Lucky Me

My big task for yesterday was to go out and hunt for a four leaf clover. Whenever I pass a clump I tend to look down, just in case, but I've only ever found one that way. This time, I thought I'd take a more scientific approach and concentrate on a single patch and go through it on hands and knees. My garden is full of the stuff at the moment, so why not make use of it. Well, I never managed to find a four leaf clover. Instead, I found the even rarer FIVE leaf clover. When I started taking photos of it, my wife told me I'd reached a new low in boring. I'm not bothered, I think my little clover is class. Here's the pics:

usually the fourth leaf is smaller, but they're all pretty equal apart from the fifth in the centre, which is teeny.

The back view - you can't see the fifth leaf, but you can see the way the four split.

A Search for Inspiration

Now that college work is out of the way (well, mostly) I thought it was time to clear my mind and search for some inspiration, something to fire up a creative mind. A camping trip! Now I like to think I’m quite impulsive, but that only goes as far as the basic idea. From there, it took me about two hours to sort out all the stuff and pack the car, by which time the kids had been sitting there, all belted up, for best part of forty minutes.

Finally, we got there and half pitched the tent. Work stopped at the increasingly ripe smell of summer dog shit. Rather than move the pitch, I decided to do something about it. I located the offending splat and, after careful considerations of the options available, decided to destroy it with boiling water. The result of this lunatic approach was well cooked, steaming dog shit, and smelling much, much worse than before.

I moved pitch.

The kids were starving by time I’d got the tent up, so no time to start the barbeque - besides, that was for later anyway. For now, we had soup. What could be simpler. I had a camping stove, pans... but no tin opener. Not to worry - I had the camper’s best friend: a penknife! And what comes on every camping penknife..?

Well you tell me, because the device that appeared to be a can opener had clearly been designed by some sadist who despises all campers and had has made it his - successful - mission in life to make our lives a misery by designing a blade almost perfectly inept at opening cans. Ten minutes later, with soup splatters over my t-shirt and jeans and a cut across the back of my thumb, I’d managed to wrench open a gap large enough to shake the contents through. Then I had to go through the whole operation with the second can. In future, if I forget a proper can opener, ie one designed to open cans and not get itself wedged in them, I think I’ll just drive over the thing in my car and scrape up what I can from the road.

And after all of that, and burning my thumb from trying to pick up the pan without the special “gripper” handle (that doesn’t work either), the kids didn’t even like the soup, so it was time to stoke up the barbeque anyway. So as I set it up I took the time to have a beer and soak up some sun. The summer was finally here! Clear blue sky, not a hint of a breeze and a blistering hot sun. Down at the park, the kids were enjoying the weather with their tops off, skin frying in the heat... Oh, hell. I’d forgotten sun-cream. Back in the car, off to ASDA, back to the site, sun-cream everywhere, kids happy, dad happy. Sit, drink beer, get out a sketch pad and do a bit of drawing. I even had a mini watercolour set to paint. The results aren’t wonderful, so I won’t put them up here, but it was good fun to relax and do a spot of painting. I didn’t do any reading, and although I had some writing notes with me, I didn’t do a lot of planning either, but I did manage something creative.

Later on, as the sun began to go down and I realised I’d forgotten anything warm to wear, I went to the clubhouse. This comfortable little watering hole has a pool table, a few bandits and a jukebox, and the sounds of The Beatles’ Ticket To Ride welcomed me inside. This was followed by Europe’s Final Countdown - a nineties beat-mix version, and then back to Ticket to Ride. At first I figured there was probably a Beatles fan in the room. Nothing wrong with that. Except it was once again followed by Europe, and it soon became clear that there were only two working songs on the dukebox. By ten o’clock I thought I was going insane, just as the Bingo started. I could see the kids behind me, still playing in the park with a whole load of other kids, so my choices were to go back to the tent and be cold, listen to other people play bingo, or have a go and see what all the fuss was about.

It was great! I won the first line. Five quid. Ding Dang Doo!

Spend the rest of the night taking long-exposure photos. Here's one.

My New Shadow

I’ve always wanted to buy a black kitten and call him Poe. I first heard the story, The Black Cat when I was about ten years old. We listed to it in class, on a cassette player. Ever since then I’ve had this daft idea that if I ever get a black cat, I’d call it Poe.

We came very close to buying a kitten yesterday afternoon (at an extortionate price), but I couldn’t help feeling a little sad because although it was a very bonny little kitten, it was black and white, not just black – so the name wouldn’t really work.

So we came home without it. I went outside to read in the sun. Paula went upstairs on the computer. Five minutes later she was downstairs, saying she’d found a black cat for sale on the internet, and only half a mile away. Next thing I know, this tiny ball of charcoal fluff is padding about our front room, just waiting for a name.

So this was it! My moment. I’ve waited 29 years for this opportunity. I picked her up and in a clear, commanding voice to all in our house I announced my perfect choice of name.

‘Don’t be so stupid,’ came the reply. ‘The kids can name her.’

So she’s called Jasmine instead.

Pulling at the Reins

Despite what I said in that last post, saying that writing “is what I do”, I haven’t really done a lot of it in the past few days. Well, not really creative writing. I banged out 1,500 words of college work (defining Special Needs and support) this afternoon and I managed 500 words of utter drivel late on Saturday night.

But, on the positive side, I’ve got a fairly good idea of where I’m going from this point on. Rather than diving in, like I usually do, going hell for leather to get the words out, I’m letting this one steep in the back of mind for a month or so, hoping the not-so-good ideas drift away and the good stuff settles.

The more I think about it, the more I want to get started. It’s more of an effort not writing than it is just getting on with it.