Tag: Reference

In a word: Blind

I’m sure we’ve all been blinded by the light!

Oncoming headlights, a bright light flashed in our eyes or walking into a dark room and a halogen light suddenly snaps on.

You’re still seeing red flashes for hours afterwards.

Literally, blind means you’re not able to see anything, i.e. you are visually impaired.  That’s the first meaning of the word people will think of.

But…

It’s another of those words with a few other meanings, such as,

A blind is a window covering; usually it goes up and down, and some you can see through slats.  Very good for nosey parkers, and subplots in stories.

Being blind to the truth means that you refuse to accept it for specific reasons, generally brought on by a belief or a prejudice

It can be a hidden enclosure from which to observe or shoot animals

And for the more interesting uses

Blind drunk, I think a lot of people have been there

Flying blind, pilots do it at night, but some of us have figuratively done it a few times, but not in a plane

And lastly, a blind tasting, where you’re not sure what you’re going to get, but usually it’s for a wine tasting, to see if you can tell what’s good and what’s swill.

Sadly I can never tell the difference, which is why I usually stick to beer.

 

 

 

Searching for locations: The Lingering Gardens, Suzhou, China

The Lingering Garden

These gardens are very tightly put together and are interspersed with buildings that you can go in and look at as distinct from just looking in from the outside.

There are lots of paths that wind around interspersed with rocks which may or may not be sculpted, and equally interspersed with trees, bushes, and small plants.  In the middle is a lake which usually has lotus plants in bloom, but they are not in season.

The gardens were built around a small lake that was filled with fish of all sizes and colours

The buildings were also a contrast for those built for the men

and those for the women

In the middle of the garden was a significant rock pillar

surrounded by certain areas of the garden that had smaller rock formations

 

At the end of the garden is a large collection of bonsai trees, some of which are quite exquisite.

There’s this affliction going about

It’s not new, it’s been around for a while.

Everyone seems to be talking to themselves and I think it has something to do with smoking, perhaps a side effect.

You know how it is, you are walking along the sidewalk and someone near you starts talking.  You turn around thinking they are talking to you, but they are not.

And then they take a puff of a cigarette.

It’s not an uncommon assumption to think they are going mad.

But the thing is, if you take a closer look you notice they have a Bluetooth device in their ear and they are really talking to someone out there in cyberspace.

Or for the uninitiated, they’re talking on their mobile phone.

Not that many years ago, men in white suits would be collecting these people and taking them to an asylum typically called Bellevue.  It was the stuff of 1950’s horror films.  You really didn’t want to be caught talking to yourself.

It, of course, has a number of symptoms, this condition we’ll call cybersickness.

Like, for instance, wandering aimlessly.  Or bumping into people.  Or walking in front of cars on the street.  Or falling off the edges of sidewalks, which can result in very, very bad injuries.

You could be forgiven for thinking these people are hearing voices in their heads telling them what to do.

But, as a worst-case scenario, we could say we have just created a viable excuse for these people.

I suppose it’s better than locking them up because, at the end of the day, our jails would be full to overflowing.
One thing is for certain, I think a lot of them are already living in their own world, oblivious to everyone and everything about them.
Now, as for using phones in cars, just don’t get me started.

Mall shopping can be interesting

I’m wandering through a shopping mall.  Not exactly what you’d expect from a writer looking for ideas.

Not that I came to the mall with that in mind, we have to do some shopping and a visit to the bank.

It’s one of those odd things this writer does, subconsciously looking for characters, character traits, or plots.

One came to me when I saw someone running.  Had they stolen an item and were they running from the store manager?  Were they escaping from a situation?  Perhaps they were just trying to catch up to the rest of their party.

Then, in another corner, not so private from everyone else, a couple is having an argument.  They are young.  There could be any number of subplots going on, were they breaking up?  Had one found out the other was cheating?  Were they married and discovered they were about to have a child they couldn’t afford?

Shopping malls are not exactly places that can be woven into a story unless it’s about teen angst, and there’s a lot of that in the after school hours and k as the night shopping.  I have never understood the need for teens to gather together and wander the halls of a shopping center.  Perhaps it’s just to hang out, whatever that means.

My teens used to gather and go to the cinema.  Years later we discovered they used to get drunk first then go to the cinema and misbehave.  It seemed like one of the passages of rites thing for young people.  Not in my day, but things were different for them.  Nowadays it’s all about drugs and rage parties

Is this the sort of angst that finds it’s way into ya novels even though they have a paranormal and/or fantasy theme.  People are still people no matter what the setting, so are we trying to sort out the problems of youth living in the current perilous times against a mythical background?

So much for finding subplots, now I’m looking at solving the world’s problems. I guess it’s time to go to the bank and solve my own problems and leave the rest to more competent people than myself.

Still, food for thought.  Perhaps a short chat with my 16-year-old granddaughter might make some sense of it.

In a word: Yellow

It was an easy choice from the start, yellow is a colour, in any number of shades from very pale to very dark.

We have yellow egg yolks, yet another y word, and depending on whether the eggs are farmed in cages or free range can dictate the shade of yellow.  Free-range gives the brightest yellow, by the way.

We have yellow cabs, but oddly enough these cabs are orange, not yellow as in this country, though the same may not be the case overseas, particularly in New York.  Good thing they are bright yellow so you can see them coming if you are crossing the road, perhaps illegally.

We have yellow bananas and lemons, probably the most common answers when asked, what is yellow?  That, and perhaps the yellow rose of Texas.

Then there is a more sinister meaning of the word, and it is associated with cowardice, and cowards are said to have a yellow streak down their backs.

If you have yellow fever then you are in a whole world of pain.

You can sometimes have what appears to be yellow skin, a sign of jaundice.

There is a yellow sea, and then there are the yellow pages, sometimes a substitute name for a telephone directory of businesses.

And lastly, an expression that comes out of the past, and not used so much these days, but people from Asia were thought to have yellow skin.

Living in the 1920s – if only I could!

I’ve often thought that I should have been born in the early 1900s and lived through what might be called the halcyon days of the ’20s and ’30s.

Of course, it is only a matter of opinion if those days were good or bad, depending on who you were.

If I’d been the heir apparent to become Lord of the manor, or from any part of upper classes with a University education, I have no doubt that I would not have been spared the horrors of war along with rest of the young men who went to serve and never returned.

The only saving grace might be as Officer it might have been easier than being un the ranks, but at that age, I doubt if I’d be as cautious as I should be, as of all youth I’d throw caution to the wind.

But in all likelihood, I would not have been part of the aristocracy but more than likely a clerk or farm worker who might by wit and guile have survived the war, if not a little traumatized by what I had seen and done in the name of defending the Empire.

It had prompted Hemingway to use the phrase ‘the lost generation’ at the end of one of his books, but perhaps it was first used by Gertrude Stein who had said in not many words that those who survived the war were more content to drink themselves to death.

I guess if the war hadn’t taken you, and you survived the great flu epidemic that followed it, then you would probably believe you were in some way invincible.

So, in those post-war days where writers and others congregated in Paris in those mid-twenties, what some regard as the halcyon years before the great depression and later the next world war.  I suspect a lot of the American writers left because of prohibition and wanted the more liberal lifestyle in Paris during these years.

Certainly, there was a group of writers and artists who lived that bohemian lifestyle, perhaps a result of the horrors of war, using alcohol and promiscuity to drown the bad memories.

I doubt if anyone could return from a war like that and not be damaged in some way.  Perhaps the only way to escape the horror was to immerse oneself in a different world, and if I had been back in those days, I know I would be putting pencil to paper making endless notes for later use.

And I prefer to believe if I survived it was because my desire to become a writer would eventually be fulfilled.  Perhaps in the end it might be more likely because I had had a lifetime love affair with words, and to me, it would be more than enough to make a reasonable living from it.

Certainly, I would have sought out others like me as mentors and compatriots.

It was a time when the likes of F Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Edith Wharton, and James Joyce, all of whom I have no doubt would be happy to be the role models one needed.

And if you could afford to take a trip to Paris, well, enough said.

It would probably take a lot of luck to be included in their group and no doubt hanging out at the Shakespeare and Company bookshop, owned by Silvia Beach and Adrienne Monnier, might have been a step in the right direction.

But, having not been there at the time, who knows what might have happened.

Perhaps one day when someone invents the time machine, I might be able to go back and find out.

In a word: Clip

It was in the news, and seemed odd to me, that a word such as clip would have any significance beyond that of having a haircut, but apparently, it does.

Maybe they’re referring to the clip of ammunition for a gun?

But for us, a clip can be part of a haircut, letting the scissors loose.

And for those children who had a father who was a hard taskmaster, you would be familiar with a clip around the ears.  It can just as easily be used, say when a car clips another car when the driver loses control.

There’s a horse that runs at a fast clip, and can be anything for that matter that moves quickly.

It can be a spring-loaded device that holds all your papers together.  Or just about anything else for that matter.

You can clip an item from a newspaper, aptly known as a news clipping.

it can be a portion of a larger film or television programme, but to me, sometimes, when a series has a clip show, an episode where someone reminisces and we see clips from previous episodes.

And last but not least, clip the wings of those so-called high flyers at the office.

That light at the end of the tunnel

It’s a long-standing joke that the light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an express train coming right at you.
Metaphorically speaking this is quite often true if you are a pessimist, but since I’ve converted to being an optimist, a bit like changing religions, l think I’ve seen the ‘light’.
It’s a lot like coming up from the bottom of a deep pool, breaking the surface, and taking that first long gulp of air.
Along with that elated feeling that you’re not going to drown.
What’s this got to do with anything, you ask.
Perhaps nothing.
As an allegory, it represents to me as a time when l finally get over a period of self-doubt, where a series of events started to make me question why l want to be a writer.
I mean why put yourself through rejections, sometimes scathing criticism, snd the have the people whom you thought were your friends suddenly start questions your choices after initially wholeheartedly supporting you.
Are we only a success or supportable if we are earning a sufficient wage?
Is this why so many people don’t give up their day job, and then find themselves plying this ‘other trade’ during the dark hours of the night, only to find themselves being criticized for other but no less subjective reasons.
It seems like a no-win situation but these are the times when your mettle is tested severely.
But in the end, it is worth it when the book is finished and it is published, even if it is only on Amazon, not that publishing on Amazon is any less important that if it was with a mainstream publisher.
You can sit back and say with pride l did that.
And that metaphorical light, you ask.
When you make a sale.

In a Word: Egg

 

This is another of those words that can be used for manly different situations.

But…

What happened to it being just an egg, you know the sort you can have for breakfast, fried, scrambled or boiled.  Or eggs Benedict.

Or…

We can go down that path where the discussion is about what came first, the chicken or the egg?  Don’t ask me, it could be both.

So, now it seems egg has a few other meanings that could be considered somewhat obscure, such as,

He is a good egg.

Wow, comparing someone to an egg?  I guess I’d hate to be compared to a rotten egg.

 

What about, the crowd egged the man on to start a fight.

Well, perhaps a couple of rowdy schoolboys looking for some action behind the shelter shed, or at least that’s what we called it when I went to school (when I’m told, dinosaurs walked the earth)

 

Then,

If you do something embarrassing, then you are said to finish up with egg on your face.

Oh dear, been there a few times.

 

Or…

If you were to put all your money into that match tree forest in Ecuador, that’s the equivalent to putting all your eggs in one basket.

In other words, when you discover that the match tree forest in Ecuador was really your financial advisor’s private bank account and he’s now living in a non-extradition country, you understand just what that expression means.

In other words, diversify.

And lastly, if the above happens to you, then it’s time to go on an expedition, to find the goose that laid the golden egg.

In a word: Fire

I have not yet had the privilege, or otherwise of being fired yet, but that meaning of the word fire is to get removed unceremoniously from your job.

Donald Trump used to use it a lot on the Apprentice, eg, “Your fired”.  And, believe it or not, I used to like that show.

But…

Fire can be quite hot, something you can sit in front of on those cold winter nights, whether it be a gas fire, or a wood fire, my preference.

Then there’s a phrase, set fire to, which can be good or bad depending on what eventually gets burned.

I have on the odd occasion had someone fire my imagination, probably a good thing being a writer.

To feel the fire of drinking neat whiskey, or in your heart driving patriotism, is something we have asked of us.

If you have a gun, then when you pull the trigger you fire it.  Just be sure not to be pointing it the wrong way or any anyone.

A good indication is when you hear the words, ready, aim, fire.  Especially if you are in the wrong place at the wrong time.

You can,

fire off a message, hopefully, a nice one

fire questions rapidly at someone (but not a politician, they have to have time to answer anything but the question asked)

or accidentally fire someone up by saying the wrong thing.