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Mr Blobby

I have decided to create a new cartoon character called “Mr Bloggy” named after that creation of my least favourite DJ, Noel Edmonds.  (I have now written a poem about Noel Edmonds and his theory that when you want something you just ask the universe for it.  I have no problem with this theory – except that the universe is not a giant Argos store)  This character jumps up and down in the corner of the screen when I start a new post and as I click on publish he shouts “Bloggy, bloggy, bloggy!”  When people post comments he looks thoughtful and scratches his chin (or what there is of it); when I read the comments he smiles and points to the comments box… and so on.

The word is Microsoft

In fact he is every bit as annoying as that microsoft paperclip we’ve all grown to loathe.  So I’m not going to create a little widget  with this character, because I’ve recently read that people don’t like widgets as they make pages slow to load.  I’m sure this is true, especially if your computer is more than about 3 minutes old…

Acorn Antiques

Ours is not an acorn but must qualify as an antique, being more than five years old.  Which I’m sure makes us unfit citizens.  Prepare for the filing squad!

Toodle pip

PS Actually I’m not entirely sure if widget is the word I want here, since “widget”, like “sprocket” is a word of whose meaning I have only the slightest idea (there’s the preposition, up with which we must not end!)

Maybe I’ll make a list of them

Novel on Yellow Paper

I can pinpoint the exact time and place when I started writing.  I was eight, and I began a novel in a yellow notebook.  This was years before I’d heard of Stevie Smith mefeedia.com/tags/steviesmith Unfortunately this novel only ran to one page and then stopped.

Munich Station

30th December, 1980, Christmas coach trip, going home for New Year.  One breakdown, three suicide attempts behind me.  We pull into Munich Station.  The courier points out the toilets – but I only have eyes for the kiosk.  Suddenly I know I have to start a journal.  Now.

Back on the coach with a tiny, squared notebook and a pen, I begin.  The notebook is now destroyed but I can remember the first thing I wrote:

I asked the man opposite if he was enjoying the ttip.

“So far”, he answered gloomily, as though he expected his enjoyment to come to an abrupt end due to some sudden and unforeseen circumstance.

A bit wordy (I think I was reading Dickens at the time).  I also remember:

The countryside is dusted with snow like flour on bread.

I was aware of choosing the word bread because “cake” would be twee.  I now think that bread is also appropriate because the Germans seem to eat a lot of the stuff.

Sending a wodge of poems to Ambit magazine tomorrow.   www.ambitmagazine.co.uk

Keep everything crossed! (don’t bother – see “fuck off post” 6th Sept)

TTFN

Another day, another poem

This one is a homage to Philip Larkin, a poet I esteem greatly, even though he seems to have been a bit of a git as a person. It is about difficulties in sending work off, though, in an ironic twist, I actually intend to send this one off to a magazine.

Waterstones

Yesterday I came across a postcard story competition. I guess you can get about 200 words on one of these and they post the winners in the shop window. There is also a national competition and you get published in a little booklet, I think. I’ve already written my entry – in fact, I had written a short piece a while ago and couldn’t find any use for it until now! They claim you can also enter online at www.waterstones.com but I can’t find any trace of it there.  Anyway, the closing date’s 19th June so get writing!

Happy Bank Holiday weekend! (if you’re in Britain, that is)

A poem for today

A poem for today

I had a couple of ideas for poems today. This is how it goes – I finish one, and then a lot of other ideas crowd in and I can’t do much with them. It’s like working in a shop – you finish serving one customer, watch them walk out satisfied, laden with bags, and then two or three more come up, but they just want to know the price of the perfume or the way to the gents’ loos.

The ideas were:

A poem about political power and how I don’t understand it (“the price of perfume”)

Call me minister, call me secretary, call me god

I will wear kind shoes and go barefoot in the summer

At the corner shop they have a special offer on kit-kats

I walk on the grass and hear larks in the morning

Call me minister, call me secretary, call me god

Needs work, I think you’ll agree. But I like the repeated line. It was inspired by a Leonard Cohen poem, but I can’t remember how it goes.

The other poem was a monologue. (“the way to the gents’ loos”) Someone hanging on the phone, waiting to talk to an operator. It goes something like this:

Hallo. Yes, I –

Yes, I’ll listen carefully to the following four options

Yes, I’ll hold

Vivaldi. Why is it always Vivaldi? In this interminable anteroom of customer service, its always Vivaldi – and always “Spring”. Why? Those sweet strings are like diet coke. Music as commodity.

Hallo – yes? I’d like to -

Yes, I’ll hold. Yes, I understand that my call is important to you. Yes I believe that you’re experiencing unusually high call volumes at the moment. And I know all your operators are busy… Where are your operators? Bangalore? Bangkok? Bognor? And bugger Bognor, said the phone company. We’re going to Bangalore, wher the labour is cheap and cheerful. We’ll give them courses in English orienteering, till they know more than you do about the special offers at Tesco’s.. Hallo? Yes? I’d like to speak to a customer services advisor…

Yes, I understand. Of course, you’re still experiencing unusually high call volumes. Just as you are every time I call you. All your customer service operatives are still busy…

And so on. Of course, she never does get to speak to a customer services advisor. And I could rant for ages about how much I hate music being used in this way. But more than enough for now.

TTFN!!

Mark’s Utopia

Every so often I get a chilling vision of what life would be like if Mark ruled the world. For example, there would be a state alcohol monopoly like there used to be in Scandinavia. He tells me about it at length, even though I”m trying to read Raymond Carver (see previous post) and then comes out with a word that sounds like “scoggle” or possibly “scrod”. I’m used to this and if I value my peace I know better than to ask what it means.

India

It reminds me of when I was in India and met some Eastern Europeans. I asked them where they were from and got an answer which sounded like a whole bunch of consonants, mainly l’s and v’s, with possibly the odd “t” thrown in. After 3 attempts to understand this, I try another tack

- So, what language do you speak? I ask

- Lithuanian, of course, the man says, very distinctly and with infinite scorn (try putting all that into one word).

So nowadays if I don’t understand something I just nod and smile and hope it will go away.

I woke up this morning…

First thing, I usually feel that some silent gang has been gently beating me up in the night, perhaps with pillows. I wake up feeling stiff and sore, all my joints and muscles feel achy, like after a pummelling. And they have been pummelled – by hormones.

Worse than mice

The menopause is like this: you put on weight even though you’re eating next to nothing: you feel hungry all the time for weeks and then you don’t want to eat, your body feels as if it’s been through a shredder – and, if your husband is a herbalist, you try to put 12 drops of some evil brown mixture on your tongue every morning without a dropper bottle. (Don’t choke on the stuff – it’s horrible.)

What annoys me

…is when people talk about the menopause as if it were some kind of “Carry on” joke – you know, digs in the ribs and comments about hot flushes. Perhaps I should write something like Gloria Steinerm did about periods – you know, “if men had the menopause” see

Red letter

I forgot – yesterday I finished my radio play and sent it to the BBC!!! Will they recognise my undoubted talent? Watch this space!

Liz

Things people spend their time on…

So apparently this morning the computer is slow not because of Romanian but because we have a new screensaver.  Ok I’m struggling to understand this.  We have a new screensaver which – wait for it – mates with other screensavers the world over to produce some kind of Superscreensaver.  Also, some of them don’t mate properly and get stuck and “inbred”.  Words fail me.  I can’t even manage to whisper the one word which so often comes to my aid in these situations: “Why??” Why why why… After a while, “Why” ceases to have any meaning and you start asking damnfool questions like, “how?”  You say things like “how does it work Mark?”  And you might as well realise then and there that your life is basically over.

Pip pip!

Of Mice and Poems

Raymond Carver

These days the sun wakes me up early, like someone rapping me on the forehead. But this morning it had help. As soon as I had a cup of tea in my hand (don’t forget I’m British) I started to read Raymond Carver. If you haven’t read him, you should.  He writes about a kind of lost population in the States – white working class people in dead-end jobs, people drifting from town to town; alcoholics.  (Carver was himself an alcoholic.)  You can learn as much from reading him as from, say, Chekov or Katherine Mansfield. I mean it. Find out more here at www.carversite.com

Bane of my existence

This morning the sun had help from a mouse, scrabbling away in the corner in its mission to destroy not only my peace but some vital corner of the house, whereupon it will probably fall down. I have an ongoing war of attrition with these rodents – their scrabbling and chewing disturbs my rest, and so I set traps for them. They treat these with contempt, delicately consuming the peanut butter without being in the slightest danger of being caught – but I am patient. I keep baiting the traps, and sure enough, eventually they get careless, and then I’ve got one.

A Poem

But then it occurs to me that I can get a poem out of this. Ideas scrabbling about in my mind, disturbing my peace, forcing me to pay attention, even leaving little black droppings all over my brain if I don’t catch them – but if I’m really patient, I just might catch one. Then it will leave me alone – until the next one comes along. So I think there’s a poem here – a bit like Ted Hughes’ Fox, only more homely, more down-to-earth.

Watch this space!

Life? Talk to me about life!

- So, Liz, thanks for coming in. What are you working on at the moment?

- Well, I’m writing a radio play

- Uh-huh. sounds great.

- Yeah, it’s … well, it’s about global warming

- Good, good. Anything else?

- Uh – yeah. I’ve just sent off a story to Mslexia

- What’s that? Sounds like some kind of feminist disease!

- Yeah. Ha ha. You can check it out at www.mslexia.co.uk

- OK will do. So you sent them a story?

- Yeah. It was about bugs

- Bugs

- Yeah.

- what was it called?

- Tuesday

- Tuesday. Snappy title

- Yeah. It’s about cockroaches. You can read some of it on my website

- Your website?

- Oh yeah. That’s right. I haven’t done one yet. But I will

- Yeah. Right

- Right

- Well, thanks for coming in

- No problem

topless waitresses

Hope you haven’t clicked on this hoping to see any because all you’re going to see are my comments on how much I think this sucks. I can’t express it in prose as well as I can in verse, so here are two verses of a poem I wrote and performed in Leicester.

I’m an ugly lesbian with no sense of humour

why else would I object to this topless rumour

cos anyone who hits out

at women with their tits out

just has to have a wart face or tits like a tumour

I’m a retro-feminist who can’t take a joke

why else would I be bothered by these “Carry-On” folk?

Maybe I’m just too frigid

Perhaps I’m bored when men are rigid

It’s only Barbara Windsor but it makes me choke

If you want to read more you can go to my website- when I’ve created it! That’s a job for another day. If you want to protest you can email the bar on b-a-m-b-u@hotmail.com. If you want to go and check it out, ask yourself why you find it so hard to accept women as equals and prefer to look on us as objects of titillation.

word leicester

but I have to put in a plug for Word, leicester’s premier spoken word event, which even though it takes place in the above bar, is a great evening for performers and audience alike. To find out more, go to leicesterbooknews.wordpress.com