The human race has come a long way in the last 200,000 years. We have the innate ability to adapt to change, and now we are currently facing the most significant changes we will ever have to make. Climate change, overpopulation, pollution, and on top these three serious contenders, COVID-19 is raining down on us all.
With the help of the global scientific community, we will survive this cataclysmic period in our history but, then what?
When you fall off a bicycle or a horse, you get straight back on again, and writing is like that. There will always be knockbacks, but you can’t let them get to you. There will always be negatives, but they are just the potholes on the road to achieving your goals.
Whatever it is you want to accomplish in life, you’ve got to bite into it hard and, like a terrier, refuse to let go. Hone your craft, until you get it right.
“The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair” Mary Heaton Vorse. Congratulations to all you wonderful witty women! You all inspire me to better apply the seat of my pants to the seat of the chair. 👏 https://www.comedywomeninprint.co.uk
I’ve never trusted anybody who comes over as having had a sense of humour bypass. When chatting to someone new at a party or, these days, at a virtual social soiree, you unleash your best one-liner. As your voice trails away into cyberspace, together with the sound of a damp squib, it’s time to mute yourself, and go and chat to someone else.
In response to WordPress Discover Prompts, Day 18: New, I started this piece in philosophic mode, again. It really doesn’t suit me. I’m a humorist, not Eckhart Tolle. It’s all very well trying something new, in my case, writing in a different style but, not if it’s going leave me looking like I’ve just slapped a pie in my face.
What would we do without photographs? Sometime around 1827, Joseph Nicéphore Niépce captured the first fuzzy photo. What a long way we have come since then! We are constantly snapping away on our phones and posting the resulting images on Social Media. Visual images unite us when we can’t be together. No more so, while we are in Lockdown.
There was always a distinct chill inside the cottage, which was responsible for the black clusters of mould marching across its walls like aggressive armies of Unsullied. It was impossible to heat. She ran the tips of her fingers across the top of the old storage heater in the kitchen. It had only just come on so she would keep her coat on a little longer and there was no point in lighting the fire in the living room as she was going out later. No significant other, so no candlelight dinner, but a night out with the girls, which would inevitably end up being pretty wild.
This morning, I woke up feeling like a bit of limp lettuce. The last time I felt like a Butterhead, was after I had run 5 kilometres.
I was having such an incredible dream. It was the start of a long haul flight, I’ve no idea where I was going, but my excitement was as effervescent as the fizz I was sipping. I tipped my head back, savouring the moment. Waiting for someone to whisper sweet nothings in my ear, when the deep-throated moan of a hungry Burmese cat, demanding to be fed, blasted my eardrum.
‘Just let me sleep!’ Not quite all the words I used, but this is a family show.
We can’t let C-19 steal our creativity. No more daily gloom and doom journals from me. Diaries are supposed to be private anyway, aren’t they? Drowning myself in a thousand words a day about where we are with C-19 locally, in the UK in general, as well as globally, is swamping the creative part of my brain. There’s a reason, I’ve been limiting myself to one news catch-up a day.
So creatives, stop Christina from hulking-out and do what you do best, unleash your creative beast and write through the storm.
When I was young and slim , I loved granary bread. I bought it fresh from the local baker on the way home from work and demolished it before burning off its calorific content in the gym.
One day, my love for granary came to an abrupt, crunching end. I enthusiastically bit into a soft slice, excited for the nutty, rich taste to flood my taste buds and bit down onto something hard. A piece of wire wool.
The trauma was too much to bear, and I’ve never eaten granary bread again.
Being in lockdown is inevitably changing our perspective on many things. How we will live and work in the future is at the forefront of all our minds. Our lives are, effectively, on hold until we return to some sort of reality, and we have no idea when that is going to be. I have no doubt that when we are eventually let out, we will run around like headless chickens trying to pick up where we left off.
Until that time, it is so important to keep focused on life after lockdown and where we want it to take us, as well as the things that we want, but are yet to achieve.
School friends are the best. If you had bestie at school, the chances are that you will stay in touch for the rest of your lives. Well, that’s how it was with ‘my twin’ and me. Somewhere between discovering that we shared a birthday and the end of the spring term, we had gelled.
We shared the same sense of humour, which is always a good start. After that, we never went anywhere without each other. We shared family holidays and supported each other during our early adult lives. The boyfriends, the first tentative steps on our chosen career ladder, as well as celebrating all our significant birthday’s together. The building blocks of a lifelong friendship.
Whether wearing a face mask will stop you from contracting COVID-19 or not, covering up your nose and mouth makes sense – even if I look like like a bonkers blogging buffoon. I will work on a more stylish look for my second attempt at a homemade mask. As they say, where I come from, owt’s better than nowt.
In my mind, it’s peace of mind, and it’s got to be better than inhaling anything COVID-19 related. Stay safe everyone.
I have square hands. I had no idea what having square hands says about a person, apart from realising that a career as a hand model would be a no-no.
Being in lockdown is forcing me to become a Domestic Goddess. I am trying, but it’s a slow process. I can’t see my hands ever baking bread or vying for the title of Master Chef any time soon. As for rushing around with a hoover and duster, its just a part of my daily lockdown routine.
Domesticity and I have never gone dishpan hand in glove. I blame it on my late mother’s ridiculous idea of sending me to a boarding Domestic Science College when I was sixteen. I was expelled before my first half term, which tells you all you need to know.
I live in a lane, rather than a street. There are seven houses close by and children live in two of them. It has a country feel about it, as there are fields around us, but the main road is only 200 yards away, and the town centre is just a twenty-minute walk.
There are constant comings and goings. We are all busy. Our lives taking us in different directions going to work, school runs, evening classes and sporting events.
We chat with each other when we pass in the lane, walking our dogs, going for a jog or a cycle ride.
‘We’re overdue a catch-up!’ We say. ‘We must get together soon.’
It all began in my early teens when I was obsessed with writing poetry. I started learning the guitar around my fourteenth birthday and began writing songs. It was a natural progression. I tried to write a rock musical instead of concentrating on my O Levels, which never made it to production.
You wake up every morning to the gentle whooshing sound of the sea underneath your water bungalow, before dropping off your deck into the clear, turquoise water. Flipping onto your back and staring up into the bluest of blue skies. It doesn’t get much better than that.
I started 2020 with newfound confidence and a steely determination to succeed in my writing goals. I’m over halfway through my second novel, a murder-mystery spoof, and was skipping and dancing my way down a road fuelled by purple patches with a finishing date of the end of April. Then, somewhere around the unfolding COVID-19 crisis in Italy, my bubble burst, and I lost my mojo. Since then, I’ve been struggling to find my funny.
