On May 1st I started a hundred day challenge to write a hundred posts each of exactly a hundred words. I completed it, but by then it had become a habit!
Day 121
Scraping the bottom of the ideas barrel, there are precious few scraps of words, fragments of phrases… my head is empty. Thinking of barrels takes my mind to Treasure Island, a favourite book. I heard it on the radio on Children’s Hour when young, the mental images more vivid than any film seen as a child – Blind Pew tapping his way to the Admiral Benbow – I see him on the dipping chalky road, the blind man with his stick.
But the barrel was a near empty apple barrel that Jim climbed into, and hidden, he overheard John Silver’s treacherous plans.
Day 122
It’s not good enough, I’ve let it slip. Last night I wasn’t so tired but somehow I couldn’t write my 100; no excuse, I should have done. It wasn’t an accident – I didn’t forget, I stared at the screen, and stared… and stared, and nothing.
Maybe I was desperate to get back to reading the latest book, maybe it was just the bad habit I sometimes slip into – doing anything but write. I can’t call myself a writer when I don’t conform to my own idea of what a writer is.
Three out of ten, must do much better.
Day 123
One, two, three, it’s so easy… the song’s running through my head, like taking candy from a baby… It was written by Leonard Warren Borisoff, better known as Len Barry born 1942 and described as an American recording star, vocalist, songwriter, lyricist, record producer, author, poet.
His name vaguely rings a bell, but I remember his songs much better. His genre is described as blue-eyed soul – as the name suggests, soul music by white artists. Listening again I find his voice so redolent of my early youth, and then discover he wrote another favourite, Zoom recorded by Fat Larry’s Band.
Day 124
Celery… many people don’t it, some are allergic to it, but I’m sure that many who dislike it have only eaten the bitter foreign variety. Those unfortunates have never tasted the sweet, deliciously nutty Fenland celery, grown up to its neck in the good black fen soil. The smell is incredible; my dad once brought a boot full of heads of celery back from a visit home to Cambridge. For months after, the car smelt of it. The white heart of celery is delicately delicious, the leaves salad-worthy and the pale stalks crisp without that harsh flavour of imported heads.
Day 125
Suddenly the internet wasn’t working, not at all, not the slightest flicker. Run a diagnostic test – Your connection has been disrupted. Unhelpful. It’s been erratic for days, not working, then working, suddenly not working, then springing back to life. Now it was completely, utterly not working.
Turn the computer off. Turn the computer on, to no avail. Look at the magic box, a blue light’s shining, is it the same blue light as normal? Unplug it, plug it back in.
What to do? Ask daughter. She looks at the magic box, does something, all is well. T’internet now works.
Lois Elsden 