Category: Challenges
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Morning memories
So many memories poured out yesterday, as the village turned up in force to honour and remember Nigel Geoffrey Baynes. He seemed to have touched everyone, in one way or another, and it felt like a sacred duty to be there, in one way or another ourselves, to say goodbye, to say thanks for brightening…
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The delights of feedback
My good friend from college (university) days back in Pennsylvania is a constant source of joy. We seem to have many areas of empathy, and the primary one is now in the realm of ageing. One of the great things about feedback in this blog is that I get to re-consider the thoughts I’ve had,…
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Minimalist joys
Having accumulated stuff for most of our adult lives, it seems we’re now embarking on a de-cluttering routine, so that our lifestyle could be said to be moving towards minimalism. Just how long this phase will last is anybody’s guess, but it feels as if it could be refreshing, cool, and well, minimal. I’d like…
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Fixing things gives a special pleasure . . .
What if your wheelbarrow develops a flat tyre, possibly as a result of trundling through endless thorny branches from a long hedge trimming odyssey? That’s going to play havoc with the big gardening effort, but it’ll take a couple days before the tyre can be fixed at Paul Gowland ATV in Allendale. It doesn’t take…
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The joys of clearer vision
I was humbled the other day when Anjelica posted a comment about her cataracts. That’s a cross-eyed bear I have yet to encounter. But my eyes haven’t been good for several years, so as I’ve mentioned, I took the plunge and accepted prismatic corrections. It was a delight to get the call from the opticians…
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The ms is delivered . . .
With a dull thud, the finished first draft lands on the kitchen table, all 272 pages of it. On the one hand, it’s an enormous relief, and a definite joy, but on the other hand it’s an empty space in my heart. I could feel the vacuum encroaching as I developed the ‘last’ scene which…
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Clear vision joys
Actually, the revealed joy was on Saturday, during an extensive eyesight check at the local opticians in Hexham. The expertise and professionalism of Dickinson’s on Priestpopple is second to none, I thought, especially as the weird double vision I’ve been experiencing over the past while got prismed back into crystal clarity. I could read the…
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The joy of work-arounds
Well, that was a trying morning! Opened my laptop to begin the daily routine, and the screen jumped and jiggled around before my eyes. It looked like there was something behind the frenzy, but I couldn’t be sure. After rather a lot of trial and error, which included the classic powering off and back on,…
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Shooting for the moon . . .
There’s a little watchword, in creative writing circles: during the creative process, banish that editing devil from your shoulder and just channel the flow. Shoot for the moon, in other words, and adjust the trajectory later. I have a friend who can’t get going until they hone the first sentence of their effort to perfection.…
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Fragile, but joy enters
I’ve been spending far too much screen time doing puzzles, and they’re expanding: Wordle started me off; then the family suggested the math teaser Nerdle; Quordle is fiendish but fun; and lately I’ve been playing a Scrabble variant with a robot on Lexulous. Too much, and my brain is getting frazzled. I was going to…
Roads to Joy 