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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.     |
I have to echo Ned  's thoughts in her latest blog post, "I Gotta Feeling I would rather listen to Stardust"  . If a more up to date example of poetic lyric writing is needed, try the following from a duo known as the Postal Service. The music is better, too. |
| The Death of William Rufus I have long been interested in the strange tale of William Rufus, son of William the Conqueror and king of England from 1087 to 1100. In his lifetime, Rufus was something of an enigma since the chroniclers, all clerics, disliked him for his complete disregard for the morals and customs of the Church and so cannot be relied upon when detailing the events of William’s life. But his death took place in circumstances that are still argued over by the historians. The story goes that William went hunting in the New Forest with a party of noblemen that included his younger brother, Henry. At some point, William and a noble named Walter Tirel became separated from the main party and continued on their own. Chancing on a couple of stags, they both shot arrows but Tirel’s found not a deer but the king. William fell from his horse and died within minutes. Horrified at what he had done, Tirel immediately fled, escaping to France and, as far as we know, never returning to England. Although it was said that the arrow glanced off a tree before hitting William, the possibility that this was really planned by the younger brother, Henry, is an obvious alternative view of the event. Tirel was an accomplished archer and had been given two of the king’s arrows as a recognition of his prowess when the hunting party set out. It seems a little unlikely that Tirel would have been so clumsy as to hit a tree when aiming at a stag. His hasty departure for France is also something to be considered, although we should remember the rather haphazard forms of justice in those days. One can hardly blame Tirel for wanting to avoid any involvement in a trial. Henry was certainly capable of planning the deed, however. He is known to have thrown an annoying aristocrat from a tower. For me, the most telling fact is a quote from a friend who sheltered Tirel in France. This is often used to reinforce the theories of those who believe that it was an accident, but I think it shows the exact opposite. This is what Tirel’s friend said: It was laid to the charge of a certain noble, Walter Thurold (the contemporary form of the name Tirel), that he had shot the king with an arrow; but I have often heard him, when he had nothing to fear nor to hope, solemnly swear that on the day in question he was not in the part of the forest where the king was hunting, nor ever saw him in the forest at all. If Tirel claimed that he was not present when the king was shot, he must be lying. All accounts of the matter are agreed that only Tirel and the king were separated from the main body of hunters. Add to this the fact that Tirel fled on the king’s horse rather than his own, and it becomes clear that his assertion of being elsewhere was nonsense. Much is made in the accident camp that there are no suspicions raised by chroniclers at the time. But how vocal would they have been with Henry, a man at least as ruthless as his older brother, now on the throne? Good sense would dictate that such thoughts be kept very much to oneself, I think. It all happened a long time ago and what controversy there may have been has long died down. It may even be said that those Norman kings were so nasty that it hardly mattered which one happened to be on the throne at any given time. But, to me, it seems a romantic and fascinating tale of an event that throws a lot of light on the period. And I am no longer in two minds as to what really happened - Henry wanted to be king and arranged for his brother to be disposed of, I think. Word Count: 656 |
| We can hardly blame the young for not being able to think when we never taught them how. Word Count: 23 |
| I Only Ask Because… The thing is, a poem’s supposed to tell us about the poet, isn’t it? First the poet has to feel something and then he writes the poem in such a way that the reader gets it and experiences what it’s like to be the poet. That, surely, must be the essence of poetry. So what do we do if the poem reveals a nature that is less than likable? If, whether the poet is aware of it or not, what he has written reveals that he is mean or self-obsessed or hateful in some way. The poem has done its job, at least. But can we say that it’s good, considering the unsavoury truth it has revealed? I know that, very often, it’s the paintings we don’t enjoy that are actually the best. Any painting that elicits the response, “I’d not have that on my wall,” has communicated with us, whether we enjoy what it’s saying or not. Take Picasso’s Guernica for instance. It’s a powerful statement of the evils of warfare but it’s not something you’d hang in your bedroom. Who would want to wake up to that every morning? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guernica_(Picasso) But I think the poetry that I’m talking about may be a different thing entirely. There are war poems, after all. It’s the poems that betray the smallness of the poet’s soul that trouble me, that make me wonder whether they deserve the label “good”, even though they have done their job very well on occasion. I’m not asking that poetry elevate us to a higher plane of understanding and humanity (although that would be nice) but that it should not drag us down to a lower level of existence. Blogging is quite dangerous in that it, too, reveals the soul of the blogger. And now you know one more weird thing that occupies my thoughts. Word Count: 307 |
| Falling into Autumn I am so tired of reading poems about Autumn that turn out to be just lists of colours. Someone should run a Fall poem contest that bans the use of colour words. And no cheating with the use of coloured text! There is more to the season than the damn leaves falling off the trees, after all. Word Count: 57 |
| The Amilcar Experiment A week ago, I wrote a little poem for Amilcar the Hermit. There was no particular reason for doing this, apart from the fact that it’s been a long time since Amilcar had his folder updated with something new. Grundle the troll is way ahead on number of items anyway but had a recent updating that only made things more inequitable. Clearly, Amilcar deserved my attention, however briefly. When it came to putting the new poem into my portfolio, I was presented with something of a dilemma. So far I’d been able to keep all the Amilcar pieces in his folder and I wanted to continue this. The folder is a sub-folder in my short story folder (which was logical since everything I’d written for the hermit had been in short story form). But now I’d spoiled that by this latest offering being a poem. Where was I to put it? Ultimately, I decided to throw it into Amilcar’s folder, pretending not to notice the anomaly of it being a poem not a story. In a way, it’s a story poem so I reckoned I could get away with it. And now, a week later, that poem has had precisely two visits. I didn’t advertise its existence, not wanting to appear too forward, but it seems I’ve buried the thing so deep not even Read & Review has been able to find it. Being such a recent creation, it’s still pretty close to my heart and it needs (as does everything we write) readers. Time to advertise, je pense. So here it is, an amusing little thing but quite bright and cheerful, in common with most of Amilcar’s stuff. Do yourself (and me) a favour and give it a read.
Word Count: 288 |
| The Problem with Stats I have to confess that I read my summary stats every day. This comes from my blogging days when the daily stats were an important part of the game, indicating progress (or otherwise) in the battle to be noticed. So now my morning ritual includes study of my WdC stats in the vague hope of learning something. And it is a vague hope. So far, all I have is an awareness that the stats don’t make sense. Several days in a row they will claim really low numbers of visitors and then, for no apparent reason. a day will come when the numbers soar to twice or three times more than usual. I’m sorry but I just don’t believe that, on certain undefined days, I become flavour of the month and the world and his dog visits me. I’ve looked for a reason why this strange pattern might be happening and I cannot see why I should get such strange results. It looks to me as though whatever program is supposed to be counting my visits goes to sleep on the job occasionally and so misses lots of them. Then, at some sort of accounting point, it realises there are all these uncounted visits lying in a corner and it just adds them to the day it’s in. That’s not the only odd anomaly in the stats, however. We naturally assume that all these visits are from other WdC members. Not so. The overwhelming majority come from outside WdC. Knowing how difficult it is to get into WdC without being a member, I cannot help but wonder who these people are and how they get in (no, I refuse to block them - they’re more than 50% of my visitors!). Many of them will be search engine bots, of course. Those little spies get everywhere. But they can’t account for all those foreign visits. Maybe my chosen WdC name (I’ve used it elsewhere) is well enough known on the net for it to be googled and my friendly bots tell ‘em where I am these days. But I doubt it. I was never that popular in my blogging and Facebook days. Then there’s the number of visits to the most unlikely of the things in my portfolio. Top of the hit parade by a long, long way is my Guestbook. It’s true that I do get people signing it occasionally, but an average of one signing every three months or so isn’t going to produce the stats my Guestbook revels in. It seems the bots love to find out who admits to have looked at my portfolio. The latest addition, the blog, is hardly in a position to break records yet it already has visits (according to the stats) of over 174 and shows no signs of slowing down. I know I sometimes advertise a new entry to the blog but I don’t get anything like the response that the stats are claiming. The whole thing leads me to suspect WdC stats. Something somewhere is not quite right and, until I know what it is, I shall take the numbers with a huge shovelful of salt. Even though I admit I do enjoy those days when the numbers break my record! Word Count: 540 |
| The Voices, The Voices For quite some time now, I have been devoid of inspiration, particularly on the short story front. I don’t blame such times on any supposed departure of a mythical muse but rather on the thought that a period of frenetic production is bound to be followed by a time of recovery in which very little is produced. During July, I was saved to some extent by the coincidence of three poetry challenges/contests occurring at the same time. One of these, The Daily Poem, was for July only and it has deserted me now, leaving only the rebooted 24 Syllables and Promptly Poetry to keep me going. Twenty-four is no longer a daily event, being spread out to about three prompts per week (a sensible conservation of effort by the owner), and Promptly is a weekly thing. Which leaves me with considerable time to fill with my lack of inspiration. Last night, however, I realised that I have had the makings of a horror story in my head for many months. It would be horror, of course, since I’m currently trying to stay away from SCREAMS!!! (my feelings of duty toward it were devouring what little capacity I had left for original creation). But beggars can’t be choosers and I shall run with this idea to see what results from it. Here in the oven of a typical New England summer, we have been running fans to maintain a livable temperature in the house. Recently the air conditioning units had to be hauled out and thrown into the fray. And the result is an environment dominated by the constant noise of fans. It was my wife who turned to me in the midst of this and remarked, “Do you hear the voices in the noise of the fans?” Now, I have heard those voices for decades and assumed that I was the only one who could. I figured that they were some weird effect of vibrations in the air creating the effect of voices within the fans’ song. Either that or just a human need to imagine something recognisable in the wall of unremitting sound produced by the fans. It might be similar to my tendency to discern faces within abstract patterns on walls and floors, something that I already knew I shared with many others. And now it seems that I’m not the only one who can hear the voices of the fans. Maybe we all can. But it was only last night that it occurred to me that there is the making of a short story in these voices. There are several theories that might fit the production of such a phenomenon (note the use of the singular form - the plural is “phenomena”) and some of them could be decidedly creepy or psychologically threatening. No doubt I will just begin the thing without having chosen an explanation and allow the story to tell me where to go as it is written. So there we are - two birds with one stone. The tale of a break in my desert of inspiration and something to awaken my blog from its two-week sleep (it’s bad when you don’t have enough going on in your head at least to write in the blog). Now all I have to do is write the story. Word Count: 551 |
| It's biblical that the man should make the coffee. It's in Hebrews. |
| Prompts and All That I had a thought and it’s my thought so it makes no claim to infallibility. But it just might be true and is certainly worth thinking about. This comes from over a year’s participating in contests and a sudden realisation of what’s wrong with prompts. If I may phrase it succinctly: The longer the prompt, the less scope for imagination. The best prompt of all is the one-worder for it invites a multitude of interpretations and has no hope of restricting a contestant to a particular path. As words get added, the boundaries march inward until, eventually, the contestants are forced into the position of merely putting the finishing touches to a piece that the contest owner wants to see. Those, I never write for, considering that, if it’s that important that the piece be written, the prompt originator should write it themself. I have a strong belief that this is what decreases the number of entrants and, ultimately, leads to the demise of the contest. It is possibly a factor, at least. Give me one or two words to play with and I’m happy to set them free into the fields of my imagination. But tell me the story and then ask me to end it and I’ll look elsewhere. You might disagree - so tell me and show me where I’m wrong. Word Count: 223 |
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