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 |   A tentative blog to test the temperature. |
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Ten years ago I was writing several blogs on various subjects - F1 motor racing, Music, Classic Cars, Great Romances and, most crushingly, a personal journal that included my thoughts on America, memories of England and Africa, opinion, humour, writing and anything else that occurred. It all became too much (I was attempting to update the journal every day) and I collapsed, exhausted and thoroughly disillusioned in the end. So this blog is indeed a Toe in the Water, a place to document my thoughts in and on WdC but with a determination not to get sucked into the blog whirlpool ever again. Here's hoping.     |
| Conundrum Presented with a conundrum this morning. Most nights I use my pee break to hop on the computer for a few minutes to see how things are going. Last night this happened at about 1:00 am. I did answer an email received in WdC and then closed down after a quick look around. On firing up the thing today, I notice that the StoryMaster’s new badge system indicates that I’ve already done the blogging one. And I can’t imagine how that can be. My memory assures me that I didn’t even open the blog last night, and I certainly didn’t comment on someone else’s. I even checked to see if that email answer hadn’t actually been a blog post comment. It wasn’t. So I must presume that WdC knows something I don’t and I can ignore the blogging badge today. But can I trust it? Short answer is that I don’t and so now this post makes doubly sure. And I’ll announce it in the Newsfeed. So there. Word count: 169 |
| Quotations As writers, we come across a lot of quotations. These are supposed to make us think, usually by expressing an idea in unusual or succinct form. And very often they succeed. But I would counsel wariness. Something may sound very wise but sometimes that depends on who said it. And that’s why I always check on the origins of quotes. It can be that a whole new meaning emerges from a quote when we learn about the person who first pronounced it. Just occasionally, nefarious intentions can be detected by seeing the person behind an apparently wise saying. And now you’re asking for an example. Well, in the little known but amazingly good television series, Slings and Arrows, one of the characters keeps giving quotes which he ascribes to Richard Nixon. Suddenly each saying becomes a little more suspect as a result (unfairly, I would say but that’s just me). So the point is that we should think before accepting things just because they are quotations. No one’s infallible, after all. Word count: 171 |
| Chinchilla! Pondering on guinea pigs today, I suddenly remembered the chinchilla. My father once bought one as part of some crazy money-making scheme he had cooked up with the landlord, Solly Epstein. The chinchilla was the test run and they never bought any others. I guess they proved it wouldn’t work. The only thing they did succeed in was introducing me to the idea of a chinchilla as a pet. And I have to report that they are not worth it. Sure, they have the most wonderful, soft fur imaginable, but they are huge. Especially if you’re used to the size of guinea pigs. Chinchillas are the size of an average cat. That may seem a little irrelevant but it seriously attacks the idea of them being cute. Somehow it doesn’t seem right that rodents should be that size. And then there’s the matter of intelligence. Chinchillas are nothing if not stupid. They don’t do anything and they don’t make noises. They exhibit no character at all. They are, quite frankly, boring. To someone used to the endlessly inventive and communicative nature of guinea pigs, the stolid blob that is the chinchilla is a massive disappointment. One can only marvel at the luxurious touch of their fur for so long, after all. So there, my thoughts on the pet rating of chinchillas. If you remind me, some day I’ll tell you how Solly got his name. Word count: 235 |
| Kudos Kudos to the StoryMaster for the brilliant idea of the 7-day badges. It’s just the kind of thing that serves as a whip to my creative sluggishness. But those kudos are the point of this post. Has anyone ever seen a kudo? I know I haven’t, in spite of being told on occasion that they’re mine. Which begs the question of just how valuable kudos are. And are they perishable? For all I know, there’s a cupboard somewhere full of the rotting remains of kudos. Even more to the point, do they have monetary value? Now that would be a thing to know… Word count: 103 |
| The Nothing Post Part of the problem in this daily blogging is that I have to do it early in the morning. Blogging requires a certain amount of thought but I often find myself at a loss in that department because of the earliness of the hour. Like most people, it takes a while for my brain to start working after waking. In fact thinking is often only possible after considerable quantities of coffee have been consumed. Which takes time. So much so that sometimes the best hours for thinking have flown before I can get a post done. Which is when I resort to what I call the “Nothing Post.” This has been one of them. Word count: 114 |
| Carry You Home It’s not often I respond to these Media Prompt Challenges as the songs tend to be too recent to fit neatly into my own taste. But, every now and again, a song more to my liking comes along and I find I actually have something to say about it. This month’s is a little ditty called Carry You Home by Alex Warren. It’s a catchy little number that starts out sounding like a folk song but then explodes into a toe-tapping belter that is as inoffensive as possible these days. I haven’t concentrated on the lyrics, the rhythm and beat being the real point of the song, but it seems to be a promise to carry some young lass home for the rest of her days. Seems reasonable, if a little exhausting. And that’s really all I need to say about the song. It’s likable (at least, I like it) and I could listen to it a few more times without objection. But there’s the video to consider as well. Now this is surprisingly attractive, considering that it consists mainly of a couple dancing to the music. The dance is fairly energetic and well performed but it’s the character that hits home. Both dancers are extremely capable and expressive, giving real meaning to the song as they move. Utterly concentrated on each other, they create a romantic mood that dominates the scene to the extent that the song fades into the background. Ultimately, all that matters is the beat, supplying the timing of the dance as it does. Which sounds as though it might be too powerful to allow the song to sell itself. Surprisingly, that is not the case - I found myself enjoying the whole performance and liking the song in spite of distractions. So that’s my take, anyway. Word count: 300 |
| Landscapes As a young man, way back in the mists of time, I had a dream of a landscape of rounded, rolling green hills, treeless and covered with a short, richly green grass, that went on forever. Small, clear streams wandered through the valleys between the hills and the sky above was always cloudless and blue. Many years later, I found that landscape in the environs of Pietermaritzburg in Natal, the easternmost province of South Africa. Not only were the hills exactly as I had imagined them, they continued for long miles all the way into Zululand, far beyond the horizon. There is a place near Maritzburg that is called the Valley of a Thousand Hills and that is an underestimate. When I had the opportunity to walk those beautiful hills, however, I found that it was not quite as I had imagined. Although verdantly green, the grass was tough and hard, too prickly to sit comfortably upon. The soil between the grassroots was also stony and sharp, conflicting with that first impression of a soft, somnolent landscape. Some time later, my dream of grassy hills was replaced with another. This was of a dry, cold planet where the wind whipped fiercely across the plain, eternally wearing at the land until the planet became a featureless, smooth globe, an endless landscape of leveled and polished rock. There were a few imperfections, however. In just a few places there remained cracks and deeper valleys beyond the reach of the wind and in these were small streams that could support a sparse vegetation. Here, too, I imagined that people could live, scratching at the bottom of the valleys to raise just enough food to ensure survival. Above them, the jet stream howled its way across the crack, knowing that time was on its side - that one day it would erode down to the level of the deepest valley and all would be left unblemished. The planet would become a perfect stone ball-bearing, rolling forever around a pitiless sun. On very rare occasions, however, the wind would drop and would allow the people to climb up to gaze across the empty plain. At these times it would be possible to journey across to visit other small communities in other narrow depressions. The people would have to hurry, knowing that the wind could return at any time. To be caught by that wind on the exposed plain was death. Perhaps this dream explains my apparent obsession with flat landscapes. Word count: 414. |
| Of Whirlpools Not having any ideas for today’s post, I reread the heading to this blog. That made me realise another effect of the blogging 7-day badge - it drags one deeper into the blogging whirlpool! Not saying that it’s a bad thing but just that it’s a way of looking at it. Word count: 50 |
| The End of the World I wrote a comment today on Damon Nomad’s newsfeed post about the latest asteroid that came close to hitting the earth. As my comment stated, I have become tired of the scientists’ constant attempts to induce panic in us because “the world is about to end.” My point being that, if the world really is about to end, then there’s nothing that can be done about it (or it wouldn’t be true in the first place). And it’s not just about asteroids. We have been told for decades that one thing after another is about to bring life on this planet to an end and yet, here we still are. In fact, we seem to be doing better than ever before. The net result of all this fear-mongering is that science itself is becoming suspect. After all, how many times do events have to prove these theories wrong before we realise that it’s overstated to the point of hysteria. In biblical times they would stone false prophets. We’d all live happier lives if we resumed the practice. Anyway, that’s my rant for the day. Word count: 184 |
| First Post? The previous post was suggested by the arrival of the 7-day merit badge, of course. So, in a way, this one is the first post in a new era. And yet another occasion for me to feel guilty about posting so brief and inconsequential a post as this merely to cross off the day. |
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