Category: writing

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Updates

Sunday 2 April 2023

I didn’t think I was going to do this – a bit late in the day for me to start. But as you can see (if you’ve been here before) I spent this morning sorting out a few changes to this blog. It’s part of a process – long overdue – of attempting to overhaul my online presence in general, including buying a new domain name (lindarushby.com), sorting out what’s worth keeping and what needs doing to it, and transferring it all to new and hopefully more cost effective hosting – quite a challenge after over twelve years in one place, and I’ve got about three months left to get it done before letting go of the old damson-tree.co.uk stuff. Which is a bit over-optimistic given that I’ve also sort-of committed myself to finishing The Long Way Back by the end of the year. We shall see.

But last week I wrote a new poem, in response to one I found printed on an A4 sheet among some other stuff. I don’t know where it came from, I can’t remember the name of the writer, and I Googled what I thought was the title this morning without finding anything relevant, but I expect at some point I’ll find that A4 sheet again and be able to give credit where credit is due.

In the mean time, I now have two poems to offer for this year’s NaPoWriMo.

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Blogging

At the latest count, I have two blogs which are still current (by which I mean I’ve posted at least once in the last two years), as well as another one which I set up for a group, of whom only one other person has ever posted to it (and he hasn’t done so lately). I’m sure there are a few others around that I’ve created at various times and subsequently abandoned (or the entire platform has gone out of business and thus they’ve been obliterated).  And now I’m contemplating setting up a whole new website.

Of them all, I guess this one is my favourite. It’s semi-private – except it isn’t really, because I do share it on Facebook and Twitter – but I write honestly on the premise that I can say what I want because no one is ever going to read it – which is in fact a good assumption because so few people ever do.

But against that, I’m not writing – not really writing anything – because of the old, old issue that I just can’t think of anything to write about. Except that here I am again, finding myself writing once more about my inability to write.

I have sort of committed myself to completing TLWB this year. Which in a sense I might do because a lot of it is already ‘written’, but what do I add, what do I take out, and, hardest of all, where and when do I finish? If I can answer those questions I might get somewhere.

But that’s an aside. What I was really thinking about when I started this was the question of whether ‘…’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take words against a sea of writer’s block, and by opposing end it?’ (with apologies to WS). Sorry, don’t know where that came from – well, obviously I do, it came from Hamlet, but I don’t know why it popped in my head at that moment, except that it seemed to follow naturally from using the word ‘whether’ (words are tricky like that). What I was REALLY thinking was whether it’s worth writing stuff out of my head like this, as I used to for so many years, and spewing it out into the ether, or whether my time could be better spent in other ways. I mean, is writing this drivel every now and again preferable to writing nothing at all, or just a waste of effort and time which could be better directed at finding more original ways of avoiding the housework?

#notwriting

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Still Here

If I started writing again… every now and then…

The above is as far as I’d got before I decided to a) make a coffee and b) have my morning crap, which entailed finding my Kindle and reading the next chapter of The Constant Rabbit by Jasper Fforde while sitting on the toilet (and incidentally downloading a sample of The Terracotta Dog by Andrea Camilleri, which came up as a ‘you might enjoy…’ recommendation. I discovered the other day that at some point in the past I’d read the first of Camilleri’s Inspector Montalbano books, but I couldn’t remember when or why or anything about it or why I hadn’t chosen to download the next one. So, if I have the sample – and the title did catch my attention – I might read it sometime and decide to buy the whole book – or not, but if I don’t I never will and that might be a shame.

Anyway.

What was that first sentence again?

‘…every now and then ‘ I think maybe I will (start writing again), or perhaps it was going to be: every now and then the thought strikes me that maybe I should, but usually I get involved in doing something else and time passes and it goes away again without me doing anything about it. And reading that back, it occurs to me that it could be a metaphor for sitting on the toilet (or vice versa)

Anyway.

I think I was going to make a serious point, and end up with sharing a poem I wrote a few years ago, which may or not be relevant. A point about making goals and plans for the year and trying to satisfy other people’s expectations (which is a hiding to nothing, it seems to me).

I don’t do goals and plans any more. I never was very comfortable with them – I’ve blogged about that times without number – and at my stage of life, honestly, why should I? Who cares what I do with my time, if I don’t?

There are, in theory, at least two books which I ‘should’ be trying to finish. The start of a year is supposedly a spur to effort, but at my age it is also a reminder that my remaining stock of years is steadily going down, and raises the question whether it really matters that much how I spend them? It’s not as though the ‘dreams and plans’ I’ve made in the past have made much difference to the world.

So here I am, a week into 2023 – not even starting on the first of the year, as far as those things matter, fifty words short of my arbitrary target of 500 per day, and not even having said what I was intending to say. I’ll see if I can find that poem and share it.

#notwriting

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Something weird

Something weird has happened. This blog disappeared in May 2021 and since then has been displaying a message saying that the version of PhP wasn’t compatible. I tried to follow the instructions for updating the version of PhP, and thought I’d done so, but nothing seemed to be happening, just the same message whenever anyone tried to link to this site.

I found by experiment that the Damson Tree and Phyllida Fogg blogs were still accessible, and so was the Southsea Storytellers, so I could have continued blogging if I’d wanted to, but it seemed like a good time to give up, and that’s what I did. I carried on writing a journal for a while, just something where I wrote (at first every day) but didn’t share it with anybody (or rather didn’t put it anywhere where other people could potentially read it even if they wanted to), but after a couple of months that just fizzled out too. I think I may have jotted down a couple of poems since then, but don’t really know what happened to them. I removed writing from my life as a hobby, as I’d been drifting towards for several years, and deleted ‘writer’ from the tagline on my FB profile, though I left in ‘poet’.

This morning I saw that I’d had an email from my hosting provider saying that I needed to update the PhP version on my whole site before the 9th February. I almost didn’t renew it when it came up in September, because I hadn’t done anything with the site in so long, but then I paid for another two years, almost out of inertia, and from a superstitious dread that if I didn’t, I’d regret it.

Anyway, I almost didn’t read the email, but having paid up in the autumn I thought I’d better. It also gave a link to how to do it, so I tried it, though it didn’t look any different from what I’d done before. But hey presto, suddenly I have my blog back…

Except that…

Now it appears that the Damson Tree blog isn’t working any more (but with a different error message). which means the ‘bookshop’ isn’t either.

Not that I have any plans of writing anything – or any expectations of selling any copies of my books.

PS: I had a brainwave and changed the php version on Damson-tree.co.uk back to the one it was before. Now all the blogs seem to be working. Go figure.

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Wind on My Face

Monday morning, sunny, I walked to the rock gardens again, like last week. I was later than usual – didn’t leave home till after eight – so instead of taking a flask, I went to the kiosk and bought tea and a bacon bap and took them to my favourite bench, passing the café on the way, and noticing that the doors were open, although I thought it wasn’t open until nine. Maybe it was special early opening for today. Still, I was okay in the garden. I’d also noticed, after I ordered tea, that the kiosk is run by a coffee shop I’ve been to a couple of times, so their coffee is probably decent coffee – normally I avoid buying it from the kiosks because I assume it will be instant. Of course, decaff is often instant anyway, but next time I go that way I’ll ask.

In the gardens I went to check on the fish in the pond. I saw the two big fellas – one black, one coppery – and looked out for the tadpoles clustering along the edge – there were still some, but not as many as before. I walked round to the other bit of the pond, below the waterfall, and saw a man holding a camera. I paused and realised why – I don’t remember there being a plastic heron over the other side of the pond before, and then it moved its head. The first time I saw the tadpoles, I remember being amazed by how many there were, and then thinking: ‘if a heron finds them, it could clear this lot’.

Something I was thinking of yesterday in the context of plans and failure was a story my therapist told me on Thursday, about a past client from years ago who, towards the end of her therapy, revealed something about her life that she hadn’t mentioned because, as the therapist said, it ‘didn’t fit in with the story’. I’ve been wondering what she meant by that: was it just to tell me that things can change, however stuck and entrenched they feel, or was she suggesting that I’m holding back something because it doesn’t fit my ‘story’, either from her or maybe from myself?

I haven’t expressed that very well, and now I can’t see the connections with the planning thing, though I’m sure there was one. If I keep writing, maybe it will come to me.

Then there was that quote about ‘living your way into a new kind of thinking…’ rather than ‘…thinking your way into a new kind of living…’ (I had to look it up again) which also seems relevant. That seems to me to put the emphasis on doing (living) rather than planning (thinking) – so that doing something – whether that be knitting or other crafts, writing, walking, gardening, even a jigsaw – is better for me than when I am thinking about what those actions are leading to, or how best to do them – which sounds either very profound or utterly banal.

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Life and Writing

I was going to go to the beach, out for breakfast and then to the shop on the way home, but it was raining. I got up and went to look out of the window, and thought: ‘That’s a large cat sitting on the flat roof of the sheds behind the back wall’, then it got up and turned so I could see it sideways on, and I realised it was a fox. That’s the second time I’ve seen one in the last few months.

There was quite a storm in the night, I heard the wind at one point, it was really wild. It looked as though the rain was settling in for the day, but now the sun’s shining. Still, it will take a while before the benches dry out, and it’s not worth going out to sit on a damp bench to eat breakfast, plus the cafés will be getting pretty full by this time, so I’ll stay here and write.

I was going to write some more about planning and failing, but in the shower I started thinking about ‘The Long Way Back’ again. I said I would start work on it when I’d finished my proof reading job, then I read a few old blog posts and got very depressed remembering those times, and now it looks as though I’m going to be pretty tied up with family things until the middle of next week (or the week after next, depending on when you think ‘this week’ starts) which gives another delay to getting properly started, and when the cafes are properly open I can take my laptop somewhere to get stuck in, which is always a nice way to do it.

I have been ‘planning’ and procrastinating over this for so long now, years in fact. I came to the end of the pre-Prague section early in 2018, I remember it quite distinctly. I went to the café where I used to go for breakfast on Sunday, before the writing group meetings (not one of my usual writing cafes, but it was en route to the dentist, where I’d been for an appointment) and took with me printouts of the early Prague posts, which is when I had the idea that there was just too much, and maybe I’d write a separate book about my time in Prague. Or was that 2019?

This is the problem with writing autobiography – though ‘S2S’ and ‘TLWB’ are strictly speaking memoirs, the distinction being that an autobiography is the story of a whole life, but memoirs are just a specific part of a life, either in terms of time or of an interest which may cover different periods. But as a memoirist, I find it hard to see how an autobiography can ever be finished, unless the author is still writing it on their deathbed (which in my case might well happen).

Life feeds writing, and writing feeds life, like Ouroboros, the snake that eats its own tail.

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…Plan to Fail

‘Fail to plan and plan to fail’ was another piece of wisdom which I acquired from my business networking days and totally failed to learn from. I reflected on this yesterday when I was digging holes for my newly bought plants and tenderly packing the soil around them. I plan to fail, not because that’s what I want to happen, but because that’s my expectation, on the basis of past experience. It wasn’t that I had no plan at all when I was walking around B&Q on Wednesday with all the other Diamond Card holders, all waving our ten-pounds-off-when-you-spend-over-thirty coupons – there were certain things I knew I wanted to buy, like compost, basket liner, and a 40 cm diameter pot, but when it came to plants, I was mainly driven by spontaneity – well, within bounds –mostly what I bought were pretty predictable: begonia, petunias, geraniums. But I still didn’t have any specific ideas about where any of them were going, and so I was making it up as I went along.

There’s a lot to be said for spontaneity, impulse, intuition – well, I would say that, given my aversion to planning. No, that’s not right, ‘aversion’ isn’t quite the right word: it’s not that I don’t want to make plans, it’s more that from experience I know the stress that planning causes, the struggle to sort it all out, to impose order and make sense, to remember the stages, to decide on the appropriate actions, to implement them without flying off in all directions, and to judge the outcomes. All those things that make perfect sense rationally, intellectually, academically and succumb to chaos when they hit the real world, that great, spinning distributor of ordure.

Having said that, it occurs to me that the major, dramatic changes in my life, the ‘leap before you look moments’, like starting a PhD, leaving a husband (both of them), travelling, moving to Prague and Southsea etc, were all preceded by years of ‘planning’, just not in the organised, logically –sequenced, rational fashion – more on the lines of: ‘…if I could, I would… if only…’ At New Year 2015, I met a lady and told her that I was hoping to move to Southsea one day, then when I announced in March that I was moving, her comment was: ‘you’re a fast worker!’, even though the idea had been in my head for three years.

There’s more I wanted to say, but as usual I started writing and then wandered off at a tangent. But I’d like to share a quote that I heard on Thought for the Day on Radio 4 earlier while I was making coffee: “You don’t think your way into a new kind of living. You live your way into a new kind of thinking.” It was attributed to Henry Nouwen, a name which means nothing to me (apparently he was a Catholic priest, but I won’t hold that against him.)

I’ve often been told I think too much… TBC

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Plan to Plan

Ten years ago, when I was going to business networking meetings, I was part of a team of three people organising meetings in a local pub on alternate Wednesday mornings. I was in charge of sending out email and text invitations, chasing up invitees to confirm numbers, collecting payments and paying the pub for breakfasts consumed, working with a woman in her forties who was an area rep, in charge of a number of fortnightly groups locally. The third member was a an older man (older than  I was then but probably younger than I am now), whom I’ll call Charles (I can’t remember whether that was actually his name) who chaired the meetings and was a general figurehead for the group.

The reason I’ve been thinking about him this morning was that he would sometimes give The Talk – there was always a ten minute talk over breakfast, usually given by a guest speaker – who, when I look back now, were probably drafted in from other groups in the region or more widely spread (it was that sort of organisation). I’m guessing that possibly part of Charles’s role was to stand in when no other speaker was available, and his talks were always on a similar theme, the gimmick being that the titles consisted of an increasing number of words beginning with P. This had obviously started long before I’d joined, and would always induce a groan (in the nicest possible way) from the assembly. Anyway, what set me on this train of thought was that a typical example would be: ‘Perfect Planning Prevents Piss-Poor Performance’ or words to that effect.

And the connection is: that as I was lying in bed this morning I was thinking about my inability to plan anything whatsoever. At five thirty I was reviewing my options: walk to beach; take van out for a picnic; stay home and start on editing of TLWB (reading Prague blog posts) etc. The conclusion was to stay home and get on with gardening, which I didn’t do a lot of yesterday, just half an hour or so’s weeding and not planting of plants purchased (I’m starting to sound like Charles), which should really be a Priority (definitely one of the words he would have used) as they will Probably die otherwise.

So I got up shortly after six, did my exercises, made coffee and here I am, doing my daily Post (Pontification? Pronouncement?) – which, incidentally, I am still doing, despite moaning last week,  because – it feels important to Persist, in fact, maybe (or even Perhaps) Persistence is Paramount. Some days I dread it, but I always feel better afterwards – no matter what it is, however trivial, or complaining, or ranting, or self-Pitying  – even Pathetic or Pointless – the results. I write every day – as long as I’m home, and sometimes even when I’m not – and I stick to my 500 words because it is a discipline, and that’s that. And I Plan to keep on doing so.

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Triumph of Hope

Yesterday I was debating over whether to take the van out to the country park for a picnic, or the car to B&Q to spend some coupons on stuff for the garden, or a combination of the two or something completely different. In the end, I went to B&Q in the car, and it was lucky I didn’t try to combine that with a picnic, because by the time I’d finished (after almost an hour), I felt quite worn out. I came home with compost, basket liners and enough plants to hopefully ensure one or two of each type might survive my half-hearted and inconsistent attempts at gardening.

I sorted out a few things into larger pots during the afternoon, the rest are lined up in a tray supported by two upturned buckets, along the fence, along with some sweet peas and other stuff in trays that I’d bought earlier from the Co-op as I walked past on my way home from tai chi sessions in the park.

They say a second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience, and I did that, but gardening fits into the same category for me. Maybe the same conditions apply to both – a lack of attention to nurturing the first time around, or, in the case of gardening, of all previous attempts.

Today I need to get out there and do some weeding to make space for my new purchases. As usual, there was minimal planning and organisation behind the things I bought. There are three wall-mounted baskets, two small and one large, on the wall outside my kitchen window, along the little alley between my house and the neighbours, which had trailing begonias in my first year living here, but which have deteriorated over the last few years until there were just a dead fuchsia and some very straggly geraniums, which didn’t flower at all last year. It’s not an ideal spot for geraniums, because, squashed between the two houses, it doesn’t get much sunshine. I can’t remember when the begonias gave up, but over the years I have made various attempts to replace them, but this is the first time I’ve replaced the liners, so hopefully that will help, and maybe give me something attractive to look at while I’m doing the washing up.

The large one was screwed to the wall, so I left it in situ and just reached up (it’s just slightly above my eye level) to put the new liner, compost and plants into it. I took the two smaller ones off, as they were just hooked over the nails, but didn’t think about the fact that one of them had come loose from one of the nails and was dangling at an angle from the other one, until after I’d filled them both and went to try and put them back. The first one was okay, but there was no second nail in the wall for the other, it had rusted or come away altogether.   

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Decisions

Today I have a decision to make.

It’s not earth-shattering – it’s this: should I take my camper van to the country park, have a walk through the trees and a picnic? Should I go to B&Q, buy some compost and plants, come home and do some gardening? Should I do both, drive the camper van to B&Q en route to the country park and hope to find a parking place not too far from home when I get back, so it’s not too much of an effort to carry the compost etc home? Should I take the car (camper van too tricky to park) and go to the garden centre that’s en route to the country park (if I can remember where it is, I’ve only been a couple of times, and that was years ago), and if I do, does my parking season ticket for the country park cover the car as well?

Yesterday I bought rolls and individually wrapped flap jacks in preparation for this picnic that I was planning. But – isn’t the country park getting a bit boring? I don’t want to drive the other way, to the New Forest, because that is a full day out, and does mean driving along the M27, which can be stressful. And putting the van back into the garage is always stressful. It’s only a couple of weeks since I moved the van, so it shouldn’t have seized up yet – though I did leave the battery connected up in the expectation that I’d be taking it out again in the near future. I won’t be taking it out next week, though, because I’m going up to Bedford – on the train, because hopefully my daughter will be bringing me back to stay a few days and help with sorting out the study.

I was going to go to B&Q because I have a coupon, and Wednesday is Diamond Card day, but of course you can’t combine the offers, and anyway if you read the small print the coupon only applies if you spend £30 on full price items, so it’s not great if you want to combine lots of small things, when some of them are likely to be on multi-buys anyway, so I’d spend all my time trying to work out what to spend it on.

I like the idea of going to the garden centre, but from what I remember the parking is pretty awful, so as I said, I wouldn’t want to take the van.

I’m just trying to give examples here of what my mind is like all the time. I think I’ll give myself a treat, but it takes so long to think through all the options, implications, ramifications and potential consequences that I start to dread it, even when the object is something I know I would enjoy – unless, of course, I don’t enjoy it at all and end up wondering what on earth I’m doing there, wherever it is. Which is quite likely.