Category Archives: Uncategorized

Summary of a Day Where Not Much Happened

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(Wrote this yesterday and forgot to post it).

It’s just coming up to 11.00 and I have been up for three hours or thereabouts. I’m retired, I don’t need to work things out to the minute.

In that time I have read blogs, commented, replied to comments and finished off a post which I then posted without tags or a title. I’ve also had breakfast (fruit and porridge), prepared by Julia, I just needed to eat it.

And that’s it. A pathetically small amount of activity for three hours. I’ve not sorted out a delivery that needs sorting, I’ve not replied to an NHS email (the crisp reply I wrote as a first attempt was judged to be in need of work by Julia). I am therefore going to waste twenty minutes being effusive and apologetic for something that isn’t my fault and ten minutes showing Julia how  I have done what she says. Then, of course, I am going to send my original version.

Actually, I just remembered. I have put in the TESCO order. I have established, with forensic precision, who is at fault for us running out of Weetabix. I have cleaned my teeth extensively. It seems to take longer these days. Fewer teeth but more hiding places for strawberry seeds. We are having raspberries next week – it will be worse. I have cleared out some  emails. I have wondered about the meaning of life. I have tided away a few things I left out last night. I have researched a new email system, as I am getting fed up with BT and their regular outages. And their unhelpful customer service “bot”. I’m sure they do it deliberately as they want to get rid of all their old email customers.

And so, I drift, in my unfocused manner, back to the things I haven’t done. I might have to write a list. Or I may drift on, do a bit, make lunch and snooze in front of the TV.

I am retired, and I don’t have to work all day.

Birds and Mice

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I have a new mouse. After several months of blaming my computer, Microsoft updates and a dirty screen (I  grasp at straws) it occurred to me that the problem might be my mouse. A look at the mouse, with its top worn smooth by my fingers as I performed thousands of scrolls and clicks,  revealed that I have had it quite a long time.

Green Woodpecker – this an adult on the farm some years ago

The final test, after months of problems with random menus, failures to cut and paste, and an increasing tendency to rearrange text, came when I realised I could use the panel on my laptop that serves as a mouse. Everything worked perfectly when I used that.  It’s also working perfectly with the replacement mouse. I assume something just wore out with constant use.

It’s one of those boiling frog moments, when you suddenly realise that a succession of tiny changes has crept up on you and combined into a serious fault without you noticing. Now I have a new mouse everything works better, and using the computer is so much easier.

I’m sure there is more to report than that. Something important happened earlier in the week but I forget what it is. I’m sure it’s important though.

We have had the sparrowhawk in the garden again, and an immature Green Woodpecker visited the front lawn in pursuit of ants. That’s now three sightings for the sparrowhawk (a female) and one for the Green Woodpecker. I did see an adult in the trees next to the house before, but this is the first time we’ve seen one in the garden.

Great Tit – or “lunch” as sparrowhawks think of them

Bad news for the garden Great Tit population is that their size and eating habits make them ideal prey for the sparrowhawk.

I’m sure there was something else I meant to write about, but I can’t bring it to mind. I’m sure it will come back to me. Or maybe not.

PS – forgot title and tags before publishing. Bah!

Devil Dog Goes Nuts

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It’s three days since my last post, give or take a few hours. This is handy because it is half the previous lapse and makes it look like I’m making progress.

England lost 2-1 tonight and Argentina paraded round the pitch afterwards with a political banner. It was against FIFA regulations on such things, it’s not a classy way to celebrate a win, but that’s football for you.

Anyway, given that Donald Trump seems to consider himself a personal friend of the King, and an expert on football, I’m tending to think of the result as 2-1 (subject to official confirmation by President Trump).

That is my nod to world events of historical note.

Now, how about this. If you think you had a bad day, see what Billy Mann has been up to today.

You will then understand my title. And Billy’s anguish.

(Warning: Not for the Faint-Hearted)

Meanwhile, my day progressed quite well. After a major breakdown of my email system, and needing to use it quite urgently as I had two submissions to make, I resorted to the BT help bot.

Pigs and flowers

This consisted of a circular system where the questions always came back to the same answer – “Many customers with this problem found that resetting their password solved the problem”. Well it didn’t solve mine, because to reset the password you have to be able to progress further than it was allowing me to go. Absolutely useless. Useless email, useless help system. I will be resetting my password, but I will be resetting it using a different provider. I’m not looking forward to changing, but I’m not sure how long I can carry on with the shoddy service either.

I did eventually get the two submissions sent off in time and then did a third one, which will surprise the editor, who is more used to me submitting with only hours to spare.

Finally, another acceptance for a tanka prose and a request via the Military History Group for use of another of my articles. Looks like I’m doing something right.

Meadow flowers at East Leake

The Days Pass

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It is now six days since my last post. They slip by so, easily in my days spent sitting by fans sipping cold water and eating ice cream. That’s not my entire day, of course, Julia is rationing me to one ice cream a day. It is for the best. I’ve been out a few times but returned to shade and fans as soon as possible. We have had a builder  in doing more jobs that should have been done years ago. We still have jobs that need doing too. It never ends . . .

Several notable people have died in this period, including a politician who seems to have been murdered and a TV presenter who was my age when he died. I could, I suppose, offer some commentary on the events but all I would be doing would be voicing an opinion based on what I have seen of them on TV. They both seemed OK and I’m sorry they died sooner than they, and their families would have wanted. These days I tend to think of people in relation to our ages – one was 11 years older than me, one was my age. Any sadness I may feel at their passing would be heavily intertwined with thoughts on my life expectancy.

I also try to avoid the modern curse of thinking I know people after reading Wikipedia, an obituary and a scattering of internet gossip.

I see one of our national football team has just referred to him and his team mates putting in a “hard shift”. Shifts tend to be eight hours long, depressing, tedious and poorly paid. It’s not how I would describe the life of a professional footballer.

I just checked up on my views to see if I was being fair and accurate. It seems they start their training  days “early” and “often around 7:30 or 8am”. I can’t help feeling that this says as much about the life of a journalist as it does about the life of a footballer, as most of the working world doesn’t see this as early. Nor do we start the day with a light breakfast of low fat and high protein ingredients. Employers generally expect you to have eaten before you arrive.

However, like members of the Royal Family, footballers are easy targets, as they are so divorced from the realities of life. I will, therefore, desist, though I will link to the doings of the Royals. Prince Harry, in his campaign against the press, seems to have come unstuck this week and he and his celebrity mates failed to carry any of their points in the recent court case. Yes, I admit that it must be irritating to have the press pursuing you, but you can’t have press coverage when it suits you and turn it off when it doesn’t. Anyway, none of the people that joined him in the case were particulalrly interesting, so either way, it’s no interest to me, apart from a variety of public figures being told to grow up.

I’m very conflicted with this case. Yes, I’m glad the celebrities lost, but I don’t really like the press winning, and I certainly don’t like the idea of the lawyers making money from it. In the world of cosmic balance it feels like we all lost a little bit this week.

In poetry terms I have had either one (or two) acceptances (I’m not quite sure when I last reported on this) and a rejection. I’m about to start submitting, as there are some things I need to get in before the 15th. I meant to do them last week but I just ignored them and sat in front of a fan. That, I think, is where I began, so it’s now time to go.

Football’s Shame

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Football has had many shameful moments. Enoch West, a local man (I say that as a resident of Nottingham for the last 37 years) was a great example of one of football’s villains. Born in Hucknall, he played professionally for Sheffield United before transferring to Nottingham Forest for a fee of £5. He was the first player ever sent off whilst playing for Nottingham Forest and in 1915, playing for Manchester United,  was convicted of match fixing. Four United Players and four Liverpool players were banned. West refused to admit his wrongdoing (possibly because he was wrongfully convicted) and his ban was not lifted until 1945 – a thirty year ban being the longest in Football League history.

For an American parallel, look to the Chicago Black Sox (not only a racist recasting of the White Sox name, but a crime against orthography) and “Shoeless Joe” Jackson. Of course, they have made films about that, but Enoch West has never, as far as I know, appeared on screen.

I love the history of sport, it’s just a shame that modern sport is so tawdry and diminished in comparison. The money is bigger but the characters are not the same.

Enoch West was banned for 30 years, Jackson was banned for 105. Balogun was reprieved before the ban was served.

Today, in contrast, Forest just announced they were selling Elliot Anderson to Manchester City for £115 million. Inflation of a high order indeed.

FIFA also announced the shortest ban in football history today too. Donald Trump got in touch with them to tell them that he didn’t think the offence that earned a red card, and a one match ban, for USA player Folarin Balogun was a foul.

Donald Trump is, of course, an oracle on all things, including the rules of football. And Gianni Infantini, after surviving many investigations for corruption, is an expert at being in the centre of controversy.  Trump has already had a meaningless “Peace Prize” awarded by FIFA, isn’t he just being greedy by demanding they re-write the rules to suit the USA national team?

The trouble isn’t whether it was a foul or not, or whether the ref was right or not, it’s that football has made it look as if it is open to corruption, that if does not back up its referees and that the USA, if it does pull off a fairytale ending and win the World Cup, will forever be remembered for controversy.

We might have to start using an asterisk again, like they did for Roger Maris and his batting record.

 

Out of Ideas

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Community Gardening – Sherwood – Nottingham

I didn’t realise until WP started posting a daily dose of retrospective posts, that I am writing about the same thing over and over again.

In 2025 I was writing about medical matters and the planning and scheduling behind my poetry writing.

In 2024 I wrote about elections and the moral shortcomings of politicians, including Peter Mandelson.

In 2023 I wrote two posts on the same day. One was about not having any ideas (note that I wrote the title for this post before starting the original post, which is now edited to nothing). The other was about the contents of my head and producing ideas from there.

In 2022 the subject was ideas. Can you see a pattern developing? That was the year that I gave up on titles – the post being Day 185.

In 2021 it was slightly better. That was the day that a lady rang the shop to confirm that we were Collectors World.  Having established that, she proceeded to ask me how she could change the batteries in her carol-singing ceramic rabbit figurine. It turns out there was a shop selling gi

In 2020 I wrote 10 Good Things About Breathing.

In 2019 it was a rant about old folk on mobility scooters. It was a sign of things to come, and slightly poignant as my own mobility scooter is sadly under-used.

Bumble Bee Mencap Garden Wilford

It seems to have been a good day for me, as there are more posts – 2018, two from 2017 and one from 2016.  I won’t link to them all as it’s a lot of reading, but I am pleased I managed to get 11 successive years. On some dates they only pick up half of that.

It seems that the further I get back the more interesting I become – some of the unlinked posts include baking pizza, and building benches from pallets. However, there is still some chuntering about sunburn, fish and chips and birdwatching.

The pattern is there on other days too and the conclusion is clear – I am gradually writing about a shrinking pool of subjects. I don’t just need new subjects for poems, I need new subjects for blogging.

The shopping has arrived, so after we have put that away I will start to look for new ideas.

Figs at Wilford Mencap Garden

 

 

 

What a Difference a “T” Makes

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Reflecting on immortality this morning, I couldn’t help wondering what the difference is between immortality and immorality. One letter and fifty years, I decided. Even if I were single I wouldn’t have the energy for chasing women these days and nights of beer and curry are restricted by my digestion and fear of hangovers. I am not the man I was.

A mixture of books

I would like to achieve immortality through my writing, though I doubt that this will happen. The best I can hope for is that I actually get round to producing a book of poetry and that I get myself organised enough to fulfill my legal requirements, someone may dust my book off in a couple of centuries and cite it in their thesis on whatever they are doing – average poetry, vanity publishing or analysis of paper types.

Legal requirements? That’s right,  books published in the UK should be sent to the following Legal Deposit libraries – the British Library, National Library of Scotland, National Library of Wales. the Libraries of the University of Oxford, Cambridge University and the Library of Trinity College Dublin. It’s a strange list and one I’m not particularly happy with as Scotland, Wales and Ireland are always critical of England and Oxford and Cambridge can afford to buy their own books.

However, it’s nice to know that it will be available, whether it’s for a future scholar, a survivor of WW3 looking for toilet paper or a monkey dressed in leather armour. Or anybody dressed in leather armour, for that matter. Why, in all these fantasy and post-apocalyptic films do they never invent the printing press or a system of proportional representation, but they always manage to rivet bits of leather together?

That’s my thought for the day.

The Gardening Section

As One Door Closes . . .

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Little Egret – Horseshoe Point

That’s it. The scramble to write a post a day and beat last year’s publication record for publication, is now over.  I have thrown in the towel and will now blog when I feel like it. ironically, I may feel more like it when I remove the target I set myself.  It was OK when I was keeping up and missing one or two, which were easily caught up. Once I got a week behind, and more to the point, did so without noticing, it was till within my capabilities, but I found I wasn’t particularly bothered.

The same goes for the numismatic writing. I let it lapse about a month ago and so far nobody even seems to have noticed that the Facebook page has had nothing new on it. This was just a pause due to the wedding, but as it went on I realised that I felt more relaxed. And when I realised that nobody had noticed, I realised that it didn’t matter. I started doing it to back the efforts of the member who set the page up, and tried to enlist the support of several other members, but none of them stepped forward to help. Eventually someone, who never raises a finger to help others within the society, will mention that it’s a shame we stopped doing it. I could illustrate that simple remark with many examples, but I won’t.

The poetry is still going OK. This morning I wrote one that I feel happy with and I have had two acceptances this week. It’s difficult to say where i am compared to this time last year because of the problem of defining “this time”. I’m close to my results for the first six months of last year, with one or two results still pending. I may well be exactly on target, but as I had a couple of disappointing results early on it’s a bit borderline.  All I can do is keep trying. I’ve made 53 submissions this year compared to 45 last year, so I’ve been putting the work in, even if the success rate is down. This isn’t necessarily due to writing badly, I’m just trying new places and it can be tricky. However, it is good for me to make things harder.

Little Egret

Finding Myself Lacking

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Swan at National Arboretum

I just did a count, and found that as of yesterday I had written 174 posts this year. Unfortunately, as yesterday was day 181 of 2026, this means i was seven posts behind on my target. This was very annoying as, until four weeks ago, I was on target.

My first thought was that I should write like crazy and get the seven made up so I could sign off with an average one a day, as I had said. But it would take me at least two days, which would effectively still leave me short of the target and mean I had to write for at least another day, and leave my target at one a day, but for six months and three days.

Whooper Swans on farmland near Frampton Marsh. Note the straight necks and yellow/black bills.

On the other hand, tomorrow will be day 183 of the year, and thus halfway through. I could, at the risk of looking like some sort of single-minded maniac, write nine posts in two days and achieve a nice neat record of one post a day for the first half of the year. It is an elegant and balanced solution, albeit from a man who is looking steadily less well-balanced as this post goes on.

This is a worry, not because I failed in my self-selected target, or even because I can’t do a simple thing like writing 250 words a day, but because I can’t accept it and have to manufacture a tidy end.

This is a bit too much like my Dad, who started to constrain his days and his trips out with the need to fit in with self-induced set mealtimes.

For now, this will do, but I will be back later with more posts. Or a reflection on mania. I am not sure which.

Mute Swan, Lapwings and Black Headed Gull

 

Poetry and Morality?

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Don’t get excited, despite the title it isn’t a newly discovered Jane Austen novel where an opium addicted poet moves in next door to the three attractive daughters living in a Hampshire Rectory.

I decided to include a poem a few days ago when I was discussing moral judgements to be made by poets. When I discovered how many days I have missed posting recently, I decided it was definitely time, as republishing poetry is quick and easy.. I don’t think I’ve posted this one before. If I have, my apologies.

One major change has taken place since this poem was written – 18 carat gold was £38 per gram in 2023 when this was written. It’s now £72. At peak it was about £96. That’s the effect of wars, disturbed markets and political panic.

My contribution to the discussion was to say that I didn’t think it was my job to make decisions based on my perception of morality. I was then asked whether or not I made a moral judgement every time I wrote a poem.

I’m fairly sure that I don’t. This one is just a description of one line on the official documentation relating to the valuation of my father’s estate, with a couple of bits of trivia relating to death. Maybe I should. But to be honest, I have enough trouble wrestling words into a poem, without debating the rights and wrongs of it. I’m just shallow. I could, of course, write a second poem based on this one and the new price of gold, but I’m not sure the world needs another poem about war and capitalism.

That of course, was just one of the questions surrounding poetry and morals. Two others are about the morality of supporting right-wing magazines by submitting (it’s always the right-wing that gets questioned, isn’t it?), and I asked about the morality of reading poems by poets with questionable moral stances.

I will leave it there, as it has the potential to develop in a way that is neither useful or interesting. I’m off to read some poetry. Now, should I try the racist Larkin, the incestuous Byron or the fascist Pound? Even Dylan Thomas was overly fond of the bottle and committed a number of crimes against neckwear. Morals can be so confusing.

Does anyone have a view?

On Dunwich beach

 

Weighed in the Balance

The Egyptians believed that Anubis would weigh the heart of the deceased against a feather to see if they were worthy of the afterlife. Later, scientists calculated that the human soul weighed 21 grams.

This morning, preparing the paperwork for my late father’s estate, my heart skipped a beat as I saw the details of his life reduced to a weight – 8 grams of 18 carat gold at £38 a gram. That is the price set on his wedding ring, the value that the tax man places on 63 years of marriage.

his life
persists in memory
—dust floats in the sun

First published in Blithe Spirit August 2023.

Ringlet