wordswordswords

Elgin Amateur Dramatic Society is to perform ‘Between the Lines’ later this month (21st -24th May, Elgin town Hall should you happen to be in those earts).  One of three short plays, it will run for four nights.  I caught what you might call the premiere at Crieff High School, a couple of months back.  It’s so exciting to see the words come alive and to learn more about ‘wot I wrote’ when I see a director’s interpretation.

 Talking of openings, I’m fascinated by the explosion of leaves and blossom, as though all the growth has been straining at the starting gate until released by this last week of warm sunshine.  Here’s the azalea in my garden rioteously joining the party.

What’s the difference?  Today’s Independent featured a column headed ‘Gordon may be listening - but he’s not really hearing.’  Are the two verbs interchangeable?  Could we say ‘Gordon may be hearing - but he’s not really listening.’  Of course the first and genuine headline is based on the commitment that Gordon Brown had already made ot ‘listen and lead’ so naturally the columnist picked up on that.  But I guess I think of listening as more active than hearing.  Unless we clap our hands over our ears as we did in childhood ‘can’t hear you, can’t hear you’,  we can hardly avoid hearing what’s being said.  To listen though implies a measure of attention.

On Saturday I was involved in an event which sought to provide good conditions for listening.  Ground rules were followed to ensure that those speaking could be heard uninterrupted by a small listening group.  It’s an enormous challenge to give attention moment by moment without formulating a reply.  It allows the speaker to relax knowing that he or she will have time to develop what they want to say and indeed to hear themselves.  Free from the anxiety of having to defend a view or answer a challenge, people speaking can sometimes surprise themselves as well as their listeners.  (Oh for a gender-free singular personal pronoun.  Never mind  grammatical elegance, it might have changed the course of history!)

Yeah I know, lapsed again!  Part of the problem is being away so much.  I don’t always take my laptop and even when I do, there isn’t always easy or affordable connectivity.  Last week, work took me to an idyllic venue by a river where tree creepers crept up the trees - and no wifi.  A cable could be hired for broadband at £10 for 24 hours!   Anyway I tend to be brain dead after spending all day in a training session.  It’s the day job.  However I’m not about to complain.  I get more writing done in the ’summer’ months when there’s less of the other stuff on the go so I’ll keep things ticking along until then.

I had an idea for a short story which I’m pottering at when I waken and there’s an article I want to write in connection with the coaching side of my business.  It’s about The Waiting Room, a title I was offered by a friend when I was describing the area I’m focussing on at the moment.  You know those times in your life when you can’t go back and you can’t go forward, maybe because of external circumstances or because of your own state of mind or heart.  William Bridges in his book Transitions calls it the ‘neutral zone’.  Not sure about the term and anyhow it’s his.  If you want to know more about this, read my April newsletter entitled ‘Spring into Action - or not!’

I hear the pedants howl! Just think, I might have written ‘Cheers the heart, innit?’.  Having spent a boggling two hours on the PC this morning I took a domestic break to wash up several meals worth (mealsworth?) of dishes to the accompaniment of Woman’s Hour. (BBC radio 4 for the benefit of any reading beyond these shores or too young to know about it.)  The link takes you to ‘Listen again’; the item is about half way through the hour.  There was an item about a north of England primary school which runs this wonderful scheme.  Five ladies from the WI go in once a week to teach the weans knitting and other traditional handcrafts AND the said weans teach the ladies IT skills!   The kids were very positive about it in spite of finding their seniors ‘a bit slow’ on the computers!  Besides learning to make toys, mittens etc the youngsters benefited from chatting to the women and found it a relaxing break from the plethora of tests in their curriculum.  One of the women had wanted to teach but had left school at 16 as her family could not afford a college education for her.  Now much later in life she delighted in being in the classroom.  A teacher of long experience said it was by far the best project she’d ever been involved with.  Yet, though this must have taken imagination and organisation, it’s not a complicated undertaking. 

Kids experiencing this may be the future thinkers-out-of-the-box.  They’ll be more confident in relating to older people.  (’WI online thanks to Primary 6′)    And they’ll be able to sew on a button. 

Well, I was rewarded me for the good press I gave the goldfinch in the previous post.  I was on Islay for a work trip which turned out to be something of a birdfest. The goldfinches twittered and flew about in a young tree just outside the bedroom window where I was staying, flashing red, gold, black and white in the morning sunlight.  Now take ‘twittered’.  That’s just not accurate.  I don’t know whether the collective is a ‘charm’ of goldfinches because of how they look or because of how they sound.  It’s a sort of tinkling twitter - a sparkly sound!

5pm saw us at the Loch Gruinart bird hide with the sun behind us enabling me to identify several pairs of Shovelers with their shiny deep green heads and eponymous bills.  Now there’s where words fail.  ‘Green’ doesn’t begin to describe the colour of that plumage.  Bluer than sea green but not as blue as peacock.  I can see it, but the right word?

I had never had a proper view of a Whooper swan.  What a stunning creature!  Lapwings put on an aerobatic show so close we didn’t need the binoculars.  One of them even divebombed a heron, out of sheer mischief it seemed.  The barnacle geese that overwinter on the island were still there, perhaps because the temperature hasn’t yet risen significantly.  

The weather was kind enough for standing out on deck part of the way back from Port Ellen to Kennacraig so perhaps the geese will set off soon back north.  Too warm for them here.  Each to their own!  

(Tried to upload a photo of the rookery at the bottom of the garden whose residents provided a wake-up call but no luck.  Worked fine for the magnolia.  Any other wordpressers had problems?)

Well it looks like spring but there’s a north wind blowing.  Visited a magnificant magnolia tree and was struck by how we associate the exotic with the tropical.  ‘How could this produce such amazing blooms in a cold climate?’  we found ourselves thinking.  This picture was taken last year when it was just past its best - didn’t have camera today.  If it snows tomorrow as predicted, it may be worth going back to capture it.  The huge flowers come out before any leaves and feel really thick - I believe they’re called ‘tepals’.  I was reminded of the creamy waxiness and dark dark glossy green leaves of a gardenia plant I was once given.   Not that it was ‘like’ a magnolia except in being amazing!    

Same with birds.  Is it just me?  Or do we tend to think of British birds being subdued compared to tropical ones?  And yes, of course we don’t have multicoloured parrots flying about but the goldfinch and the jay are pretty spectacular. 

I see that’s the tactful heading above my last group of postings.  On my wall planner, the first 3 months of 2008 has blue dots on Fridays intended to indicate writing time.  Hmm.  I genuinely believe it’s not procrastination.  I’m not really given to that except in the case of filing, form-filling or book-keeping.  The day job takes me away from home quite a lot and I haven’t invested/learned a satisfactory portable IT system.  My other excu - reason! - is that I do have additional family responsibilities.  So life changes.  Deal with it, Al.  It’s back to the planner which at least has reminded me of my intentions. 

I will take time out as I did at the start of the year to think through how I can enjoy the luxury of choice.  Some folk have none.   More words tomorrow - a promise or a threat?

Are they dreaming of spring?

Equilibrium - what a lovely word.  Apparently that’s what we were meant to have yesterday when light and dark are balanced, the sun being overhead at the equator.  There are gales here -I thought that they were a feature of the autumn equinox!  It seems we have a wild start to spring and snow forecast for Easter. 

The few daffodils in my small garden are struggling to remain upright.  A friend said to me ‘they’re very resilient’  but I fear for them.  A special strain, they seem less sturdy than the regular bright yellow ones.  (You can tell horticulture isn’t my strong suit!).  I won’t struggle to extract meaning from that.  In fact I intend not to struggle for meaning in anything I experience this weekend but to let it unfold like the buds on my flowering currant.

I bought a couple of primula plants with huge flowers and the most amazing perfume - very like freesia, although a completely different botanical family.  I looked them both up and am now confused about when a primula is a polyanthus!  I’ll just enjoy the fragrance.

Another gap! I had a complete break for 5 days over last weekend which included a train trip from Glasgow to London which I spent writing the first draft of a short story. It was the assignment for my writers’ group, a short piece of crime fiction - not my bag but a useful exercise. I learned several things. Writing and thinking took most of the four and a half hours. I did nothing else except eat my sandwiches. This demonstrated the value of uninterrupted time in a capsule where I couldn’t be reached - as if I didn’t know. I also learned that I wrote it only out of what I’ve gleaned from reading or watching television so in that sense it’s second hand. I learned how little I knew about actual police processes.

I was not in the least surprised to note that I struggled with the plot - I’m not a doer of puzzles. When I do read crime, I don’t much care whodunnit.  But attempting it forced me to struggle with the back story and address any gaps or loose ends. I’m pleased to say that the unedited draft met with a favourable response from my peers and the offer of comments to fill any lacunas in the story.

In a previous post, I mentioned the Bute Writers Group anthology ‘All Roads Lead to Bute’.
This morning we’ll be celebrating at a launch in Bute’s Discovery Centre. It looks good and the pieces are fun to read and give an insight into a variety of childhood experiences in Scotland and beyond.  A companion piece tells how each of us fetched up on these shores. 

I can do no better than reproduce here some entertainment I received by email from ABF who received it from a relative who had ‘too much time on his hands’.  Never, you can’t have too much fun with words.  You may all have seen this by the time I post this but I have added one more thought at the foot if you care to scroll down.

DORMITORY:
When you rearrange the letters:
DIRTY ROOM

PRESBYTERIAN:
When you rearrange the letters:
BEST IN PRAYER

ASTRONOMER:
When you rearrange the letters:
MOON STARER

DESPERATION: When you rearrange the letters:
A ROPE ENDS IT

THE EYES:
When you rearrange the letters:
THEY SEE

GEORGE BUSH:
When you rearrange the letters:
HE BUGS GORE

THE MORSE CODE:
When you rearrange the letters:
HERE COME DOTS

SLOT MACHINES:
When you rearrange the letters:
CASH LOST IN ME

ANIMOSITY:
When you rearrange the letters:
IS NO AMITY

ELECTION RESULTS:
When you rearrange the letters:
LIES - LET’S RECOUNT

SNOOZE ALARMS:
When you rearrange the letters:
ALAS! NO MORE Z’S

A DECIMAL POINT:
When you rearrange the letters:
I’M A DOT IN PLACE

THE EARTHQUAKES:
When you rearrange the letters:
THAT QUEER SHAKE

ELEVEN PLUS TWO:
When you rearrange the letters:
TWELVE PLUS ONE

The last one is an anagram of MOTHER-IN-LAW.  I don’t like mother-in-law jokes (in spite of, technically at least, not being one)  It’s quite good though so work it out for yourself! 

And my final thought?  I now realise that it did not occur to me to check the accuracy of the above.  Did you?  What does that tell us, one way or the other?  Tee hee.

The final final thought: have a look at the exchange about words on blethers