That sounds a grudging thing for me to say about something so important from a ‘life experience’ point of view. It’s amazing that I’m finally writing some sort of book, even if it’s more of a ‘practice book’ than anything else.

Anyway, I am well behind… there’s a minimum word count I’m supposed to have achieved by the end of each day. That took a nose-dive on Day 3 when (1) I found myself sorting out someone’s laptop; (2) noticing things in the story that didn’t make sense. It was enough to make me stop short and think. I know we’re supposed to just write and write, and then maybe the ideas will come, but I only typed about 13 pages using that method, then ran into a wall. I couldn’t make my fingers keep on typing.

At one point I wrote about ‘an unmended fence’, and noticed the wavery red line under ‘unmended’. One online dictionary and my Microsoft Works dictionary told me that though ‘untended’ is acceptable, ‘unmended’ isn’t even a word. Yet it’s everywhere on the internet… nobody says it’s wrong, and it feels normal enough. Odd. I suppose I could change it to ‘a broken-down fence’, but the whole point I’m trying to make is that it’s neglected and nobody has repaired it. I could always add a bit saying “it looked as though it had been broken for a while and nobody had been round to fix it(!)” which would add a little padding to my word count! But it seems a bit of a palaver to go to just to explain something that the nice simple word ‘unmended’ would at least imply.

Similar niggles aside, I took a printout of my outline and other notes to bed with me (that’s where I do most of my best thinking!) and after scribbling and plotting and brainstorming, had fresh ideas for the plot… what I’ve written so far is already being turned inside out. There are two or three characters I may even have to erase. But for now maybe I’ll just move things around and add bits and keep writing, and then I can do some of the serious cutting and rewriting after making my final word count at the end of the month. Fingers crossed. I do feel better now that I worked things out a bit more.

Meanwhile I thought it would be unfair to go silent for a whole extra month without letting you know… I’ve been missing you all, and I’ll be back.

Now there are floods where we are, including the little burn out the back. It overflowed across the path, but has receded now, touch wood. I’m beginning to feel chased around by these muddy rushing rivers…

Hope to get myself sorted out soon, then I’ll get back to responding to blog comments.

The burn seen from our back gate.

Hail Fellow Ill Met

 
A few weeks ago:

When we were going home on the bus, I was writing a message to Mum on our conversation notepad. An elderly man got on the bus and stood for a while, tucking his ticket away. I felt his eyes on me and looked up, and smiled. Then I went back to the message I was writing. Mum jerked her head towards him suddenly, and gestured apologetically, with a half-turn of her head towards me. I could imagine her saying, “I’m sorry, she can’t hear you.” He sat down across from us, where I couldn’t see him, and for the rest of the journey they talked politely, their voices lost in the roar of the bus. After a while I put my conversation notepad away, my message unread.

When we reached our stop and Mum moved towards the exit, I glanced at the man, intending to say goodbye. But he sat with his head turned away, so I said nothing. I didn’t ask Mum who he was or what they were talking about, and she didn’t mention him… he was just a passing ship.

 
Two days ago:

We were walking in single file along a narrow footpath, when we came across a bearded man on a ladder who was preparing to trim a hedge. He and Mum exchanged jolly-sounding greetings. Powered by her presence, I breezed past in my turn with a cheery smile. But I thought about how, on my own, I would either not look at him, or would raise my hand in a polite salute.

A little way further along, when we came onto the road, another man stood nearby. Again he and Mum made friendly noises. “People are so kind!” said Mum, as we passed on.

 
Yesterday:

We went into Costa’s for coffee, but it was quite busy. All that was left for us was a small round table for two, wedged between a lady in the corner (reading a newspaper) and two gossiping boys. The woman looked up and smiled, and she and Mum talked for a little… I wondered if they knew each other. Then the lady went back to her newspaper, and Mum and I wrote to each other in our conversation notepad.

“It’s hotter than I thought,” said Mum. “Have you noticed that the students get younger every year?”

“I never looked,” I said.

Mum rolled her eyes good-naturedly, while I thought about the old man on the bus, along with years and years of students passing me by, unseen.

After a while I said, “You know why I don’t look at people? I don’t want them to think they can speak to me just because I smiled.”

Mum laughed and shook her head at me. “They don’t always — and don’t smile,” she said. “Just observe.”

 
A small mystery cleared up:

When we left, the woman reading the newspaper didn’t speak to us again — she was a stranger after all. But Mum later volunteered the information that she’d told us (when we came in looking for somewhere to sit) she’d been watching a single student taking up a table meant for four.

Oh, I so know the feeling! Especially when we are meeting my sister, and the three of us have to huddle (with two shopping trolleys) round a tiny table for two, while a skinny kid stretches out blissfully in a tasty piece of café ‘real estate’… and stays there forever.

Lady next to us — I share your frustration.

The game of Blog Tag works like this: Once you are tagged, you must follow these simple rules:

1. You must post the rules. (These are THE RULES.)
2. Answer the questions the tagger set for you in their post.
3. Create eight new questions to ask the people you’ve tagged.
4. Tag eight people with a link to your post.
5. Let them know they’ve been tagged.

**Here are the questions by my tagger:**

1. If you could be any character from a movie, who would it be and why?

Scary things happen to characters, even in happy movies, so I don’t know who I would opt to be. It’s also hard to imagine being someone other than myself… I would bring something completely different to the movie and would probably ruin the plot.

I found myself thinking I would quite like to be the mother in Mamma Mia!… living in bright sunshine with happy, cheerful friends. I have old flames that my movie daughter could invite, including a song-writing guitar player with long hair. And I like Abba!

2. What do you miss most about being a kid?

That one’s easy… all of my family being there. Proper Christmases with six people at the table.

3. What’s the best present you’ve ever received? Given?

Received? A pink mouse.

Given? For the sake of conversation (though I doubt if it’s true), a Mozart bear who plays Eine kleine Nachtmusik.

4. Name your favourite book.

Ah, that would depend on my mood! Light option: the Moomin books by Tove Jansson. Heavier option: Master and Commander by Patrick O’Brian.

5. It’s your last meal ever.  What are you eating?

Rich pea and ham soup, followed by hot BBQ chicken with soft white crusty bread, followed by a good quality chocolate sundae with whipped cream. A nice sweet white wine along with the main meal. And then coffee, with a square of good Scottish tablet. Make that the whole packet of tablet, if it has to be my last…

6. What song(s) would you include in the Soundtrack of Your Life?

Eleven songs, placed in approximate chronological order of my life events.

Wimoweh (The Lion Sleeps Tonight / Mbube) I still love this video!
Isn’t it Amazing (Hothouse Flowers)
Dreaming (OMD)
Same Old Scene (Roxy Music)
Heart on My Sleeve (Gallagher and Lyle)
The Sound of Silence (Simon & Garfunkel)
This Land is Mine (Dido)
Dream a Lie (UB40)
New World in the Morning (Roger Whittaker)
Going Home (Runrig)
She’s Leaving (OMD).

Notes on my choices:

(a) My sister and I were brought up on Wimoweh!

(b) People interpret The Sound of Silence in different ways. I believe Paul Simon himself suggested that it was just a bit of teenage angst about the young being ignored by society. That’s what I read into it myself, though I feel it can speak for many others who aren’t teenagers.

7. What last experience did you have that made you a stronger person?

Books are nothing new, but the Kindle itself might count as a recent experience, or discovery? It helps me tap into the world of books without filling our rooms from floor to ceiling. Books of all kinds have gone a long way to making me what I am, good or bad.

8.  Favourite season of the year and why?

Summer… I’m a hot weather chick. I was born in a hot weather country… I don’t like being cold, and I don’t like it when it’s dark and wet. Though sometimes I’m in the mood for the first signs of spring, violent storms, golden leaves and Halloween, Christmas, pine trees, snow… and Moomin dreams.

**Now here are my questions for the Tagees:**

1. If you could be any character from a movie, who would it be and why?
2. What do you like best about your hobbies?
3. Do you feel that reading other blogs changes or shapes your attitude to life?
4. What is your favourite cake?
5. If you ever had to leave your current continent and live in another, where would you go?
6. What was your first ever favourite song?
7. Do you have any bad habits that you don’t regret?
8.  What song(s) would you include in the Soundtrack of Your Life?

Lemon Drizzle

Mum buys home-baking from local coffee mornings, and one of our favourites is Lemon Drizzle. It is moist and sweet without being too sweet. We fell in love with it, and I always make room for it in my daily calorie allocation. (I still manage to lose weight, and it makes me happy, so it’s not a problem)!

There are lots of recipes for Lemon Loaf online — I compared several before settling for this one from Daily Mail Online: Crunchy Lemon Cake.

It tastes very like the coffee morning cake, though I learned not to use a small food-processor for the batter! There isn’t enough room. Next time I’ll just use big mixing bowls and a hand blender.

Super Sad True Love Story (Gary Shteyngart)

I love my Kindle, but it would be nothing without the books.

One Kindle feature is that I can rate each book after finishing it. I keep a personal database of Kindle books (mostly so I can keep tabs on which books in a series I haven’t got) but I also note down the scores I give each book.

According to my database, the top scoring book on my Kindle is Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart — I gave it 45 points out of a possible 50. So far it’s the only book on the Kindle that I’ve given five stars.

I was interested in the ‘big brother’ aspect of the story (the scary thing is, I can imagine life turning into that). I liked the fact that the main character had a diary and was wrestling with issues similar to mine (logging the nice stuff and avoiding the bad)…. it just tickled my funny bone.

Although he begins by sounding like somebody you’d prefer to have nothing to do with, you can’t help feeling fascinated by his whole way of life… and you get very fond of him by the end. In fact he’s the most decent man in his social group.

Main characters in books don’t have to be young, beautiful, strong, clever, and sociable… in fact none of these qualities are necessary. They have to seem real and be vulnerable, have to have experienced things I recognize from my own life… and they have to be trying to be good rather than bad.

Perfection is not required in a human being, unless true perfection is having the right balance of imperfections! I think it may have been achieved in this book.

Piggin

…just because everybody needs Piggin Friends!

This boyo here has his own box of trinkets. The bigger and bulkier the trinket, the more he loves it. You don’t leave anything sparkly lying around, because it will disappear into Piggin’s treasure chest.

He has even snatched costume jewellery from beneath other customers’ noses. Mum bought a string of cheap bulky beads from a stall, and another lady said, “Oh, you beat me to it! That’s just the kind of thing I love!”

I said, “I don’t suppose you told her it was going to be worn by a Piggin?”

“No,” she said.

Good call.

]]> http://diddums.wordpress.com/2012/09/04/a-few-of-my-favourite-things/feed/ 9 diddums Piggin Friend http://diddums.wordpress.com/2012/09/03/kindle-waffle/ http://diddums.wordpress.com/2012/09/03/kindle-waffle/#comments Mon, 03 Sep 2012 21:55:00 +0000 Diddums http://diddums.wordpress.com/?p=3123 ]]> We meant to go to the supermarket this morning, but the car refused to start. Mum says the battery has gone flat (again). We don’t use it enough!

When I was glancing at my list of old Kindle purchases on Amazon, it said there was an update available for one of the ebooks. Any notes and highlights I made on that particular book would be wiped out… but I don’t care about that. I can always put them back in!

I’ve seen people saying on a Kindle forum that they are sometimes offered these ebook upgrades… but I don’t think I was notified about mine by email. I should check the full list of purchases in case there are other offers!

Mum has apparently been going crazy watching me share many happy hours with my Kindle, because she suddenly announced that she wanted one too. Instead of sitting around waiting for one to arrive through the post, she bought a Kindle Touch from Argos. (Reminds me of the Argos advert… she’ll be the one darting brightly through the door with Argos bags, while my house of cards tumbles down about my ears).

She wanted to make the font larger, as she can’t read very well in bed. It took us both a little time to find out where Amazon had put the font sizes… it’s right there on mine, but harder to find on hers.  Anyway, it’s all sorted now.

She seems to be reading Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death. Maybe I should do all the cooking for a while…

People are affected differently by the seasons, but perhaps I would feel more creative at this time of year if we were living in a hot country or a brighter, warmer house.

I’m in more of a ‘blogging’ frame of mind than I’ve been all year, though. I suspect other interests have shifted, leaving more room for that. I’ve been looking around  and reading more; wondering more about other bloggers. I doubt if I will be here every day, especially if I’m so cold that I’ve taken refuge downstairs… but I have more appetite for it.

Sometimes I miss being young… I used to feel there was no limit to what you could do or write about. To think of something was to write, and I didn’t worry about originality as such… if it came from me and wasn’t a repeat of something I remembered reading or hearing somewhere else, then it was original. I wasn’t stupid — I realized that true originality is rare… ideas are derivative and people often think the same thoughts independently. But the world seemed big enough and diverse enough to bear it.

The reason I miss my naivety is that my world seems to have shrunk… I have fewer options and less faith that I will write about the right things in the right way. I’m no longer some carefree child leaping off the plank at the deep end, sure that I will swim, and swim well.

I wonder if the internet has added to this over-flowing cup? My pictures are the same as everybody else’s, and there is nothing new under the sun. Some articles, discussions and reviews are repeated word-for-word on different sites, and it doesn’t matter how hard you try at something, there’s always someone else who does it better.

Anyway, when the weather takes a nose-dive, so does my mood. Perhaps switching off and reading a book is not such a bad idea!

I prefer quiet conversations with just one person at a time.

Sometimes feels as though life is something you are forced to do when you would rather keep out of it! There is no way you can say “I don’t want to do this, thanks…. I don’t have the right kind of brain.” I always wanted my life to be a book I could learn from without being hurt in any way.

I’m the heroine of my own story, and I don’t like it at all. I’d much rather read about it.

At the end of the novel I would turn round and be at home with my family. No other kind of existence is imaginable.

But for now the book is still open…. the next chapter could be filled with masked highwaymen (or did we just have that one?) Or howling wolves in a cold Scottish forest (think I’ve done that one as well). Or a shipwreck, and pirate’s treasure. Or there’ll be a hobbit and a gold ring.

Is that all just wistful thinking?

I liked the following…  it reminds me of modern TV:

“The brief life of the Ideal has burned itself out, as the year, in its vernal beauty when Arthur came, is burning out in autumn. The poem is purposely autumnal, with the autumn, not of mellow fruitfulness, but of the “flying gold of the ruined woodlands” and the dank odours of decay. In that miserable season is held the Tourney of the Dead Innocence, with the blood-red prize of rubies. With a wise touch Tennyson has represented the Court as fallen not into vice only and crime, but into positive vulgarity and bad taste. The Tournament is a carnival of the “smart” and the third-rate. Courtesy is dead, even Tristram is brutal, and in Iseult hatred of her husband is as powerful as love of her lover. The satire strikes at England, where the world has never been corrupt with a good grace.”

All this talk about flying gold, ruined woodlands and dank decay reminds me of a perfume I like… Calvin Klein’s Secret Obsession. Moss, wet earth and cool, damp leaves… beautiful. Perhaps the courtiers were wearing it at their Tourney.

There were words concerning women trying unsuccessfully to be like men (rather dubious, I thought!) and although I couldn’t find online commentary on the subject, I saw he had written a letter to Jane Austen in Letters to Dead Authors. I downloaded 10 or more Kindle books by Andrew Lang, including Letters to Dead Authors and Letters on Literature. I also found A Collection of Ballads, A Short History of Scotland, Tales of Troy and Greece and New Collected Rhymes.

A reviewer for The Book of Dreams and Ghosts said if anyone understood it enough to get more than 40% of the way through it, they were ‘ratty and silly’. Eight people out of eight said the review wasn’t helpful.

My Kindle was running out of power, so I connected it to the computer to recharge, washed a splash of coffee from its pink Shocksock and hung it up to dry. Then I went back to bed, as it was still quite early.

Had a horrible dream about a friend I fell out with…

In the dream I was happy and excited, telling her how I could visit a site of hers any time to see what she was saying and how she was getting along. It was like being subscribed to somebody’s blog, and there was nothing wrong with it. I thought she would be chuffed, but she told me that my frequent visits were causing problems on her site, and I shouldn’t be online so much, as it led to system overload.

She said I should unplug everything and stay offline. She didn’t say “check a few times to see how I’m doing!” or anything else nice; she gave the impression she wouldn’t care if I never went online again.

Obediently, I unplugged everything and thought, “well, I can do a little housework now.” I stared through a window at the garden. The day was slowly darkening, and shadows stretched across the lawn. The leaves stirred restlessly in the encroaching chill. I could hear my friend in the next room… she was clacking eagerly around her kitchen, talking to her husband. She had forgotten I was there, and was telling him that now they were free to do whatever they wanted, and she had lots of plans for the two of them.

I woke up again, depressed, and discovered I had slept so long it was lunchtime! The song Vienna by Ultravox was in my head.

The feeling has gone, only you and I,
It means nothing to me
This means nothing to me…….

I was amazed to find the following YouTube videos of them, and got horribly nostalgic…

Ryan’s Son: the handsome one with wide blaze and exuberant buck.

Claret: the beautiful little horse with rapid style.

Hydrophane Coldstream: the brilliant one.

I’ve mentioned all three of them before on this blog: 20 Things Meme. I called myself a negative wood snake (always felt like one!) Some things never change… Anyway, if you like memes or answering questions, you’re welcome to take that one up on your own blog.

When trying to decide whether or not to buy it, I worried that it might be dry or unnerving, but decided that it didn’t matter. As a blogger, I should read it anyway.

In fact I enjoyed it, and made a lot of highlights for my personal reference. (Incidentally, I decided a long time ago that I would only allow people to see highlights I made on older books such as Dickens. I’m just being cautious!)

It looks at international issues, which is something that affects all online communications anyway. It doesn’t pretend to cover all of the dangers, but I learned things I didn’t know… as a very new and uncertain Facebooker, it was mostly Facebook issues I didn’t know about. But there are issues everywhere, really. Better to be aware of them than not.

I told myself off for being lazy, found the letter to myself, read it, and thought, “is that it? No blinding words of insight that will add something to my day? It’s all stuff I could have written yesterday (or could write tomorrow), though I do have glasses that work now (varifocals), and have found some (not all) of the books I was looking for.”

Unimpressed. Though that snippet about my father was of value, as I would have forgotten it otherwise.

I didn’t say much about it last year: Memory of a Garden. But below is the blog post I meant to post last year, and didn’t!

WordPress prompt:

“Write a short letter to yourself, to be read one year from now. You don’t have to post the entire letter, but you do have to:

(a) write it

(b) post about what surprised you the most about what you wrote

(c) whether you found the experience interesting or not…

…and don’t forget to set a reminder in your calendar to read it in one year.”

Thursday 21st July 2011

Dear Me,

I have no idea where you’ll be and what you’ll be doing, but I hope all of your current aches will have gone, and that you’re wearing glasses that work! (Right now I can’t read, write or draw well, with or without them). I hope you’ll have found and read the books on your ‘to track down’ list… Sean Thomas Russell, the missing Patrick O’Brian novels, Robin Hobb, Raymond E Feist and Janny Wurts.

I don’t know what else I hope for you, as I can’t wish a particular course in case it’s the wrong one. Que sera, sera, perhaps… but the newspaper article that Mum found today struck a chord… she handed it to me with a significant look.

Meet Generation X: Women born between 1965 and 1978 aren’t having children OR success in their careers… Why? (by Anna Pursglove).

After reading it, I was silent for a little, then said, “Obviously we haven’t flattened the men quite enough. I vote we start with [censored].

“Spoilt for choice!” said Mum, with a basilisk glare.

She said earlier today how men of previous generations did not like shopping — but my father ‘was unusual’ because he enjoyed it. I asked what was in it for him? Gadgets? And she said “I don’t know. Just enjoyed looking.” It lifted my heart to think of him enjoying such frivolity. Of course he always was warm and human, but it makes him seem even more so.

My main regret, I think, is that everything rushes by so fast — and sometimes you don’t fully understand or appreciate people, things or places till they are long in the past. To want them back seems useless — to fly in the face of how life is.

Regret is also futile in other regards — if I didn’t say or do certain things, I wouldn’t be me. Sometimes you read something bad you wrote, or find a depressingly poor picture you’d worked on for hours, but other times there’s a pleasant surprise or two. Today I found panoramic images I didn’t remember creating — of the garden and my bedroom! Rough, but evocative.

Just don’t give up on yourself… try to keep your ship afloat, like in this morning’s dream. It would have been easy to let it sink, but I kept on and was around to rescue someone who sank his own. Also, it’s such a cliche to say “you’re never alone,” but it’s true that you’re one speck among many who share similar experiences.

That last bit sounds detached and a little frightening, as though you could blow away at any moment and never be seen again through the swirling dust storm. But you’re still in there, along with people you know — the dust cloud is all of us.

I’m beginning to feel a bit lost in this message, and my pen has already run out, so I better stop. As you know, there is the blog and the private journal if you want to read more from the past! Asterix and Obelix are waving to you from the side trolley, as perhaps they are waving to me from wherever you are. The song in my head is ‘I Am, I Said’ by Neil Diamond, which is strangely apt.

Please keep blogging, reading, making pictures/videos, sitting in the sun outside, looking round the shops… enjoy life while you have it.

Lots of love,

Me.

To complete this assignment, I’m supposed to post about what surprised me the most about the above letter, and whether I found the experience interesting.

Previously I scoffed at myself, writing ‘…my entire journal is a letter to any future me who cares to read it.’ But some things came out in the letter that I was too lazy to write in my regular entry for the day… Mum’s words, the panoramic pictures and the newspaper article. I don’t mention my blurring eyesight much either, though it causes me problems every day. I wonder if it will be better a year from now, or worse? Will I have found a solution… bifocals??

Did anything surprise me about the letter? Yes, that it wasn’t longer and more waffly! That things like my dream fitted into what I was trying to say. That I wouldn’t tie myself down to anything more specific, such as a better career or a more organized life… as I know how life often isn’t what you expect.

Something I didn’t mention in either letter or private journal entry but which I found interesting… Apple is building what I would call a mini city or a Ringworld. Rather scary… but I wonder if there is room there for me. I could do a panoramic photo there…. “my new abode”.

Dotty Photoshop

A problem I have off and on with Photoshop is that the brush corrupts mid-session. I could be drawing or painting with a nice flowing line, then suddenly all I get when I pull the brush along the page is nothing, followed by a single dot. When I check the brush settings, they don’t appear to have changed; I should still get a flowing line.

To combat this, I changed brushes and brush settings, but it makes no difference… I only get my flowing line back when I quit Photoshop and start it up again. I don’t have to trash the Preferences file, so it doesn’t appear to be a permanent corruption.

When it happens too often in a day, it’s exasperating!

It’s possible I accidentally hit or click on something that causes that to happen… here are some things I could try.

(1) Changing the tablet pen’s settings so that the button on the side of the pen is disabled. I never use that button anyway; it just adds anxiety to the painting process!

(2) I could hit the ESC key and see if that brings my brush back.

(3) I could set my brushes to default, then reload the one I want.

(4) I could renew the Photoshop Preferences file anyway, in case it’s essentially faulty.

Well, now my pen’s button is disabled, and my plan of action is mapped out for today…. bring on the dots!

If I’d known no calls were coming in, I would have put two and two together, but I assumed it was business as usual.

Anyway, when my sister complained about an engaged tone and an automated male voice telling her to hang up, BT got on the act very quickly, and sorted it out… you keep hearing horror stories about how such issues get dragged out and fought over, but BT were here and sorting out the fault almost before we could say ‘Jack Robinson’. The engineer said the fault lay with something in the junction box, and was ‘comparatively rare’.

It was lovely to be able to get back online again, and all the things I was desperate to do ON THE INTERNET suddenly became of less importance, and I put them all on the back burner again, and just relaxed and played in Photoshop! It was like my cat’s attitude to my cheese… it was nice just to know I had the option.

Till the next morning, when I checked my email, and nothing happened….. we were offline again!!

I picked up my mobile phone (rusting through lack of use) meaning to send a text message to my sister, and found one already waiting for me… she said her phone and internet were both down. It was a relief to know it was something more general, and probably nothing to do with our original fault. We were offline most of the day… we would get in for a few minutes, and then ‘boom!’ it was gone again.

It’s holding steady now, but for a while I didn’t trust it at all! I had no intention of buying anything, for instance, till I knew it wasn’t going to suddenly duck out from under me mid-payment. Anyway, it reminds me not to take these things for granted.

I tapped it, smashed it, and weevilled at it with a corkscrew. Nothing. Mum finally got it open after launching herself at it with a heavy hammer and a wild scream. At least we can eat it now…

I spoke too soon! During an interview with Stephanie Cole, she said (according to the subtitles), “my garden is quite of Excise.” I’m still trying to work out what that meant!

According to my stats, I only posted 37 times last year. So… what prevented me from blogging?

Some thoughts:

The publish button ‘looms’…. once you’ve pressed it, there’s no way back. You can delete or edit your post, but in the meantime people will have seen it in all its roughness.

Sometimes I wrote something and it seemed empty.

Sometimes I just wanted to turn off the computer and be by myself… write my private journal (without feeling constrained), read a book, watch Death in Paradise.

My sight has been ageing and I’ve had trouble concentrating on all of my usual hobbies (e.g. digital art) along with new ones (such as trying to draw). It was unpleasant switching my focus from a book or magazine to the computer screen (or a drawing pad) and back again… there’s a point where you just can’t do that without developing a stoop in the back and a crick in your neck! Varifocals have helped, but my vision will never again be as good as it used to be.

What would I do differently this year??

I have various computer ‘projects’ that never seem to be firing on all cylinders at the same time. I was listing them last night: Facebook, digital art, blogging, a small chat forum, the Kindle Reader (it’s a world of its own)… and I think I forgot to list the DVD Subtitles site! It’s a while since I’ve rated any DVDs.

Anyway, where was I going with all that…? I feel I need to get all of these main hubs of internet activity organized and functioning equally, so that I don’t spend all my time in Facebook, for instance, leaving my other interests to suffer. It has to be easier to reach everything and get involved.

The most important thing I’ve done so far is setting Google Reader to show up automatically every time I fire up my browser. The blog posts of my blogging friends are the first items I see every day… so keep blogging! Fuzzy Bear is watching.

Doubtless his lot is important in his own eyes; and the chief reason that we think he asks too large a place in our consideration must be our want of room for him, since we refer him to the Divine regard with perfect confidence; nay, it is even held sublime for our neighbour to expect the utmost there, however little he may have got from us.
~ Middlemarch (George Eliot)

Sarah has posted some questions on her blog Stars and Rainbows — I can never resist answering these!

1. What is the one thing that makes you happiest, each day?
A peaceful day in which nothing has to be done or faced, and no fires have to be fought.

2. What is your biggest dream?
A more insightful, thoughtful and understanding world.

3. If you could meet your 16-year-old self, what advice would you give to her/him?
Keep in touch with your friends if possible, and keep that diary going! One day you will want to remember, and sometimes what you have written is a surprise… often good as well as bad. Also record your dreams… those are of interest too. Photos are good too, but they are never as evocative or as useful, somehow, as your own words from the past.

4. What is your most prized possession?
My sight.

5. What did school teach you?
That you learn more when you take an interest and get involved in your studies, especially when you choose additional books of your own (from the library or wherever). I didn’t hear at lessons, and sometimes didn’t hear what our homework was to be, and so home-study and planning were particularly important.

6. What has life, thus far, taught you?
That there’s no point banging your head against a brick wall, and that some people will believe what they want against all reason. Just accept you can’t please all of the people all of the time, and that so long as you get on with some people most of the time, you’re fine!

7. How would you describe your style?
Best when light…. but I keep forgetting that!

8. What is your favourite thing about blogging?
It’s a way of getting your view across, while discovering and talking to other bloggers. It’s a way of venting steam, preferably without scalding anyone. Your blog is a record of your past thoughts and actions, and sometimes a reminder to get on with something that you were putting off and blogged about ages ago…

It’s also that moment when you think “what could I blog about today? It could be absolutely anything!” and feel an anticipatory thrill.

9. What is your favourite meal? Describe it, in a way that will make the reader want it.
Prawn curry! The rich tang of the curry sauce steams and curls under your nose. The plump sultanas glisten alongside sweet pink prawns, nestling on a bed of pearly white rice. At your side sits a large, finely etched glass of chilled white wine — we like ours to be dessert wine. Sometimes you also have a crunchy spiced poppadum –  I love to break mine into big pieces for scooping up the curry.

10. Imagine you are off on an adventure, and you need to pack a bag of food. What will your picnic consist of?
A Cornish Pasty or an onion bridie, if I felt a little more adventurous than usual! Sometimes cold quiche, or cous cous mixed with roast vegetables. Normally (more boringly) it would be a Marks and Sparks sandwich with a pricy little bottle of Coca-Cola.

11. What is the one thing that you wish everyone could understand?
It’s communication that’s important, not how one communicates.

One of the things about having fallen out of blogging for so long is that WordPress has changed a lot, and I don’t quite know how to use it any more! I’ve been slowly finding out. The last time I created a blog post, it made tag suggestions and gave me the opportunity to add them. It also invited me to choose from the ‘most used’ tags, and when I clicked on the link, this image came up…

It didn’t take me long to work out that this isn’t a list of common tags on the WordPress site… this is my OWN cloud of tags!

The word ‘trivialities’ is unsettlingly huge. On the other hand, ‘grumbles’ is surprisingly small. Perhaps I just forget to add it most of the time…

We were out this morning, and when I came in the front door and saw the way my two cats were sleepily regarding me, I took photos, trying to capture their mood. Unfortunately the girl cat (Delilah) first of all just put her head down and closed her eyes, and didn’t look at the camera the way she had looked at me… then she sat up and did a very sweet green-eyed yawn, and at that precise moment my camera decided it had run out of card-space!!!!

That sort of thing is enough to throw you into a screaming tantrum.

I behaved myself though, and fetched another camera card… by that time Delilah had hopped off and left through the cat flap. Thank goodness for Samson, who stayed in bed, occasionally blinking at me, though with not quite the roguish grin that he had before.

I tried to focus sharply on him (dark room and ageing eyesight), and sometimes managed; other times it was way off, like here… I would have deleted this picture without a second thought, but I suddenly remembered the photo challenge.

Well, I thought, if I have to post a fuzzy photo, it might as well be this one! I made it even softer in Photoshop, mostly round the edges. Will have to look and see what other challenges I can respond to… my camera has been a bit covered in cobwebs recently.

I’ve been weeding out my mailbox. I found a lot of unread Daily Post emails, but have been reading through them as I delete; making notes of some of the tips and suggestions. They did inspire a few more blog posts out of me last year than I would otherwise have managed, so I knew the potential value of them!

I’m only partway through the task but have already put a new badge in my sidebar (‘I’m part of Post A Week 2012′)… better late than never! If you click on the badge, it will take you to WordPress’s  Daily Post page.

I have also set Google Reader to appear whenever I fire up my browser. I used to do that before, but for a long time it’s been displaced by other sites.

Reading the Daily Posts have got me dusting off my blog again, thinking about the posts I could write… thank you to the staff there. I don’t know if I can keep blogging even once a week, but would like very much to get back into the swing of it.

Trying to find somewhere on my desk to lay out a sheet of paper I’m copying from, but there’s no room. Then I remember I’ve got a nice solid copy holder somewhere, but I’m not sure where. Find it on my desk, sitting beside me. Prop the paper on it, not bothering to fasten it with the bar. This won’t take long.

*** *** ***

It’s half past 8 on a Tuesday night — feels more like it was Monday. Golden sunlight in the dimming outdoors, glancing off the tops of the clematis and off the sides of the trees. Sky a soft pale blue. Sun was pouring down through the loft hatchway upstairs, pooling in the middle of the soft gloom of the landing.

TV downstairs is on — one of those music shows of Simon Cowell watching dance groups that all look the same. A very nervous girl has just walked offstage in a skimpy outfit she’s not comfortable in — she looks as though in her mind she has already lost, and she is probably right. I don’t hear their remarks on the TV, or any of the music… though the music phantom in my muffled brain is playing some dignified, ‘big’, dramatic voiceless rock music that I know well and can’t identify. It’s one of the tunes that’s often there. Makes you think of sun setting slowly over heavy, glinting seas.

I’m drinking the dregs of yesterday’s coffee — it’s like stewed sawdust in water. There’s milk in it but no sugar. There are pigeons in the trees outside. Pecking, preening, flying off occasionally but always coming back. This is their home. They suffer somehow through the frosts of winter and are still here in the spring. I watch them and they watch me.

Mum is playing solitaire on her laptop. She’s moving the cordless mouse on a tray on her knee and is leaning back. It seems tired and disengaged. She said during the day she had a headache — perhaps it has not gone.

*** *** ***

My eyes smart a little, especially the left. I was at the opticians today, having a ‘full’ eye test. At one point in the proceedings she was shining a very white bright light in my eyes. The left eye stood up to it reasonably well, but the right eye kept fluttering and closing.

I nearly started whimpering in the middle of my interview with the optician — she pretended not to notice, but her bright cheeriness and warmth redoubled. I’d been upset all morning. I felt tired of trying to talk to people, maybe about important things like my eyesight, and not hearing anything they say unless they repeat fifty times or write it down. You miss things and make mistakes because of it, which results in repeat appointments etc… the very last thing you want.

I’d even got tired of pretending that I’m on board with everybody else — the polite nodding and smiling that smooths most of it over while feeling confusion about who people are and how they spend their time. Pretending I know whether a stranger has said “may I sit here?” or “is anybody sitting here?” to which the answer will be ‘yes’ or ‘no’, or ‘no’ or ‘yes’, depending. And all the time, a guilty, creeping boredom and resentment that has to be disguised.

Today I froze in the headlights, and waited for it all to stop.

I sighed and cheered up when the optician said my eyes were very healthy. I notice she didn’t add “for your age,” but I knew it was true. With my floaters, dry eyes, varifocals and blurring eyesight, it seemed an unlikely diagnosis. Especially when she said “you see better than 20/20 with your spex [sic]“, which my mother said she thought only Superman could do. Last week she said she and my sister have high blood pressure and that I might too… but I haven’t yet, it seems. Maybe because I’m the protected youngest, or because I was so sluggish this morning. “I felt like roadkill,” I said, and Mum said “you looked it.”

I suppose the thought of being deaf AND blind terrifies me. I wouldn’t be able to read what people say to me, and that would destroy what communications I have. It would just be me and the ‘music phantom’ in my head, and vague rumblings and vibrations in my environment. Perhaps a cat on my lap.

*** *** ***

It’s 0:20 the next morning and I’ve gone to bed. A Piggin leans on my shoulder. I’ve drained a glass of slightly too acid tomato juice — won’t buy that brand again. My Kindle is next to my bed in its pink Shocksock… I’m reading a rather poor whodunnit set in Egypt. But it’s not so poor that I need to stop.

The Kindle changes the way I buy books. I nearly bought an L.E. Modesitt Jr hardback for £1.50 from a charity shop, but when I noticed the stained pages, I put it back. I wonder, “do I really want MORE books taking up space, especially blemished ones that I’m too squeamish to touch? I could buy it for my eReader and highlight the bits I like, and leave it in my Amazon archive.”

It’s more comfortable reading and writing without my glasses. Everything at some sort of distance is a blur… shape, colour and a soft shine… no detail. Closer to, my hands and writing are clear. My long hair is a dark haze that frames my vision.

Last night I dreamed about white werewolves. As I watched a big one loping along, I grew nervous and asked myself why I was so relaxed? Then I remembered the werewolf was a friend who was helping me. I relaxed again, but then woke up and remembered the optician, and really didn’t want to go out.

Day came to an end eventually though, with golden sunlight and so on. It wasn’t all bad, any more than the werewolf was… though my inner rabbit waits behind my eyes, ready to pounce!

Yesterday I finished Middlemarch by George Eliot.

I don’t believe the following is a spoiler, as I don’t refer to the plot or individual characters, but if you are going to read the book, wish to start with a blank slate and don’t even need the persuasion, you might want to skip this, in case.

It was a surprise of a book… a slow and graceful waltz which illustrates life in a small English town in bygone days. I didn’t know if anything more would come of it, but in fact the pace quickens and there’s a strong finish.

George Eliot is at pains to point out that life continues after that climax, with people either becoming what they want to be or getting lost along the way. Eventually they pass on, leaving room for young hopefuls, who tread similar paths while thinking them new.

Major social events (such as weddings, births and funerals) tend to be skirted around, with the main focus falling on events both before and after: the things that make all the difference.

It’s remarkable how a person’s life and character can be so affected and changed by individual decisions, both great and small. One person getting married or deciding to do good instead of evil, evil instead of good, or walk this way instead of that, could utterly transform the lives and characters of the people around him/her.

It reminded me of An Inspector Calls in that respect… how separate and apparently irrelevant actions by different people could impact on one individual’s life in a major way.

Parts of Middlemarch are dry and hard to follow, but there is plenty of humour and liveliness, and the style in general seems to loosen up in the latter half of the book. A quality I like about some of these older books is that there is a focus on redemption, forgiveness and change of heart, whereas many of today’s books and films have a shallow quality, demanding indignities and vengeance to be inflicted on unsympathetic characters.

“What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?”

Sometimes I couldn’t decide if I liked or sympathized with a Middlemarch character or not, which is like real life in that we don’t know everything about people. Our views are irrelevant anyway, because people have both good and bad things about them, and have good and bad experiences regardless of our opinion, and they make friends with people we like, even when we wish that they wouldn’t…

“‘I suppose we never quite understand why another dislikes what we like, mother,’ said Mary, rather curtly.”

I was amazed at the corners and shadows of human nature that George Eliot explored; it made you wonder what she has experienced in life to know all of this. Some of it falls in your own experience. It’s unsettling to know that you are thinking and feeling no differently from people back in the 1800s, but then you ask yourself what else you expected? As George Eliot said, these paths have been trodden and these stories have told many times before.

“I protest against all our interest, all our effort at understanding being given to the young skins that look blooming in spite of trouble; for these too will get faded, and will know the older and more eating griefs which we are helping to neglect.”

“…people were so ridiculous with their illusions, carrying their fool’s caps unawares, thinking their own lies opaque while everybody else’s were transparent, making themselves exceptions to everything, as if when all the world looked yellow under a lamp they alone were rosy.”