Fighting the Winter Blahs

I can't remember a winter when we've had so much rain going on for so long. Christchurch, after all, is on the supposedly drier east side of the island. I really felt in need of a pick me up. The first step was to ask myself on Friday night, what do I need to get done so that I'll feel as if I have time to go out at the weekend? (And of course, to do it. Little tasks that have been hanging round for a while. It takes more time, I discover when I actually do them, to avoid them than to get them done).

But Saturday dawned grey, drizzly and gloomy. Yet again. Not a day for photographing open air markets or walking in parks. So, I set out to the pharmacy to pick up some repeat prescriptions, then followed my whims:



I've been wanting to photograph the interior of the Cupcake Collection for some time. I'm not normally a pretty pink and blue person, but for some reason this china appeals to me. I think it reminds me of my grandma.



Of course, I had to buy something to justify being in there taking photos. (Such hardship!)


And then I browsed in a fabric shop, and looked at patterns, but without finding what I wanted - and in a yarn shop with the same result. I remembered I had been meaning to visit Penny Lane records for quite a while.



I've bought some really cheap second hand CDs. I haven't tried them yet, I wonder what the quality will be like?



This part of Colombo St in Sydenham is interesting, there are quite a few run down, boarded up shops, but the shops that are still there are varied bunch - not the endless "same again" repetition of shops found in malls. Some are of the cheap second hand variety, and some are specialist shops, surprisingly smart and up market looking - like Dance Pacific, which always draws my eye with its collection of ballet costumes, mostly in little girl sizes.

The Process of Change

OK, I haven't been posting much lately. But I was a little surprised to receive my traffic report last week and find my visitor numbers had gone way, way down. And then this week, my report told me I had none. All week. Which was very strange since I had at least one comment.

Then I twigged. It all happened after I upgraded my blog to the "new" (probably a couple of years old by now) functionality. In the process, my site meter had disappeared from the blog. I guess it can't count my visitors if the code isn't there. So I retrieved the "template" I had saved as suggested by blogger, only to find that it didn't seem to include the bits and pieces I had added in, and it was in xml instead of html. Fortunately it turned out I had copied and saved the old html code as well - in other words, don't rely on blogger to save your blog, do it manually. I have retrieved the bit of code and pasted it back. Although blogger insists I have a title to this bit of html. I'm not sure why. I don't really think the little icon needs to be headed "site meter".

And at the same time, at work, we are trying to get to grips with a new computer system which is, as yet, half baked. I can't help thinking that if architects built houses the same way as computer systems are designed we would have some pretty terrible houses.

It's as if someone went out and found a house that was fairly close to what was needed. It just needs a few add ons which the builder will fix. Except that those two or three extra rooms we need? Well, there's no room for them where it would be logical to put them. So they will have to be at the bottom of the garden, over a gully, with a strange maze of overhead walkways to connect them to the main house. Oh, and once you use one of those walkways, suddenly it will reconfigure itself, so you can't use the same doorways again, you will have to do something different. At least, I think that's what's going on.

We are expected to go live with this system in a few days, but it's just not going to happen. It doesn't help that the software designers are in another town, and the head office system that we are supposed to be integrating with is in a third town.

No doubt we will get there in the end.

Always Start with a Photo

I have been reading Blogging for Bliss after finding it in our library's monthly list of new books (and going on a fairly long waiting list to borrow a copy). One of the bits of advice that I came across was to start every post with a photo, even if it didn't relate to the content of the post. Hmmmm. I have to say that many of the blogs I read and enjoy don't have photos at all. And others have brilliant photos (for instance the wonderful Di Mackey, who is, after all, a photographer by trade.)

The book has an excuse, I suppose, for offering this piece of advice (I think it came from one of the interviewees rather than the author herself). It's aimed at crafters and visual artists, so the readership for their blogs is probably rather visually oriented. Anyway, I do have a photo to offer today. It's that time of year when I don't get too many opportunities to take photos, as I leave for work in the morning just as it gets light and arrive home just after dark. Thankfully, we are nearly at the solstice, and then the days will gradually get longer. The photo above is my offering for Carmi's Thematic Photographic. His theme this week, appropriately, is lit-up night scenes. This one was taken at about this time last year, on an evening when I was heading for Joanna Preston's book launch. I didn't have enough time to go home after work, but did have some free time before the event, so I was dawdling and taking photos as I went.

My family history (see previous post) has reached 5,500 words. I don't think it is going to get beyond ten thousand at the very most. It will still be a full length book by the time I've padded it out with photos and appendices full of genealogical charts. And as I write it, I realise that I need to do a lot of fact-checking. Which is good, because the research is the part that I love the most.

Tomorrow at 6 a.m. England play their first match in the FIFA World Cup. I may get up early - not to watch, but because one of the big genealogy websites is making access to their records free every time England has a game. It's just a pity that most of them are in the middle of the night, New Zealand time. Or 6 a.m on Saturday or Sunday which is definitely sleep-in territory for me, in the usual order of things.

Oh and you may notice I have upgraded my blog at last. Now I can see who my followers are. And some of the things I had in my sidebar have vanished, though I've saved a copy. I fiddled with the old template the hard way, with html. I'm not sure how to put things back the new, "easy" way. But I have corrected some links, and added some more. If you have disappeared, sorry. I'll make further adjustments bit by bit.

Local Genealogy Writing Month

It's been longer than I intended since I last posted here, partly because I have been immersed in writing up the history of my mother's family. I decided that the format of NaPoWriMo worked well for me. And it was a bit of a shock to realise that the year was almost half over, and I hadn't really done anything about any of the projects on my list for the year. So I decided to tackle them in the same way - make a concentrated effort, every day for a month.

I have a very large unwieldy file on my father's ancestors. It's a bit overwhelming, so it was easier to tackle my mother's first. A couple of them were in the Navy (that's how my great grandfather got to New Zealand). I'm discovering small tit bits such as the fact that the ship my great great grandfather served on in the Russian War was commanded by one Edward Tennyson d'Eyncourt, the first cousin of Alfred Lord Tennyson. (The war is now known as the Crimean War, though he served in the Baltic, not the Crimea which is in the Black Sea).
I have new respect for those who tackle National Novel Writing Month. Fifty thousand words in a day is a big ask - there was only one day when I managed even 1000, but then, there are lots of pauses for finding notes, fact checking etc.

I'm thinking of using alternate months to tackle a project in a concentrated way, and use the in between months for more varied bits and pieces. It's not that the writing fills my day exactly, but it fills my head and doesn't leave a lot of room for anything more complicated than laundry, after my day job.

In other news, our small poetry group's book looks as if it may be finally on the way towards layout for publication.

Big Tent Poetry: A Wordle Prompt

I was sad that Readwritepoem wound up at the end of April. But there are always bloggers to carry on the good work. Among the ventures set up to carry on where Readwritepoem left off is Big Tent Poetry.

I didn't jump right on to the horse to ride bareback round the ring - after writing a poem a day in April, I needed a break. But I love Wordles, and the words given for their third weekly prompt were calling to me, so, a day late, here is my rough draft.

Weaving the Nets

The women sit on the shore knotting their nets.
Each rope is a journey, a cord spun
by their fathers' forefathers,
their mothers' foremothers
as they travelled the world.
The nets are the pattern
that ties us all together
since we were first sapient,
since we came out of Africa.
The men are of water. They came
in their galleys and longboats.
The women are of the earth. Do not think
they were weak, when they were bedded
in a pile of straw, or a forest clearing,
a richly caparisoned horse tethered nearby.
When they fell for the merchant with his rich purse,
the young man with the smooth tongue
who doffed his cap in passing, they were not conquered.
They bend, but they do not crumple
nor capitulate. Their hands are as old and knotted
as the nets they make, while they sing
the fierce song of the generations.
They fondle the ropes, tie another knot.
It is futile to resist the making of the net.
Your dark-skinned sister no glitch in the DNA,
but the proof of an ancient tincture in the blood,
a connection over the waters
and over the centuries.

*****

I think I fitted in all the words, though some may well come out again in the editing.
fondle, purse, crumple, proof, sapient, tincture, pattern, doff, futile, capitulate, glitch, caparison

For more poems using these words, go here

Free Stuff

I don't buy lottery tickets. I've been known to enter contests offering a free trip to the other side of the world, without any success to date. But in the last year or so I've found out how to enter competitions, and win things, which gives me a great deal of pleasure.

The secret is to aim for the small things. A contest offering a trip to the UK will attract very many entries and generally only offer one prize. But a number of local magazines and newspapers seem to have frequent offers of smaller goodies, often in multiples - for instance, the New Zealand Listener will often offer movie tickets, with fifty double passes in each of three main centres on offer.

I prefer the prize draws that allow on line or e-mail entry, so that it costs me nothing at all to enter. I have received free movie tickets, twice, a Craig Potton handbag sized diary, a free ticket on a Lyttleton harbour cruise, and $200 worth of book vouchers. The entry for the book vouchers cost me a stamp, but all the rest were online entries.

On Thursday night I made use of a voucher I had won for a local Indian restaurant. I had to do a bit more than send an e-mail for this one - it was won in a local radio station's daily trivia contest - though I didn't have to do much. We listen at my workplace, and when I gave the answer, my boss placed the phone call for me, and his wife picked up the voucher in her lunch hour! (They are good people!)

It turned out that the voucher covered about half the cost of a meal for two, given that we had entrees (which in New Zealand is not the main course, it is what you have before the main course), and drinks, and pappadoms on the side. If we had had takeaways instead it would have covered the full cost of two mains.

I haven't been out to dinner in ages, so it was a very pleasant treat.

Though maybe one day I'll win that big trip, and that will be even better!

A Few Poetry Things

Performance poet Charlie Dark in New Zealand - video clip here. (It's about seven and a half minutes and comes with an energy efficiency ad before and after, only brief though)

Best New Zealand Poems 2009 here. This has been up for a few weeks, but the NaPoWriMo madness meant I didn't get round to posting until now.

Another new New Zealand poetry site - The Tuesday Poem.

******

I've started looking over my April poems and editing them. I'm pleasantly surprised - I haven't counted, but the number I want to tune up and keep is definitely more than last year's tally. In a few days, I will probably delete some or all of them from the blog in case of future submissions, so if you haven't read them yet and want to, be warned! (Though I can always e-mail them to you, if you are too late).

This evening I read at the final of the Canterbury Poets' Collective's autumn poetry series. The guests - ten of us - for the second half were the poets who had been voted first or second by the audience in one or more of the preceding seven weeks. I read three of my NaPoWriMo poems, suitably tweaked, and they went down well. With no "big name" guests, I was impressed by the quality of the reading - my favourite of the evening being Joanna Preston's five poem sequence, Lucifer in Las Vegas, which I very much hope makes it into her second book. (I very much hope there will be a second book!)

The Day After

So April and along with it NaPoWriMo is now officially over (or, what I think of as "Bad Poetry Month"). What's next?

This weekend is mostly "breathing space". Time to clean out the fridge, sweep the dust bunnies from the corners, clear the decks. I have also gathered up all my poems into a single file. I hope to visit a number of the other Readwritepoem contributors - something I didn't have as much time for as I would have liked, when I was posting a poem a day. I've fixed up a few embarrassing typos in my poems. I will be off line for half a day or so as I have a brand new reconditioned Apple computer waiting to have all my files copied over to it. My old computer had developed some annoying lines down the screen which have been gradually multiplying, so a faster, bigger computer with lots of space for all my photos, and no annoying lines, will be a great treat.

And then I will be editing. My day 27 poem was voted best of the open mic contributors at last Wednesday's meeting of the Canterbury Poets Collective. As such, I get to read again next Wednesday, so I will be doing some hasty edits to some of the other poems. There are also some deadlines coming up for submissions that I want to consider.

And of course there are plenty poetry prompts waiting for me - I have at least two sets of thirty prompts stored up in case I need them in future. Though I suspect they won't be quite as effective without the deadlines looming over me.

Off to set up the new computer now, see you all in a day or so

NaPoWriMo #30: Not With a Bang but a Whimper

So - April 30 and I am really, really tired. Not so much due to the effort of writing a poem a day, but due to all the other stuff that I have been fitting the poetry writing around.

The April 29 prompt at Readwritepoem (which is April 30 here), was to be inspired by newspaper headlines. So, I looked at our local newspaper and found the headlines very uninspiring. So I went online to New Scientist instead - I have a subscription - and at least I got to catch up with some reading, something I've done little of this month. I jotted down quite a few of the headlines, and just strung some together, more or less, with a very small number of additional words of my own, to come up with this bit of nonsense. Given enough time to collect more headlines, and some more thought, the idea may even have possibilities - there are some pretty strange headlines there.

Not my favourite of the month, but I didn't want to stop one day short of the end.

(All NaPoWriMo poems have now been removed for possible editing and submissions. Contact me if you would like to read them.)

NaPoWriMo #29

(All NaPoWriMo poems have now been removed for possible editing and submissions. Contact me if you would like to read them.)

The prompt at Readwritepoem was Intuition. This poem may or may not be on prompt - it is something that came to me in an intuitive way as I was arriving home from work.

NaPoWriMo #28: Acrostics

At Readwritepoem, Carolee asked us to write an acrostic poem. I'm not a big fan of acrostics - they are the sort of thing that many teachers here seem to have children do in school, always using the letters of their name, and using each letter to start a line describing themselves eg "good friend of James", or "fast runner" etc. I find them indescribably dull.

The problem I have with acrostics is that I always feel that the poem itself has to describe the word that is used to provide the initial letters of the lines. Whatever word I could think of seemed rather limiting, until I thought of "emporium" - one of the two words I didn't use from the Day 22 Wordle prompt (my own prompt).

So, here it is - I doubt I'll bother to do anything with this when the month is out, but at least I haven't missed a day yet.

(All NaPoWriMo poems have now been removed for possible editing and submissions. Contact me if you would like to read them.)

NaPoWriMo #27: Scraps from my Notebook

(All NaPoWriMo poems have now been removed for possible editing and submissions. Contact me if you would like to read them.)

NaPoWriMo #26: Overheard Conversations

Today I used the Readwritepoem prompt which was to take the first thing said to me after reading the prompt and use it to spark a poem. Except that I was at the computer, and when I did later join the rest of the family for dinner, I forgot to note the conversation. When I remembered, the first two things that I noted were "It's a post-extinction burst" (a psychology term that the speaker later admitted was slightly mangled) and "What shall I do with my hair?" References to both these phrases turn up in the last stanza.

The form of this poem owes something to the ghazal, although once again I have taken it rather loosely.

(All NaPoWriMo poems have now been removed for possible editing and submissions. Contact me if you would like to read them.)

NaPoWriMo #25: A Sort of Villanelle

(All NaPoWriMo poems have now been removed for possible editing and submissions. Contact me if you would like to read them.)

The prompt was to take a phrase from the Phrase Finder website and use it to spark a poem. The quote I used is in italics at the head of the poem. This comes apparently from Shakespeare's Henry VIII and is alluded to on Keats's tombstone (which in turn is alluded to by me). Inspired by Joseph, I decided to attempt a villanelle, though I am one stanza short, and I was pretty free with the repeated lines, altering them so much that the repetition consists mostly of the final word.

Nevertheless, I find trying to write in form absorbing - a bit like crossword puzzles or sudoku - even if I'm not often satisfied with the results.

NaPoWriMo #24: Odd Companions

Sage Cohen's prompt at Readwritepoem was to imagine someone in a place they wouldn't normally be, and use that to write a poem.

At this stage of the month, I am feeling all poemed out. And also, I have a lot of magazines to send out this weekend, and before I get together with the other helpers, I need to prepare a bunch of mailing labels, renewal notices etc., which is keeping me pretty busy. However, when inspiration totally fails to strike, I find the best thing to do is stick with the prompt if possible, otherwise I spend all my time sifting through and discarding too many different ideas.

So, I imagined the ringmaster of a circus in Parliament. Actually, it strikes me that Parliament is pretty much a three-ringed circus anyway, so perhaps this is not as unlikely as it seems - at least metaphorically.

(All NaPoWriMo poems have now been removed for possible editing and submissions. Contact me if you would like to read them.)

NaPoWriMo #23

The latest prompt at Readwritepoem was a Wordle - it was my turn to contribute a prompt and I had been careful to do my best to "forget" the words I supplied, so that they would come to me fresh.

Given that they included words like "fierce" and "flinch" I thought my poem would tend towards the dark side. However today I attended my sons graduation, and much to my surprise I realised I could write a poem about the event and work nearly all of the words into it. (I missed out "emporium" - although I did use "auditorium" which sounds similar to me - and "dizzy". Perhaps I could have worked those in too, but I didn't want to force it).

As you will see, it is autumn here.

(All NaPoWriMo poems have now been removed for possible editing and submissions. Contact me if you would like to read them.)

(Words I used: squall, fierce, crow, pepper, rust, saffron, reverberate, flinch, tendril, tomorrow)

NaPoWriMo #22: Perfectly Flawed

For the prompt at Readwritepoem

(This piece doesn't have a title yet. It's a little bit of word play incorporating grammar jokes and science jokes among others, and also the fact that averaging out the features of human faces produces a composite that is judged more beautiful than any of the individual faces.)

(All NaPoWriMo poems have now been removed for possible editing and submissions. Contact me if you would like to read them.)

NaPoWriMo #21: Heroes

The muse was a bit slow in visiting me today, but late in the afternoon inspiration struck. The prompt was heroes. This poem is about three special women, and others of their kind. I'm really tired, and I suspect it doesn't do them justice, but it's a start.

(All NaPoWriMo poems have now been removed for possible editing and submissions. Contact me if you would like to read them.)

NaPoWriMo #20

I didn't use a prompt for this one as none of those on offer really inspired me. I took part in a pub quiz last night - a popular outing here in New Zealand - so I managed to come up with this, which I think may be promising with a little editing.

(All NaPoWriMo poems have now been removed for possible editing and submissions. Contact me if you would like to read them.)

NaPoWriMo #19: Cats

For the Day 18 prompt at Readwritepoem. (Yes, it looks as if I post my responses a day late. That's because of the time difference, when the Day 18 prompt went up, it was close to my bedtime for the 18th, even though it was probably around 12.01 a.m. in the US, so I use it for the following day.)

(I'm not sure what the title of this one is yet)

(All NaPoWriMo poems have now been removed for possible editing and submissions. Contact me if you would like to read them.)
****

OK, I'm writing this in a great hurry, although I have been thinking it over for a few hours, because I've been at work all day, then the supermarket, and am shortly going out for the evening. Usually I write on my coffee break but with a new staff member to show the ropes, I felt obliged to be sociable.

I'm not much of a cat person, but my daughter has a rather intelligent cat (actually, I think the cat has my daughter), and some of the details came from there.

I've been reading the poems of Linda Gregg and was struck by how short and simple many of her sentences were. I tend to write long complicated musings with lots of subordinate clauses, so I tried to simplify the grammar in this one.