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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.     |
| Mortal Musings Another meeting with my pee doctor this morning (I will have to tell him we should stop meeting like this). Not for anything really - just for him to harangue me some more about all the tests he wants to conduct on me. We have an ongoing duel on this score. I keep explaining to him that I can’t afford even one of the tests, and he tries to find ways to make them more palatable to me. It’s a bit like a Martian trying to work things out with a Venusian. I speak a little Venusian and can understand the pressures on him to cover all possibilities. Not sure that he understands Martian very well, however. This is the guy who made the mistake of telling me that I don’t have to worry about prostate cancer (I wasn’t but he definitely didn’t understand that) because, if I get it now, I’ll be dead of old age long before it kills me. They give up being interested in PSA levels (whatever they are) when you reach the age of 69. So I don’t see a need to do the tests, even if I wanted them done (I don’t - I’ve had my fill of being prodded and inspected through natural and artificial orifices at every turn). The truth is I’ve exceeded the biblical allowance for age (three score years and ten) by four years now and that’s more than I ever expected to make. Anything further is a bonus (or maybe a curse). My pee doctor doesn’t believe me on that score, of course. He figures that I’ll get cold feet when the reality of death knocks on the door. I haven’t bothered to tell him that I’ve been there a few times already and yes, to some extent there’s a natural reaction of striving to hang on a bit longer, but one gets more weary as the years roll on. Rest gets more attractive with the passing days, especially when one considers the insane mess the world is becoming of late. Hopefully, I’ll last long enough to complete an entry to Schnujo’s Whatever Contest "The Whatever Contest -- Closed for Now"  , which should cover the matter of what happens to my portfolio in the ultimately inevitable occurrence of my death.No doubt my pee doctor will continue to arrange for more duels in the future. In fact, that is more or less guaranteed, now that he has established communication with my ordinary doctor (who is from Uzbekistan and possessed of a boundless optimism towards the world - although I’m not sure that one is the result of the other). I can look forward to increasingly complex and cunning arguments as they collaborate on their strategy. It’s almost a pity that they’re bound to lose in the end. Or should that be “my end?” Word count: 466 |
| Do You Want a Hammer With That? I was very young, certainly well before my tenth birthday, when I discovered my mother’s collection of books. Being an avid reader for as long as I can remember, I proceeded to go through each one of them. Presuming that they were the survivors of her youth, they were evidence of a surprisingly broad range of interests. Many of them were crime novels and books about true crime, and she had a number of suspense and romance novels too. Names like Ngaio Marsh and Dorothy L Sayers became familiar to me, although I did not spend too much time on their books. There was a collection of Shakespeare’s works and the collected short stories of O. Henry as single examples from the many genres represented by only one book. I was too young to know that I should be bored by Shakespeare and I devoured each one of his plays. His sonnets were included as well, but they had less of an impact on me. It was O. Henry’s short stories that had probably the most influence on my later life, however. In reading them repeatedly, I learned what constituted a good short story, and I presume that it was this that made it so easy for me to begin writing short stories many years later. The lesson was that, as well as being short, this discipline required a twist at the end of each story. I took this to heart and made sure that I found a twist to end each of my short stories. Yesterday I discovered that there are more ways than one of providing a twist. I had, in fact been searching for a twist of great impact to end my tales, something that I now call “looking for a hammer.” But I had lately written a few that had tails that, although unexpected, were not as blunt as the hammer, instead being rather subtle and presenting the reader with a question. I wrote one of these yesterday and this is what made me realise what was going on. It’s a strange little story and has an ending entirely unexpected. It left questions in my mind that I have pondered ever since. There are several interpretations of the tale that are possible, the most obvious of which is political (most unusual for me). And this is what rescues the thing from being disqualified as a short story, I think. The hammer will give the reader a moment of enjoyment in the sudden reversal of assumptions in the story. This more subtle approach, however, gives the reader something he can take away with himself, something to consider in his spare moments and to reach his own conclusions about. It’s a lasting gift rather than a slap in the face. Don’t get me wrong - I still love the impact of the hammer. But I have discovered an alternative that I may well use again in the future. To illustrate all this, an example of the hammer method is this, a recent favourite of mine:
I can think of three examples of the other approach but here is the one I wrote last night:
Nothing like a bit of unashamed self advertisement, is there? Word count: 539 |
| On Being a Hobbit In real life, I am a miniaturist. In my imagination, too, I realise. I have always seen other worlds in patterns on the wall or spots on a tarmac drive or rivulets in the gutters draining the rain from reality. My daydreams have been inhabited by the people who populate these tiny worlds. This breaks through into the real world in the form of my various interests and pastimes. Most obviously, I once spent far too much of my free time in creating slot racing cars from scratch. These were accurate models of the real thing and, as time went on, they became more and more detailed as my obsession with perfection in miniature took over. Today, at the age of seventy-four, I have realised another outlet for my fascination with the small. Over the past two or three years, my unconscious mind has directed me into the arena of tiny poems. I thought it was circumstance that arranged for me to become involved with the 24-Syllable Contest, and then Express It In Eight (lines). But now I see that it has been my propensity for little things that was at work all along. I did not have to allow this gradual move into aggressively constrained poetry, after all. There was nothing that insisted I remain entangled with mini forms until the present. It’s enjoyment that has kept me churning out little poems, every day, for so long. Obsession has been in the driving seat and I am merely the vehicle. What brought this revelation today was the decision to re-read all my offerings to Lilith of House Martell  ’s Micro-Fiction Challenge (it didn’t take long - 100 words is definitely a microscopic short story). It struck me that I am going to miss this weekly challenge now that it is completed until Lilli restarts it in the future.The plain fact is that I love this form of prose. It really is a challenge to create a situation and a story with a twist in its tail, all in the space of those 100 words. The possibility of creating a tiny gem is present within every start to a new micro-story. It’s my tendency to the miniature at work in me again and I’ve not been aware of it until today. Amazing that I’ve not noticed this before. I’m not going to suggest that you have a go at this excursion into the realms of the tiny. That must be something you decide for yourself. We can’t all be hobbits, you know. Word count: 420 |
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Quite good is quite a good compliment 
As someone who just reviewed an item in your port, I can't help but wonder, Did I pick an item that you'd throw out? 
