Words

A morpheme, an allomorph or simply a morph? A collection thereof makes words and words make sentences but what do the words say? Words take you on roads and your choice of words determines the route.

 Reached a crossroads? The direction you decide to take will invariably be indicated in words. Will you use the right words and go down the path you intended or will you use the wrong words and find yourself on a track you didn’t plan? The words may be written or spoken.  Will you use the right words but in the wrong tone of voice and will they, as a result, be read as something completely different? Or will you write the right words in the wrong order, or omit a crucial collection of morphemes resulting in an opposite meaning?

 How fraught the use of words can be and yet how magical too. The right words at the right moment can mean the difference between life and death as you debate at the cliff edge. Special words for special people can create warmth, love, romance and excitement. Encouraging words can inspire, angry words can hurt, and soothing words can lull even the savage beast. Words have led to wars and brought about peace, won hearts and lost hope.

 Do you dare use words when you realise how powerful they can be? Do you fear the misunderstanding they could cause and fail to use them or cast them adrift without thought and take the risks? Too many words can drive away; too few can break a thread.

 We use words for art and artifice, for expression and emotional outlet, for stories and truth, for therapy and theatre.

 Gaps have their own language, lending nuance, pregnant pauses or tension. No words can speak volumes but give control to the listener.

 Words, gaps, silences and sentences can lead you down paths, around corners and through crossroads as you search for meaning and direction. There are many dead ends, often carelessly created by those who don’t employ words with due consideration. Life is a maze of words. An amazing world of words.

 Are my words meaningful or just exploring that world of words? What words – or silences - would you like to hear?

When is a Dog not a Dog?

...when it's a cow!

Hand Cream

A former boss of mine used hand cream at every available opportunity. It was quite mesmerising, watching the ritual of flicking open the lid, squeezing a marble-sized glob into the hand not holding the tube, smoothing over the backs of the hands and then massaging thoroughly. A woman wringing her hands - not with anxiety or distress but with the confidence that she is saving her hands from a dry and wrinkly old age.

I'd watched, mentally declaring my intention to buy some hand cream and follow her example. But somehow it was always too difficult - to remember to buy the cream, to have it around when you needed it, to remember to use it.  And when I did, I invariably had a reason to wash my hands again shortly after, making the whole exercise redundant and wasteful.

Would  my hands be plump, smooth and blemish-free if I had pursued this line of action since my youth?  Does my old boss have lovely, young-looking hands?  I don't know - I shall have to track her down and find out.

Google Hand Cream and you get 12,000,000 results. That's a lot of hand cream links.  How much do we spend on hand cream in the UK per year? No idea and Google won't tell me, but a 39 year old woman recently confessed in the tabloids that she spent over £1100 per year on weekly hand treatments to keep them supple and soft.

What's the point of this post? No idea but I just got to thinking about hand cream and wondered if I should have started many years ago.  Would it have made any difference?

That's it really. Just fancied a blog post on hand cream!

What is she talking about?

The original title of this post was to be, "Words That Should Be Banned From Blogs".  By the time I finished writing it I realised how ridiculous I sounded (there's a reason for all these "I"s - stay with me) so I changed it although I like the controversial nature of it.


I'll retain the original first sentence. I'd be interested in your response to it.


"I". This word should be disallowed unless the blog is a rollicking tale of sex, sin and debauchery or at least a very intimate account of a very intimate part of a blogger's life.  


I'm certain I was taught not to start a sentence with "I". (See how easy it is to fall off that particular wagon?) But this is not a rule that shouts from the first page of a Google search on the subject. There is far more fear of starting a sentence with 'but', 'and' or any other conjunction. So did I make it up or did some adult in my youth make it up? (Not sure you are allowed to start a sentence with 'so' either). Maybe the 'rule' was not to start a paragraph with 'I'.


You see, 'I' all over the place suggests egotism, although I is surely born of Id which is different from Ego. 
Back to Google: "the id is the set of uncoordinated instinctual trends; the ego is the organised, realistic part; and the super-ego plays the critical and moralising role".


However that is all irrelevant. How many of us are writing blogs in order to talk to ourselves? Am I writing a blog to massage my own ego? And how many of us are truly interesting enough to warrant multiple sentences starting with 'I'? Not I! And yet I do it. Far better to start a sentence with 'you'.  'I' tells everyone you are about to talk about yourself. 'You' says you are going to talk about them. 


Now, the one thing we are all interested in, generally over and above all else, is ourselves, so giving the impression that you're about to talk about the most important person in your reader's life is surely a good start. If you're really clever you can make it sound like you're talking about them whilst actually talking about yourself.


An example:  "I have often wondered about the meaning of life...." (yawn) can simply be replaced with "have you often wondered about the meaning of life?" (yes, I have - how perceptive this blogger is!).


(Note: we shall excuse fiction writers who employ the first person narrative.)


.......


Right, well I have just travelled around a few of my favourite blogs and many of them use 'I' on a regular basis so I think I have shot my own theory in the foot already. However, if I reject this thesis then I'd have to start a new subject for today's blog and that would involved extra work so I shall carry on in the same vein.


Next word, please!


"Mad". this word has its uses but should be employed with utmost care and NEVER in the same sentence as the offending "I". 


A casual  hop around various blogs suggests that too many of us are laying claim to the same mental condition - madness. Madness in that 'hey, aren't I cute, I'm really mad' kind of way, not in any meaningful, "I'm on medication" kind of way (that is another subject altogether and a fascinating one at that).
Yes, I'm guilty of that as well. In fact, I have a horrible feeling I've even used the word 'lunacy' as a tag for my blog (two 'I's in that sentence - I may have to ban myself).


Avoid the "I am completely mad" unless you can produce a doctor's or psychiatrist's note to prove it.  There appear to be so many of us with completely 'mad' lives that we are in danger of making madness normal and then where will the fun be?


Of course (can you start a sentence with 'of course'?), it may be that people prone to writing blogs are more eccentric than their none-blogging brethren (shall we talk about the link between creative genius and 'madness' another day?) and on that basis they may try and excuse their overuse of this word.  Still I am keeping it on the Banned List until someone argues cogently that it should be otherwise.


You can argue if you like.

Tales from the Coffee Shop: What happens to Dead Oxen?

The routine is simple and no doubt the same as many others every day*. Get the kids off to school, take the dog for a walk and stop off at the local coffee shop on the way back.

We sit outside with the dog whatever the weather - rain, snow, heatwave.  The dog eventually takes himself down the parade of shops to the butchers. Here he will sit outside the shop - never going inside. He knows the rules.  If the shop is busy, he'll sit patiently for quite some time until Paul, the butcher, comes with the bone.  There follows a well worn ritual.  Paul makes to grab the bone back, Zac (yes, the kids were into High School Musical - they've moved on but the dog is stuck with the name) runs away from him; Paul calls him back and he returns bone firmly clamped in his jaws.  Zac doesn't' just wag his tail - he wags his whole body. He loves this man - the man with the bones  - more than anyone in the whole wide world. He loves this game. It can continue for some time, depending on how busy the butcher is.

The shoppers watch this pantomime with a smile.  Zac makes everyone smile. He has a great smile himself. He's the only dog I know that manages to smile whilst holding what looks like the backbone of a tyrannosaurus rex in his mouth.  Once the chasing is over, he settles down next to us outside the coffee shop. He prefers to lie down right by the door so that anyone entering or exiting is required to stop over him.  Here he chews his bone, leaving a nasty trail of blood and fat over the pavement. Small children stop to star. Elderly folk stop to admire and pat. Others come to compare notes on canine capers. That ability to make people smile is worth his weight in gold (and he's heavy!).

Friends, neighbours, local storekeepers and estate agents stop to pass the time of day.  Occasionally someone takes the time to join us for a caffeine break.  'Liverpool Dave' is one such person. His sense of humour is second to none and the banter is good. Today he tells us a story about Granox, a company situated in Runcorn that does unmentionable things to dead animal carcasses.

Runcorn plays host to a wealth of industry - most of which appear to spew nasty stuff into our environment.  I used to commute daily over the Runcorn Bridge to the Albert Dock in Liverpool. You can't help but admire the unique industrial landscape - horrifying and somehow beautiful at the same time. It's like a location in a surreal futuristic Hollywood film - the sort of film in which the world is about to end and nature has been obliterated.

But back to Granox - granulated oxen, you see. You're starting to feel queasy already, aren't you?

Well, what do you think happens to dead animals?  Turns out they are useful for something. Granox 'renders' them. Apparently the oil that comes from dead carcasses is valuable to someone - turns into glue amongst other things, as far as I can tell. You can probably  imagine the working conditions. There was mention of maggots, flies and the sort of terrifying smell that can only come from a place of mass death and decay. Workers are paid double average rates on that basis.

"Some of the workers live on site in caravans", Dave is telling us, "and you've not seen the likes before - bunch of troglodytes!" (If you happen to work at Granox, please be assured he's joking - he's from Liverpool, the birthplace of comedy).

"The company also takes dead animals from nearby Chester Zoo," he goes on to explain.

See, I'd never given that any thought before. What happens to dead animals from the zoo? Amazing what you can learn over a cappuccino.

"So one day they get a dead gorilla", Dave tells us with a glint in his eye. He's enjoying this tale and proceeds to tell us how some joker ( remember we're up Liverpool-way) decides to put the dead wild animal to some use before rendering it into something sticky. An innocent cleaner finds out exactly what that use is when she opens a cubicle in the ladies toilet to find a large silver back slumped on the seat.

We're already laughing. That is an image you don't expect to settle in your head on a Wednesday morning over an innocent coffee.

"Of course, a cleaner comes in and", here he pats his chest in a fluttering motion, "she gets the old flutter."

Well your heart would suffer in such circumstances, wouldn't it?

Someone was fired or severely reprimanded. The cleaner survived by all accounts. The story made the local paper.

Now that's what a coffee shop should be about. A sociable venue and a place of education.


* (The many of us who are unemployed, that is - and there are many of us!)

Mummy

I am concerned about the time. We are due to return the child at 2pm and we haven’t even started lunch.  Husband is sanguine as always. How do men manage to resist the worry of being late, the angst at putting someone out?

The delay with our order makes me twitchy. I am computing the likely time taken to consume the meal once it arrives; the time we should allow for the novel experience of strapping a small toddler into a baby seat in the car; the time it will take to drive back. Muscles are tense, brain racing, feet tapping. This is not enjoying the moment. This is wasting the moment with unreasonable disquiet.

Suddenly two small chubby arms wrap themselves around my neck. This beautiful child, this baby, this toddler who will soon be mine but today is someone else’s, senses my anxiety. Or maybe she just wants me to know, even though she has yet to learn how to talk, that she accepts me as her mother. 

Fanciful you may think, hormones, maternal desperation, wishful thinking, but you tell me why she started practicing the word ‘mummy’ on me before she’d even come to live with us, looking at me carefully as she did so to gauge my reaction?  Trying out the word on someone she barely knew before she’d even learnt to speak.

When a child is not yet speaking we underestimate what they are picking up from our words. It doesn’t always occur to us they are listening, learning and understanding. Many people have been talking to this toddler’s older sister about what is to happen, who is coming, what these new people will be in their lives. How can a two year old comprehend such a complicated chain of events: birth parents who don’t know how to parent, siblings who won’t be living with them anymore, an important foster mum who will wave them goodbye? Best focus on the older child the social workers no doubt conclude.  But the toddler has been listening, absorbing, making connections and waiting for this event.

She has decided she wants a forever mummy. She’s seen them down the nursery, pushing their young children in prams, waving them into the hall. She’s heard her fellow playschool chums call for ‘mummy’.  She’s tried it with her carer but this woman doesn’t respond like the others. Instead she receives a smile and a gentle “I’m not mummy.  I’m Cathy”. Recently she’s added, “but we’re going to find you a mummy.”

The child nuzzles my neck. I feel those arms around me. It has got to be the very best feeling in the whole wide world. It’s a caress to beat all caresses, a touch that touches your heart.

To hell with the time. This time is precious. We are both at the start of a brand new life together - a life that is bound to have its up and downs, times when a teenager yells “you’re not my mummy!”

But right now, right here, at this precise moment in time I am a mummy and I am just what this child wants and just what she needs. She wants to belong.

Let's Talk about Blogs, Baby....

..... Let's talk about you and me....

So what is this all about, this blogging business?  That was the question that started this blog and I still don't have an answer.  Not an answer for my blog anyway.  What earthly use does it have? What is its function, its purpose?  It has none!

Let's look at a blog with purpose - Jake Barton's 'Rambling of a Deluded Soul':
http://jakebarton.wordpress.com

First off, it ain't full of ramblings, it's full of fine fiction and the odd real life episode, and it has a very distinct purpose. That purpose is to introduce the wider world to the work of this excellent author. Jake writes a chilling thriller and has two already up on Amazon for Kindle. He has connected his blog to his Amazon page and his books. He delivers just the right length of fiction excerpts to tease, entertain and intrigue without boring or giving too much away.

A project with a clear purpose is a project destined to be successful. In under three months he has accumulated a healthy  number of followers and an impressive number of page views. It's working. Jake is not distracted by egotistical ramblings, nonsensical rhyming or irrelevant photographs. He sees his goal as clearly as his fictional serial killer. He works toward that goal with the same precision and inspiration as Marcus planned the murder of his father at the tender age of 6.

There is something to be learnt here.

What I have learnt? That I lack clarity, purpose, dedication and hard work. For now I can but watch and learn.  And you could do worse than check out his blog and his books on Amazon - both a steal for under a quid!

http://www.amazon.co.uk/BURN-BABY/dp/B004HILQ7W
http://www.amazon.co.uk/BLOOD/dp/B004NIFW3A/ref=pd_sim_kinc_3