Minster being declared a cathedral. They also have a visiting exhibition – 80 scenes from D-Day to celebrate the 80th Anniversary. So far, I hear you say, so good. But what made it worth queuing for. Well, it’s an international cooperation between knitters. Yes, all 80 scenes are constructed by knitting. However, I suppose you can tell that from the pictures.

The pictures are, of course, a knitted homage to D-Day 6th June 1944. The lighting wasn’t great, the cases were reflective, and the processional nature of the exhibit prevented too much stopping or any going back, so she is apologetic about the images. They are better than I could have managed in the circumstances, so I am happy with them. There will be more tomorrow.

Moving On

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The last post I published was really Monday’s post. this one is today’s post, though as it is 23.45 according to my computer clock that state of affairs will only last another 15 minutes.

Today, for the first time in ages I am free from the tyranny of my need to write a presentation for the Numismatic Society of Nottinghamshire. It was a tyranny I wore lightly, in fact I managed to ignore it for most of the ten months leading up to the five days of panic that marked the run up to the meeting.

Chilwell Factory Check

When I finish this I am going to sort of a dozen old poems, edit them and send them off to different magazines. I’ve just had a spreadsheet from Robin Houghton with the latest details of poetry magazines.. You can find the sign up page here if you are interested. It is quicker than trying to find all the information yourself, and contains many magazines I’ve never heard of.

After that I am going to write a new piece for the Numismatic Society Facebook page – which will be my 10th, I note. I will probably use a piece from my old talk on Peace Medals. I was talking to someone about that recently – how it’s possible to build a body of work by recycling old articles. I used to buy books on local aspects of the Civil War – it was a noticeable feature of the small scale publications associated with it that a number of keen authors were doing a lot of recycling. It’s also known as “sweating your assets” in business jargon, which always makes me feel more relaxed about my lack of business success. What with running things up flagpoles and blue sky thinking, sweating my assets would have been a step too far.

Admiral Vernon & Commodore Brown

However, I need a reasonably early night tonight, so I’d better stop this and get to bed. Poetry can wait.

Photos are from my posts on Numismatic Society’s FB page, though I recycled them for use on WP too, which is where the links go.