Tag Archives: nosebleed

Wednesday? Already?

Another outing for this photo

Somehow, I missed Tuesday. It wasn’t much of a day and we had rain falling audibly on the flat roof above us as we worked.

The only good thing was that when I switched on my emails to check them before going to bed, was that I have had another acceptance.

It my look, to someone just reading the blog for the first time, as if my life is one long acceptance, but this isn’t the case. Due to the erratic nature of my submissions I hadn’t submitted anything since October. My October submissions produced one acceptance and two rejections. It ws a poor month, everything considered, but sometimes there are months where nobody is open for submissions. I appear to have made twelve submissions in September, but they were better spread than my efforts in January and I didn’t notice them.

I have noticed that editors tend to select the first haibun or tanka prose from the selection when I submit the required three. This might be because I naturally order them from bad to worse. It’s definitely true that the third is often not as good as the others. Then I looked again. My last six successful submissions all resulted in the first one being picked. However, I then had a run of six where the first was only picked once, so I may be wrong.

This is known as clutching at straws. Tuesday produced little to write about and Wednesday has been little better (a blood test and a Shingles booster vaccination)  so I’ve written about submissions.

Snowy Detail

The alternative was to tell you about my nosebleed (I’m currently typing with a piece of kitchen roll shoved up one nostril) but I thought a couple of hundred words on submissions might be less disturbing than the word picture of a gory keyboard warrior and the resulting discussion.  So I won’t discuss it.

No photographs on this one because WP seems to have stopped working. I can select photos but the button to load them seems to have stopped working. This applies to headers and photos in the text.

I suspect interference from foreign governments. I’m having problems with eBay photos at work too. It’s state-sponsored hackers. Has to be. I mean, WP and eBay never have problems . . .

Magpie in the snow

There is a warning out for snow tomorrow, though it is hedged round with provisos. It may not actually arrive. Or it may be sleet. None of the scenarios engages my enthusiasm. Even if there is no snow I won’t feel happy until it’s Friday and there is definitely no snow.

Yes, later in the evening I was able to add photos.

After the Lord Mayor’s Show…

I don’t know if the expression used in the title will be familiar to some of my overseas readers. It is often rendered as “After the Lord mayor’s Show comes the dustcart.” I assume it has been bowdlerised over the years, as the material collected after the show was clearly horse manure and not dust.

To sum up our day- seaside, egrets, owl,marshes, magic. And so Act One ends with out happy couple heading off into the sunset…

Actually it’s a bit early for sunset but the sun is falling and there is a hint of colour in the sky.

The conversation is interrupted by a “Ping!” and a warning light on the dashboard. It was the one that warns about a tyre losing pressure. No big worry, as they do it regularly and you have to pump them up.However, I did wonder…

I reset it. My reasoning is that if it doesn’t go again for weeks there isn’t a problem, but if it sounds again in a day or two you have a slow puncture.

Twenty miles later, it sounded again. By this time we were back in Sutton on Sea and I pulled into the Car park and called Green Flag. After the debacle of our last wheel change I didn’t want to risk it in a deserted car park in the growing dusk. (Actually it was nearly 4.30, so not quite night but getting uncomfortably close for a man with poor form in recent tyre changes.

I decided to walk down to the toilet as we’d had several drinks on the trip, and found that they were locked. It was 4.31, which is how I know the time.. I just checked – most of the toilets round there are locked at 4.00, apart from the ones that are locked on Sundays and the ones that are locked all winter. It can’t be an economy measure as the lights were still on in the locked toilets.

I think it’s just a way of inconveniencing elderly visitors.

Fortunately, by the time I got back to the car and took the spare out, the man from Green Flag arrived. This is top quality service, as well as being a lot cheaper than the AA.

We were soon back on four wheels and 200 yards later we were outside the chip shop. The darkened, closed chip shop. After a number of average visits it’s only the fact we’ve been going there for 30 years that keeps us going. They really are pushing their luck. I’d been looking forward to chips too.

We went further down the coast. It was dark by the time we reached Skegness and selected KFC for our meal. It’s good, reliable, has toilets and a car park. And it isn’t McDonald’s. McDonald’s are OK for snacks but this was our evening meal. We do not have high standards…

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Wicked Zinger Meal – why can’t they just call it a chicken sandwich meal?

It would be nice to report that we had an excellent meal and an uneventful trip home. We did have a good meal, mostly, but that will be another post. We didn’t quite have an uneventful journey home.

The conversation went like this.

“You should have stopped picking your nose fifty years ago.”

“I was clearing an obstruction in my nasal passages.”

“You’re disgusting.”

“Do you have any tissues?”

Rustling in bag.

“No, but I’ve got a spare serviette from KFC.”

Sometimes, when you are driving, you just can’t manage a decent nose blow to clear your nasal passages and a good prod has to suffice. Unfortunately, when you are on Warfarin, a good prod can result in copious bleeding and a lecture on the habits of small boys and grown men being far too much alike.

We saw another owl later. First we saw the reflected light of its eyes as it flew across the road in front of us, then again as it turned towards us for a better look, which also enabled us to the the dumpy brown shape of what was probably a Tawny Owl. which isn’t a bad final memory of the day. With any luck, when we look back, we may forget that I had a serviette stuffed up my nose at the time.