Good write, bad write

Blogs not quite flowing last night.  Having had a not bad first week back after holiday, struggling a bit more this week.  The Scottish greyness-that-lasts-mightily has set back in, rather than last week’s sunshine.

It’s not quite C S Lewis’ ‘always winter and never Christmas‘ but the mood is a little in that direction – though given that we live so close to the coast, I doubt there’ll be any of the Lewis snow etc. of “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” sense.

But I did find myself thinking that writing is the point, whether or not it always flows.  Good write, bad write, it’s still keeping the discipline going.

Now is the time of year to bury myself in a big book that gives me another country for my mind to hibernate in.  Or write one.  Or kick around a few ideas, like fallen leaves, and see where they pile up.

Found myself having a linguistics type thought the other day on the bus, re penetrating the ‘speech streams’ – linguistics speak for the patterns of sounds we make when having conversations or just talking solo.

Rather like a nano-adventure where people are swept round the body or something, maybe there’s some way for characters to ride out the streams of sounds…? Rather more research needed for that, and what can be carried on sound waves, or radio waves.

But still, even if I can capture the thoughts that seem half way interesting, even of the ‘interesting for at least 10 seconds while you mull them over’ kind of thoughts, that’s a start.  Reading the ‘Mind Gym‘ while on holiday re having idea generating sessions, and ways to do the idea generating before you do the assessing.

Similar issue to an author who came into our office one time to do creative writing stuff – talked about imagining your internal critic a bit like a parrot on your shoulder, and knocking it off mentally when it interrupted too much.

Ideas first, shaping later.  Good, bad or indifferent write comes later.

In a line of a Larkin poem, there’s the question “Where can we live but days?”  I think I’ll try a bit more living in ideas, and see what comes of it.

Duty v Pleasure

This weekend was a good one for reading things I could nod along with, or better.

Kate Muir took potshots at modern coffee houses no longer being places for debate and politicking, but being more about a load of hot milk.  (I had been thinking of writing something about feeling excluded from seasonal Starbuck products because they all seem to be latte-based.  Kate redressed the balance with reference to thick black coffee in the earlier cafes that started the trend for heated beverages being a viable alternative.)

Even better though was the article on duty versus pleasure.  Now I can see you rolling your eyes already at this.  But in terms of ‘someone’s thinking like me’, it was a good one to read.

Basic concept: previous philosophers have suggested that we have to choose between duty and pleasure.  Various others, church fathers included, have rushed in after to agree that we must choose. In fact, let us say, many say there isn’t even a choice, becasue we know what we should do.

The struggle is that duty alone gets wearing.  We know that ‘all work and no play…’ but it gets harder to hold to that when work moves ever faster.

The church has also had something of a struggle with pleasure as a concept, certainly in its early days.  ‘The devil finds tasks for idle hands’ will certainly keep you in homemade socks, if you take its precept literally while at home of an evening.  In fact, I’m sure I can claim I got the laptop in order to keep my hands busy while watching television, but that does stray dangerously close to pleasure too…

Anyway, thankfully the writer, philosopher A C Grayling, confirms that the best option for us all is a mix of the two.  Which sounds very simple and obvious, I know.  But as someone who’s felt that following duty is the way to please people, and God, it’s a newer prospect to stray towards little things like going home on time – or early.

Thing is, when you start looking out for pleasure, you find that God’s provided plenty of that too.  You know that I can rhapsodise for ages on the delights of food alone.  Add in sunsets, birdsong, smiles of friends, those kind of things, there are lots of gentle pleasures tucked away behind all that duty.  They even allow you to enter work with a smile on your face.  And duty gets a lot better when you enjoy it too…

Rainbows from above

Everyone likes a good rainbow eh?  Double ones good value too and all that. Coming back from our recent holiday, we had a new sight – a rainbow from above.  You are basically talking a stripy donut shape, but it’s still exciting.

Even better – we got to see two different ones, about half an hour apart. Maybe this is God’s view of rainbows?  I guess you’d have to be a fairly high flying bird to get that view too often.

I know the thing is meant to be the crock of gold at the end of the rainbow, if you can ever work out which end it’s at.  But all the same, the treat was seeing something you are used to, but from a completely different angle.

Admittedly, there’s less time to go through the whole ‘red and yellow and pink and green…’ shtick when you’re flying over.  Which is just as well for the other passengers.

But it’s probably a good example of some of what I treasure in life – getting to see, or think about, or hear, something in a completely new way.  Second in line is finding out someone else has seen that, heard that, thought that too.  More on that next post.

Sunday roast

You know the signs.  Interest in gardening, cardigans, family history…among the list of signs that you are getting on.  (Some of us have liked cardigans for a while, but we won’t dwell on that.)

Perhaps one of mine is an interest in a little more tradition for the weekend, or something to mark the fact that the weekend is a time to slow down.  I’ve probably already written about my cooking phases, and the fact that roasting chicken in different ways is the current focus.  So here’s my chance to champion the Coop, and their chickens that are organic, reasonably priced, and even better, delicious!

But alongside this, starting to think about ‘oven economy’, and how to get best use out of the oven when it’s on.  Last weekend and this, trying to do some baking while the oven’s on.  I wouldn’t claim to have this sussed – and in fact, the aim is to get a double oven so I can only have the appropriate bit on when I need it, or cook things together at different temperatures.

I know that in the past, there were different days for different household tasks.  Washing day, baking day, etc.  I don’t know that I’ll ever get as far as a fixed baking/cooking day (and I certainly don’t want to have a washing day – three cheers for washing machines!).  But I certainly agree with Nigella et al that there is something soothing about cooking various things together.

It allows for a different rhythm to part of the week. How much of the rest of the week allows me to do one kind of activity (apart from sleeping, I suppose) for more than an hour or so? Life at work can get very fragmented – certainly felt like this last week, settling back in and going from task to task, or even bits of tasks, before being pulled on to something else.

There is a sense of peace from doing these things that permeates into the start of the week.  Knowing that there is more ‘already done’ for the next few days makes it easier to deal with that unhappy bump back into Monday mornings.

Maybe the nicer side of getting older is realising that there are certain patterns to life, and that we can choose which patterns help us, which to take on as our own.  Alongside this, our concern about what others will think starts to wane.  So hurrah for cardigans, Sunday roasts, and slippers…

 

Seedy weedy seeds

Dear Mr Fischbacher,

I am not trying to nick your song lyrics – in fact I listened to them again last weekend.  But I need to overcome my fear of gardening.  I know that the seeds may be seedy, but I fear I am weedy (the grass certainly is) when it comes to getting on with planting things.

This might otherwise be entitled ‘Missing the bus and visiting Poundstretcher (again)’ – there’s a rather convenient shop near the bus stop I use when heading home after work.  Rather than stand at the stop for the next 14 minutes (bus comes every 15 anyway), I nipped in, and came out with lots of packets of seeds.

I am actually thinking of them for a friend as part of a Christmas present.  But they had multiple types of seed in each packet, including a Mexican one with seeds for peppers and chillies, a Chinese one with pak choi…you get the picture.  If I combine my love of things international with my devotion to food, it might get me back to the soil.

Even better…they turned out to be a bargain!  Each packet was meant to be 99p, but for some reason, they sold them to me for 49p a packet.  I now have 15 varieties of seeds for £2.45!  All of which should help if a few of them fall on rocky wocky soil, or that kind of thing.

Spoke to my gardening friend at work, who informed me that I can also plant garlic and onions at this time of year, plus broad beans.  Not a fan of broad beans, but the other two, always useful.

Garlic, I’m told, is as easy as taking individual cloves of garlic, sticking them in the ground one by one, pressed down by your thumb.  You could even mark out a bat shape if you wanted them to be particularly effective, I guess.  (I decided to pass on jokes about staking them out.)

Hopefully, now I’ve got your interest in my gardening potential, you can reply, and shame me into planting them.

And for Mr Fischbacher’s song writing talents…find out more about what happens when seed falls on goody woody soil: www.fischy.com (It’s a Noisy World album)