I am feeling pleased with myself. I sent three poems off to a journal on Tuesday night and had one of them accepted this morning.

Cactus, Malta

Even better, the two that weren’t required can go elsewhere, which saves considerable effort.

I had to look at the punctuation again, as requested. I wasn’t sure whether the problem was an errant comma or something else so I checked it all, wondering if this was a test. I found two other possible errors – I hadn’t hyphenated the number thirty-one and I’d lazily put a hyphen where some editors prefer an em dash. A hyphen (-) requires hitting a key, an em dash (—) requires two hands – depressing the Alt key whilst typing 0151 on the numerical key pad. I should probably, in the name of precision, have used one where I stuck that hyphen in front of depressing.

CActus hedge Malta

And talking about depressing – I know that an en dash is the width of a capital N and an em dash is the width of a capital M. There is something very sad about a man who has spent 68 years getting to the point. I wanted to catch and sing the sun in flight, but I ended up knowing the difference between two sorts of dash and getting excited about taps (read on to find out about that, or fall into deep slumber as the tedium of my life washes over you).

Then I started looking at a comma with a view to making it into a full stop. At that point I decided that I was getting altogether too involved and thought about telling him I was an avant-garde surrealist poet in the mould of e. e. cummings.

Memento Mori

Then I started to wonder why cummings signed himself e. e. cummings instead of e e cummings, did he have a quibble with upper case letters but not punctuation?

He died when he was 67 which, since my last birthday, is something I have beaten him in. On the other hand, he wrote 2,900 poems. I’m not sure I’ll ever write 2,900 poems. Even if I do, it’s not a measure of quality.

We’ve had quite a lot of blustery rain today and a sharp hailstorm this morning. English hail isn’t generally too much of a problem as it’s quite small. However, it’s unusual in May.

Malta

We also had a handyman, which was a surprise. He had said he would fit us in for new kitchen taps as soon as he could, and he finished a job more quickly than he expected, so dropped in on us. It was a bit of a surprise as I was halfway through preparing lunch, but we now have a nice mixer tap with levers, which makes it a lot easier for me to work. The previous taps were a bit stiff and inconvenient for a man with arthritic fingers. It’s a tricky social situation as I was pleased to get the job done, but not pleased that lunch was interrupted.

Another day gone and a bright start ends with me quoting Thomas and talking of poetry and plumbing and punctuation when I should be writing.

Blue Lagoon

Pictures are from Julia’s May 2018 trip to Malta to visit No 1 son while he was working there. She went with No 2 Son while he was still living in UK. Now he is in Canada. Was it something I said?