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Posts Tagged ‘Keats’

An Ever-Changing Blog

June 16, 2013 10 comments

At the beginning of the week the lovely Khana over at Khana’s Web nominated me for the Versatile Blogger’s award!

First of all, I’d like to apologise to her for taking so long to write this post. In my defence, after sitting at a computer at work for 10 hours a day I find it quite hard to fire up the old laptop when I get home.

This particular award comes at quite an apt time, actually. I was already planning to write about how my blog has changed in nature from my original idea. But first…

versatile blog award

Versatility is my middle name (not really)

When I first started this blog, it was going to be posts about things that happened in my life that made me think about things. Unfortunately, not a lot of things happen in my life and therefore I was running seriously short of things to write about.

So I added some poetry. Well, I say poetry. Most of it’s quite naive – I still haven’t quite gotten out of the schoolchild “it’s all got to rhyme” mentality. I’m not sure why I’m writing it at all – I hated poetry at school. Keats can take his “Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness” and stick it where the sun don’t shine. It’s a perfectly good poem, but I have an aversion to anything I was forced to read and endlessly analyse at school. I enjoy a lot of the poetry I find on various blogs, but I choose to read that.

I actually hate nearly everything they forced me to read at school, the only exceptions being two of the books for my German literature exam – Die Physiker (Dürrenmatt) and Biedermann und die Brandstifter (Frisch). These are plays and therefore almost all dialogue. The third book was all flowery prose. I don’t want to read 300 pages of flowery prose in English. Why would I want to read it in German?

But I digress.

I began responding to some of the Daily Prompts – a great way to pick up ideas and see what other people make of them. I expanded my repertoire to fiction (I’d forgotten after all these years how much fun it is) and I’ve even added original “artwork” in the form of DraliDoodlesTM :-).

So I guess I have become”versatile”, and am happy to accept the award! Here are the rules:

  1. Post the above logo [done that]
  2. Accept the nomination and link back to the blog that nominated you [done that as well]
  3. Share seven things about yourself [coming up]
  4. Nominate blogs and inform them of the nomination [hmm]

So seven things all about me. This is, presumably, seven more things that I didn’t mention in my last award acceptance. That last award post pretty much used up everything interesting about me.

But wait – it doesn’t say seven interesting things, does it?

  1. I’m in my early forties (yoinks!)
  2. I’ve been at the same job for nearly 10 years – my longest-lasting job ever!
  3. I get up really early and go to bed quite early too
  4. In two days I’m embarking on my first holiday in five years. I’m going to Wales for three days. I’m anticipating high winds and heavy rain.
  5. I’m pessimistic by nature
  6. I enjoy books about sci-fi and vampires and magic and stuff
  7. I think it’s a really interesting fact about me that I can’t dredge up even seven interesting facts about me

I’m going to have to break with tradition here. I’m really no good at nominating people, so I’m going to follow the cop out various others have taken, and just say that if you feel your blog is sufficiently versatile, grab the award and follow the rules! Like I didn’t.

Here’s a picture of me receiving my award. Warning – this picture contains flash photography!

I Accept

“I Accept” by DraliDoodles (TM)

Season of mists and mellow etc

October 28, 2012 Leave a comment

It was a lovely day yesterday. A real Autumn becoming Winter kind of a day.

I got up nice and early to drive into Truro for a long-overdue haircut. It was still dark, but crisp and clear. It was also the coldest morning of the year so far – the temperature gauge in the car read 2 degrees and the little orange snowflake was showing on the dashboard. As I arrived in town the sun was just peeking over the horizon, big and orange and beautiful.

Towards evening we had a couple of short, hard rain showers. Not that persistent misty drizzle we’ve had all summer. Good, proper honest-to-goodness rain. Lovely! Well, the absence of rain might have been better, but at least it was proper rain.

This sort of weather always reminds me of when I was little and in primary school. We would always have to collect leaves which had fallen to the ground, bring them into school and stick them into our exercise book. Then there was the Harvest Festival, when everyone would bring in vegetables and things for a display in the main hall. This is the only time of year which reminds me of primary school stuff – not even Christmas compares.

We switched back from British Summer Time to Greenwich Mean Time early this morning which means lighter mornings and darker evenings. I prefer darker evenings – getting home after work, the flat always seems cosier with a little light on and the curtains closed. A warm haven away from the cold outside. There’s no point in light evenings anyway – all it did all summer was rain.

I even decided to write a poem to mark the occasion of Autumn, but all I managed were two lines which would go in the middle somewhere:

The crunch of leaves upon the ground
A carpet lying all around

On the plus side, if I change “leaves” to “snow”, it works for winter as well, so maybe I’ll have another go in a month or so. While you’re waiting for my literary master piece – to be titled “Winter Days” (formerly titled “Autumn Days”) – read this one from an expert (Keats) instead.

Now I’ve just got to hope that winter is cold and crisp and it doesn’t snow – I like snow and all, but driving over frozen snow to get to work is no fun at all.