I’m on Page 42 of Failed Haiku this month. I still have difficulty seeing a three line poem as a poem. It’s a senryu, by the way, slightly fewer rules than a haiku but still three lines. You can also write them in one line, but that requires more skill. This is all part of my positive thinking mode – I decided to make sure I got more haiku/senryu practice. that’s the good thing about monthly magazines – instant results. If my positive thinking had said “write sonnets” it would take three to six months for the results to filter back. Traditional poetry magazine can be a bit slow.

There would also be the problem that it would take me months to write one. I’ve only ever finished one sonnet. It took ages and it wasn’t very good, but it was14 lines and it did rhyme in all the right places. Even Shakespeare had to start somewhere.

It was a reasonable day at work – we had some decent orders on eBay, a couple of good customers in the shop and we bought a few bits and pieces. Not a spectacular day, but a much better one than we’ve been having recently. We even had some nice emails from happy customers. The owner had a family event on and needed to be home by 4.00 so we knocked off half an hour early. I sat down in the living room to read one of the new poetry magazines that had arrived (I’m researching new venues for publication) and that was how Julia found me when she returned home 45 minutes later. Well, I was in the chair, though technically I was dozing rather than reading. It was a very dull poem.

Home Guard Bomb Disposal  Arm Badge

The header picture shows the last pre-decimal halfpenny of 1967 and the new decimal one of 1968.  The tiny ½p is a fraction of the size of the pre-decimal ½d, but actually worth more.

The badge at the bottom of the post is an arm badge for the members of the Home Guard who qualified in Bomb Disposal.. It’s a far cry from Dad’s Army. During the war, 1,206 men of the Home Guard were killed on active service, most of them as a result of their work with unexploded bombs. The recipient’s daughter brought it in with some other bits and pieces as nobody in the family wanted to keep them.