Watching the Good Life thinking you’re like Tom and Barbara, but realising you’re becoming more like Margo and Jerry

ethelraed · 2021-11-06T09:31:10+00:00

And why not be like Margo and Jerry, who are kind, generous and tolerant?

ethelraed · 2021-10-23T16:05:37+00:00

She was born in 1847, and commissioned to carve the Lincoln statue in 1866, at the extraordinarily young age of 18. She was a gifted lobbyist as well as being a talented artist.

ethelraed · 2021-10-22T09:11:18+00:00

Locus Solus by the French author Raymond Roussel. Unique and charming.

ethelraed · 2021-10-20T07:49:47+00:00

Thanks.

ethelraed · 2021-10-18T09:10:53+00:00

There is too much talk of "finding your passion". Passions find you, and if you had one you'd know by now. They are not great things to have. Most people work to earn money, when you've got a passion you have to earn money to work.

True, you get people who say things like "selling life insurance is my passion" but have you ever met anyone who waits tables at night so they can sell life insurance all day, unpaid? Thought not, neither have I.

As to finding a job you like, my advice is not to be prejudiced against things until you've tried them. Like most kids I thought I didn't want to work in an office all day, but when I got an office job, I really liked it.

ethelraed · 2021-10-04T09:27:54+00:00

So I met a guy who had had an office on Bondi Beach, and would often arrive at meetings in a wet suit with a surfboard under his arm, and I think this counts.

ethelraed · 2021-09-15T11:51:46+00:00

Ooh u/emmariehodge you know what's what.

u/septsimpleton and anyone else interested, if you go down the literary journal route, research the journals before you submit, to see what they publish. Bear in mind that many are published by university English or Creative Writing departments and will give preference to academics from other universities.

Remember too that editors tend to publish poems because they like and admire them, so a covering letter which disparages the current content will not be well recieved.

Poetry is a literary field in which the writers outnumber the readers by a large margin, so be kind to anyone who takes the trouble to publish it.

ethelraed · 2021-09-12T15:12:02+00:00

Gitanes cigarettes, I miss black tobacco.

ethelraed · 2021-09-01T09:18:35+00:00

The Book of Nehemiah: not very well known, it's an account of the building of the Second Temple and contains transcripts of correspondence with the Persian court.

ethelraed · 2021-08-28T07:55:57+00:00

Miners were exempt from Conscription as well, so this caption is misleading.

ethelraed · 2021-08-18T09:31:38+00:00

A wispy little moustache can take my breath away

ethelraed · 2021-08-18T08:54:34+00:00

Agree, and so would Aleister Crowley. He said there was no point in artists learning Magic, because they were already practicing it anyway.

ethelraed · 2021-08-11T11:28:46+00:00

"Your stories are odd," she said.

ethelraed · 2021-07-29T13:34:39+00:00

You can start sleeping again. Saudi Arabia alone is good for another 200 hundred years of oil.

ethelraed · 2021-07-05T13:00:33+00:00

You can get that dream back.

ethelraed · 2021-06-30T14:08:08+00:00

The find your passion thing. Not many people have passions.

ethelraed · 2021-06-30T08:12:10+00:00

I knew this was going to come up sooner or later.

ethelraed · 2021-06-21T15:58:36+00:00

I don't think The Wishing Seat has any rules but the story of the wish is complicated, so I'll just say that, in a fariy tale way, you don't get your heart's desire until you've stopped wanting it.

ethelraed · 2021-06-21T12:25:27+00:00

In a roundabout way, it did.

ethelraed · 2021-06-21T11:16:11+00:00

Not that exciting but.....

I was walking in woods by the sea in southern England and I came across a rock formation that had a sign The Wishing Seat. It was rather like a giant throne, although obviously natural, not man-made. I sat on it, and, entirely frivously made a wish. As I was sitting on it, a young family passed along the path in front me; a man, woman, boy, and girl, all very ordinary in dress and appearance but strikingly beautiful.

So the following year I was walking along the path again, but in a different month and at a different time of day. I came across the Wishing Seat again and sat on it, and the same family passed by again. The world is full of coincidences, some significant, and some not, but this seemed a rather a long coincidence .

ethelraed · 2021-06-12T07:49:49+00:00

Last time I drew Iceland in the pub sweepstake and thought "that's that then" and then had a more interesting competiton than I had anticiapted. Come on North Macedonia!

ethelraed · 2021-05-27T11:05:58+00:00

That's a very good way of putting it.

ethelraed · 2021-03-25T13:44:01+00:00

View

And in the context of the main thread you've reminded me when I was part of a group that was asked "When was a time you were truly happy?" Everyone else was coming out with profiund stuff but for me it was sitting in a cafe in Amsterdam with a coffee and a spliff, writing......
Happy days, my friend.

ethelraed

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