Tag Archives: wasting time

Pens and Days Pass So Quickly

I realised a couple of days ago that I need some new pictures of pens artistically posed across scribble (my general purpose photo for talking about writing or poetry (as if I know anything about it)). The orange Parker Pen, which I hoped would be my way to fame and fortune and free pens, proved o be a dead end. Then it broke. The barrels of recently made pens are so thin that they crack and when the ink gets into the cracks on brightly coloured pens, it shows up badly.

I also broke a good quality one and most of my others started clogging on a regular basis and I got so fed up of washing them out that I went back to fibre tips, then biros. Biro is cheap and, mainly reliable. Fibre tips, particularly cheap ones (my natural position in the market) can be erratic and unreliable so I bought some cheap Parker ballpoints and they are doing OK.

There will be some new photos in coming days.

Iranian Vegetable Stew – last night’s stew had dumplings and no yoghurt, and the greens were different. But it’s the nearest I’ve got.

Meanwhile, I have successfully wasted a day. The morning was quite productive, then someone sent me an auction catalogue. Well, you have to check in case there is anything you want, don’t you? According to Julia “You don’t.”. This is one of the areas where we disagree. However, she was the one who wanted children, and they have cost far more than my collecting. The main difference is that my collection has a resale value, but that sort of thing is frowned on when it comes to children. Mine were badly trained, so I don’t suppose they would have been worth much anyway.

At lunch (which was last night’s vegetable stew with additional herbs and a go whizzing from a stick blender) we realised it is Thursday already. Where does the time go?

Sumac and Sedum. I had no pictures of dumplings but after “dum” I picked up a picture with sedums. Search engines, less reliable than politicians . . .

Sunday Morning Turns to Night

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The Helmet Byron wore when liberating Greece. The legend is, I believe, bigger than the truth.

I would say “it’s early on Sunday morning” but it isn’t. It’s almost ten. Julia has heaped up the bedding to for a bulwark against the cold and is refusing to move and I have been pottering instead of doing anything useful. Let’s face it, I always potter or procrastinate or, possibly, putter. I had to use a Thesaurus for that last one as my supply of P words proved to be inadequate for the task in hand. I’ve also been Googling Australian writers in WW1 after a comment from Paolsoren. I actually know more about American writers in WW1 than I do about Australian ones, and that isn’t much.

I know that e e cummings and Hemingway served as ambulance drivers, that Alan Seeger served in the French Foreign Legion, Joyce Kilmer wrote a poem about a tree, and was a man, despite the name, and nothing much else.

And that, on a cold Sunday morning, is where I have ground to a halt. With little more than 150 words done from my modest target of 250 written, I have run out of things to say.

Time, I think, to make bacon cobs for breakfast. If bacon doesn’t do the trick I may have to admit that my brain has closed for winter. Talking of that, I am reminded that I have quite a few submissions to do in December. That’s always good for a few hundred words as, despite the evidence, I always worry that I might not be able to think of anything to write this time.

Water feature at Newstead Abbey.

But first, bacon . . .

And so the day passed . . .

Eventually, having put the vegetable stew on to cook, I have made it back to the keyboard. Quiz shows have come and gone, a second-rate film with Dick van Dyke and family has passed, time has flowed, or ebbed, depending on where you are standing and, as far as I know mighty empires have crumbled and fallen, though I suspect they might have announced it on TV if that had happened.

And then, bit by bit, I watch TV and make sandwiches for tomorrow and waste time in a dozen different ways until it is time to finish this off and go to bed. And so a day that seemed to have so many possibilities has been frittered once again.

Picture from behind the waterfall at Newstead Abbey.

Pictures are from Julia’s visit to Narnia/Newstead Abbey yesterday.

The Great Ledger of Life

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If today were to have an entry in the Great Ledger of Life it would not, I suspect, be totally positive.

I had several interesting and reflective conversations with wife, which would be a positive.

Bacon and black pudding cobs for breakfast would be in the “iffy” column. They are definitely nice for a leisurely breakfast, but from a health point of view are almost certainly frowned on by thin people within the NHS.

Slept through and hour and a half of dull TV before spending a couple of hours awake in front of dull TV programmes. That would definitely be bed, and a waste of life.

“Read a Kindle book on the Vikings” should be a positive but as the entry continues “written with a 21st Century slant” you can probably guess what my thoughts are. The Vikings, it seems, are bad. I can go along with that, as it’s a point of view I’ve heard before. However, when I am informed that they are bad on the grounds that they had slaves and influenced British Imperial thinking, I begin to recognise a touch of fashionable bias. Bias is OK in historical writing as we all have it, but I do dislike the taint of fashion or opportunism.

These are not, I confess, traits found only in this book, as virtually any TV historian you watch these days seems to be contractually obliged to mention the evils of slavery and Imperialism in relation to British history.

It’s very much like the popular view of the Great War – Lions led by Donkeys and all that, plus Blackadder Goes Forth and the famous drinks cabinet line. “Field Marshal Haig is about to make yet another gargantuan effort to move his drinks cabinet six inches closer to Berlin.” It’s a view that has been popular for around 60 years now, to the point where schools are showing Blackadder as a history resource, despite it being a comedy programme. You may as well rely on Oh! What a Lovely War as a source. However, if you say something often enough it becomes the accepted view, and is often accepted as fact, as you can see when reading many WP blogs.

That’s it for today. I’m going to look for some photos and go to bed now. I would say that I’ll see you tomorrow, but at my age you can’t always be certain of that. This is the problem with writing about unhealthy breakfasts and warfare – it encourages thoughts of mortality.

Olympic Breakfast

Day 76

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I started reading some blogs last night, which took the best part of an hour. It was more entertaining than surfing eBay, but it didn’t help me in my search for cheap medallions, so it was a case of swings and roundabouts.

I meant to read some more tonight but I seem to have swerved from the path of righteousness and started browsing poetry sites looking for ideas on writing better poetry. No luck so far. Practical help is hard to find. Tomorrow night I will read more. It has now crept into the early hours of the morning and I need to make sandwiches and get to sleep.

First, however, I need to get to 250 words.

We are now seeing a more normal pattern to the business, with more regular customers returning and some trade customers – even one from overseas. It makes life a bit more interesting and stops me wondering about the future quite so much. I have just over two years to go before pension and would hate to find myself unemployed, as it would be awkward to find a job and even more awkward to stretch one wage between the two of us.

Even ten years ago I’d just have gone asking for work, or started something up myself, as I did with the gardening when I decided antiques were no longer paying. Now, with white hair and a walking stick I’m not quite as employable as I once was.

I could, as I said to Julia, go on the street and sell my body. Her reply that only medical researchers would be interested was, I feel, a touch unkind.

I am going to lit this as “uxorial unkindness” in the Tags, as I am on a quest to use more words.

More stained glass. Well, I like stained glass.

Bah!

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I left myself with little time to post, then, when I reached for my camera to load the photos, I realised I’d left it at work. Again. This is annoying.

It also leaves me with 14 minutes to write a post and publish, unless I want to have to start getting notes from WP congratulating me on doing two days of consecutive posting. I’d be happy to do without the notes, but after working my way up to 14 days I don’t want to slip back. It’s like being one of Pavlov’s dog, but without the food.

I have spent most of the night reading blogs and generally catching up, which was quite pleasant, but I really should have blogged first and read second. However, that’s normally the way with me. Good sense and organisation are another world as far as I am concerned,

I can’t think of much more to say, as most of it will be contained in what is now going to be tomorrow’s blog, with photos.

Eight minutes to go.

I ead a blog tonight about writer’s block. I’m glad to say that I don’t believe in it, though I do find writing less easy at some points. I did, however, restrain myself from saying that as it’s not really my place to offer opinions on the blogs of others. I took that option on another blog too – about whether it’s better to say “they” or “he/she”. The drivel that is modern life…

One More Quiet Day and a New Leaf

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It has been a restful day today – painkillers overnight, a decent sleep and a morning spent with a hot water bottle. This became an afternoon also spent with a hot water bottle. And cake. It’s been quite good. Perhaps I have needed to sit down with a hot water bottle and waste time. It’s far more relaxing than sitting at the computer wasting time.

I’m also beginning to think that the problem with my arm and shoulder is RSI rather than arthritis, which is mainly confined to my fingers.

The moral of this is clear – spend less time at the computer. I do my best writing with pen and paper anyway, I have been trying to do more writing at the computer in recent months, but it hasn’t worked out. I thought it would be more efficient if I sat at the computer and made myself write, which would cut out the boring process of typing stuff out. It hasn’t gone to plan – the only thing that has improved is my command of Othello/Reversi and Nine Men’s Morris. A computer in idle hands, is a dreadful thing.

So, drug abuse, my health, fashionable injuries, procrastination. I seem to have covered a range of subjects, but it all sems very self-centred. How is everyone out there? I will try to get round and do some visiting now, as I’ve not been very good about reading recently.

Having said that I have finally started on one of my pile of books to read. It feels good to be reading again, after spending so much time concentrating on writing. Or, to be more accurate, after spending so much time concentrating on procrastination. Time, I think, to turn over a new leaf.

Musings on a Lack of Industry

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What sort of day was it today? I hear you ask.

Well, it’s our day off, so it started with a lie in and then we baked a couple of bake at home baguettes (we have accumulated several packs over the last few weeks) and filled it with the poor quality bacon we got from TESCO last week. For lunch we had excellent avocados on sourdough toast (because TESCO does ro some things right) and this evening we had stir fried veg with rice, because we seem to have a lot of vegetables.

Tonight I have put in a grocery order online but have concentrated on things like washing powder and stuff as we don’t need a lot of food. In a couple of weeks I will probably rearrange the shopping so we can miss a week – we just seem to have accumulated too much food as a result of having to make a minimum order every week.

There are a lot of pitfalls to grocery shopping online, even without the inefficiency of the supermarket, one being the accidental stockpiling of baked beans and tinned tomatoes.

The rest of the day was reasonable. We picked up our prescriptions, though mine was two pills short. It isn’t even worth ringing up about, but it will go down in the new diary I am keeping about my prescription ordering, because I’m getting sick of the inefficiency.

I actually got a bit of writing done, read some blog posts and started to organise my submission plan for the month ahead. A couple of magazines have reorganised things – one isn’t taking haibun for a while and another is going to publish every two months instead of every month, so it needs allowing for in the plan.

That’s what they don’t tell you when you start writing – for every hour you write there’s at least on for errands, one for planning, one for reading and one for watching TV. Actually writing time is limited, and that’s before you squander it on video games, looking out of the window and chewing the end of your metaphorical pen.

What happens to all that time?

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Over the last few days I’ve found myself sitting looking at a computer screen in the evening wondering what has happened to the day.

Twelve hours pass, and I look at the jobs I’ve done and wonder what happened. (Yesterday was washing up, shredding two lots of paper, taking Julia to work and picking her up, blogging, writing a few haiku, reading a few haiku and making soup and a stir fry.) Even with a snooze and some TV it is hardly a full day.

Tomorrow I will sort books out because once the charity shops open again and customers start coming back to the shop I can start moving them on again. The car boot is absolutely crammed and there are bags of books in the back floor wells too. I also have them piling up at home.

It is a sad thing, but they had taken over and life is, I confess, more relaxing without so much stuff in the house. As a bonus, when we move (which is planned for some point in the next few years) we won’t have as much stuff to sort or move. We will be moving 150 miles, so the less we take, the better. I will probably have to give the kids our new address as Julia seems to want to keep them, but apart from that I’m aiming for a fresh start.

Country Life sent me the normal weekly email and, as long as I can manage an immoderate lottery win, I think I have found just the place for us. I mean, a library by Rennie Mackintosh, a herd of Highland cattle and fifteen bedrooms. That means you can have clean bedclothes every night for a fortnight before you need to start doing housework. If only it wasn’t just 500 yards away from Loch Lomond. I seem to recall it being famous for midges. and after my last experience with them I’m not sure I want another go.

That was how I used to organise myself as a bachelor- fifteen sets of everything and then do the laundry once a fortnight. It’s a good system.

However, talking of Lottery wins, it’s going to have to happen soon, as I’m going to stop buying Lottery Tickets. I never win so I might as well save the money and buy something useful. As of January 1st I’m going to drop the money in a jar and buy Premium Bonds. There’s still a chance of winning a cash prize and you can actually get your money back when you want it.

Wednesday Again

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Today I got up late, as I don’t see any point in having a day off and flinging myself out of bed at dawn, or any time approximating to dawn. The benefit of having two days off together (as I did this week due to a rearrangement of our days in the shop) is that you can work into the early hours of the morning, pretending to be creative. I say ‘pretending’ because I’m not sure I do my best work when I’m half asleep.

I read for the first hour of waking, then went downstairs.

I had written four haibun last night and, after replying to comments on the blog and reading a few other blogs I got down to work.

All four needed considerable tightening up, and that’s what they got.

Then, at 12.00 I decided to have lunch, as I hadn’t actually had breakfast. Sourdough toast, tinned plum tomatoes, fried mushrooms and scrambled eggs, in case a future reader is interested. It’s not exciting or healthy, but it’s what we had in the fridge. A bit like my writing, which is what happens to be kicking around in my head when I sit at the keyboard.

That turned into a short spell of watching TV and a rather longer one of napping. I don’t know why I needed a nap, perhaps because I could.That led on to doing the washing up and doing a bit more writing. After that there was more TV, a discussion of shopping lists, a meal of stir-fried vegetables, the on-line shopping order and this blog post. Actually there was a previous blog post but it developed in a way I couldn’t be bothered to complete, so it is now resting in drafts.

Light and Shade

TESCO have increased the delivery charge – I am now paying them £4.50 to pick and deliver my groceries, where it used to cost £3. That’s £75 a year, though if I had to drive to the shop every week I suppose it would cost me about that in car running costs and time.

That’s it for now. The post is drawing to a natural close, midnight is approaching and I need to do my sandwiches for tomorrow.

It’s tempting to ramble on a bit to try for 500 words, but I’m going to stop now. Three hundred and eighty nine will have to do. (If I’d written 389, it would only have been 385 and I wouldn’t have been able to add this sentence and top it up to 412). I just noticed, on adding a title to the second photo, that the word count went up. Strange…

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Life after the Care Farm