Tag Archives: competitions

Blogging Weekly

Sorry, everybody, I’ve done it again. Suddenly, a week has passed and I have not blogged, or read any blogs, or commented or replied. It’s strange how I was addicted to blogging at one time, and couldn’t settle unless I had posted something that day. I was, I admit, erratic, but addicted all the same.

I then made my delinquency worse by writing a post and, feeling it wasn’t good enough, putting it to one side to see to later. “Later” turned into three days and I’m still not sure it’s interesting enough to bother publishing. Any7thing in italics are todays additions to the draft from 3 days ago.

These days I have to almost force myself to make time amongst my busy schedule of procrastination and displacement activity.  Well, not quite a schedule. That implies a degree of organisation that is way beyond me.

In a rare out break of self-discipline I have started cutting back on displacement activity – so no games, no and less browsing. It’s still not perfect, but I have been much more productive in the last few days. It’s the middle of the month now, and I really need to start writing poetry again, bearing in mind the large number of deadlines looming.

As I sit here I have three pages torn from a notebook. IT has 23 items on it. One won’t be done because I have temporarily mislaid the item it relates to. One is not possible and needs moving to another part of the list, where it will become possible. Several need me to go out and take photographs, several need more research and some simply need an email or a phone call. It’s going to be interesting to see what I have done by the end of the day.

 

I actually managed to do a good number of them – six fully and 3 partially – but after performing the one that said “Tidy desk, recycle paper” I lost the list so will have to start again with a new list.

The reason for this activity – I just wasted an entire day on low-level admin, playing games, browsing Wikipedia, going through auction lists and watching TV. The auction lists were probably the worst waste of time. I don’t deal these days and I don’t even go to places where I could pick up a bargain – so why am I checking the prices of vintage toys? Come to think of it, my budget is empty after recent car repairs and the washing machine, so why am I looking at anything? Time to wind my neck in and accumulate a little more cash.

We are doing some family history at the moment – one of Julia’s great uncles was hit by a bus and killed in the blackout. Tomorrow I will post a piece I wrote on carrots in WW2. Not sure if I have already done it, but brace yourself for more trivia. Or, if you have seen it before, prepare for more dull stuff. 

The saddest bit is the report on the doings at the village show. Good news, we won’t be needing to move things round to accommodate an avalanche of rosettes and trophies. Bad news – most of the art prizes went to two people and most of the photographic prizes went to a different pair of people. It’s often the way with competitions, which is why I have mixed feelings about them. However, Julia had fun entering, and we enjoyed moaning about the results (good things won, but there wasn’t enough variety, was our conclusion). Next year, I am going to enter too. I may even enter the chutney competition and the baking.

And there you have it – a post that starts with a weak pun and fizzles out, crushed under an avalanche of dull trivia. This is my life.

A Poetry Sort of Day

My copy of The Poetry Review came through today. It was accompanied by a copy of Poetry News and seven glossy leaflets advertising poetry competitions.

It’s fair to say, from looking at this pile, and skimming Poetry News, that poetry is popular at the moment.

I fear, looking at the pile of paper, that the rise of poetry may be linked to a decline in tree stocks. This wouldn’t be so bad if they were all limericks and light verse but there is a lot of very earnest poetry about. To be fair, we wouldn’t appreciate the humorous stuff without the serious verse, but there’s an awful lot of it.

It seems that the Grenfell Towers fire has been a popular subject this year. Last year Donald Trump was a popular subject. I remember that last time I took a serious interest in poetry the 2004 Morecambe Bay tragedy supplied the subject for a lot of competition entries. Misery loves company, as they say, and it seems to love poetry too.

If I’m going to be a proper poet I may have to ditch the clerihews and get serious.

Meanwhile, I also got a copy of Don Paterson’s 40 Sonnets. It’s looking good so far (I just had a quick look at the first two), so that’s tonight’s reading sorted.