Looking back at the blog posts I wrote on this day over the last eleven years (Cracking Open the Time Capsule, as WP has it), I am struck by one thing. I have become dull in all aspects of my life. I no longer go anywhere, I don’t write about interesting things and I certainly don’t see anything in my writing that I feel pleased with. I am, at best, going through the motions. Of course, in those days I had more to write about. Life as a retired man is somewhat deficient in matters of poultry, butterflies and composting toilets. Ah, the glory days . . .

It’s a little better when I look at my poetry, but even that is suffering, and my recent attempts at expanding my horizons have been met with a range of editorial response ranging from apathy to hostility.

I am trying to work out how to move on from here.

Blackpool Tower

More sleep is one thing. I slept well last night and feel full of ideas. I had been intending to take Julia in to wood turning, but she told me to go back to sleep. I was happy to do so, and grateful to wake up well-rested.

In poetry terms, I have become a machine for writing poems. Many of them are accepted for publication, but as I have said before when discussing the numbers posted by other people – quantity is not necessarily quality. The approach has served a purpose, and I will probably carry on like this, as it is a good way to practice and to pursue the, possibly mythical, ideal of writing good poetry.

In terms of writing about numismatics, I have faded out. It’s harder than poetry and blogging and after producing two years of weekly Facebook pieces, plus all the others, it was too easy to take a break when I needed time for the wedding and the funeral. This, I must address, as I have more that I want to do.

Finally, the blog. At one time I was addicted to it and felt uncomfortable if I missed a day. These days I have become very erratic and although I am managing to average a post a day (which I set as a target at the beginning of the year) I am far from blogging on a sensible daily basis.

This is all leading to one of two conclusions. One is that I need to stop writing so much so I can be more relaxed and write things of better quality. Once a week blog posts, less poetry, written to a slower tempo, and a selection of posts on numismatics which will make me a reputation as a scholar.

I probably overdid it with the “scholar” didn’t I? This really isn’t me.

So I’m going to carry on with my frantic blogging (clinging on to my daily schedule by the tips of my fingers), and I’m going to plough ahead with the targets I have set for poetry. Writing more is good practice, and the experience of rejection is forming a nice hard shell to protect me in the future. You can tell I’m getting better, a younger me would have used the word carapace. And finally, I’m going to start back on the numismatic articles. I have a few subjects I’ve been saving until I am researched and ready, but as I may have said before, the perfect time never comes and it is better to write something imperfect than leave a pile of lovely notes.

Empire State Building

I am going to do this by reorganising myself. Not only will it release time for my literary projects, but it will give me time to write my memoirs. Not proper memoirs, more like family history notes. My cousins have asked me several times about family members that they vaguely remember. On that side of the family I am the oldest by a few years and am probably the last person alive who met my great-aunts Sarah and Maud. I have very few memories of them, mainly about being intimidated by the street they lived in, and by the ladies themselves. They were both in their 80s when I met them, tall, forbidding and living in a dark three story terraced house built from Accrington brick, which was equally tall and forbidding. I know very little about them, other than what I know from the family tree, but I think I ought to write down what I personally know about the family members who were still alive when I was young. They are, in a fashion, still alive while someone remembers them. Even if that person was a bewildered small boy. My great-grandmother read to me from Rupert books. Her sisters were, in contrast, distant and austere. I never knew why they never married, because they were old enough to have married before the shortage of suitable husbands caused by the Great War. Maud, as far as I can tell, worked in the cotton trade all her life, Sarah started off in domestic service. I wonder if it was something to do with their early lives. In contrast, their brother was an assistant draper in his father’s shop and my great-grandmother was a seamstress and dressmaker. She made my mother’s wedding dress. I must find a photo of that. It was an elegant dress, considering it was made of what was available after the war and before the end of rationing. I remember seeing a piece of it once, it was a rich brocade. I wonder if it is still around. It was in with some family photos. It’s strange how some thoughts on my writing skills end up as a search for memories and a scrap of dress material.

Accrington bricks, by the way, are used in the foundations of Blackpool Tower, the Thiepval Memorial and the Empire State Building. They were also used to build the brick sculpture of the Mallard. Hence the photos.

Mallard. It looks fast even when it’s built from bricks. Not any brick, Lancashire bricks, from Accrington.