Thursday 27 March 2014

Holidays, old poetry and old friends

We have plans for the weekend, as the saying goes.  Off to London on Sunday to pick up oldest boy and then onto youngest boy in Canterbury for the day, and it happens to be you know what day so maybe a couple of treats in store for their old mother.  Then on Monday we bring the young one back for his Easter break from Uni.

Many moons ago I did an OU Creative Writing course through which I met two lovely people.  For several years after we met regularly at our local Waitrose cafe to encourage each other in our literary attempts.  One of the antics we got up to was our 'guerrilla poetry' where small poems were written, mostly about things on sale in the store, and then placed carefully onto shelves next to the appropriate products; all under the watchful eye of the in-store cameras (a sample sits below).  Daft I know but it gave us practice in our writing skills and great laughs along the way.  This week we met again after a break of about 18 months and it was great to see them, two of us still write and the other one thinks a lot about it but has little time to put pen to paper.  Spurred on by my recent 'success' in putting a short story on Amazon Kindle the other two have taken up the challenge, and the task we have set ourselves is to make at least £5 out of writing something before we meet again in June.  However, I've been told that in order to level the playing field I must publish something under a pseudonym so as not to take advantage of my 'world-wide known literary status', haha - does this sound fair?  I'm not sure, but the immediate problem I have is thinking up another name for myself - suggestions welcome.

Anti-Wrinkle Cream


Make me smooth,

Never mind the truth,

Take away the mirrors,

Bring on the youth,

Bring on the cream,

Lotion and potion,

Leave everyone else

Without a notion.

My better half and I are off over the sea to Skye at the end of April.  Its somewhere I've always wanted to visit - probably the Scottish genes in me.  We have one friend who describes her visit to Skye and the Western Isles as the worst holiday she's ever had and another who has been more than a few times and loves it.  So we'll see when our time comes, here's hoping for good weather and calm seas.
The other trip is a bit of a blast from the past.  All four of us are headed to Eurocamp in Brittany one more time in June.  We've had a few Eurocamp adventures with the boys over the years and after a request from the youngest one we are going for one last time.  How my two 6ft 4inch, adult offspring will fit into the caravan beds, and manage a holiday among a campsite full of toddlers is another matter!

The City and Guilds Level One in Photography comes to an end this evening with the handing in of the six photos that will determine my fate.  There's a sneak preview of two of them below..........






















We went to a great yoga workshop last Sunday run by Julia Thorley and Penny Taylor.  It lasted for 3 hours, with intervals for tea and cake, and great fun was had by all.  Honestly, despite the sweaty red-faced appearance to the contrary in some of the poses.  Thanks Julia.

2 comments:

  1. Maybe your pseudonym could have a link with where you started your guerrilla poetry such as Rose Waiter? Probably sounds better than Free Coffee although with trends for naming babies after things there might be some unfortunate soul out there soon with that tiltle.

    ReplyDelete
  2. That's a great idea, thanks Clare. The free coffee thing is funny, it's certainly become very popular - I've heard the workers in the cafe complaining about how busy it gets, so who knows some poor baby might get an unfortunate name from it.

    ReplyDelete