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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.     |
| Home Many years ago in England, I had occasion to visit my local pub with a friend named Richard. We had just sat down when Richard noticed someone he knew and called him over. They had not been talking long before I realized that they had known each other almost all their lives, from junior (elementary) school, in fact. Their conversation consisted mainly in catching up on the news from people they had known through their schooldays, all of whom still lived within a few miles of their original homes. All of a sudden, I felt rootless, adrift in a strange land and surrounded by strangers. I was in contact with no-one from my schooldays; I had email correspondence with a friend from university but even that was sporadic and subject to years of silence at times. Through Richard, I was seeing life as it is for most people: a community of friends who have grown together through the years, familiar faces in a familiar landscape. The first ten years of my life, I was in Cape Town, South Africa, and, when my family moved to Zimbabwe, all the friends from those years were lost to me. Through high school, I formed other friendships but most of these ended when we all went off to different universities or careers. The few friends that I had remaining were left behind when I moved to England, so that I found myself without a community of friends, alone in a way that is probably not normal to as social an animal as the human being. A feeling of desperate loneliness hit me in that pub as I listened to those two old friends talking. They did not know it, but they had something that was now forever barred to me. Yet the feeling did not last. To some extent at least, it was based upon a very idealistic view of a life that could not be mine. At first sight, it seemed that I was missing out on something comforting and secure but, on reflection, I realized that I had compensating experiences. I may not have known what it is to be part of a lifelong community, but I had friendships of shorter duration that were no less valid. And I had seen a bit more of life in other places, for whatever that is worth. In the end, it comes down to the meaning of "home". Richard may have been able to define the word as a combination of people and places, but I see now that "home" has much more to do with how we feel than with external things. Home is where we feel comfortable and secure, amongst those we love and who love us. The old saying is true: home is where the heart is. And, when we move, we take home with us. Modern life dictates that we move far more often than our parents or grandparents did. If we are to pursue a career, we must be prepared to move from one side of the country to the other. This is especially true in America, where corporations happily move their employees about as and when it suits the aims of the company. So we become people without roots and have to learn how to take home with us, relying increasingly on our family circle for comfort, rather than any wider community. We are complex creatures. It is hard to say whether this change in lifestyle will have good or bad effects on us. Perhaps it is merely a return to the nomadic existence that once was the lot of all humanity. Or it may be that we become something entirely new, a collection of interchangeable parts that can be assembled in any order to create society. It would be easy to take the old line of "Things ain't what they used to be"; that is always true, whether things be better or worse. I think that change is inevitable and we adapt and cope, even as we complain about it. So I am not against the increasing mobility of modern life; no doubt we lose some things through it but we also gain. It's just at times that a wave of homesickness might strike us; that, for a moment, we might be lost in memories of how things once were. Which brings to mind another old saying. You can't go home again. Word count: 734 |
| A Few More Words Be a part of WdC and, sooner or later, you’re going to wonder why we all write. The most common reason seems to be that we write because we like doing it but, thinking about this, I realize that it's not true for me. I hate writing. If it were not for the keyboard, I would never write anything longer than a poem. At the age of sixteen I commandeered my mother's old Imperial typewriter and bashed out half a novel. And I do mean "bash". It was a tank of a machine, weighed a ton, and required real force to work the keys. I did not know it then but it was to affect my typing style ever afterwards; I am still heavy-handed on the keyboard. Twenty years later I was working on a lightweight electronic typewriter and pushed it all over the desk with my pounding. And now I have cause to thank the computer keyboard manufacturers for producing such a robust and reliable product. Which is not to say that I don't break modern keyboards - I do. But it takes a while and, invariably, it's the Enter key that goes, the microswitch underneath finally battered into submission. That's when another brilliant invention of the manufacturers comes into play; there's another Enter key at the bottom right of the board and, with a swift adjustment of my habits, I can type just as fast using the alternative. And that brings up the matter of speed. I never learned to type properly and I use one finger, index on the left (I'm left-handed so this works for me), and my right index finger has responsibility for the Enter and Shift keys. It's called the Hunt and Peck method, I believe. This means that I can never aspire to the typing speed of a true touch typist but I can rattle along at a fair old pace, even so. The "Hunt" part of my method has become more of an instinctive awareness through long years of practice and my typing speed is reasonable as a result. Yet I do not trust my instinct; I still have to watch the keyboard while typing, if only to confirm that my finger is hitting the right keys. I envy those who can watch the screen while typing. But I will never take one of those software typing courses and teach myself to do it properly. Partly, this is because I'm too old a dog to learn new tricks but, more importantly, I have discovered that my typing speed fits perfectly with the rate at which I think. By the time I've completed one sentence, the brain is ready to supply the next. Were I to increase typing speed, I would merely waste the time saved in sitting motionless while the mind catches up. So it is the keyboard that enables me to "write". This is reinforced by the fact that, thanks to another event way back in the mists of time, I switched my handwriting from lower case to capitals and this makes my writing very slow. I have become a creature of the keyboard. As to why I set words on a page, I think that must again be a speed-related matter. Whether we write books, short stories or poems, what we are doing is to set out our thoughts in a logical, understandable manner, with the intention of arriving eventually at a conclusion. Speaking is an unsatisfactory solution to this need for communication, too subject to interruption by others, stray thoughts that lead one into side streets of irrelevance, and omission of important facts through the heat of the moment. Writing gives us the time to organize and sharpen, concentrate and refine, so that the finished product is that much more effective in attaining its goal: to communicate something we feel is important. And, for me, the keyboard is the perfectly-paced tool to enable me to do this. Without it, I doubt I'd even blog. Why is there this need to communicate? Ah, there I think we're getting into what is called "the human condition", something common to us all and yet totally inexplicable. We can say that we are social animals but this does nothing to explain why we feel so compelled to tell each other stories, be they fact or fiction. It's just one of those things… Word count: 728 |
| Opinions As the man with a wooden leg said, it's a matter of opinion. And I've been thinking about opinions. Reading blogs makes one very aware that it's true what they say: everyone has an opinion. What is less often noticed, however, is that some people have more opinions than others. I have known people who have an opinion on everything; you mention a subject, any subject, and they will be able to grace you with their opinion on it. Such people are rich in the currency of opinion and are always very generous in sharing their wealth. Others, however, seem to have been at the end of the line when opinions were handed out; they have few and compound the fact by hoarding those that remain to them. Which brings to mind the parable of the talents, although I am not convinced that it applies in this instance. Both money and talents have a value, after all, whereas opinions are so common that they have become almost worthless. A penny for your thoughts, say you? Hah, a hundred years ago that might have been the going rate; these days you can't give them away. I know there are a few who manage to squeeze a living out of their opinions; newspaper editors and television talking heads, for instance. But these are not really selling their opinions. To a large extent they are preaching to the converted, sharing their opinion amongst those who already have that opinion anyway. There is little real trading that goes on, just mutual bolstering and encouragement. So we tend to collect in groups, sharing our opinions with those of like mind and applauding one another as we do so. If someone from another group intrudes, the immediate result is a fight, with opinions thrown in anger and scorn exchanged in copious quantities. The problem is that we all think our opinions are based on the facts and must be correct, therefore. It does not seem to occur to us that facts are so numerous that we must pick and choose which ones to take and which to leave. Being human, we will accept those facts that we like and ignore those that make us uncomfortable. Then off we go with our chosen collection of facts and we construct our opinions around them. Small wonder that we emerge with so many different opinions. The ideal would be to wait until we have all the facts before forming our opinions. Like most ideals, however, this is impossible, so great is the weight of facts with which we are confronted. Some people, a very few, will reserve judgement, knowing that they do not have all the facts. The great majority of us will shrug and enter the fray with whatever we have managed to glean. It is tempting to see those who are slow to form opinions as the wise amongst us. And, if that is so, surely the man who has no opinion at all is the wisest. Since he is staying silent while he adds to the facts at his command, he must be gaining a far wider view of things than those who go out to battle with only a selection of their favored facts at hand. I wonder whether it is possible to have no opinion on anything. Being a dreamer, I ponder on this and try to imagine how an opinion-less person would function. How would such a person be received in society? A philosopher and thinker of the past, Desiderius Erasmus (1466 - 1536), said this: "In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king." It seems a good saying until one thinks hard about it. To refute it, H.G. Wells wrote a short story entitled The Country of the Blind, in which he shows that the blind would regard someone with sight as a madman. In point of fact, Mr Wells need not have bothered with his story for we already have a perfect example of what he wanted to say. Jesus Christ had better vision than any of us and remember what we did to Him. Which all leads me to think (yes, it's my opinion) that our hypothetical opinion-less person would receive rough treatment in our world. In fact, I suspect that we have already prepared our ammunition against such a phenomenon. We have all heard the saying that it is better to remain silent and be thought stupid, than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt… Word count: 750 |
| Archy and Mehitabel Many moons ago, when the earth was young and blogging even younger, I was a chameleon that posted fairly often in one of those dreaded weblogs. At times I would bemoan my fate but, if truth were known, other creatures struggled through far greater difficulties to communicate through the medium of writing. Which thought always brings to my mind the delightful Archy and Mehitabel. Archy was a free verse poet reborn in the form of a cockroach in the early twentieth century. Mehitabel was a cat of Archy’s acquaintance. They were the creation of Don Marquis, a journalist of genius, and the best way to explain how he met Archy is by repeating his own recording of the occasion: We came into our room earlier than usual in the morning, and discovered a gigantic cockroach jumping about upon the keys. He did not see us and we watched him. He would climb painfully upon the framework of the machine and cast himself with all his force upon a key, head downward, and his weight and the impact of the blow were just sufficient to operate the machine, one slow letter after another. He could not work the capital letters, and he had a great deal of difficulty operating the mechanism that shifts the paper so that a fresh line may be started. We never saw a cockroach work so hard or perspire so freely in all our lives before. After about an hour of this frightfully difficult literary labor he fell to the floor exhausted, and we saw him creep feebly into a nest of the poems which are always there in profusion. Congratulating ourself that we had left a sheet of paper in the machine the night before so that all this work had not been in vain, we made an examination, and this is what we found: expression is the need of my soul I was once a vers libre bard but I died and my soul went into the body of a cockroach it has given me a new outlook upon life I see things from the under side now thank you for the apple peelings in the wastepaper basket but your paste is getting so stale i cant eat it there is a cat here at night i wish you would have removed she nearly ate me the other night why dont she catch rats that is what she is supposed to be for there is a rat here she should get without delay most of these rats here are just rats but this rat is like me he has a human soul in him he used to be a poet himself night after night i have written poetry for you on your typewriter and this big brute of a rat who used to be a poet comes out of his hole when it is done and reads it and sniffs at it he is jealous of my poetry he used to make fun of it when we were both human he was a punk poet himself and after he has read it he sneers and then he eats it i wish you would have that cat kill that rat or get a cat that is onto her job and i will write you a series of poems showing how things look to a cockroach that rats name used to be freddy the next time freddy dies i hope he wont be a rat but something smaller i hope i will be the rat in the next transmigration and freddy the cockroach i will teach him to sneer at my poetry then dont you ever eat any sandwiches in your office i havent had a crumb of bread for i dont know how long or a piece of ham or anything but apple parings and paste leave a piece of paper in your machine every night you can call me archy After that, Archy published many of his poems through the medium of Don’s typewriter and they made the journalist an international celebrity. He is, perhaps, one of the greatest of American writers, yet I find that his fame is slipping away and few indeed are those who remember him now. This little post is made in the hope of stemming that progression at least a little. Here’s one of my favourites of Archy’s poems: Pete the Parrot and Shakespeare i got acquainted with a parrot named pete recently who is an interesting bird pete says he used to belong to the fellow that ran the mermaid tavern in london then i said you must have known shakespeare know him said pete poor mutt i knew him well he called me pete and i called him bill but why do you say poor mutt well said pete bill was a disappointed man and was always boring his friends about what he might have been and done if he only had a fair break two or three pints of sack and sherris and the tears would trickle down into his beard and his beard would get soppy and wilt his collar i remember one night when bill and ben johnson and frankie beaumont were sopping it up here i am ben says bill nothing but a lousy playwright and with anything like luck in the breaks i might have been a fairly decent sonnet writer i might have been a poet if i had kept away from the theatre yes says ben i ve often thought of that bill but one consolation is you are making pretty good money out of the theatre money money says bill what the hell is money what i want is to be a poet not a business man these damned cheap shows i turn out to keep the theatre running break my heart slap stick comedies and blood and thunder tragedies and melodramas say i wonder if that boy heard you order another bottle frankie the only compensation is that i get a chance now and then to stick in a little poetry when nobody is looking but hells bells that isn t what i want to do i want to write sonnets and songs and spenserian stanzas and i might have done it too if i hadn t got into this frightful show game business business business grind grind grind what a life for a man that might have been a poet well says frankie beaumont why don t you cut it bill i can t says bill i need the money i ve got a family to support down in the country well says frankie anyhow you write pretty good plays bill any mutt can write plays for this london public says bill if he puts enough murder in them what they want is kings talking like kings never had sense enough to talk and stabbings and stranglings and fat men making love and clowns basting each other with clubs and cheap puns and off color allusions to all the smut of the day oh i know what the low brows want and i give it to them well says ben johnson don t blubber into the drink brace up like a man and quit the rotten business i can t i can t says bill i ve been at it too long i ve got to the place now where i can t write anything else but this cheap stuff i m ashamed to look an honest young sonneteer in the face i live a hell of a life i do the manager hands me some mouldy old manuscript and says bill here s a plot for you this is the third of the month by the tenth i want a good script out this that we can start rehearsals on not too big a cast and not too much of your damned poetry either you know your old familiar line of hokum they eat up that falstaff stuff of yours ring him in again and give them a good ghost or two and remember we gotta have something dick burbage can get his teeth into and be sure and stick in a speech somewhere the queen will take for a personal compliment and if you get in a line or two somewhere about the honest english yeoman it s always good stuff and it s a pretty good stunt bill to have the heavy villain a moor or a dago or a jew or something like that and say i want another comic welshman in this but i don t need to tell you bill you know this game just some of your ordinary hokum and maybe you could kill a little kid or two a prince or something they like a little pathos along with the dirt now you better see burbage tonight and see what he wants in that part oh says bill to think i am debasing my talents with junk like that oh god what i wanted was to be a poet and write sonnet serials like a gentleman should well says i pete bill s plays are highly esteemed to this day is that so says pete poor mutt little he would care what poor bill wanted was to be a poet archy Absolutely delightful stuff (and a demonstration of how libre vers libre can be). But don’t stop there. Read more of Don’s wonderful invention at his site, http://donmarquis.com/ . Be a part of this great American’s continuing fame. Word count: 1,588 |
| Medicine This is an old one and I may have blogged it before, but I like it and feel that it deserves another outing: A few days ago I dropped one of my tablets and it rolled underneath my desk. A quick look failed to reveal its hiding place so I shrugged and took another from the bottle. The floor is a distant country for me nowadays and I knew the little escaped convict would turn up some other time, leaving us to wonder what it might be. Time heals all slips between cup and lip, they say. Well, this evening an M&M made a similar bid for freedom. The desk must be the most obvious hiding place in the vicinity for it, too, chose to roll under it. M&Ms are not quite as disposable as tablets, so I directed my gaze to the offending area and, to my amazement, spotted the miscreant immediately. The problem of distance was solved eventually by judicious use of the toe to maneuver the freedom-loving treat into a more convenient place - a place that was within my bending range, indeed. Imagine my surprise on discovering that the object was not the M&M at all - the tablet had returned to the fold, it seemed. I admit that my joy at its retrieval was somewhat less than I had prepared for the errant M&M, especially as the tablet has now presented me with a problem. Presuming that its few days outside the medicine bottle would not have had any effect on its efficacy, it remains a fact that it has offended against the five second rule. An M&M would be impervious to such caution, of course, provided with so hard and shiny a coat as it is. A quick brush up and it would be as good as new. But the tablet? Certainly more absorbent and welcoming to the vagaries of life on the floor, I would think. The tablet sits on the corner of my desk while I ponder this conundrum. Word count: 341 |
| Animations These animations on completing the 7-day badges each day are all very nice but I have a question about them. How does one return to the page one was looking at before watching the animation. Hitting the back arrow takes one to the page before starting point and closing the animation page closes the connection to WdC. So how do we get back? Okay, it’s a minor irritation to be brought back to the page before starting but it’s annoying even so. I just wondered if there were a trick to it. Word count: 92 |
| Homage to Ned Sometimes in my forays into the past I come across little gems that belong to others rather than my own. Here’s something that Ned wrote ages ago and I bet has forgotten it almost immediately: People are brittle and fealty is dead So write funny posts that keep 'em well fed Lull them to worship the things in your head Never let 'em suspect that you're actually Ned. |
| Canada 'Cheese-Smugglers' Busted I am reminded that, several years ago, Canada went on a drive to end cheese smuggling. This led to all sorts of strange ideas in my head and I wrote a little rant about the matter. Obviously, these would be the serious cheeses, the equivalent of hard drugs. Interestingly, when it comes to cheeses, the hard cheeses are actually soft and the soft cheeses are the nasty, hard ones. Things like Limburger, Roquefort, Brie and Stilton - these are the ones the Canadians are after, surely. Come to think of it, they are probably trying to make the country odour-free. No more sniffing those cheeses or, God forbid, lighting one up! I think it's worst when they push it on the kids with things like cheese straws and cheese puffs. Oh sure, it's "only" processed cheese or cheddar but this is the thin edge of the wedge. Before you know what's happened, your teenagers are sneaking off at night to indulge in Gorgonzola orgies and Camembert capers. None of this innocent "Oh, I'll just have a slice of mild Wensleydale, thanks" like we used to do. No wonder the Canadians are so vigilant! Come to think of it, cheese is legal in Holland, I hear. One can only imagine the dreadful effect that must be having on the populace. All that Gouda openly consumed in the streets, the red peel littering public places. Word count: 232 |
| As I Was Saying… Looking for something in the past, I noticed some longer posts that I'd written back in those days and I began to read them. That was fatal, of course. Reading one's own stuff at such a distance most often results in discovering them afresh, with no memory of ever having written such things. And some of them ain't bad. So I started copying a few into my trusty freeware Notepad. But now this terrible dilemma presents itself. Do I carry on digging, dusting off and recycling old thoughts as new? This would save a lot of hard work thinking in the present but therein lies the rub. This might be a devilish scheme by the brain to allow nostalgia to provide it with complete retirement. I might, indeed, stop thinking altogether. And that, of course, is the demon of old age. It might be better to avoid the past and keep slogging away into the future, as annoying as that may be. It's a conundrum that I shall have to contemplate for a while. In the meantime, however, I might just reprint a few of these old meanderings. Well, to be honest, I’ve already done a fair bit of that. But not too often, no, not too often… Word count: 208 |
| Education by Waiting Room Digging around in ancient history, I found this: The only thing worth reading in my doctor's waiting room is a collection of National Geographics. Unfortunately, he is also adept at timing his eventual arrival for the moment that I reach exactly halfway through any Nat Geo article. I have become an expert in knowing exactly half the interesting facts about anywhere in the world. Word count: 64 |
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now I have to unglaze my eyes 
