Category Archives: Life is laughter

Jethro

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Jethro had enjoyed his dream sleep, comfily suspended upside-down by a silk thread throughout the starlit night. But now, out hunting his breakfast, he was on alert for the dumb, fluffy cat who frequented his patch of garden.

Fluffy-bum, as her Human called her, was hardly cunning enough to intentionally stalk him, but in an undiscerning act of curiosity, she might smack him into oblivion with a giant paw.

Just as well he has eyes in the back, front, and sides of his head…

Jumping Spider in my garden, Sydney, Australia. 1/100, f7.1, ISO 200, flash, handheld

Horace

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Horace did not see the Human at first. He was too busy trying to extricate himself from the web of an orb-weaving spider in the silver spruce on the driveway.

But now they clocked one another…

Australian Stick Mantis, in my garden in Sydney, Australia. 1/25, f3.2, ISO 100, ambient light, handheld,

Weekly Photo Challenge: Symbol

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Bob—my minion, courtesy of my husband—is a symbol of my excesses:

Too much chocolate and champagne: I, like Bob, am a candidate for the cakewalk rather than the catwalk.

Too much grieving: my father, who was affectionately called Bob (not his real name) by our extended family, died 13 years ago, but his ghost still looms at dawn.

Too strange a sense of humour: dark, subversive, and sometimes toilet.

And now I’m laughing too long and too loud.

Have a silly weekend.

😀

For more entries to this week’s WPC, see The Daily Post.

 

 

Weekly Photo Challenge: Muse

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Stylish in Shibuya

I’m lazy technically when it comes to photography. Part of the problem is that I have two sets of glasses and never seem to be wearing the right pair when I want to take a photo quickly. Which is frustrating because my muse is most certainly ordinary people, and for this reason the photography that I most enjoy is street photography, which requires spontaneity.

These lovely chaps cheekily photo-bombed me as I was taking photos down this street in Tokyo and then happily agreed to pose. Of course, my camera was on the wrong settings.

The other people-inspired form of photography that I love is portraiture, but I don’t get much time to do it these days. My good friend Kim is always a wonderful subject.

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For incredibly beautiful and technically perfect portrait photography, see Joshi Daniel’s blog.

For more entries to this week’s photo challenge, see The Daily Post.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Broken

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I know what you’re thinking…
..but I haven’t taken to my husband’s head with a meat cleaver.

Being time-poor, I don’t cook much, but when I do, I like to try something new and recently attempted this MiNDFOOD recipe.

The problem is that the whole tap-the-pomegranate-skin-with-a-wooden-spoon-and-the-seeds-will-just-fall-out trick didn’t work so well. Hence the pomegranate bloodbath.

For more entries to last week’s photo challenge, see The Daily Post.

Back from Behind

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I like to do things backwards, don’t ask me why.

When I read a print newspaper (yes, some of us still do), I often start at the back page and work my way forward. Same with magazines. I can’t help it. (Although, I haven’t yet acquired that peculiar habit of reading the end of a book first. Horrors!).

Anyhow, I don’t like the thought of taking a blog break without announcing it upfront, but, somehow, my unintended break got away with me. So I should have told you that I was taking a blog break. But I didn’t. So now you know.

I’m back from behind.

As if you’ve noticed.

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Kill Your Darlings Not Your Editor

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Given the grammar and punctuation transgressions on this blog, you’ll probably find it hard to believe that I qualified as a book editor over a decade ago. *Sharp intakes of breath around the Blogosphere* Yes, you know who you are. 😀 Breathe easy; I’ve yet to give up my day job.

What I do know is that editing is critical to the writing process and essential for, at the very least, published works and professional documents. And what I did learn in studying for my editing qualification is the need for tact when dealing with authors and their work, no matter how awful either.

At work, I edit my own writing before and after I get someone else to edit it. Even so, when I do the final edit, I’m often bemused to find a number of errors remaining. When it comes to prose, I know my weak areas: omission of functions words, homonym misuse and comma confusion, to name but a few, so I know what to look for. But, poetry? I really have no idea.

So it is with heartfelt gratitude, appreciation and admiration that I thank Linda Cosgriff (a.k.a. The Laughing Housewife) for the gift of her editing expertise on my first poetry collection.

Linda is what the publishing industry (if she were to put herself out there) would consider an exceptional editor: she knows her stuff, and she is unafraid to say what needs to be said on both form and style but does so in an encouraging, tactful and respectful manner. And she sends gifts. 😀

I’ve taken most of her advice…
..OK, I admit I’ve granted clemency to some of my poor darlings.

Any errors remaining in the book are purely mine.

You have done me an immense favour, Linda dear. Thank you for the gift of your friendship, your valued input and the Olympic Games bookmark with the inspiring quote. ♥♥♥

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Canine Fictions

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My S-I-L Belinda has an eye for the interesting, the beautiful and the absurd and takes the most wonderful photos.

I love this photo of hers and thought it the perfect match to a poem that I wrote for Gabrielle Bryden’s Close Shaves Week. Thanks, B. 🙂

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Photo by Belinda Price-Sinclair

Tank
the neighbour’s dog
has a lot
to say in the morning.

I imagine he entertains
the Vox Dogz with tales
of victorious nocturnal stoushes
with the white cat from across the road:
“A face like a chook’s bum
I tell ya rrrrhahahaharuffruff “

But I’ve seen him run
wide-eyed
at the sight of her.

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 (Look, Tilly, no commas! 🙂 )

Writing Process Blog Tour

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Dear blog-amie Gabrielle Bryden has tagged me in the Writing Process Blog Tour, which involves me answering the following questions and tagging a few other writing bloggers:

What am I working on?

 

How does my work differ from others of its genre?

It’s never accepted for publication.

Why do I write what I do?

I once read somewhere that Stephen King said something along the lines of that if he hadn’t become a writer, he would’ve become a small town sniper. My reasons aren’t quite as extreme (and, in case you hadn’t noticed, neither is my level of success), but writing—poetry, in particular—is a good outlet for stress and the things that fire my imagination.

How does my writing process work?

It’s a bit like vomiting, really – atrocious analogy, I know. But it is; it just happens of its own accord. One Saturday morning, I sat down with the intention of writing a non-fiction post about the notion that cheese before bed causes nightmares and within an hour, I had written this, something altogether different from what I’d intended.

Next on the Writing Process Blog Tour (tagged writers, feel free to ignore)

Thanks, Gabe 😀

Search Engine Poetry, Cryptically

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After the response I got to my Search Engine Poetry challenge last year, I thought it would be fun to do it again this year. But, sadly, due to the reasons reported by Timethief over at

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Google has gone and torpedoed all that – Pfffft!
(Christine, can you please have a mother-to-son chat about this! 🙂 )

What to do? What to do?

A Blog Title Poetry Challenge, perhaps?

Hmmm, doesn’t quite have the same ring to it…

..but it could be fun, and who knows what blogging gems we might discover along the way.

So, here’s my BTP challenge:

  1. Write a poem from WordPress blog titles (use the Explore Topics Tags in the WordPress Reader to help you).
  2. Be sure to hyperlink to the blog titles in your poem.
  3. Post the poem on your blog and leave a comment on this post linking to it.
  4. Read and comment on at least one post on the blogs whose titles you’ve used.
  5. Have fun!

I’ll go first:

Ducks in a row,
Let’s go!

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1000 Great Smoothies –
Cigars and Cupcakes,
The only Cin…

And whether or not you feel like participating in the BTP challenge, do yourself a huge favour and subscribe to one cool site; Timethief knows her blogging stuff and can help you with yours. One of her many really useful posts for bloggers can be found here. Thank you, Timethief.

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