I went out for  meal last night – Steak and Ale Pie at a local pub. Since I last had it either the portions have grown larger or my capacity for food has ben reduced. I’m hoping, after  over a month of losing weight, it is the latter. I hve to get my portion size down, it’s the only way to do it. Experiences like last night are worrying, because it’s an example of how you cn start eating too much again.

Newstead Abbey Again

Work was dull in parts, interesting in others. I ate my sandwiches far too early. This has always been the case. When I worked on farms I ate at lunchtime but as soon as I had a job driving between farms to do blood tests and monitoring I started eating my sandwiches about half an hour after leaving home.

I had an email last night, two tanka accepted to go with the tanka prose I previously had accepted. Some editors are very quick. One of the others tells me they don’t send out rejections, but if you haven’t heard from them within 12 weeks you can assume it’s safe to send the poems to other people. This isn’t satisfactory and I don’t usually submit to editors with similar policies, but I fancied a change this month.

For January I sent out 11 submissions. I missed one out because they wanted poems to a theme I didn’t feel like writing and two because they were competitions and I’m not altogether in favour of competitions. You tie up the poems for months, pay for the privilege, and then when you read the winning entries you wonder what idiot picked them. Sometimes I optimistically enter a competition but am usually brought down to earth when I read the results.

Next month I just have five. I may look for a few more, or I may just take a rest.

Newstead Abbey again

Thanks to Julia for the photos again.