“There was a moment when I changed from an amateur to a professional. I assumed the burden of a profession, which is to write even when you don’t want to, don’t much like what you’re writing, and aren’t writing particularly well.”
Month: February 2018
For work or pleasure
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Snow falls in winter,what a shock!
From the Rochdale Herald
After blowing 28 million pounds on Winter Olympics the UK grinds to halt after first sign of snow
Peyongchang 2018 was the most successful Winter Olympics for team GB and just one day after the closing ceremony Britain has begun its annual mass panic as snow flakes have been spotted all over the country.
Corner shops and supermarkets have been totally cleared out of milk, bread and other essentials, but still at least we are the worlds best at going like a I bat out of hell on a tea tray even if we can’t make it the 1 mile round trip to the office because it’s a little bit slippy.
The British Olympic committee are hopeful that the great British public will be inspired by the games and pop down their local toboggan run or giant ski jump and get active during the big freeze however because no true Brit can get anywhere in this weather the likelihood is everyone is just planning to stay home eat soup and watch Jeremy Kyle all day.
Many towns are already at a stand still with as much as 2cms of the white stuff falling in just 9 hours and every single school in the country has been closed until further notice.
People have been asked to definitely not call 999 unless they are actually dead and even then think twice about it.
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The window
Love
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UK does not have open borders for EU residents even while we are in the EU
https://fullfact.org/europe/border-security-eu/
Controls at the UK border
The British government retains full control over its own border controls. Travellers who hold EU passports can’t cross the UK border without having their passport or identity checked, and the same applies for travellers from non-EU countries.
The UK can, and does, perform passport and identity checks at its borders and refuses entry to travellers who do not travel with valid identity documents even if they are from another EU member state.
The benefit of holding an EU passport, or being the citizen of a European Economic Area (EEA) country (Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein) or Switzerland, is that you travel through a separate channel at UK border controls. This normally results in a swifter identity check.
Non-EU citizens need to conform to all the UK’s border and immigration checks, even if they’re travelling from the EU, and are checked in a separate channel from EU, EEA and Swiss citizens. Citizens from outside the EU also face different visa, or visa waiver, requirements depending on the purpose of the visit and its duration.
There’s no difference here if the person is travelling from a Schengen or a non-Schengen country.
The requirements to enter the UK from outside the EU (for example, whether you need a visa) are a decision made by the UK government
.
What this means for terrorism
Terrorism, just like many other crimes and other threats to countries’ security, operates across borders.
Concerns have been raised that terrorists may take advantage of refugee routes to Europe. As the UK retains its own border controlsand national control over asylum-seeking processes it has the capacity to address any such development itself.
In recent years, there’s also been more focus in the UK on ‘home-grown’ terrorism, as the House of Commons library and othershave said. The government has been developing policies to counter the development of extremist beliefs among UK citizens identified as vulnerable to radicalisation.
According to UK in a Changing Europe Fellow Richard Whitman, collective information sharing has evolved on criminal justice issues between the EU’s member countries to help them apprehend criminals, including sex offenders, people traffickers and terrorists, by unifying the procedures for and speeding up extradition and distributing security related information among EU members.
The UK has chosen to ‘opt in’ to some of these arrangements and cooperate collectively with other EU countries through the SIS, European Arrest Warrant (EAW),European criminal records system and EU-Interpol cooperation.
For example, the UK’s National Crime Agency issued 219 EAWs for suspects in other EU countries in 2013, and 228 in 2014. In return the National Crime Agency received 5,522 EAWs for requests in 2013, and 13,460 in 2014.
If the UK decides to leave the EU it might lose direct access to some these arrangements (such as the EAW which doesn’t currently apply to non-EU member countries). That said, other non-EU member states, such as Norway, still participate in the SIS without being members of the EU and have negotiated similar arrangements to the EAW.
Outside the EU, the UK would be free to decide on which issues and with which countries it would wish to pursue such cooperation. That isn’t much different to the situation now, according to Professor Whitman. The UK also already collaborates with other countries outside the EU, such as the US, on these issues on a one-to-one basis.
This article was written by academic experts at the UK in a Changing Europe initiative, with support from Full Fact, and used as the basis for a feature on ITV News at Ten. Any opinions or professional judgments of the authors are labelled as such.
Isn’t it nice to have the whole picture?
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Woman seen wearing a jacket in N E England
Met Office alert after sighting of Geordie woman wearing jacket in Newcastle
We have a joke here that women in the North where I come from never wear coats even in winter….
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Old man
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Poem in a dark time
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43347/in-a-dark-time
In a Dark Time
In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;
I hear my echo in the echoing wood—
A lord of nature weeping to a tree.
I live between the heron and the wren,
Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.
What’s madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance? The day’s on fire!
I know the purity of pure despair,
My shadow pinned against a sweating wall.
That place among the rocks—is it a cave,
Or winding path? The edge is what I have.
A steady storm of correspondences!
A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,
And in broad day the midnight come again!
A man goes far to find out what he is—
Death of the self in a long, tearless night,
All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.
Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind.
Theodore Roethke, “In a Dark Time” from Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke. Copyright © 1963 by Beatrice Roethke, Administratrix of the Estate of Theodore Roethke. Used by permission of Doubleday, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.
Source: The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke (Doubleday, 1961)
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Lonely blue
I bought more cyclamen and thought of you Wandering through wild flowers by my side I don’t know where to put them,they might die Then I would feel so sad and lonely blue, All we read of pain and love is true. Yet we let our hearts stay open wide I bought some cyclamen and wanted you Wandering through wild flowers by my side I have loved not widely but a few I have touched on bliss and when it flies I have touched the grief that truly lies I bought cyclamen and recalled you
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Trust the dark unknown, to hold us
Four o’clock- and the sun’s still glowing
Four o’clock – on a colour bright day,
Up above, pink clouds are sliding
Down still sky, sweeping sun away.
Come back sweet sun, do not leave us.
Come back bright beams,we need your light
Down on earth,it’s witch moon darkness,
While your face is out of sight.
I see the orange clouds extending
I feel such width of sky lit bright.
But gently now, the mist surrounds you
And sweeps away that happy sight.
Into velvet blackness sinking,
Dazzling, dreaming darkness falls.
Goodbye to haste,and glare, and sunshine,
Time for reverie,night-time calls.
On the night-train’s gentle journeys,
On this trackless train we ride
Strange new sights and haunting pictures
We will find in dreams’ designs.
In my night train,I’ll be happy
In such rich deep reverie.
We visit darkness in our sleeping,
There we learn its ecstasy.
Now we may have no God to hold us,
In His Hands of Living Love,
What will help us trust deep blackness
If there’s no Saviour from above?
Must we enter that great darkness,
Go back to dark from which we came,
Into dark all living creatures,
In that darkness find our home?
Trust the dark unknown, to hold us,
Trust the dark,both night and day.
Must we walk into that darkness
And trust it is our safest way?
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What is character?
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/character
Origin and Etymology of character
Middle English caracter, from Latin character mark, distinctive quality, from Greek charaktēr, from charassein to scratch, engrave; perhaps akin to Lithuanian žerti to scratch
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Mirth?
Nothing is so low as dark dark. earth
Every living being turns to dust
Where worms and beetles make no claim to worth
I wonder if they’re capable of mirth
As we parade our egos ,as one must!
Nothing is so low as dark dark. earth
From blackness comes creation and new birth
As little insects calm us with their trust
The worms and beetles make no noisy fuss
Life will happen, cannot be rehearsed
As the tide of life rides with true lust
Nothing is as good as dark dark. earth
Looking round, we tremble on our path
Are we selfish,are our actions just?
The worms and beetles make no worried fuss
Comes the day and comes the aged Nurse
Has she got your money in her purse?
Nothing is as dear as rich dark. earth
Where worms and beetles ground us as they work
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What is humility?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humility
“Outside of a religious context, humility is defined as being “unselved” a liberation from consciousness of self, a form of temperance that is neither having pride (or haughtiness) nor indulging in self-deprecation.[4][5] The materialistic view characterizes humility as self-restraint that frees oneself from vanity.
Humility is an outward expression of an appropriate inner, or self, regard and is contrasted with humiliation which is an imposition, often external, of shameupon a person. Humility may be misappropriated as ability to suffer humiliation through self-denouncements which in itself remains focus on self rather than low self-focus.[6][7]
Humility, in various interpretations, is widely seen as a virtue which centers on low self-preoccupation, or unwillingness to put oneself forward, so it is in many religious and philosophical traditions, it contrasts with narcissism, hubris and other forms of pride and is an idealistic and rare intrinsic construct that has an extrinsic side.”
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Rivers freeze and fields are thick with frost
Steam rose like a cloud of raging dust
I’d left a copper pan on a hotplate
Yet all around the ground was thick with frost
I did,I did, I did,I must confess
But surely I don’t need to emigrate
Steam rose like a cloud of raging dust
Some feel shame and some feel overstuffed
With guilt and horror,hot as fiery grates
Though all around the ground is thick with frost
So we do not like to take a risk,
Look for work and find a loving mate
Sins hiss like black clouds of raging dust
The ruler of our soul has iron fists
We’re seldom free enough to navigate
Rivers freeze and fields are thick with frost
Fear and terror can annihilate
Then rage comes by to further isolate
Steam rose like a cloud of raging ghosts
Dispel such vision with a cold,cold frost
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Is it really true more of us are diabetic?
https://www.obesitymyths.com/myth8.2.htm
I saw an article in the Guardian saying far more people in the UK are diabetic.But they don’t say that the definition has been changed.There is no “absolute” definition.It is the level at which diagnosis is made that has been falling.T
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Poetry and identity
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/culturevultureblog/2006/oct/05/shareyourfavo
“For my money, the best poem on the subject is WH Auden’s In Memory of WB Yeats, which unites issues of personal and literary identity, and explores the question of the extent to which authors can identify themselves with their work.
“For him it was his last afternoon as himself,” says Auden of Yeats’ dying day,
An afternoon of nurses and rumours; The provinces of his body revolted, The squares of his mind were empty, Silence invaded the suburbs, The current of his feeling failed; he became his admirers.
Now he is scattered among a hundred cities And wholly given over to unfamiliar affections, To find his happiness in another kind of wood And be punished under a foreign code of conscience. The words of a dead man Are modified in the guts of the living.
The brilliance of Auden’s poem, for me, is that not only does he raise these fundamental questions in some of the most fervent, lyrical lines I’ve come across in poetry, he also uses his poem to enact the point he is making. The poem is divided into three sections, and in the third, Auden pays ringing tribute to Yeats in lines that have an unmistakably Yeatsian flavour. The two poets merge for a moment on the page, identity becomes fluid, and Yeats comes alive again through Auden’s lines. It’s a heartstopping poem: I highly recommend you give yourselves a Poetry Day treat and read it.”
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My notes
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My vowels
So what gives you anguish?
My bowels!
I don’t mean that kind of anguish.
You wait till you’ve been in and out all night
That’s a double entendre.
If only.
Still, it makes me grateful to have a bathroom with a radiator
Why, what do you do with that?
It keeps me warm while I do Super Fiendish puzzles
Why do those?
I can’t waste any time.
But when you die will God ask you how many you did?
I’ll ask him why my bowels are so sensitive
It’s not just your bowels.
I wonder why they ate called bowels and if they are related to vowels?
B and V are quite similar in some languages.
Funny how we learn all the sounds as babies and we don’t even know we are doing it
Then we spend years learning to read and write and we do know and for some it is hell
The average reading age here is 9!
So is that why people buy the Sun?
Apparently.What they should do is bring out a simplified version of a paper like the Guardian
No, it lacks human interest.That’s what many of us want.Gossip,sickness,bravery, fires,death,cancer,bombs, heroism,scans,shingles and flu
I don’t know how you can get to the doctor’s if you have flu as it makes you so weak
Then the doctor might catch it!
What would we do then?
Lie in bed and drink lots of water and read dirty books.Oh,pardon me.Clean books
You are so funny
i can do it without trying
Although listening can be trying!
Buy some ear plugs
Or stop talking
OK
Night,night
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Thanks for my new bed,mother
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Don’t wait up for me
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Shall I put the TV on or stay here in reverie?
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You mean I have to do my homework,mother?
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The fortunes of us all
No words of mine can properly display the anguish and the joy that touch our lives; yet all our ghostly forebears went this way where words may pierce our hearts like sharpened knives. No sentient being willingly at first Accepts the pain that true perception brings. Yet we must not take hearts to be a curse. We need not flee from knowledge,though it stings. Each day demands our thoughtfulness and love from which all better action justly comes each day the grace we have is just enough as through the meta narratives we roam For life' s but a true story we invent, with passion and with purified intent
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The universal soldier…….
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Everybody’s Talkin’
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To make life plain
Whatever god made flowers such as this
With beauty even stronger than they need
Also made the tiger and the lamb
And humans too who make each other bleed.
We are not his puppets on a string
Whom he toys with when he feels inclined
We are conscious but we fail to see
The need for love and nurture of our kind
The lack of affect and the need to win
Make us less than human in our ways
Flowers only show their beauteous forms
As if that is enough to make life plain
God loves excess beauty and the wild
We cannot see his face and live defiled
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My friends drop hints
Tormented by a need invalidate
I fell into the bath where sponges mate
As there was no water I’m unclean
What a metaphoric sign, what does it mean?
My need for validation is so bad
My friends drop hints like,are you going mad?
If I were I’d not be writing here
I’d go to Scotland, where they still keep deer.
My first degree was valid, I proclaim
Even if I were a touch insane
For if your problem solving is still great
Madness helps your thinkings as they mate
If you wish to hide your true intent
Clean the windows now and pay the rent
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Validate
https://www.merriam-webster.com/word-of-the-day
Definition
1 a : to make legally valid : ratify
b : to grant official sanction to by marking
c : to confirm the validity of (an election); also : to declare (a person) elected
2 a : to support or corroborate on a sound or authoritative basis
b : to recognize, establish, or illustrate the worthiness or legitimacy of
Did You Know?
Validate, confirm, corroborate, substantiate, verify, and authenticate all mean to attest to the truth or validity of something. Validate implies establishing validity by authoritative affirmation or factual proof (“a hypothesis validated by experiments”). Confirm implies the removing of doubts by an authoritative statement or indisputable fact (“evidence that confirmed the reports”). Corroboratesuggests the strengthening of what is already partly established (“witnesses who corroborated the story”). Substantiate implies the offering of evidence that sustains the contention (“claims that have yet to be substantiated”). Verify implies the establishing of correspondence of actual facts or details with those proposed or guessed at (“statements that have been verified”). Authenticate implies establishing genuineness by legal or official documents or expert opinion (“handwriting experts who authenticated the diaries”).
February 2018 Words of the Day Quiz
Examples
“Reaching home, I anxiously handed my report card to Mother. Validating my angst, she took it and reached into a battered shoebox containing the report cards of my older sister Tanja.” — Charles van der Horst, The Herald-Sun (Durham, North Carolina), 6 Nov. 2017
“Recognizing outstanding teachers establishes a culture that rewards excellence in teaching and validates the work of the teacher. It gives students a sense of pride in their teachers, displays teachers as positive role models, and encourages students to think about teaching as a career.” — The Yankton (South Dakota) Daily Press & Dakotan, 11 Jan. 2018
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A poem called,The cost of revolution, by Afzal Moolla
https://afzalmoolla.wordpress.com/2018/02/25/the-cost-of-revolution-2/comment-page-1/#comment-9749
The Cost of Revolution …Afzal
(in memory of the June 16th 1976 student uprising in South Africa)
You hurled rocks, stones,
Molotov Cocktails,
Sling-shots against the brutality of racial oppression.
You fell on the streets of Soweto,
Thokoza,
Kagiso,
Sharpeville,
Tembisa,
So many more I cannot begin to mention.
Tasting the acrid stench of tear-gas,
Feeling the flesh ripped off your bones by their dogs,
Drenched by water-cannons,
Stung by rubber-bullets,
Whipped by sjamboks,
Shot in the head by bullets,
Paid for by your country’s gold.
You stood trial for Treason,
Facing the hangman’s noose,
You stood firm, you did not break,
Even though,
You had wives, sons, daughters, lovers, brothers, sisters, and friends to lose.
The revolutionary dream burned bright,
In all your hearts,
Even as the jackboot of Apartheid,
Fractured your bones and tore your families into broken and splintered parts.
You left your brothers,
Sisters,
Sons,
Daughters,
Lovers,
Wives,
Comrades and friends,
Seeking out foreign lands,
With only the ammunition that you held in your hearts, your minds and in your never-wavering hands.
The enemy did not waver either,
Tyranny didn’t cease.
2 AM knocks on doors around this land,
Meant to stifle, to intimidate,
Yet,
You took a stand.
Hungry,
lost far away from home, pining for freedom and your loved ones,
Still,
You stood firm,
You fought on,
“Release Mandela and all Political Prisoners” was your cry,
In capitals of far-off lands,
You feared not the bayonet in the enemy’s hands,
The revolution was burning bright,
Even as the dawn of Freedom was in sight.
Finally on a February day,
They released him and the joy was palpable, nothing stood now in the revolution’s way.
All the while,
The enemy consolidated its power,
Paying off traitors,
Seeding violence,
Orchestrating mayhem to taint the noble cause,
And still you took the tyrant’s rifles and clenched their muzzles in-between your brave jaws.
Never standing down,
Backing away,
Retreating to safe space,
The fire of revolution burned,
Spreading through the plateaus and valleys and townships and cities and villages in this pained land,
And still,
Still,
You held that Kalashnikov in your hand.
And when that day of freedom came,
You felt the stirrings of joy and pain and yes,
Of shame.
You felt the shame of leaving those you left behind,
You tasted again the pain,
Of economic hardships,
Of capitalism and its illusory promise,
Of a revolution left incomplete,
Till,
Every man, woman and child has enough to eat.
A revolution still incomplete,
Where hunger stalks the night,
Where mercy,
And comradely solidarity,
Left last night on a first-class flight.
You stand tall still,
Working as you always have,
Polishing the metal chariots of those you once bled for,
Still feeling the injustice,
Of not having the two cents more,
That deprives you of your daily bread,
And you try hard to remember,
Whether this is the revolution,
For which so many died,
The countless whose names remain unsaid,
The brothers and sister,
Mothers and fathers,
Lovers and friends,
Who lie cold and dead.
(dedicated to all South Africans who sacrificed their lives, their families, in pursuit of the revolutionary dream. A dream that remains a dream to many, and a dream that will continue to be dreamed)
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My first drawing
I sat afraid to make a pencil mark
While round me all the others made a start
I felt like a new baby in the dark
As worry stabbed me in my artless heart
Then I gripped my pencil in my hand
I’d bitten it so hard I’d made two holes
Then like a lost soul in a foreign land
I took a step in as I had been told
The science of art is rarely talked about
Measuring, proportion,volume,size
We hear of drama and of anxious doubt
But not that we should set free our own eyes
It’s simple but not easy, I should know
Every drawing pains me like a blow
How my heart sings 