Tag Archives: time passes

Thursday Morning 7.29

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Did it really take an hour and seven minutes to write the previous post? Well, yea and no.

It certainly took that length of time from stating to finishing, but in that time I also attended to a couple of comments, read my emails and searched for photographs that were badly labelled. Or, in truth, not labelled at all. I developed lazy habits early on in my blogging career and regularly waste time as a result.

I also searched for a couple of links and read the review on my poem, rejected a couple of ideas for things to say and rewrote a couple of paragraphs.

Here, halfway through my second blog post of the day, I note that I’m about halfway through and it has only taken six minutes.

My conclusion is that I can still write reasonably quickly, but waste time with all the peripheral activity.

Nella Last with Clifford, the son who went on to be a sculptor

 

Nella Last, or Housewife, 49, of whom I have written more than once, wrote 12 million words in her diaries, including 2 million during the war. If she wrote at 20 words a minute, as I have just (approximately) done, it would have taken her 417 days.

Of course, I doubt that she wrote as fast as that. You don’t do you? There’s thinking time and musing time and simply staring into space time. I’m doing a bit of that now.

I’m on 224 words and have taken sixteen minutes. Several of those have just been spent wondering how to finish this off with a point.

There is no point, simply a reflection on how much “writing time” is spent on things that aren’t really writing. And that’s before you start to consider the endless writing and rewriting involved in writing something decent.

Julia is up now and it’s 7.48. Probably a good time to put the kettle on. But first I have to add tags and photos. At least I don’t need to find a witty title.

 

After doing the links etc it’s now 8.03 and it’s becoming clearer where my day goes. Fifteen minutes just disappeared as I looked for a link to Clifford Last.

Summary of a Day Where Not Much Happened

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(Wrote this yesterday and forgot to post it).

It’s just coming up to 11.00 and I have been up for three hours or thereabouts. I’m retired, I don’t need to work things out to the minute.

In that time I have read blogs, commented, replied to comments and finished off a post which I then posted without tags or a title. I’ve also had breakfast (fruit and porridge), prepared by Julia, I just needed to eat it.

And that’s it. A pathetically small amount of activity for three hours. I’ve not sorted out a delivery that needs sorting, I’ve not replied to an NHS email (the crisp reply I wrote as a first attempt was judged to be in need of work by Julia). I am therefore going to waste twenty minutes being effusive and apologetic for something that isn’t my fault and ten minutes showing Julia how  I have done what she says. Then, of course, I am going to send my original version.

Actually, I just remembered. I have put in the TESCO order. I have established, with forensic precision, who is at fault for us running out of Weetabix. I have cleaned my teeth extensively. It seems to take longer these days. Fewer teeth but more hiding places for strawberry seeds. We are having raspberries next week – it will be worse. I have cleared out some  emails. I have wondered about the meaning of life. I have tided away a few things I left out last night. I have researched a new email system, as I am getting fed up with BT and their regular outages. And their unhelpful customer service “bot”. I’m sure they do it deliberately as they want to get rid of all their old email customers.

And so, I drift, in my unfocused manner, back to the things I haven’t done. I might have to write a list. Or I may drift on, do a bit, make lunch and snooze in front of the TV.

I am retired, and I don’t have to work all day.

Poetry, Proverbs and Poppies

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I’m feeling a bit like the proverbial full bookshelf. It’s the one where you force another book into it and something falls off the end . . .

I’ve been writing more about coins and medals recently – the three short articles for the Numismatic Society’s Facebook page are the thin end of the wedge, I’m preparing others too – and I seem to have stopped writing poetry, as if it just fell off the end of the shelf. One minute it was there, now it’s gone. I have three unopened poetry magazines and nothing in the pipeline.

 

This has coincided with doing more reading again (which is a bit like recharging my batteries after so much poetry writing), more research and more retirement planning.

Little Gidding

I’ve just had three poems published, while I’m on the subject. Not sure if I’ve posted the link before (my memory is getting worse). The magazine is Contemporary Haibun Online, which is always worth a read and I am here, here and here. Sorry, I suppose I could be more subtle or inventive with the links, but I’m not.

 

In themselves, they are a great indicator of time passing. Poetic time is very distorted. One poem actually started five or six years ago. It has changed substantially since I started it, and been rejected four times. Two others were written last autumn after I went to a couple of family funerals. One harks back to a time when I was 16. That is now 50 years ago. That thought is hard to grasp. I have let 50 years slip by and would be hard pressed to tell you anything I have done in that time.

Maybe that’s the theme for my next poem.

It’s poppy time again