Write-Place

     “I write fiction  and I’m told it’s autobiography. I write autobiography and I’m told  it’s fiction, so since I’m so dim and they’re so smart, let them decide.” Philip Roth 1933 - 2018 One of the signs of my advancing years and certainly since I began life in my 6th decade, is that I discover great writers, only when they have died.  Sometimes I have read something of theirs over the years, during enforced study or just through recreational reading. Sometimes, I have not known who the writer was at the time. But more often, I haven't heard of the author or their works.  This sends me into a kind of panic, that there is so much wonderful literature in the world that I can't hope to get around to reading, appreciating and maybe be inspired by.  Perhaps, if I had been an "academic" for longer, this might not have been the case. Before the technological age really kicked in and we only had real books to inform and entertain us, ...

Poem In Process I start in the slush queue  Un noted, un seen, un read  Waiting for anothers perusal for the start of the journey. Perhaps with a request for change coming from a holding place. Revised, replaced, released I go on my way towards acceptance and publication or to be felled by the scarlet slashes of the correcting pen. But maybe, I will silently withdraw and leave myself curious and wondering. 

Transaction, Translation,Transformer, Translucent, Transfix, Transpose, Transverse... ... You get the   idea of where I'm going here. A lovely way to while away a Sunday morning - looking up words to find their meanings and origins. The more alert of us reading this will spot the similarities immediately in these words - the prefix Trans. This prefix occurs in the English language, usually in loanwords from Latin (transcend, transfix) with the meanings "across", "beyond", "through", "changing thoroughly", "transverse". It's also used in combination with elements of any origin : trans-Siberian, transvalue, transempirical  In Chemistry, according to Wikipedia, it "denotes a geometric isonomer having a pair of identical atoms on the opposite sides of two atoms linked by a double bond".  I shall investigate this further when the need arises to use it in this context.  In Astronomy, the trans prefix denotes so...

Here we are again on the last day of the year, looking back on the year past and forward to the next year. Some of us will be glad to see the end of 2016 and happy to see the start of a new year, while others will be cautious and perhaps nervous of what 2017 will bring.  Of course, the concept of a "new year" is a purely man made notion to help us fix ourselves in time within days, weeks and months and likewise in hours, minutes, seconds and even nano seconds - which I understand is equal to one billionth of a second, one nano second being to one second as one second is to 31.7 years. At this point my mind boggles and fails to comprehend the enormity of "time" as we as humans on earth, know it. Our idea of a month comes from the moon and many cultures over thousands of years have used months with lengths of 29 or 30 days to divide the year up into manageable pieces. With this system though, there is the problem of having moon cycles at 29.5 days not dividin...

Since my mother now  91 years old, moved out of her home of 62 years and into a care home, I have stored in my spare room a large collection of paper work, written over many years by my mother and father.  They were both involved in the Methodist Church since childhood, Dad being a Local Preacher and Mam leading a weekly Women's Group at "The Chapel" at Whitburn for around forty or more years.  Whitburn, Then and Now  by J Gordon Holmes When we look at these writings - readings, anecdotes, poetry and stories - with Mam, she remembers things sometimes and has forgotten them completely at other times, but she is always amazed that she wrote them and pleased that we can share them and the memories, together. One, about people who collect things, which we read the other day was particularly apt. It is a slow process as she finds it difficult to concentrate - as do I -  some days.  My Dad, who died in 1989, was a writer, musician, artist, local historian and aer...

Having not put pen to paper or rather fingers to keyboard to write anything more creative than a comment and share on Facebook or Twitter - some serious but mostly trivial or joking - I somehow found myself being directed from an Author  Community post to a "Freelance Writer" website, this morning.  I say "somehow" as if it was a surprise to me, but as the speedy diversion from one activity to another is how my life runs these days, it wasn't surprising at all. Whether this is a sign of old age, lack of concentration or plain stupidity (probably all three and more) I do it constantly, much to my own annoyance.  I put bread in the toaster and fill the kettle to make tea or coffee and notice that the tea towels washed earlier are still sitting in the washing machine, so pick them out and begin to hang them on the line. I wonder where the peg bag was left, and a search for it down the garden begins, involving a quick sweep of the path, pulling up a couple of weeds...

I thought I’d done with camping and caravanning a long time ago. I’d had enough of crawling about on hands and knees looking for a torch in the darkness of a tent in the middle of the night to light the way to the toilet – or sometimes a convenient bush.  No more shouting “keep off the sides of the tent” at everyone in hearing distance so that the deluge of rain, that usually begins before the tent is even erected doesn’t soak through. Enough of spending the majority of what is supposed to be a ‘holiday’ folding and unfolding sleeping bags, blankets and towels and dodging precariously strung lines dripping with wet washing. Gone the days of sitting around a single gas burner stove that takes an hour to boil a kettle and even longer to cook 2 rashers of bacon and an egg.  At my age I ought to know better. But it seems that once the idea of the open road and the freedom of the outdoor life is in your blood it never leaves you.            ...