Tag Archives: planning

Plans and Plausibility

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Boiling the ingredients

Well, I did make he cauliflower soup I was planning, and it went well. The situation at the moment is that I can get a cauliflower for £1.20 or a large cauliflower for £2. You get more than twice as much cauli if you order the big one so it’s much better value, as long as you don’t mind cauli for three meals.

I have not yet got round to the pickled eggs because I can’t face the thought of peeling all the eggs. I need 12, so I will add at least three more to allow for breakages (and possibly a few more so we can have sandwiches) and it becomes a mountain of eggs to peel.

But I did settle down to do the writing plan. So far I have 93 things listed, and probably still have another 20 to do. It includes some new forms I have tried before, and makes a regular feature of magazines I have only tried a few times. Allowing for sloth and disorganisation and rejection, I can probably manage to keep up the numbers, and if I keep up the quality I can probably get the same results as this year despite the loss of a couple of magazines. At that point I ask myself why I didn’t try harder last year.

When I remember why, I despair about my memory. I was ill at the beginning of the year, and Julia was injured. Strange how easily I forget. The key is obviously to stay healthy. I was going to try that anyway, as five days in hospital is not the sort of experience I want to repeat. It’s a Burns sort of moment here – “The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft a-gley, / An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain, / For promised joy”

Before the addition of Stilton cheese

That sums up the pain of planning – things often go wrong. However, what is certain is that if you don’t plan you will end up with nothing but a pile of regrets. I’ve done that often enough. I wonder what I will be saying at this time next year.

Other than that I spent much of the day watching TV as I couldn’t find the enthusiasm to work while Julia was out wood turning, I then sorted out various medical things, including appointments (my blood clotting is now back on course and I am back to monthly testing) and insurance. I had been putting off the insurance. I was, as I feared, trapped in a labyrinth of customer service bots and had to give my information four times before they connected me to a human. Even then, it didn’t go well, though it is at least sorted. and I don’t need to worry about it.

Brooches from WW1 – cost 1 shilling and 6 pence in 1914.

The latest two articles on the website of the Peterborough Military History Group are a summary of military sweetheart brooches (where I noted a typo and several places where I could have written better) and one on the Home Guard training school at Osterley Park. It was quite an impressive place – set up by an ex-member of the International Brigades and associated with George Orwell. That led me to browse the International Brigades and George Orwell, then into his diaries. The bits I read are much more historic than my equivalents. He was writing during the Battle of Britain, though he still managed to discuss his income tax affairs in one entry, so even well-known diarists still have trivia in their diaries. It was a pleasant interlude, during which I discovered that James Robertson Justice (Sir Lancelot Spratt in the Doctor films), once played professional ice hockey between the wars, fought in the International Brigades and was invalided out of the Royal Navy with a shrapnel wound in 1943. And this was just the tip of the iceberg of the life of a man I always thought of as a supporting actor in comedy films. Time spent with Orwell and a network of Wiki links, is never wasted.

I am now going to send Christmas cards to my cousins. I always think I should sprinkle them with wit and good cheer, but will probably settle, as I normally do, for expressing the hope that they are staying well and will have a good 2026. I normally start thinking in November, and finally get round to it about now – close to the last posting date. Such is my life.

Badges on Mother of Pearl discs – WW! and WW2

Pickled Eggs and Gingerbread

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Biscuits

I started off by writing a post called “Things I Wish I’d Done”. By the time I’d done 150 words I’d depressed myself and, if I’d published it, would probably have spread this depression round. It is currently dispersing itself in cyber space, a selection of pixels slowly growing smaller a bits flake off. The only thing that survives is the title and a memory, but the way my brain is going, the memory will be gone fairly soon.

That’s the beauty and the tragedy of memory. Long term memory survives (which is why my Dad could still beat me at dominoes when he was over 90 and suffering with dementia). The tragedy is that you can remember all your mistakes with painful clarity. But you can’t do anything about it.

Anyway, enough about memories. I bet you’re wondering how far I got with my planning for next year. Having said that, anyone who has read this blog before isn’t going to be expecting too much. In fact, my dedication to procrastination is so pronounced that I’ve just been tidying my desk rather than getting down to any actual work.

Peppermint creams in preparation

The facts of this morning are that I got up, started work just before 8.00, wrote a post I deleted, looked at a few comments, checked emails, had breakfast, decided to have some toast, made coffee, washed up, watched birds and squirrels, sat at the desk, tidied desk, paid some bills and finally wrote something. As you are probably already thinking – it wasn’t worth the build-up.

I’m off to boil some eggs and make cauliflower soup now. I’m doing a dozen pickled eggs for Christmas – six ordinary, six with chilli. That should see us through to New Year and after that I intend trying to make a new recipe a week and try to bake every week. That, as you may have noticed, has no bearing on my poetry plans for 2026. I did however, write about baking in a poem I had published in Contemporary Haibun Online.

I had the title for years, because I’d used it for a blog. It looks like I had the title for nine years, in fact. It took me starting to bake again before I found a poem to go with it. It’s not even original, I pinched it from The General of the Dead Army by Ismail Kadare.

Look at that, an effortless slide from biscuits to Albanian novelists. Makes you wonder what this blog is coming to, doesn’t it? There was a time it was all compost, alternative toilets and sausages. Those were the glory days when I was trying to make the world a better place. Now I’m just happy if the world is still there when I wake up in the morning.

Poppies and corn wreath

 

A Plan is Born

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Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Plans for next year include writing more, writing better, managing my time and, most importantly, finding new markets. I’ve done over 80 articles on coins and related subjects but they have all been published in the lower levels of society journals.  I don’t want to be rude about them, but it’s not really a challenge getting into something where you are one of two regular contributors and they are read by about six people.

The situation with the articles is that I am either going to have to up my game or stop writing them and use the time for something else. In my first stint as a poet I wrote for new magazines and those known to be easier to get into. It produced results, but when I restarted a few years ago I aimed for the better quality magazines. It has gone quite well and I feel like I have produced something worth doing.

Next year, instead of producing 85+ articles for society Facebook pages and the like, I want to appear at least 12 times in magazines which pay and the journals of the more serious  kind. I think 12 is realistic, just as 50 (again) is realistic for poetry.  That’s why the target is now set at 60 and 15 – there’s no point in sitting back and feeling complacent. At the same time, I still want to support the societies I’m in but I’m going to reduce my output to around 50. I’ve asked other people to help but they haven’t responded, or have made excuses, and they can’t complain if I do other things.

Photo by Roman Koval on Pexels.com

That, of course, is the easy bit. I now have to work out how I’m going to manage my time and actually achieve the targets. That’s the trouble with planning to write more – the first day or two will be taken up with planning. And I just remembered that one of the regular magazines has pulled out.  That will be six fewer slots to aim for.

I will, to be honest, simply send more poetry out and develop a new range of work. I’ve never done a haiga, for instance, which is a photograph with a haiku. Nor have I ever tried any of the linked forms where you put haiku or tanka together to form longer poems. It also feels like time to get back into free verse. And there you go – a plan is born.

Orange Parker Pen

Using the pen pictures reminds me once again that my efforts at product placement have not met with much success. Either that or my complimentary Parker pen has been lost in the post.

Next year I may lower my sights a bit and use pictures of snack food.

 

It is Done

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The Magpie, Little Stonham, Suffolk

I stuck to the rules and I have three new poems to show for it. I felt like I’d had enough after two, but three is the target. Either three revised or three composed. Being inflexible, and having started to write, I carried on writing, even if the rules would have allowed me to write two and revise one.

Silly as it may sound (I am, after all, talking about writing poetry, not cleaning out a hen house) I am now in need of a rest. This blog post is a rest. Just a change of pace.

Yesterday I deviated from the rules, and things went wrong. The gardeners arrived and did their job. I went out to avoid the first three hours then returned, made cups of tea for us all and got to work. I couldn’t think of poetry so I got stuck into an article I am writing – fact checking and constructing a biography from snippets. It’s coming together slowly. Very slowly.  However, it did fill the day so although I veered off track, I did at least spend several hours in useful pursuits.

Norfolk Flint Wall

Flexibility, as TP just remarked, is key. The rules and targets are to make me work with more focus. If I can fill a few hours with effort instead of frittering my time away all day, it is time well spent and proof that a few rules and targets can help.

I have set targets before, for junior sports clubs and for writing and in all cases I have achieved much more when I plan and write it down. The trick is to make sure you sit down and write something out. I’ve let things drift for the last three years and although some good things have happened, I have to say that more would have happened if I had planned.

I use the SMART model – that’s Specific, Measurable,, Something, Something and Time-bound or Timely (they struggle a bit with that last one). I always have to look it up because I can’t remember the middle bit.  It’s Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound.

Doesn’t really nee a title does it?

I will end up with a table that has magazine names with times and targets in boxes. It fits quite well. The names are Specific, the targets are Measurable because they are numbers of poems, the targets are Achievable, but I don’t actually need a column for that, Relevant is the type of poetry (they don’t all take the same sort of thing) and Time-bound is a good column for the submission windows, though I generally rely on my submissions calendar for that. There’s a lot more admin in writing poetry than the lives of Lord Byron or Dylan Thomas would suggest.

Pictures are from September 2018, a trip round East Anglia.

The contents of the bag

New Rules

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I have given considerable thought to my lack of poetic output recently.

Yes, some of it is due to illness, recovery and natural cycles of productivity. Some of it, illogical as it seems, is because of the worry, which makes me less relaxed and creative. That’s the downward spiral that posh people  call writers’ block. However, after much thought I have to admit that I’m doing more writing about collectables, and I enjoy that more than poetry. It’s easier and does not involve so much dredging through painful memories.  The best of my poetry is a greater pleasure than my best writing on coins or medallions, but on average the article on collectables are easier and involve fewer bad memories.

Recently I have written ten pieces for the Numismatic Society of Nottinghamshire Facebook page. I have also researched and written a slideshow, which took ages. It can take a day just to put the story of one man together. Despite having done a lot of the work previously, the first draft always reveals extra work that needs doing Sometimes, when it’s a new story, it can take the best part of a day.  There were 20 stories in the presentation, plus the general pages on the history and the nut and bolts of collecting. I’m also putting afew articles for magazines together, as some of them actually pay and I’d like to think I can make some of my subscriptions (WP and Ancestry specifically) pay for themselves.

Being naturally idle and disorganised, it is easy to start something new, but not so easy to find enough time. So I have several new rules, which should sort a few things out.

Number One, I am going to do nothing until I have worked on at least three poems. Today I actually did the washing up first, but I couldn’t concentrate with a stack of dirty plates needing to be done. Then I worked on three poems – tightening them up and getting them ready for submissions later this month. After that it was emails, WP comments and, finally, this post.

Next it will be lunch.

After that it will be an article I am working on, followed by planning. My best years as an administrator in junior rugby were always the ones where i planned properly. After a couple of years writing haibun I spent a couple of evenings planning things out properly, which was when I started to be published a lot more. It wasn’t talent. It wasn’t even hard work. It was searching out places I could submit to, and setting targets for how many submissions I was going to make. I need to get back to that. It’s too easy to tell yourself you are ill and you can’t be blamed for your slump, but it’s surprising how much more productive you are when you have a target.

So that’s the two new rules – 3 Poems before other work, and a plan with targets. Simple enough, the complication lies in making myself do it.

I thought the Alf Tupper pictures were well suited to today’s subject.

Where Did All the Energy Go?

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I’m desperately thinking of something witty or interesting to say. So far, it isn’t happening.  I’m mainly thinking I have a lot to do, and that I don’t feel like doing it. This is not witty or interesting, and to my regular readers it isn’t a surprise either, is it?

I started writing this last night, ran out of steam and tried again in the morning. It still isn’t happening. I’m thinking of writing a list and working through some of it. At that point, with some work done and a space to relax, I might have better luck with the blog.

I had better spring into action and do things or I’m going to be looking at a very slim body of written work for the first half of this year. And if I don’t have plenty out there I will have nothing for editors to nominate for the anthology.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

We also need to start thinking about the move in serious terms. We started the year with 11 months before us and are already down to 8, with virtually nothing done. Some things, and this includes moving house, as I dimly recall, are better done with plans and time to spare. Writing poetry the day before the deadline is OK, moving house is not.

Last time I moved I borrowed a lorry from work and invited a group of friends for the weekend. They helped with the heavy lifting and it all went well. Of course, the contents of the house have multiplied and I no longer have friends who can lift stuff. It’s a depressing commentary on my life.

Water Clock. I think it’s Southwold Pier.

Going to the Grave with a Song Still in me . . .

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It suddenly came to me in the car this morning, that I have my planning all wrong. It’s all very well planning the number of submissions or the number of publications. What I need to do is target the number of poems I write. I know from the old days of doing the Buson 100, that I can write a lot more than I do.

As from today I am going to set targets and become a writing machine. To use the Thoreau misquote, there is little point in going to the grave with the words still in me. let’s see if I can get them out.

Here is what he is reputed to say. He didn’t, it seems say this, but he should have done because it’s better than what he actually said.

“Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them” 

I’m going to have a good go at not doing that.

On another note. I saw a woman with a specialist bicycle yesterday. I’ve seen her before but yesterday was obviously a day for minor epiphanies. She has a hybrid of wheelchair and hand cycle. Now, as you may have seen, I have been talking of buying an electric scooter for extra mobility when I retire. I’m not overly keen on the idea as it’s a bit like giving up, but on the other hand it will allow me to get out and about.

Why not, I thought, buy some form of hand cycle? It will give me mobility and exercise and not involve giving up. With luck it may help me lost weight, which will help me become more mobile. That was before I started looking at it seriously. The main sorts of hand cycle are either wheelchair types, which isn’t really what I want, or they involve recumbent cycles, and if I could get down low enough to the floor to use one of them, I probably wouldn’t need one. There is, if you look hard enough, a range of upright tricycle type bikes. The only trouble with them is cost. However, I’m sure that eBay can provide something second hand. I really must look harder as my lack of exercise is something that I need to address.

Fruitbowl

Pictures are more of our tomatoes and a generic fruit picture. The apples from the gardens are sweet but not photogenic.

 

The Power of Planning

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A few years ago I did a SMART plan for the junior rugby club. That’s Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant/Realistic and Timely/Time Bound. There are slight differences in the way people construct the mnemonic, but it all works out the be the same. Timely and Time Bound are both awkward and I may just change that to Timed. Timely implies something more than just delivered on time; there is a suggestion of convenience or aptness about it which is not accurate in this case. Time Bound isn’t a construction I’ve seen in other places and I suspect someone made it up. It worked well.

However, that’s not really important. The article that I’ve linked to has a number of other words you can use.

I also did one for my Haibun writing, and that worked out well too. There is something about planning that makes things happen. Unfortunately I let the planning lapse – a few notes and some good intentions are not an effective plan.

This all comes from my looming retirement. I am going to have to plan this properly or face a time of chaos and disappointment. It then occurred to me that one of the reasons my poetry is struggling is that I don’t have a proper plan for that either.

The moving plan is, at present, just a piece of A4 scrap paper torn from top to bottom. It’s not elegant but it has space for months and notes and it has already given me greater clarity. Eventually it will include things like the date of delivery for new white goods and stuff like that. I’m not actually splashing out on new white goods, I’m being forced into it by the decrepit state of our current lot. The freezer and cooker are both limping along and I am keeping my fingers crossed that they last. The washer and drier both died years ago, hence my many blogs and poems about laundrettes.

The poetry plan is just a few sparks inside my head at the moment but by tonight it will have more form. Meanwhile, bear this in mind – it’s roughly 500 blog posts before I write the one titled “Our New Home”.

(Disclaimer: All this talk of planning should be prefixed by “If the good Lord’s willing and the creeks don’t rise” as it seems like tempting fate to step in, to make so many plans.) 

The pictures? I put “plan” into Search and didn’t get a lot of help. Plants and plant pots seemed to be the best of a bad lot.

Small Copper on castor oil plant

 

 

Back to Work – Day 3 – The Owner Returns & I Make Plans

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We had a quiet morning. I had all the parcels done before my workmate arrived, the customers filtered in, we bought, we sold and we relaxed. The owner returned home in the early afternoon and came to work immediately as he arranged to meet a client. Personally, I would have left it until Monday, but that’s life at the cutting edge of retail.

My new glasses are performing well, though a couple of bits of plastic in frame shouldn’t be too difficult to manufacture and there’s a limit to the number of things that can be wrong. The main problem I find is that the frames aren’t wide enough, which eventually makes them crack. these have sprung hinges, so that won’t happen. Actually, they aren’t glasses, are they? They have no glass in them.

I now have a timeline for retirement. It needs a few more details but we seem to have covered all the main points. The difficult part is knowing the best time for us to retire as Julia is younger than me. We want to be in the bungalow for Christmas next year but that’s nearly a year before she retires. I don’t think it’s worth worrying about, but she seems to be vacillating about whether retire to early or not. I get so annoyed by the way she’s treated at work I’ve suggested that she retires now, as we won’t be much worse off and can work round it. We do, after all, have a low cost lifestyle.

Books . . .

I am going to start adding more tasks to the timeline, plus mileposts, Key Performance Indicators, landmarks and a roadmap. I may have made some of them up, but you get the idea. I will be writing about targets soon, so had better brush up on my jargon so I can sound knowledgeable.

Books are going first. Some will be offered to specialist dealers or go into auction, many will go to charity shops and quite a few are destined for recycling. Some books, it pains me to admit, are just not worth anything. Some of them haven’t been opened for thirty years, so I’m not going to spend good money on transport just so I can clutter up another house. Those days have gone.

I will be putting parts of my collection on eBay, starting in the autumn, and other bits and pieces are destined for auction or a skip. I still have a lot of stuff inherited from my grandfather – including a magnifier for a 1950s TV (they only had 7″ screens in those days), a valve tester and a variety of hand tools that I will never use.

There are also 12 plastic boxes of military surplus clothing from my market days in the garage. They have been unreachable for ten years and if they aren’t mouse bedding by now they will be going to the charity.

The more I think of it, the more stuff I remember that I need to get rid of. I was happier when I wasn’t planning . . .

Books by Paul Hollywood

 

 

The Same Old Trap

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Sorry, I have let things drift over the last few days. I need a plan. This is, of course, the same thing you have heard me say over and over, hence the title, so won’t be a surprise, or a revelation of much importance. I have a few days off next week so I will make myself a plan for the rest of the year. Things seem to go better with plans. I should have that made into wall paper for the ceiling of my bedroom so I can indoctrinate myself each morning as I wake up.

I have probably covered my great planning success for junior rugby several years ago, when I sat down, planned and actually carried out more work than I have ever managed before or since. Same goes for my great poetry plan a few years ago. It seemed to work. It may work again this year. I am going to set a half day aside to do some planning. Of course, I will then have a decision to make – whether to keep it secret so that nobody knows if I fail, or to announce it to make it harder for me to fall short. Both plans have their merits.

I follow the SMART Model, which is . . . er . . . Something, Measurable, Something, Something and Timely.  The “T” is hard to fit in to the general plan. If I can’t remember what it all stands for this could be more of a problem than I was thinking. Looking it up I find it is Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Timely/Time-Bound. As I said, it’s hard fitting in the “T”.

The process starts with me saying I must start planning tomorrow and proceeds as I write out some sheets with space for times and targets. Then the fun begins when I start making up numbers to fit. They have to be higher than the ones I am already achieving, but not so high that they prove impossible. I’ve had 22 poems accepted  in the last six months, but am faltering at the moment. I need to plan for another 33 in the next nine months just to keep the average going.  It’s already looking like hard work . . .

When all else fails, turn to cake!