Leaving space for imagination

No time to write much – frantically busy putting together my first issue of our parishes magazine – so here instead are some pictures from a walk this afternoon on the Grand Western Canal.

It wasn’t until the end of the walk when I stopped to wait for Frog that I started to notice things and got out my (broken) camera.

Imagination rushes in to fill up the spaces. You have to leave spaces to allow for imagination, but alas I have too few spaces in my life at the moment

Boring update

I’ve finished the latest draft of The Novel. Hooray! I find novels such hard work. Every day as I walk into my writing room I think, can I do it? I feel constant pressure to make the most of my three writing days and get everything else done in the other four days of the week. I think about the novel all the time, so much so that my fictional life is more real than my real one and sometimes when I'm going about my real life it feels like fiction. It's hard to have the energy for a real life.

I intend to take a break till January and then have a last (I hope) quick run-through to tidy up some ends and redo a couple of chapters I’m not happy with yet.

In the meantime, I’ve offered to take over editing our ‘parishes newsletter’ (for four villages). The sensible part of me (a very small part) says that I will enjoy being connected to the community. The rest of me is screaming in terror as I have no idea how much work it will entail or how much I will struggle with the technical aspects (eg a new computer programme).

The dearth of pictures recently is due to the fact that my camera is nearly broken. When I inherited it (from my brother) one of the lugs (as Frog calls them) that keep the battery in place was broken. The other day I dropped the camera on our quarry-tiled kitchen floor and the other lug broke so now, when I take a picture, I have to hold the battery in place with a redundant finger – no mean feat. I’ve added ‘buying a camera’ to the list of ‘Things to do when I finish the novel’ (ie now).

As I lay in bed yesterday evening nursing my migraine my perception shifted and I moved into a blessed calm space. I realised that it’s not a question of either/or – is life an exam or a walk in the country? do I do this or that? have I made the right decision? It’s a question of stepping back from everything and observing it as part of the quirks of my peculiar life. The confusion is the problem, not the question. (Why do I keep forgetting that?)

This is rather a boring post but it’s difficult after a long gap, I find, to know where to start. I’m hoping it will open the door for other, more interesting, posts. By interesting I mean posts that have a more general relevance and aren’t just about me. Is that right? I’d love to know.

Changing mindset

I wake in the night feeling gruesome – again. At the moment I spend more time feeling ill than I do feeling well. I’m presuming that it’s because I have a couple of stressful events on the horizon, but I’m loath to cancel them because my life is already reduced to a minimum. I need to find a way either to cope with stress, or to take life more calmly.

Poor Frog wakes and I tell him my troubles.

    ‘Life’s not an exam,’ he says.

    I start to cry. ‘What is it then?’

    ‘A walk in the countryside.’

If only. If only it were. If only I could change my mindset.

Why?

Sunset, this time last year

I wake in the night with a poem in my head - and a migraine.

This morning I still have the migraine - but the poem is gone.

Why can't it be the other way round?

She literally exploded

I’m supposed to be cleaning out my Mini which I’m selling after 22 years – it’s no longer worth patching it up and I don’t feel safe driving it on motorways. As a little light relief however (for me and, I hope, you) I thought I might do a post on infuriating words and phrases.

Having been an editor and proofreader for some twenty years, I’ve always had an annoying (to others) habit of editing and proofreading everything I see and hear – graffiti, packaging, radio and television, magazines, books – you name it. This involves not just grammar and spelling but also phraseology, clichés and the correct use of words.

One of the less comfortable aspects of living in close proximity to someone else is the way they take on your behaviour traits, bad as well as good, and unfortunately Frog is now just as prone to the above annoying habit as me – if not worse (but he wouldn’t agree there). Particularly since I gave him for Christmas a few years ago She Literally Exploded: The Daily Telegraph Infuriating Phrasebook which he has read from cover to cover many times.

As an example, here is the book’s entry for ‘literally’:

Distinguishes the literal from the figurative meanings of a phrase, but is now used at random as an intensifier or a synonym for ‘really’, by those with tin ears.

Charming, no?

Here are some of the words and phrases currently infuriating Frog and me (and which neither of us dares point out to the other for fear of a diatribe).

Iconic Used for everything, with no thought to its original meaning

Issue A mealy-mouthed way of saying ‘problem’

Source (as a verb) Buy? Find?

Locally sourced Do you mean ‘bought in the corner shop’ or do you mean ‘locally produced’ or even simply ‘local’?

Gift (as a verb) What on earth is wrong with good old-fashioned ‘give’?

Chanteuse Singer?

Brutally murdered Isn’t all murder brutal? Might it be better to be specific eg ‘shot’, ‘strangled’?

Changed forever Change is change. If you’re looking for emphasis, use a stronger word eg ‘transformed’, ‘revolutionised’.

Sorry about all that. It's very naughty of me and I know my own writing is far from perfect and we're probably just a couple of old fogeys, but I do feel better having got it off my chest. Feel free to add some of your own bêtes noires.