Walking in the wet

My new under-thirty-quid walking shoes are definitely dry-weather affairs.  They seem to soak up the water from all directions. Not for many a moon have my feet been quite so wet.
To be fair to them, nor had the rest of me, supposedly waterproof clothing notwithstanding.  Time to revamp my walking wardrobe - I've been lulled into a false sense of good weather security.  Lucky that they could sunbathe and dry out today.


Back to boots when rain threatens . . .

The shoes have been sprayed, the boots have been waxed, fingers are crossed . . . who says women are obsessed with shoes? 

The rain gods - are they with me or agin me?

I go to hang some washing out . . . spots of rain . . . so I think maybe I'll make a start on clearing the shed . . .and I just heave a load of stuff on to the lawn, and it pours. . . back to old faithful computer, and lo! the skies are clearing.   Maybe it's time for a coffee and a scone?  And even better - Harry's just volunteered to make it!

At the risk of rabbiting on about nothing to a greater extent than usual - yay, I cleaned out the shed, and stuck two loads of washing out, and had scones with clotted cream at coffee time.

And I managed to take a carful of wood, plastic and metal rubbish to the recycling centre - local tip.

Another random entry:

Written as part of an article about self-editing for the aborted WD mag.

'A poem is never finished', said Paul Valéry, 'only abandoned.' This is the current abandoned version. To be fair the whole enterprise this was planned for was abandoned too!

How do you get your poem to scan?
Do you bang with a spoon on the base of a pan?
Do you count all your words or just hope that they flow
Do you edit, fuhgeddit, or let it all blow?

Do you sing words along to the tune of a song?
Do you bounce rubber balls or yourself off the walls?
Whatever you do keep it up if it works,
Make poetry fun with these physical jerks.

Do you let raw emotion roar out on the page
or force the caged tiger to swallow his rage?
Do you prune out the clichés with merciless knife
and throw out excess words that drain it of life?

Can you rhyme all the time or is rhyming too pat?
Do you scour the thesaurus, or do without that?
Sometimes you may find that a word from a book
can lead you up roads where you’d not thought to look.

March 08

The original was more fun, because the mechanism was visible.

Lynn Knight - book about Chesterfield, and a family with three adoptions

I caught this on Radio 4 early this morning - I guess it was the mention of Chesterfield and in particular Whittington Moor which caught my ear. So, I've ordered it.

Lemon Sherbet and Dolly Blue.

Turns out Lynn Knight used to be an editor at Virago, too.

There's a lot of background social history of Chesterfield in the book as well.