Tag Archives: Words

Busy, busy, busy . . .

12 Replies

I rose early and at 6.00 sat at the computer. This is insomnia we are talking about rather than industry. It is now 7.02 and I have been through comments, made replies, gone through  my (short) list of blogs to read and then sorted my emails. That consisted of reading three, replying to one and deleting 23.

And that is the story of my first hour. It’s nearly as industrious as my entire yesterday, which was not a day of great achievements. Or even minor ones. It just seemed to pass in a blur.

Actual “work” as I call it, amounted to two hours of reading for research and a couple of hundred words. It’s not impressive. I meant to do a final edit on something and send it off. That still hasn’t been done either. I’m going to do it as soon as I’ve finished this post.

It’s a busy old life in retirement.  Julia’s hair appointment on Monday, woodturning on Tuesday, blood test tomorrow, cafe on Friday and cafe on Sunday. That only leaves Wednesday and Saturday free. You may notice that it’s not me who’s busy. I was going to go to the Military History meeting tonight but I have either the beginning or the end of a chest infection and I have decided to stay indoors and look after myself. It’s been rumbling on for a few days now and seems to be fading, but it’s difficult to tell. I have been caught out before by this sort of thing.

Immunosuppressants are brilliant for sorting out arthritis but, as experience shows, they have their downside too.

Thirteen minutes, 267 words, that will do for now. If I can’t make it interesting, I can at least make it short.

Now, I suppose, I ought to look at the news and see what is happening in the world. If there is a world left to report on . . .

I’m well over 300 words now, so at least the quantity of word is OK, even if the quality is questionable.

Not long now . . .

The Day the Words Returned

16 Replies

I was driving back from dropping Julia at work this morning when I found myself composing poetry in my head. This is the first time for months that this has happened. Probably six months. In that time I have been ill, depressed, short of inspiration etc. That’s proof – at school they always used to say etcetera meant you had run out of ideas.

My WP spellchecker does not like etcetera, so I checked et cetera. It doesn’t like that either, although both forms are considered correct by other authorities. It’s OK with etc though, with or without the full stop. This confirms my thoughts about spellcheckers and the people who develop them.  This isn’t another discussion of American spelling, more a comment on the assumptions made by the purveyors of computer software. Why is it assumed that I would want to take the language of Shakespeare and the King James Bible and consign it to the waste paper bin of history, in favour of a language which has no concept of the existence of a full length word for etc and thinks that favour is a mis-spelling?

My Orange Parker Pen

Did you find that last sentence understandable. I recall that sentences of up to 20 words are considered best. At 30 or 35 you get to a length where people have difficulty grasping it. That one has just run on to 55 words. I counted them after i found I couldn’t see an easy way of trimming it.

You are a poor sample to ask, as you are all clearly of above average intelligence (and above average in many other areas too), but I was curious to see if I got away with it and produced a readable 55 word sentence. That one is only 43 words long. Until I started looking I always thought I wrote short sentences. I’m clearly going to have to start looking at my readability indexes again.

And so, in a short opening paragraph, I tell you the poetry has returned, and in the rest of it, I ramble on. Sorry about that. However, I can’t stay chatting, I have poetry to write, and probably a second blog post to compose.

Orange Parker Pen

Web, Mesh or Net?

14 Replies

After a week or so of opening on a different page WP has now gone back to opening on a page I can actually use. By the standards of modern doublespeak this is probably the “new and improved” version. Take something away at random, reinstate it, and, if asked, tell people it is an upgrade.

I had an email about a similar thing. I can, it seems, pay for Jetpack to give me a search function. I already pay enough for a product that is worse than it was when I started, and I thought I already had a search function. First we had lying, then we had marketing, now we have people on the internet who try to sell you stuff you used to get for free. It’s a gradual decline to moral bankruptcy that we already see in our politicians and TV stations (you know – the ones that now call it “Plus 1” when it used to be called “repeats”).

It’s 8.36 and I decided I would have  ago at starting my day with some focus. It nearly worked. I have read my emails and a few blogs but mainly fixed my mind on writing this post. Later I will send a couple of submissions off and then do some housework. Yes, there is so much debris on my writing table that I can’t see the lower edge of the computer screen. I don’t need month old blood test results, used padded envelopes or notebooks from last year. The results will be recycled, the envelopes taken to work (for reuse as packaging) and the notebooks can go into a box until an American University puts in an offer for my papers. Or until Julia makes me throw them out.

That’s good, 8.53. The advantage of having no structure and no research is that blogging (by which I mean dumping the contents of my head on a page) can be quite quick.

This is in contrast to submitting poetry, where I am about to spend twenty minutes deciding whether to use “web” or “mesh” or “net” . . .

It’s not easy being a poet.

A New Policy

24 Replies

I’m starting a new policy from today. I may not do it for all posts, but I’m imposing a thirty minute limit on writing a post for most of them, and this may include adding tags and photos. On the best of days tags and photos seem to take ten minutes so it may involve just writing for 20 minutes.

Photos for today are Julia posing in the front garden with a word. The word is “WE”. I’m not sure what the message will eventually spell, but this is Julia’s part of it. I would have liked to have drawn the word “EVIL” and stood next to her. My design would have to include a small stripy insect so that it could serve as a warning to gardeners about the evils of weevils. I know I keep saying this, but if I ever get round to writing that series of crime fiction I keep muttering about, I think I’ve found the title for the book that features gardeners.

As we did the photographs we also watched the neighbours from the corners of our eyes – they were holding some sort of three way conversation – two in the gardens and one on the footpath. They weren’t quite, to my eye, six feet apart, but young people are so careless.

For their part, they looked out of the corners of their eyes at the two elderly eccentrics taking pictures of a piece of paper in the front garden.

If WP continue down the slippery slope of the New Editor it may be that I only write twenty words per post, the rest of the time being devoted to struggling with technology and swearing at the computer.

Nothing much has happened apart from that. On the other hand, it’s only just coming up to 4pm. There is time yet.

I spoke to my sister by telephone this morning because we are are not technological enough to Skype or Zoom or any of that stuff. Ideally I would write, using a fountain pen and sitting at a desk in my study, but I’m too lazy to do it regularly and end up having to wash the pen before use. By the time I’ve done that I normally either forget about it or send an email instead.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Part of a lockdown message project

The letters in Julia’s photos may ring a few bells. The “W” is designed to look like a water melon and the “E” is an elephant.

The alarm just went. Four hundred words in twenty minutes. They didn’t take much thought or research so it wasn’t too hard. Time to add tags and photos.

P.S. – the shop owner rang today. We will be having a meeting on Friday to discuss the resumption of eBay work in the shop. We may hold the meeting in the open air to avoid breaking too many guidelines. However, we won’t be open to the public for a while yet.

Photos and tags didn’t take too long, so it’s all done and dusted in 30 minutes. I wonder if that will ever happen again…

P.P.S. – my contributor’s copy of Medal News arrived today with a cheque. I’m beginning to like this writing business.

Words, words, words

28 Replies

I need 250 words and I’m struggling so find them. Well, that’s not strictly accurate, I have access to a head full of words but they need putting down in the right order, and it needs doing quickly because I have other jobs to do.

Biblioperigrination is always a good word but it has limited use – partly because there are only so many stories you can tell about books wandering round a house, and partly because it’s one I made up, so few other people understand or use it. I could cite previous uses, but that would involve me…

… for evidence of previous use see this link on biblioperigrination. It suddenly occurred to me that I could use the Reader function to search for it. It was a lonely post, sitting there on its own, but at least it saved me searching through months of posts.

This leads on to tsundoku. It’s not such a lonely search as there are a number of people who have blogged on the subject before.

I’ve just consigned 43 words to oblivion. I didn’t like the way they fitted, and as they were all common words (as in plentiful, rather than in sitting round watching horse racing from Kempton Park whilst drinking supermarket lager straight from the can). Other race courses and cheap alcohols are available.

Having said that, alternative venues and drinks may not convey the same picture. Watching racing from Goodwood whilst drinking brown ale from the bottle conveys a more summery and 1950s picture – I almost expect the Larkins to pop up somewhere.

Before I go on, and I admit I can go on a bit, my knowledge of the racing venues of the UK is not based on years of building up interesting material for my life story, just on years of dealing in collectables. Race courses issue passes to their members and these passes are collected. You need to know the courses, their size and if they are still open.

My knowledge of cheap alcohol, on the other hand, is based on a more hands-on approach, and a wide-ranging testing programme that has left me with several gaps in my memories of the 1980s. My current attitude to drinking, which is one of the few things about my lifestyle to draw approval from my doctor, is actually the result of accidental aversion therapy.

A similar approach to curry, kebabs, chips and fried chicken has yet to show any result. Well, not entirely true. It has yet to show any positive result. Again, alternatives are available – burgers, baltis and bacon cobs being the more northern form and tripe and trotters taking us back to the 1950s again.

My extensive knowledge of junk food has just frightened me.

However, by the magic of blogging I have now produced over 450 words, and telling you this has just added another twenty to the total. I can now bring this post to a close, apologise for the lack of photographs (food is never around long enough for  a photograph) and get off to do the washing.

I’m tempted to bring it home wet, as Storm Brian is providing some pretty brisk drying weather.