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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.     |
| Cloud Bustin’ Back in the days of my youth, I had a hippy friend by the name of Garth. He lived in an apartment block with a balcony several floors up. This was an ideal place to catch some sun and chew the fat. We used it often. My most memorable time on the balcony came when I found Garth there, stretched out on a lounge chair and watching the sky. He greeted me with the words, “Hey man, come do some cloud bustin’.” In those days I would try anything once so I asked how this was done. Garth explained that the idea was to concentrate on just one area of an individual cloud and watch as the force of your attention dispersed it. Naturally, I tried it and it worked. At first one could nibble away at the edge of a cloud or bust a hole in it. Then it was possible to switch to other parts of the cloud and so disperse it entirely in time. I know it sounds unlikely but you should try it before dismissing it as a hippy’s fanciful imagination. Heck, even I figured there must be some natural cause of this phenomenon and that clouds were always dispersing and reforming like this. I couldn’t deny that it was fun, however. It didn’t seem to matter where you directed your attention in the cloud, that portion always started to disappear into thin air. And, if clouds did this naturally, surely we would notice them getting smaller all the time? I doubt that it did any harm to imagine we were causing the phenomenon, anyway. Garth reckoned it was the latent power of the mind that was shifting things around. Clouds are so ephemeral that it was easy even for untrained minds to affect them. Imagine, he proposed, if we could get control of such power. Garth was always interested in such things, whereas I was already a bit concerned about the idiot things we humans did with some of the powers we had developed. We lost contact a few years later and, the last I heard was that he’d moved to Australia. Which is a pretty good place for finding errant clouds just asking to be picked on and busted. As for myself, I still do a bit of cloud bustin’ when the opportunity presents itself. It’s a harmless pastime after all. But the really weird thing is that I’ve never seen a cloud grow - they only disperse. How come they can drift clear across a continent without disappearing altogether? Word count: 425 |
| Double Vision Been thinking about entering a contest that allows two entries. I’m having enough difficulty coming up with new ideas at the moment, so writing two stories hadn’t really entered my head. If I could just think of one, that would be enough for me. And then, in the wee hours of this morning, I had an idea. As I lay there working on it, I realised that it could be two ideas. Writing a story from different points of view has been done before but it never attracted me. Why double my workload, after all? But this story was crying out for it. There were two protagonists and they had quite different takes on the story. Not only that, but their versions, when taken together, revealed yet another layer of meaning. The brain was really racing now and I knew there was no possibility of further sleep that night. I rose and went to the computer. Now it’s done, both stories have been individually gift-wrapped and fired at the contest, and I’m fairly pleased with the result. Not that I’m going to advertise the stories with a link here. This post is much more to encourage others to try the multiple point of view tale. It’s actually quite fun and does wonders for the feeding of the portfolio. Plus you get more than one piece from a single story. It’s every Gemini’s motto: Two for the price of One! Word count: 239 |
| An Historical Thought Ah, the delights of YouTube for the carefree wanderer. I can’t help smiling at the irony of Mark Knopfler, in a concert in Seville, launching into his song, Privateering. Oh, granted that his lyrics are careful enough to mention the coast of Barbary rather than the Spanish Main, but don’t mention the war, man, don’t mention the war. What war? Well, I admit it was a long time ago, yet we still remember Elizabeth. The First, that is. Word count: 78 |
| Quotation Schmotation Whenever writers start slinging advice around, you can bet that the old Hemingway quotes will come out. Which I’m sure is very edifying for most, but not for me. My problem is that I never liked Hemingway. Don’t like his style or his subject matter or his attitude. Never have and, in all likelihood, never will. So it’s predictable that I won’t take any notice of what he had to say about writing. The strange thing is that the writer of that generation that I admire the most, J.D. Salinger, was a great fan of Hemingway’s, in his younger days at least. I am prepared to overlook this one weakness in the great Salinger, however, and would be happy to listen to any advice he might have given. And the same goes for Steinbeck, even though he was a bit of a one-subject man. Word count: 145 |
| Liquorice My uncle George always seemed to have candy. Thinking about it now, I realize that there was nothing sinister in this - it was really part of his campaign to keep the past alive. The candy he offered was always some weird concoction from a time long forgotten. Like real licorice roots, for instance. Who knew that licorice comes from the roots of a plant? More than that, who would guess that chewing the root like a stick of sugar cane produces the distinctive taste that we know so well? Word count: 90 |
| E-Books It's just occurred to me what's wrong with e-books. They don't have that wonderful new book smell. |
| High Finance! The problem with a balanced budget is that you have to stop buying the things you can't afford. |
| A Laundry Basket Post In our bathroom there is a plastic laundry basket. It is pretty much what you would expect from such a thing - tall, plastic and obviously meant to contain clothes. On its side there is a label and this announces it to be an "attractive contemporary design". Now, I am not about to argue with the first assertion - obviously it has proved attractive enough to persuade its purchaser. And we can stretch a point with the contemporary claim since plastic laundry baskets have only been around for fifty years or so. But what worries me in all this is the apparent need to announce these qualities to us. If the thing is so darned attractive, wouldn't we notice without the sly nudge from a label on the side? And what virtue is there in being contemporary anyway? We would be just as impressed by a claim to traditional or retro styling, I'm sure. It is rather like our instant suspicion of anyone who insists that we should "trust them". I know, I know - I have to stop reading labels… Word count: 178 |
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