Tag Archives: shed

The Glittering Prize

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The world continues to offer glittering prizes to those who have stout hearts and sharp swords
F E Smith, Lord Birkenhead

I thought I’d quote Smith for the title, but make it plain I had done so. I didn’t want you to think I’d just nicked the title off the telly, though this is probably unlikely as I just looked it up and find it aired in 1976. hardly a current reference.

I needed a title with “prize” in it as I just won a poetry prize. It’s a poem of the issue award from Eucalypt, a tanka magazine. Every issue, they have two, chosen by the winners of the previous issue’s awards. I now have a commentary on my work and my subscription has been extended by an issue. More worryingly for a man with a very lacklustre education, I have select a winner from the next issue and supply a commentary for it. The one supplied for mine was insightful. The one supplied for the other winner was decidedly erudite. The one about mine used the word trochee. It’s something like 53 years since I last used the word trochee. I’m pretty sure I only used it once then.

As I grow in confidence as a poet I no longer worry about imposter syndrome and am sure I will mange to write an acceptable commentary. I can blog, I can write poetry and I can write about coins, how difficult can it be? I’ll need a few quotes to fill up the space but as long as I get down to it promptly I should be OK.

In the meantime, I should get on with my medallion presentation and making lunch ready for Julia’s return. The poem was a about the stripy shed on the MENCAP Gardens – that’s the pictures today.

I now, of course, regret not taking a photo of the whole shed instead of being arty.

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

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You may remember that a week ago I wrote about taking Julia to help at the Robin Hood Marathon, getting caught in the appalling traffic system by the Railway Station and waiting in anticipation for a ticket for using a bus lane. This morning I finally breathed a sigh of relief as the normal three or four day wait has passed. That saved me £35. (It’s not that I make a habit of contravening the regulations regarding bus lanes, but the council actually make it very hard to get round the city without occasionally crossing the line). Literally crossing the line in the case of bus lanes.

However, in my jubilation I forgot one thing – standards are slipping in all areas of life and Nottingham City Council bus lane enforcement is no exception – it took a whole week for the letter to arrive, but arrive, it did.

In a way it was a relief to open it as it looked very like a letter from the NHS from the outside, and, on balance, I’d rather have a £35 fine than one of the procedures that seem to be the fate of an elderly man in the hands of the NHS.

I could be heroic about this. I could prepare a dossier in my defence, demonstrate the evils of the traffic system and submit is with photographs and high flown prose defending my position and seeking to have the ticket set aside. However, I’ve attempted this before and it never works. Basically they don’t need to do anything, they just say no and tell you that you will have to go to court if you insist of defending yourself.

There are a number of things I can do. I could, for instance, kidnap the Sheriff of Nottingham (yes, we really do have one) and hold him for ransom until they pay me £70, halved to £35 if they pay it within 21 days.

Or I could send a bill to the Robin Hood Marathon, as it was their fault. If Julia hadn’t volunteered, and if they hadn’t closed the roads I would have been enjoying my breakfast at 7.42 am, not getting a ticket.

The possibilities for mischief are endless . . .

Picture for the day is more of the school shed. I want a shed like that when I retire.

 

 

 

Codger or Curmudgeon?

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Came home, read and answered comments, watched quizzes on TV, at tea off my lap (which is a habit I keep meaning to break), was shouted at for snoring, read some blogs and now, have settled down to rite my nightly slice of life.

I have just over eighteen months until I retire. It is now becoming real. Julia has a couple of years longer so I may carry on for a little while after that. It is alarmingly close when I think of the work that needs doing on this house to make it look good enough to sell. Then there is finding another place and actually moving. It’s a long time since I last moved. I borrowed a truck from work, got a few friends together and moved a load of books and secondhand furniture 65 miles. It’s going to be a bigger job this time, and I can’t do my own lifting.

It’s time for a decision over what sort of retire I want to be. Do I want to be a genial old codger, or a miserable old curmudgeon? I think we already know the answer to that, so there’s no point wasting time on it.

A friend of mine once suggested that life in a hotel would be an ideal retirement lifestyle – no gardening, no decorating and regular meals. The problem, of course, is cost. And sharing with other people. And having nowhere to put a shed. I’d like a shed in retirement. It would be quite nice to live in a place in a city where you could have a roof garden and have a shed that looked out over a vast display of life. I think I may have left the arrangements a bit late for that. In my next life I will pay more attention to material things and spend less time daydreaming when I should be establishing a property empire. However, for now I’ll settle for a shed.

Frantic Friday

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It’s been a bit of a rush today – shopping on the way to work as we haven’t been planning too well lately. The bakery section in the new Lidl at Bingham is good, so we had croissants for breakfast and sandwich baguettes for lunch. Probably a little bread-centred as a day goes, but as I said – we didn’t plan it too well.

Lidl was like a zombie convention with people of all ages doing their best to keep me away from the things I wanted to buy. It amazes me how many young people exist in a dream. I know we all slow down as we get older, I certainly am, and I’m not quite as alert as I was, but there’s no excuse for getting in my way when I’m in a hurry.

They even had a film crew in one aisle blocking my way to the jam. Well, a croissant needs jam, even if it is full of sugar. Then at the checkout (where they normally fling your shopping at you in an attempt to get rid of you quickly) another of the living dead was on the till.

Then it was the Garden Centre as Julia has plans. They include 30 seed trays and I am afraid to ask.

Men in Sheds put a donated garden shed up for us and re-roofed it. They are also making the Breadfest Project, which I may have mentioned before. I just had to add “Breadfest” to the dictionary as the spell-checker was trying to substitute “breastfed”, which would be a completely different project, and probably not one I’d be allowed to organise.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

The Community Payback team have rebuilt one of the Keyhole Gardens, which was dismantled a while ago by a keen but misdirected volunteer. They have also emptied the compost bins and rescued a litter of mice, which they put back after uncovering them. I’m sure I’m not alone in wondering why, but I suppose all compassion should be given credit. Even compassion to vermin.

I’ve emailed forty more schools to drum up some business, read a number of fascinating emails that offer me a chance to get to know exotic women better, or help them move millions of pounds by sending my bank account details and finally had to walk half way through the village to find the ASDA delivery man who, amongst other things, brought chocolate doughnuts, diet coke and garish iced buns (though that’s not what it calls them on the bag. I fear our healthy eating message is being diluted by the cafe. Not that a man of my size can take the moral high ground on the question of diet. I’d run out of breath trying to get up there, for one thing

I’m rushing to get this finished because I have to set up for a group tomorrow and get Julia home before setting off to see my uncle, who is down visiting from Lancashire. If he can travel 180 miles to see my Dad at the age of 86 I should be able to travel a mere 60 to have tea with them. It would be nice if they didn’t want tea at 5pm (which would give me more time to do my jobs), but that’s what happens as you get older – mealtimes become less flexible and bedtime moves forward.

Not that I’m one to talk – I may not organise my life around going to bed for 7.30, but I am often asleep in front of the TV by that time. The real difference between me and my dad is merely 30 years. We’re deaf in the same ear, have gold caps on the same teeth and, according to my wife and my late mother, are irritatingly similar in many ways.

At eighteen, this would have been a distressing thought, but at 58 I’m not that bothered. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to irritate Julia before going to practice being an amiable old buffer and listening to stories I’ve heard before.