Tag Archives: village show

Blogging Weekly

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Sorry, everybody, I’ve done it again. Suddenly, a week has passed and I have not blogged, or read any blogs, or commented or replied. It’s strange how I was addicted to blogging at one time, and couldn’t settle unless I had posted something that day. I was, I admit, erratic, but addicted all the same.

I then made my delinquency worse by writing a post and, feeling it wasn’t good enough, putting it to one side to see to later. “Later” turned into three days and I’m still not sure it’s interesting enough to bother publishing. Any7thing in italics are todays additions to the draft from 3 days ago.

These days I have to almost force myself to make time amongst my busy schedule of procrastination and displacement activity.  Well, not quite a schedule. That implies a degree of organisation that is way beyond me.

In a rare out break of self-discipline I have started cutting back on displacement activity – so no games, no and less browsing. It’s still not perfect, but I have been much more productive in the last few days. It’s the middle of the month now, and I really need to start writing poetry again, bearing in mind the large number of deadlines looming.

As I sit here I have three pages torn from a notebook. IT has 23 items on it. One won’t be done because I have temporarily mislaid the item it relates to. One is not possible and needs moving to another part of the list, where it will become possible. Several need me to go out and take photographs, several need more research and some simply need an email or a phone call. It’s going to be interesting to see what I have done by the end of the day.

 

I actually managed to do a good number of them – six fully and 3 partially – but after performing the one that said “Tidy desk, recycle paper” I lost the list so will have to start again with a new list.

The reason for this activity – I just wasted an entire day on low-level admin, playing games, browsing Wikipedia, going through auction lists and watching TV. The auction lists were probably the worst waste of time. I don’t deal these days and I don’t even go to places where I could pick up a bargain – so why am I checking the prices of vintage toys? Come to think of it, my budget is empty after recent car repairs and the washing machine, so why am I looking at anything? Time to wind my neck in and accumulate a little more cash.

We are doing some family history at the moment – one of Julia’s great uncles was hit by a bus and killed in the blackout. Tomorrow I will post a piece I wrote on carrots in WW2. Not sure if I have already done it, but brace yourself for more trivia. Or, if you have seen it before, prepare for more dull stuff. 

The saddest bit is the report on the doings at the village show. Good news, we won’t be needing to move things round to accommodate an avalanche of rosettes and trophies. Bad news – most of the art prizes went to two people and most of the photographic prizes went to a different pair of people. It’s often the way with competitions, which is why I have mixed feelings about them. However, Julia had fun entering, and we enjoyed moaning about the results (good things won, but there wasn’t enough variety, was our conclusion). Next year, I am going to enter too. I may even enter the chutney competition and the baking.

And there you have it – a post that starts with a weak pun and fizzles out, crushed under an avalanche of dull trivia. This is my life.

The Morning of the Show

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The day started at some indeterminate time for me. My bladder is playing up a bit and it’s difficult to tell where the night ends and the day begins. It’s really just a continuum of decreasing darkness at this time of year. When winter comes it will be simpler as it will still be dark when we rise.  I was up several times in the night and when my 7am alarm rang, I turned over, muttered and decided an extra 10 minutes wouldn’t hurt. On the other side of the bed Julia was turning hers off and muttering too.  I thought this was a bit rich, because it was her fault we had to set the alarms.

Today is the local village show and Julia’s entries had to be taken across, with the hall opening at 8.30. It was clear that it had opened sooner because all the decent (eye level) spaces had been taken on the boards. Now, to me, this is not an insurmountable problem. They are secured by velcro dots and are easy to remove and reposition elsewhere, leaving space for Julia’s shots in the judges’ eyeline.  Of course, she wouldn’t let me do it. There’s nothing in the rule book to stop you doing it, but according to Julia it’s not right. Ethically, she’s probably right, but as an ex-antique dealer I am morally bankrupt, and have been for years. If my wife wants to enter a photographic competition, I want to secure every possible advantage for her.

If you want to discuss ethics, many of the people at the hall have big cars, some of them live in cottages that used to hold more than one family, most of them treat it as a dormitory rather than a home. We may have only moved in last year, but if you go back to the late 1960s I went to all the village schools, from infant through to secondary, I worked for a company based in the village, and I helped with various community projects. I have a right to be a cunning county dweller and try to get one over on the incomers. In fact, it’s not just a right, it’s a duty. A line of rural rebels is calling out for me to right the photo positioning wrong, including John Gregson the fugitive Chartist. Well, I have an ancestor called John Gregson, and the authorities were hunting a Chartist called John Gregson at the same time and in the same area that my ancestor was living there. It’s a possibility rather than a fact, but when the possibility is more interesting than the fact, print the possibility.

Come to think about it, it isn’t too late to sneak back and do it now . . .

Actually, Julia says it is too late, so that’s an end to that. Nothing for it but to sit back and wait for the results this afternoon. Can you believe she actually referred to i as “cheating”?