Write-Place

Spiral    Linearity does not come naturally. It kills the imagination and nothing happens.  No bell rings, no moment of here and now, no moment saying yes. Without these, where is alive ? I prefer the pleasure of the journey through the spiral. Relax.  If you miss something on the first time around, don't worry. You might pick it up on the second - or third - or tenth ; it doesn't matter. Relax.      Timing is everything. If the bell does ring, it will resonate through all the rungs of your spiral.  If it doesn't it is the wrong spiral - or the wrong time -  or there is no bell.

  The Nakba - the "disaster" or "catastrophe" was the destruction of Palestinian society and homeland in 1948 and the permanent displacement of Palestinian Arabs. The term is used to describe both the events of 1948 and the ongoing occupation of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, as well as their displacement in refugee camps throughout the region and beyond. The Nakba was the result of the partition of Mandatory Palestine after World War Two ended as the United Nations and world powers realigned the borders of the Middle East.  The following story is by Neveen Abuelola, my 'step -niece' through marriage. I am reblogging this from when she first wrote it, around 2012 I am Neveen. I am Palestinian. This is my sto­­ry. This is the Palestinian Story. I'd like to take you back to 64 years ago, to the fertile rolling hills of Palestine. To the land of orange, lemon and olive trees, to around mid May1948. My Grandmother, heavily pregnant qu...

I have been thinking about the topic of the title I have given to this post for some time, and thought that today being   World Mental Health Day  I thought that I ought to at least attempt to put my thoughts into words and share them. "World Mental Health Day is a day to talk about mental health and show everyone that mental health matters. It's also a day to let people know that it's ok to ask for help, no matter what you're going through. The theme this year highlights 'mental health as a universal human right ' which means working towards good mental health for all."  Apart from some specific times in my life when I felt that I wasn’t quite “me”, I’ve hardly ever been one to think twice about starting up a conversation with a stranger.  The times I refer to when I have not been able to instigate a repartee, have generally been during illness of some sort – which, touch wood, I am relatively free from, as I write.      Whether this is a good t...

  He first went there with his school, long ago.  The teachers had told the classes that the stone work was from Roman times; remnants from hundreds of years back.  It turned out that it wasn’t Roman at all.   It was an old mill first used for smelting lead in the late 1600s and then between around 1760 and 1850 fine paper was produced there to wrap the products of the nearby iron and steel industry - often cutlery and probably the pins, needles and wire made in the local area. All that remained today was the pond which had provided power by supplying a water wheel  and some and some ruinous buildings.  Romantic maybe – but not Roman. When they had met years later, he could not wait to take her to this place, high up on the hillside in the depths of the forest with the stream trickling, then rushing down from the tops. Tawny, hazel, mustard and coral tainted leaves and ferns painted the background for the scene. And she had loved it too.     ...

Well, here we are seven days into July and some parts of the country are starting with hose pipe bans. Now I know we must not waste water, after all it's one of the most precious natural things we have available to us - after air, and maybe the sun (and no doubt a few more things) Anyway, it's precious, we know that. And my tomato plants not only have black fly - which is probably caused by being too dry - but they are all shrivelled too and so are the beans and the potatoes are not looking too clever. But I won't worry - I shall use the dirty washing up water on them, which I understand will kill the blackfly and water them at the same time. It's the washing up liquid the blackfly hate, not the grease and bits of food. But come on. We are an island. You can't travel much further than 50 or 60 miles and you reach water. Salted yes, but didn't someone invent something to get rid of the salt for drinking? I am no expert (on anything at all) but even I know yo...

  I could begin this by asking myself ... what should I write today ?  or, I have been meaning to write something for a while now - as has been the precursor to many of the posts on this blog, over the years.  But not today. Today it's my birthday and I have reached the official State Pension age (currently 66) and have given myself carte blanche to write whatever I feel like and whatever thoughts come into my head. Maybe someone other than me will read this, but if not, so be it. Having said that, this is not so different to any other things I have ever written , or are likely to write in the future. 😊 I have also given myself the full go ahead to use a smiley face/emoji which is not generally the done thing in a blog - but, you see, its my birthday and I'm a pensioner now. Here's another, just because I can 😀 I could write about the state of the country/world and the selfishness of society and governments or many other things. I could write that today I have written m...

Yesterday 8th March, 2023 was   International Women's Day   with the campaign theme of #EmbraceEquity. I did have this post written yesterday morning but didn't get around to posting it as my day was three quarters taken up with doing IWD type things - well sort of, as you will see if you read to the end. The word 'equity'  is the quality of being fair and reasonable in a way that gives equal treatment to everyone. It's commonly used in legal and financial terms such as in the sum of a person's assets, once debts have been taken from it.  If someone who has borrowed money to buy a house and has 'negative equity',  the amount of money they owe is greater than the present value of their home.  I have to say that I have checked my understanding of 'equity' and 'equality' and the differences between them, with a dictionary and can confirm that " Equality is providing the same level of opportunity to all segments of society such as races ...

Yesterday morning, 1st March, I began writing a blog post about St David's Day. I was interested to learn that he is the only British/Irish saint to be born in the country that he is patron of. Also that his last words are recorded as "Be joyful, keep faith and do the little things which you have heard and seen me do". I like this thought and intention that the small actions we take in life can be just as significant for ourselves and others , as the bigger ones. "Gwnewch Y Pethau Bychain" in Welsh.  That was as far as I went with the blog however, as I was distracted by further information about St David that a biography written by an 11th century monk,  Rhygyfarch  claims that he lived to the ripe old age of 147 - well, I had to investigate further, I found myself spending way looking into the life and work of this medieval Welsh poet, clerk and biographer who was one of the most renowned scholars of his time.  And the rest as is said, is history. My morning w...

Looking back over past posts that I have written for this blog - as I often do when I need to focus my mind on one new thing to write about - I found a post from way back with  this title ,  "Know Thyself".   I wrote that I had found the ultimate "get yourself moving and write" site or at least thought I had. The idea was to take part in that year's NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) the idea of which was to begin writing on November 1st with a goal to write a 175- page, 50,000 word novel by midnight on November 30th.   NanoWriMo I declared that this seemed "simple", and then immediately decided that it was not so. Having started with good intentions that morning and being sure that at least a few hundred words would be written that day, despite having "other" things to do, my plan went awry and I castigated myself that I ought to have "known myself better". I then described my scenario that day - the site itself was running v...

Came across this post of mine from 12 years ago : Battle of the Hard Copy   Write-Place (wwwrite-place.blogspot.com   in which I write that in the battle of 'book versus e.reader', I would argue for the case of The Book, to the bitter end.  Granted, I was talking about something called a 'View Quest Mediabox' which at the time was £52 and half the price of a Kindle, but oh, how new technology and age changes one's views. Apparently, at the time this 5 inch wonder could not only store hundreds of books but you could watch videos, listen to music and use a voice recorder on it. Clearly in 2011, the Smart Phone as we know it today had not reached me, or at least, I could not afford one then. I did get a Kindle like this  which a quick Google search tells me was brought out by Amazon in September 2011. I soon lost interest in it as I could not get to grips with the turning the page buttons forward and back and as the device does not have a touch screen, for me the '...

It has long been recognised and accepted that listening to and taking part in musical activities has an effect on our feelings and emotions.  We all have pieces of music or songs which reminds us of a particular event or time in our lives and most of us can recall when the hairs on the back of our neck stood up, we had goose-bumps on our arms and shivers down our spine at the musical sounds we were hearing. I am fortunate that I was brought up within a family who loved music - my father a pianist and church organist, my mother a pianist and a member of numerous choirs. I have lovely memories of singing 'around the piano', duets with my mother, especially at bath time, and my attempts at harmonising from the age of about 3 years old.  Musician Billy Joel once said "I think music itself is healing. It is an explosive expression of humanity and something we are all touched by. No matter the culture, we all love music". Most of us, I'm sure, agree with this statement ...

Here we are, already on the 3rd day of the new year of 2023 and I have been berating myself over the weekend for not having a thought or two worth expressing here about anything at all.  Anyone looking back over the 14 or so years of this blog will see that this is by no means a new 'thing' for me, and a simple search of " New Year" "Christmas" or even "Time" finds me castigating myself for not writing a post, the timing of a post or for the feelings and thoughts that I should or shouldn't have had about the season.  (I have posted handy links for some of these posts to save the reader searching themselves, which is a thankless task :) )  So where does Mr Micawber come into this ? He is a character in Charles Dickens' book "David Copperfield" and is renowned for many sayings which we use in everyday situations, such as "Something will turn up". Here, I need to explain that his quotations come about due to his inability t...