Bloggers let loose

One of the challenges of blogging to a predetermined theme is the imperative to find a link between that theme and one’s own experiences. The link can be clear or tenuous, or loose. It is up to the hapless blogger to conjure up something vaguely relevant. They can then use their writing to provide for the reader something of interest that might happily distract the reader from the inescapable fact that relevance to the theme is - er, nil. Not even loose.

           

 So, blogging can be an exercise in obfuscation. It can also be a test of the writer’s political dexterity. You know how politicians in interviews make a point of answering ad nauseam the question they wish they’d been asked, the question they’re pre-programmed to answer, rather than the awkward one they’ve actually been asked? (cf Paxman v Michael Howard, Newsnight) Thus can the blogger fulminate at length on a preferred theme, draw the reader in and cause them to forget what the theme was supposed to be!

           

 Speaking of displacement, writing this has been a temporary hiatus in an unpleasant and painful activity Dave and I have been engaged in for the last few days. We have had to face up to the reality that our imminent house move necessitates a traumatic culling of our books, for we cannot fit a magnum into a pint pot. The selection process has been rigorous, not always observed and the sight of literally hundreds of our precious books awaiting disposal is deeply distressing and depressing. I am trying to feel relaxed and – um, loose about this – and failing miserably!

On blogging, I will leave the last word to poet and blogger, Rachel McAlpine, on how she approaches blogging. Like most writers she saves up her jottings and musings, just waiting for the right and appropriate moment to release them.

Stuff in a blog

Let’s not pretend
that stuff in a blog
is poetry.

A blog is a diary
upside down, a silo
where notions wait
for processing
or better times.

Crammed tight
they twitch
in the dark.
They long to sprout
and see the light.

Let’s spill them out
and set them free.
At worst the birds
will feast.

Rachel McAlpine

Thank you for reading.

Sheilagh

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Culling Fields

Culling fields

What price a pint of milk, the fillet steak
must reach to keep the farmers from harm's wake
to save them from the cold, from being poor
is it the badger or the superstore?

For every pint of milk a pint of blood
it seems to be and so with toughest love
the bodies of wise beasts are found on roads
killed by cars that leave neat bullet holes.

Roll up, roll up, come hear the great grotesque
a cull signed off by those who ring no necks
but leave ten thousand carcasses or more
from their desks a simple signature; an all out species war.

And just like war, we find each day it is covered on TV
Spun into little half truths to persuade you and me
that this disease, Bovine TB (which is not even theirs)
is firstly a: inevitable, b: solely carried by wiry hairs.

This genocide, this fools prevention cannot be the cure
diseases grow, they multiply, there'll always be one more
Vaccinating is not an option, ask the great EU
and yet we'll fly in pesticides and peppers from Peru.

Feasible to think that those same veg could just grow here,
fields stocked full of each of them, food to last a year.
But the truth is the hand outs are better with disease ridden pets
so the farmers keep on growing beef, ignoring all the rest.

By easter, Springwatch will use infra red light
As the badgers get harder to find in the night
Then what next- the midges, the mozzies, the men?
For in truth, we are more diseased than all of them.

Shaun Brookes

The theme this week is The Colour Red, which is often not quite as black and white as you'd think. Thanks for reading, S. 

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