Monthly Archives: August 2026

Time to Write a List

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Wild flowers

Today, after all the normal impedimenta of life had been cleared and Julia had been waved off to her afternoon in the tearoom, I started work in earnest.

First – the list, specifically the poetry list.

I need around 20 haiku for various things and have about six which are currently suitable. Some of them are needed for the end of the week. Last week was not a good writing week and I needed some discipline. I put it on my list and I now have 21 to sort through. It’s not enough, as there are always some that fail to make the grade, but it’s a start.

I need a variety of other poems, but I have until the end of the month to finish them. It’s not an ideal timescale but it’s more relaxed than last month.

Pigs and flowers

It’s not an ideal system, because it is probably best characterised as the triumph of quantity over quality. On the other hand, it’s unavoidable that the doctrine of practice makes perfect also takes a hand and the more I write, the better I get. There was a drop back in quality a year or so ago but as I had sepsis twice, and as it’s usually accompanied by the words “life threatening” when you see it described in newspapers, I’m going to cut myself some slack there.

I’m feeling a lot better now that’s settled, and all it took was a list to set me going. I notes and prompts but until I made a list, nothing happened.  By tomorrow the effect of the list will have worn off, but I’m going to be happy this afternoon.

However, Julia will be back in an hour and I’d like to get more done so I will leave it now. The more of this month’s writing that I do now, the more of next month’s I can get a head start on.

Flowers

A note on modern retail – they don’t do the cheap flowers at TESCO now, you have to buy from an affiliate. The difference is that flowers at £3.99-£5.99 are something you can add on a whim and delivery, with the groceries, is easy. They are now much nicer flowers, but they cost £24.99 and come at inconvenient times. I’m going to re-examine my flower buying habits.

 

 

Thursday Morning 7.29

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Did it really take an hour and seven minutes to write the previous post? Well, yea and no.

It certainly took that length of time from stating to finishing, but in that time I also attended to a couple of comments, read my emails and searched for photographs that were badly labelled. Or, in truth, not labelled at all. I developed lazy habits early on in my blogging career and regularly waste time as a result.

I also searched for a couple of links and read the review on my poem, rejected a couple of ideas for things to say and rewrote a couple of paragraphs.

Here, halfway through my second blog post of the day, I note that I’m about halfway through and it has only taken six minutes.

My conclusion is that I can still write reasonably quickly, but waste time with all the peripheral activity.

Nella Last with Clifford, the son who went on to be a sculptor

 

Nella Last, or Housewife, 49, of whom I have written more than once, wrote 12 million words in her diaries, including 2 million during the war. If she wrote at 20 words a minute, as I have just (approximately) done, it would have taken her 417 days.

Of course, I doubt that she wrote as fast as that. You don’t do you? There’s thinking time and musing time and simply staring into space time. I’m doing a bit of that now.

I’m on 224 words and have taken sixteen minutes. Several of those have just been spent wondering how to finish this off with a point.

There is no point, simply a reflection on how much “writing time” is spent on things that aren’t really writing. And that’s before you start to consider the endless writing and rewriting involved in writing something decent.

Julia is up now and it’s 7.48. Probably a good time to put the kettle on. But first I have to add tags and photos. At least I don’t need to find a witty title.

 

After doing the links etc it’s now 8.03 and it’s becoming clearer where my day goes. Fifteen minutes just disappeared as I looked for a link to Clifford Last.

Thursday Morning 6.22

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It’s actually 6.23 now, but if I go back and correct the title more time will leak away. It’s rare, but I actually wrote the title first today.

August is here and the year seems to be rushing by. I’ve often felt like this – it’s just what seems to happen. The longest day is behind us, the year hovers for a while, like a cartoon boat on the brink of a waterfall, and August arrives. I think of autumn, shorter days and mortality. It’s one of those months (April being the other) when the progress of the year seems to reach a point of no return. In April I realise that the new year is properly under way and four months later . . .

I’m struggling. After being selected for a Distinctive Scribble award in Eucalypt magazine, I have to select a poem for the next edition and write something intelligent about it. The selection of the poems was simple enough. I read them all twice then started going through them again slowly. My short list took shape and I ended up with a list of about a quarter of the poems in the issue. It would have been longer but as you go through yuo can discard a number as you know they aren’t going to make the cut. Then you can go back and cut some of the early choices.

O

I’m left with eleven. A day later I’m left with three. But have so far failed to say anything sensible. The trouble is that so many poets have multiple degrees. I don’t. The review of my poem includes the words “concluding spondee”. A spondee is a metrical foot consisting of two long syllables. It’s one of those poetic things I zoned out when we did it at school. I am incapable of writing anything like that  My only hope is that I can get through the experience without making myself look like a total idiot. The gist of my comments (which look like they should be about 500 words long), is that I picked the winner because I liked it more than the others. The problem is that I now have to explain, in 490 words, why I liked it.

So – select the best poem out of 80 good poems. Let 79 poets down gently. Avoid sounding like an idiot.

What could possibly go wrong?

Here’s my poem, by the way. You may recognise the story of the shed.

  we had several
half tins of assorted paint
and a subdued shed
now we have neither
—bright stripes

 

I can only find one of the shed photos, the rest are flowers from the gardens at roughly the time of the shed painting.

Kintsugi – Broken Pots and Gold Paint

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Kintsugi is the ancient Japanese art of repairing broken pots.

It’s fine to start with – it’s about mending broken pots, embracing the imperfections, adding to the history of the object and making it more beautiful. It can be extended to include personal qualities like working with your faults and bouncing back from adversity.  Broken items are put back together and the repairs are highlighted in gold.

In Japan it is an ancient art form.

In the hands of the west it has become a handicraft, the philosophy has been cheapened and it is now possible to do courses and buy kits. I checked with one of the courses. Step One of the course is to break a pot, which does not seem true to the original intention (though there were accusations of collectors doing this in Japan in previous centuries). It is also possible to buy kits, one of which gave me a moment of amusement. The feedback indicated that one of the tea bowls in the kit had arrived broken, but went on to point out that this saved a job. Probably the only time an item broken in transport has been well received.

I’m not knocking it, because it can still produce a lovely and artistic piece of work, but I am pointing out that if you are happy with that, don’t dress it up. And if you want to be true to the spirit of kintsugi, don’t break a pot on purpose. Meanwhile, I got a poem out of it. I may get another. Released from the tyranny of submissions deadlines I find I can, once again, write. Definitely time for a rethink.

This is a haibun which mentions kintsugi, though only in  small way. More of it is about Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera and being married. And, of course, specifically about being married to a woman who stabbed herself in the jugular vein with a piece of broken plant pot because she wouldn’t ask for help. I originally posted a link to it from this post so if you remember it, sorry for being repetitive.

Self Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird (1940)

 

A Necklace of Thorns

Despite their fame, their paintings and their place in history, Diego and Frida (we are on first name terms in my imagination) still had to chat about the weather, and bicker about who forgot to buy more milk for breakfast. I imagine the weather was mostly sunny, and that it was Diego who forgot the milk. With his affairs and all those frescoes, it must have been difficult to fit the shopping in.

My wife’s throat, spiked with black sutures, is less inflamed today. I check each morning, trying not to let my worries show. Across the toast crumbs, she reminds me that we need more bread today, and I have to paint the garage doors this spring. For a moment my mind flits to a glorious picture of doors featuring Leon Trotsky and Emiliano Zapata against a backdrop of moustachioed revolutionaries. My wife suggests we stick with green.

today
she has her stitches out
I joke I will buy
gold paint to mend the scar
shared history

First Published cho 22.1 (2026)

Zapata and Trotsky seemed to disappear when I wanted them.

 

Poetry, Pigeons and Purple Emperors

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Yesterday was the last day of the month and several submissions windows drew to a close. I was rushed and badly prepared. The worst bit was that I paid for a competition entry and realised when I looked at the receipt, that it was just past midnight, meaning that I had missed the deadline. I wrote and told them to accept it as a donation. The Ancient Idiot rides again!

Baby rabbit in the garden

In the end I made nine submissions of the ten I had intended. August is a quieter month, with only five submissions planned. I’m hoping to catch up, as there are 12 planned for September. I have very little completed work at the moment. What is worse is that I have very little that I actually like, and if I don’t like it, I don’t know why anyone else would.

We have had Stock Doves in the garden several times recently. They are modest birds, not much different from a feral pigeon in many ways, and come to feed on the seed spilt by the smaller birds on the feeder.

Stock Doves and “grass”

It’s been a good summer for seeing new bird species in the garden but it has been a thin season for butterflies. Having said that, one of my sister’s friends saw a Purple Emperor in the country park. They are found over the border in Northamptonshire and have been spotted in Lincolnshire.

I’ve been reading about them, and about a memorial to a crashed aircraft near one of the woods where they can be found, and am feeling enthused to make a trip.

Note on the photographs – the rabbit photo was taken on the 19th May, the Stock Dove photo on 31st July. The grass in the last picture actually looks a bit greener than it really is – what a difference. Apart from the colour, yes it does look scruffy in both pictures, but there doesn’t seem a lot of point mowing when it is already under stress.

Always close to hand

Sorry about the title (which I forgot to add in the first instance) – they are doves, not pigeons, and Purple Emperors hardly get a mention, but I am driven by a need to alliterate.  Yes, it is a word, I checked.