Tag Archives: Google

What Can I Write About Today?

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I have a  number of thoughts in the pipeline but they still need a bit of work.

However, Derrick and Tootlepedal have both fallen into my trap and asked for more details of what I turned up when I searched myself on Google. They both come up with their blogs when you Google them. I don’t, because I started the blog for the Quercus Community group and, eventually, I became Quercus.

I can now provide details without looking like a blatant self-publicist or an egomaniac.

My real name is Simon Wilson, but both names are so common that if you Google me I don’t get a look in. There are just so many notable people with my name that I’m frozen out, which is slightly annoying as I’ve had for longer than  most of them.

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Trees at day’s end

Anyway, here are the links to me.

Here, here, here, here and here. And here. There were more than I thought.

There’s also a link to one of my blog posts, but though I’ve talked of haibun on the blog several times, and even published a couple, Google doesn’t seem to pick them up. The blog post has a link to a haiku that wasn’t picked up by Google.

There is also a book review  for a book of haibun and other short poems by Xenia Tran, better known on WordPress as Whippet Wisdom. It’s not much of a review but if Goggle can be bothered to note it, it would be rude not to share the link.

According to the blog, I had nine acceptances, but could only find six by using Google. I can’t look them up by name because I’ve forgotten what they were. Somewhere I have a display book with them all in, but I haven’t seen that for a while now I come to think about it.

It’s not an ego thing – I don’t feel the need to print it all out and make a book of it. I just do it because when  you get a rejection it’s easy to take the book off the shelf and remind yourself that you have been a success and will be again. Well, it’s easy to take the book off the shelf if you can remember which shelf.

One rejection, or even several in a row, only means you’re in a temporary dip.

Form, as any coach will tell you, is temporary, but class will last for ever.

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A Figure in the Fog

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Learning Welsh

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I’ve recently been toying with a vague idea of learning Welsh. To put this into perspective, it’s one of a long line of vague ideas to do things which I have had over the years. Do not be surprised to learn, in ten years time, that I still have the same vague idea.

Actually, after reading my list of medical adventures, you may be surprised to see that I am thinking that far into the future. I don’t blame you for that, as I did nearly write “five” and “next year” before deciding to use the power of positive thinking.

After reading a couple of translations of the Hedd Wynn poem I became interested in knowing which translation was more true to the original. There are two here and another one here. At that point I used Google, which produced a version that fitted in with the translations. As time has gone by I’ve started thinking I really out to do better than Google. There are internet language courses, so my only excuse is indolence.

I’ve made a start with some road signs.

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I’m clearly going to have to expand my vocabulary if I’m going to make any inroads into translating poetry.

Apart from sloth my only other problem is that Welsh is the most foreign language I’ve ever seen written in the Roman alphabet. It’s even more foreign than languages written in the Greek or Cyrillic alphabets.

In fact, the more I read about Welsh, its dialects and its counting system, the more I feel that it may be beyond me.