Note book opportunities.

I had plans to work on my writing today. Sadly normal life has intervened and I've been recruited by other members of the family to do other things. Yesterday was no different, and I ended up at the Trafford Centre at about the time I thought I was to be back at my desk doing my best at unraveling the poetry chapter to help me pepper my 03 commentary with enough technical terminology to leave my tutor's head swirling as if she were 10 years old again and masochistically volunteering herself over and over again for a games of 'head down spin and run and make everyone else laugh by your gormless efforts.' Actually the person who needs help in gormless efforts avoidance, is me.

Two good things did come from yesterday, and they are classic notebook jobs. Not that had it with me. Not that I ever do have it with me. Not that I even properly own one in the truest sense of the word - my drawer is full of them, most with one or two pages with optimistic starting, quickly followed by acres of white barrenness. Or pages are loose, or this is my least favourite observation because I simply cannot find a way to stop this - the spiral unraveling - twice I've used that word this year and minutes apart! But I did have my phone with me - everyman's gadget for all matters note taking. I'm even sad enough to have run keeper installed on it and sadder still I was monitoring the steps I was taking in the mall together with the calorie burn. See my life is full of incident.

So, I made a couple of phone notes, and any day that is lived whilst on A215 that is taken up with a few live notes is not a wasted day - even if you do end up traipsing around shopping malls with fussy wives and tired feet. Here is a snap shot of my notes taken whilst waiting in various ladies clothes shops.

'Standing high up in the mall looking down at the hubbub of people rushing headlong in ever direction reminds me of when as a 7 year old I first lifted the edges broken paving slaps from my father's geranium borders and revealed an ant universe of streets, boulevards, and paths. Twisting this way and that I was taken by how the ants with great industry moved quickly and efficiently and with good manners made deft almost psychic jinks to left and right managed to avoid bumping into each other. Occasionally there would be a juddered halt as two ants failed to synchronize their thoughts and would end up staring at each other for a second or two until a solution could be found whereby one would go left, the other right.

Some carried parcels, other were empty handed. Every ant whether with or not with another ant seemed to operate entirely alone.

In the mall I thought the people I could see as I looked down, acted in a very similar way. '

Note over. I have padded a little, but perhaps this note taking thing is no bad thing. Note to self in new note book: 'must use note book.'

Oh and I've forgotten the other thing. It'll come back to me. Oh yes: 'Market House'. The Market House from my home town features heavily in my 03 poem and during the poem's development I have had difficulty accessing information about it- for once the Internet has been a disappointment, how often do we say that these days? But I knew that I had a book somewhere in the house that had a chapter all about this building. I remembered that it was built somewhere around the 1700s and consequently had many functions and has witnessed many things right up to the present day. And I wanted to get some of this in my poem. Obviously I cannot divulge any more otherwise I will have to shoot myself; suffice to say that I found the book languishing in a box in my loft and I have since had a chance to flick through it. I can report that everything I wrote about it is more or less true so I won't have to do very much last minute tweaking. Maybe a little but I'm almost there with it.

So in the note book the following: Market House was decorated during various celebrations including throughout 40s 50s 60s and 70s. That's it. Means a lot to me this note entry for reasons that will have to remain private for the time being.

The only other thing I have done is found a writing magazine called rather inventively 'Writing'. I've never been much of one for magazines of this kind, they're always expensive and seem a little bit obsessive, earnest, and full of shallow optimism about things like tips lists of what you should do to guarantee publication etc. But this one has a quite a few competitions in it - stories and poems, and I can't think of a better thing to do with my old TMAs as they start to proliferate than to start sending them in to these various competitions, then sit back and wait and see. They're written anyway so I might as well see if I can get them to sing for their supper, otherwise I might as well give up now.