Archive | March 2015
March 9, 2015  

#MicroblogMondays: Innumerate Me!

Don’t know when I first realised that mathematics is a foreign country to me – but I suspect it was around the time I gave up on Long Division. If there ever was an answer to prayer, and concrete evidence of the existence of God, it is the invention of the calculator and the death of Long Division. True.

 

I remember getting a Detention in school way back in 1966, for not knowing my nine times table. (I know it NOW … ) Fair cop, Mr Robinson, I WAS fifteen.

 

I had to do serious maths to pursue my interest in science, and the night I measured, correctly, the distance between the Earth and the Moon with two pieces of stick and a set of log tables, I decided that I would never say I was no good at maths ever again. Nevertheless, my relationship with numbers leaves me at ease with mystery, which serves my spiritual life very well indeed.

 

 

 

 

March 1, 2015  

Just For The Fun Of It

It's a few years since I completed The Open University 'Creative Writing ' course, amd I only mention it now because I learned one or two useful tips that I am happy to pass on:

 

1. Writing is seriously hard work, and I'm too idle to make a career of it.

2. Poets NEVER make any money unless they're REALLY good.

This looks on the surface like bad news, but, curiously enough, it wasn't. Having learned that writing is never going to make me rich or famous, I relaxed and began writing just for the fun of it. I DO enjoy reaching into my cerebral cortex, having a bit of a rummage, and popping down on the screen what I find there.

 

Well there's a thought. As soon as I became aware of my thinking, it stopped happening. No, hang on, here comes a walk in an Alpine meadow in Romania and the discovery of a grass crown. That was something I can tell you, a grass crown being the highest award to a Roman general. Who made it? Weaving and plaiting an intricate and beautiful artifact with such enormous historical significance then just leaving it there – a gift to an English woman who knew it's significance. I left it too: some objects are too sacred to own,

 

And here I go again, hanging upside down on a fairground ride convinced I'm about to fall out of it and die. I'm sixteen and beside me is William The First, who later became known as The Bastard, but it was oh so long ago, and I did so much more with my life than he did, so we'll call it quits.

 

Finally, because I can go on like this all day, here I am drinking a glass of Three Choirs 'May Hill' white wine and eating a fish pie we made together. My daughter Kate and I, last Thursday, enjoying a few special hours together, just because they were there.

 

Fairgrouds, meadows and fish pie: some inconsequential things out of this one beautiful life, the living of which is such a glorious adventure.

 

Lucky eh? I should say so.