Try January

Ang was talking about her word for the year of 2026. She has a word she tries to make the focus of her year. I've not really done one before but as I read her post, I had a feeling that mine should be either be Gentle Gratitude or Reconnection.  Funnily enough, I saw the word reconnect in several contexts that day. 

Later on, I was talking to my Headteacher and Assistant head in the staff meeting on Wednesday about an assembly they did where they talked about not having resolutions but having something called Try January where they said you could try something new in January but it didn't necessarily have to stick or be permanent although you might find something that DOES stick.  (Hilariously, one of the teachers thought they were talking about Dry January to the children, which caused some consternation!).  I mentioned that I have been thinking about gratitude and saying I had decided to try and write a minimum of 5 things or small moments, most days, in a notebook so I could try and focus on positives which then gave me something to read back on when I wanted to. They liked this idea.  As I took the train home, having left my phone at home and not having my book, I decided to write a poem with some ideas for the children.

I hope you enjoy Try January and perhaps you might get inspiration from it, even if perhaps tying shoelaces isn't a new thing for you!

Try January

 

In January, I always find I fail at resolutions

They pile the pressure, hard to maintain, too much expectation.

This year, I think, I’d rather choose to ‘Try January’ instead.

Try something new for a short while, perhaps this attempt might spread?

Doesn’t have to be a forever thing, be open to giving it a go.

If you fail, don’t have to tell, no one has to know.

A gratitude diary for example, write 5 small wins each day.

Caught your bus, yummy wrap for lunch, scored a goal at play.

Try reading 10 pages most days, or talking to someone new.

Sign up for choir, learn to love peas, try a new hair do.

Try wearing yellow, draw a horse, learn times-tables, 5’s and 2’s

Try chess, go swimming, bake a cake, aim to tie my shoes.

Phone an old friend, reconnect, ACTUALLY practice the piano.

Learn to write calligraphy, choose a plant to grow.

Try meditation for quelling anger, attempt to sew a button on.

Visit the library, write a poem, learn the lyrics of that song.

Speak positively rather than moan, put my hand up if I’m shy.

The aim is not perfection BUT the aim’s just try, try, try!

If the new thing doesn’t stick, that’s fine, you knew it was only temporary.

But you might just be at the start of something great, if you just TRY January!

Night Terrors

 This week's prompt word for my poem was 'Kid'.  It was another one which took a few days of thinking. It was written in the car on the way to walking on the Roman Wall on the Sycamore Gap stretch of the journey (RIP tree) and on the way back to get changed to visit the Glasshouse for a concert with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra.

Night Terrors 

"I kid you not, it's terrifying!

I hear a monstrous dragon flying. 

Malevolent with fangs so long.

Please stay with me, you are so strong!" 

"I see no dragon, no need to hide. 

Your imagination's in overdrive!" 

"I do not jest, I'm over-awed, 

I hear a mighty wolf, sharp-clawed, 

He's watching me with evil eyes, 

Please stay with me, you are so wise!" 

"I see no wolf, no provocation, 

You've got a vivid imagination!" 

"I do not joke, I start to quake, 

I hear a fearsome, massive snake, 

He wants to squeeze me in his 'arms' 

Please stay with me, keep me from harm!" 

"I see no snake, no need to fear, 

Your brain plays tricks, there's nothing here." 

"I do not fabricate, beware! 

I hear a snuffling, growling bear, 

Massive, mighty, he wants to bite!, 

Please stay with me and hold me tight!" 

"I see no bear, no cause to fret, 

This room is bare of bears, my pet." 

"I tell no lie, my nerves are soaring, 

I hear a dangerous lion roaring, 

Hungry, surely he wants to feed. 

Please stay with me or he'll succeed!" 

"I see no lion, real or other, 

It seems the sounds are all your brother!"

I had various ideas for this one, one, something based on the Billy Goat's Gruff and the other, using the phrase, "I kid you not!" which CBC kept telling me for ages was not a real phrase until he kept hearing other people ALSO say it.

I went with the second idea and it was going to be a poem about a child being scared with a vivid imagination (ME!) and imagining all sorts of things under the bed or outside the window whilst trying to sleep. Originally, it was going to be a 'Boy who cried wolf' situation where the child tells one lie too many and then gets eaten  by something but then the poem didn't feel like it wanted to do that so all of a sudden, it felt like that child was being gaslighted by an older sibling to who was making convincing sound effect to genuinely terrify the younger, more impressionable one.

I feel like it ends a bit abruptly, but to fit with the repetition and the length of the other stanzas, it had to be so.  Do you think the parent sounds too unsympathetic in their response?  I think sometimes there is a fine balance between building resilience and genuinely supporting a terrified vivid imagination. What's your take on it?

The Surname initial Challenge

I saw this on someone's Instagram Stories. It seemed quite a fun challenge in the Giles Brandreth vein so I thought I'd give it a go.You must complete this challenge without googling, asking anyone else or looking in a book. It relies solely on your brain power! Something/someone called @thevestigeofficial created this.  Don't know what they do but their spelling is shocking, even in their profile. I corrected the mistakes in their original! They also say that this is harder than you think.  Hmmm, wonder if that's true...

You must give an item for each of the categories that begins with the first letter of your surname (and if you share my initial, get your own ideas!) 

Wear:  Plimsoles

Food:  Passata

Drink: Pineapple Juice

Place: Poland

Animal: Panda

Colour: Puce

TV show: Pinky and Perky

Girl's name: Poonam

Boy's name: Peter

Profession: Porter

Body part: Pancreas

Word to describe someone: Pernickety 

Something in your home: Pots

Your last name: Ha ha, not telling you but it begins with P!

I challenge you: Peter Piper Picked a Peck of Pickled Peppers.

Here's a list for you to copy and paste if you felt like joining in!

• Wear
• Food
• Drink
• Place
• Animal
• Colour
• TV show
• Girl's name
• Boy's name
• Profession
• Body part
• Word to describe someone
• Something in your home
• Your last name
• I challenge you

Word Play- alternative words

In my recent Photo An Hour post, I shared my alternative meaning for Wedding as part of the 64 Million Artists January Challenge.

Wee-duh-ding

In retrospect, this was obscure and a bit rubbish so I decided to think of alternative meanings for some well-known words.  This lot aren't much better but the point is to try and be creative with your mind so I am doing it!

I'd love it if you shared some that you thought of!

If I had more time, I would have made illustrations to go with these but I am lacking the time!

Ahem...

Commit- A Mitten that has technology to make a phone call  or send a text through!

Diatribe- When you get a particular ethnic clan together and throw paint at them.

Confuse- when you trick a fuse into buying a job lot of amps at top whack!

Confer- Sell an acrylic coat as real mink.

Confab- lie about how good your friend looks in their new dress.

Pirate- The standard cost for a Steak and Kidney Pudding.

Catastrophe - Where you display the feline proudly on your mantelpiece!

Guidance- moves your man makes on the disco floor.

Minimal - a petite shopping centre.

Direct -  where your hair is ruined by the apprentice colourist at the salon!

And I think I had better leave it there before I lose any more followers....


Do share if you decide to do this!

x

The bizarre foibles of a Google search

I thought this was extremely funnily bizarre so I am going to share this with you.  Am sorry if anyone takes offence at all but I find it so strange!

So, an acquaintance of mine was telling me today that they were preparing a debate and discussion recently on the nature of Mediocrity.  As part of their discussion, they were preparing a powerpoint and one of the points of the discussion was the value of the Amateur in the world and how amateur pursuits might be seen to be mediocre but their value in life is considered valuable.  They decided to search for an image to add to their slide and typed 'Amateur' into google images.  Bizarrely, when they did so, the majority of the images on screen were images of scantily-clad ladies- bikinis, knickers, tight dresses etc.  This really confused my acquaintance.  Why would 'Amateur' yield such results?   He then started wondering if Google shows exactly the same search results for everyone or was it somehow aimed at him.  He actually emailed Google saying he thought that that was really dodgy that that is what came up in the search but they were singularly unhelpful.  He wondered if  'amateur' gave such dubious results, what might come up if you typed something more dodgy.  So he typed, 'slag' into the google bar and the result was basically a whole page of 'slag heaps'! You know, stony piles of rocks.  Not one dodgy image whatsoever!   Admittedly, 'slag' is a loaded term and perhaps isn't the common vernacular for everyone (it was sadly used a lot where I grew up. I do not like the judgemental word) Isn't that bizarre that there wasn't one dodgy image yet when you type  'amateur'....

I still keep giggling when I think of  some slavering perve searching under that category and then being disappointed by the page of slag heaps!

Really hope this doesn't send google searches to my blog now!

6 words I loathe

I may be a bit of a weirdo in this respect if you read this and feel rather confuzzled by the sentiment with it, but there are certain words or phrases that I hear in conversation that really make me cringe,  irritate me to a great degree or generally leave me feeling a trifle uncomfortable.  I thought this would be an interesting post to do (and I'd love it if you chose to do one upon reading it).

We usually share things we love on our  blogs, so I thought it would be an interesting difference to highlight something I'm not so keen on.  I don't want to come across as a snob or anything, this certainly isn't intended in that way, but irrationally, certain words grate on my nerves.  My sister and I had a great time discussing words that creep us out or irritate us!

1.   Naff - this word is so beige and of a certain time- I think of the '90's when I hear it. I didn't like it then, I didn't like it now!

2.  "On my radar"- I was hesitant to put this in my list as I see it in a lot of bloggers' wishlists or sponsored posts and don't want to offend anyone but it is one of those idioms that I just can't stand and I simply can't fathom why that I dislike it!

3.  "At the end of the day....".  This is purely a contextual one. If it is being used purely in the sense of denoting a particular deed or act or description of something happening definitely at the end of the day, that's fine, but I hear it being applied liberally to conversation in the context where "In conclusion..." or some summative sentence opener/connective could be used. I think it became a trend after some Big Brother inmate used it almost constantly in conversation. Was it Jade Goody or someone else!?

4. "Innit".  This is totally being snobby- I HATE IT! In sixth form, I had a friend who used to say this all the time.  Our music teacher decided he was going to start an 'Innit box'- the equivalent of a swear box to stop him saying it. Mind you, he started one for me too because I used to incorrectly say, "Off of,", (e.g. I jumped off of it.).

5.  Flesh- my little sister shares the dislike of this word with me.  Literally makes my, er.....,SKIN crawl! Especially when said in a mock-creepy voice!

6.  Go to- e.g. "This is my go-to handbag!".  This one is CBC's contribution to the list. He dislikes this phrase. I wasn't bothered until he said it but yes, not keen on it, now he's drawn my attention to it.

Can't think of any more for the moment, so it is over to you:
Either, a) write a blog post about your 'hit-list' of phrases or words you dislike or leave me some in the comments box! I'd love to know!

Incidently, OSTENSIBLY is my favourite word!

x

January Scavenger Hunt 2015

Another last minute scramble for photos. I am much better at this job in the summer...

Without further ado, here is my set of photos in response to the prompts at Greenthumb's Made with love Blog



Something new



My something new could have been many things but I decided to use the photo of the new Cheeseboard my Mum bought us for Christmas which CBC and I christened today. He laid it out so nicely with cheese, pears and bread that it deserved some note.

Landscape


Two for you here.  I took a walk in the park 2 Sundays ago and it was a brilliant day for taking photos, so sunny and bright. You could almost believe it was summer here!



The other is a photo I found of my Grandad's garden in its glory days. Oh what halcyon days they were, spending summers in this paradise. This wasn't the extent of it either.


Words


We went over to Grandad's house today because it is soon to be sold and there are still things to be cleared out.
Grandad had an enormous collection of books which I thought I had seen most of but I came back with a few books including the hugely interesting Dictionary of Place Names.  I finally discovered where my birthtown's name came from and it wasn't what I expected! If you want me to find out yours for you, just pop me a comment.



Oh the words on the tea boxes are so intriguing!!! Mmmm, hawaiian cocktail flavoured tea???
Cold


My goodness, it was cold in the woods that day! 

Bottle


Had I but thought of it, there have been great opportunities for this prompt! Alas, I was left to scamper around the house looking for an interesting placed bottle. This one won for the sheer bizarreness of what was behind it!

Up high

I thought the view of the school tower up high with the smoke blowing in front of it was rather a picture.

In the fridge

I tried taking pictures inside my fridge. Horrid.  So you get the view of our rather cluttered fridge.

Texture

Dragon eye upon textured branch.

Hidden

Somewhere under the rocket, egg, peppers, Souper Green soup is some vermicelli.

Blue


A view of the ceiling in Les Deux Salons in Charing Cross, London.

Big

Big blue cockerel in Trafalgar Square on the Fourth Plinth.

What ever you want



Due to the amount of cooking in our friend's house as he cooked us a roast, the windows were steamed up. I naughtily drew some feet onto the window in the condensation and was struck by the eerie image cast by the lamp light behind

Have you taken part in the Scavenger Hunt? Do try and join in if you can! Go and join Greenthumb and crew to see more photos!

Ella Minnow Pea - A novel without letters

Image from Foyles.com Link leads to where you can purchase to avoid the tax-dodgers who sell books.

If there's one type of book that I can always guarantee I will love, it is a novel comprising of letters between correspondents: I cite examples such as 84 Charing Cross Road, The Guernsey Literary Potato Peel society, Lady Susan.  Thus, I was delighted to receive Ella Minnow Pea, a novel without letters by Mark Dunn, as a mystery Christmas present from my brother-in-law. He couldn't have chosen better for me.

The main characters involved in the book are Ella - an almost-18 year old girl living on the fictitious island of Nollop which is off the coat of Carolina - who corresponds with her cousin Tassie, a year older, who lives at the other end of the island to her.  The island is named after Nevin Nollop, born there, the supposed writer of the pangram beloved of typist-students, The Quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The island holds him in a reverence and his famous phrase is displayed in letters of stone in the town on the island. Nollop seems to be stuck in a time-warp,yet I get the feeling the book is set in the present. What happens is, as we discover through Tassie and Ella's correspondence and also occasionally through the missives of their mothers, Ella's father or Nate Warren, a scholar and a few others, is that when the letter Z drops off and falls to the ground broken, the council decide to elevate Nevin Nollop (who built the epitaph 100 years ago) to divine status and decide this must mean that Nollop, the eloquent, must surely mean that we must reinvent and explore our language more by banning use of the letter Z in all forms of communication: So no more zooming or buzzing, whizzing or fizzing, dozing or lazing and certainly no visits to zoological gardens or conversations with people called Zoe! The punishments will be public flogging or the stocks and the 3rd offence results in banishment.  Unfortunately, then the letter Q drops off and one by one, the letters they doth tumble! Ella and Tassie's correspondence becomes more interesting as they avoid the banned latters, creatively avoiding them and become lipograms.

The situation becomes more ludicrous, chaotic and yet chilling as time goes on and yet there is a gentle humour, fun and a heart to this book. I learnt to love Ella and Tassie and their parents and their development. At times, you wanted to shout at the Council for the sheer idiocy of their decisions but that wouldn't make an interesting book had they been reasonable people...

The final solution depends on being able to find an alternative shorter pangram to topple Nollop from his deistic status. I confess to sitting with a pen for ages trying to work out my own pangram (and remember doing this in Year 9 English)

It is a book of sheer delight for a logophile such as myself. Full of eloquent, elaborate and wide-ranging vocabulary as Ella and Tassie try to find ways to circumvent banned letters through curious and flowery synonyms, I felt I learnt a lot whilst feeling more anxious as the events of the book unfold. I loved the old-fashioned and simple life/feel to the setting and the mystery and sense of wondering what the great denouement would be.  Definitely a book I recommend to you.

I'd love to know if you have read it at all?

xx

Oh and for your delectation, here is a great blog post on Pangrams.

OH WUDDN'T IT BE LOVERLY

I am terribly guilty of the crime of overuse of certain adjectives when writing blog posts or commenting.  Thus I turned to www.Thesaurus.com to search for alternative ways to express 'lovely'- a word most egregiously overused in my blog comments, posts and in general every-day life.

I received the following suggestions:

•           alluring

•           captivating

•           delicate

•           delicious

•           delightful

•           enchanting

•           engaging

•           exquisite

•           gorgeous

•           graceful

•           handsome

•           pleasant

•           pleasing

•           pretty

•           splendid

•           stunning

•           sweet

•           dainty

•           fair

•           knockout

•           nice

•           picture

•           winning

•           admirable

•           adorable

•           amiable

•           attractive

•           beauteous

•           bewitching

•           comely

•           delectable

•           enjoyable

•           good-looking

•           gratifying

•           lovesome

•           pulchritudinous

•           rare

•           scrumptious

Ok, so I know all of these, except pulchritudious (mmmm, I like it! Spell-checker doesn't!) and yes, I shall try to use some of these instead, yet I feel that all lack that certain something that 'lovely' communicates!

Over to you.  What do you think about this fine word? Are there any words you overuse? Are there any words that you long to use but never think of it! My ultimate favourite word is ostensibly and yet I rarely think of any circumstance in conversation to use it