This week several things happened that have never happened to me before.
One is that I was turned down in a new way. I submitted to a magazine a couple of months ago, but it was during the time of my email problems and although I was initially accepted I was, I( discovered later, then rejected because I hadn’t written back to say I accepted the suggested edits. This was by a guest editor, who suggested it was still a good piece and could be submitted again later.
The permanent editor, who was the one dealing with my email explaining about my email problems , also suggested that I should resubmit it, so as I haven’t been writing much I resubmitted it in the next submission window. It was, as you may have guessed from the preamble, rejected by the new guest editor.
It just goes to show that some editors have better taste than others . . .
Meanwhile I saw two cyclists collide on a dual use footpath. I’ve never really trusted them. There is one outside the shop. It isn’t properly signposted and it seems to be merely an excuse for cyclists to get too close to me, or to sound their bell at me.
The accident I saw involved a young woman cyclist, who had stopped near a bend and was looking at her phone. Measured by car driving standards, stopping in the middle of the road to use your phone would be considered unacceptable, but cyclists have their own standards.
The second cyclist was travelling fast towards the bend (too fast to control his bicycle properly – you notice this sort of thing when you are a pedestrian using a stick on these dual use paths). He came to the bend, took it wide and ran into the the other cyclist.
She was quite well built (as in sportswoman, not fat) and he was quite weedy (pale and thin and looking like a heroin addict) so as they made contact (which was fortunately shoulder to shoulder) she stood firm and more or less plucked him off his machine. He stumbled a few steps and stopped, standing upright as his bicycle carried on several yards and fell over.
They were lucky it wasn’t worse.
Later that journey I saw a sparrowhawk hassling a crow, though I have seen that before.
Finally, I watched the Madame Blanc Mysteries. I haven’t been able to catch the previous two, so this was, I thought, going to be areal treat.
It wasn’t. Despite the fact that like Sally Lindsay as a writer and actress, I have to say this was dire. Plot – insubstantial. Characters – flat. Wit (as mentioned in the previews) non-existent. Grittiness (also as mentioned in the previews) also non-existent. It also had characters with French accents that reminded me of ‘Allo ‘allo.
It really was very sad to see such a promising programme turn into a wreck.
