%%USERNAME%%    %%ACCWORDS%% %%ONOFF%% |
 A tentative blog to test the temperature. |
|
Ten years ago I was writing several blogs on various subjects - F1 motor racing, Music, Classic Cars, Great Romances and, most crushingly, a personal journal that included my thoughts on America, memories of England and Africa, opinion, humour, writing and anything else that occurred. It all became too much (I was attempting to update the journal every day) and I collapsed, exhausted and thoroughly disillusioned in the end. So this blog is indeed a Toe in the Water, a place to document my thoughts in and on WdC but with a determination not to get sucked into the blog whirlpool ever again. Here's hoping.     |
| A Delicious Video https://www.youtube.com/shorts/2xD3hqKlMyk Good old YouTube threw this brief video at me yesterday. It really was very kind of them (if I may refer to the programmers behind the app rather than the app itself) since the video reveals something about the aristocracy that is little understood these days, something that I am trying to reveal in my short stories about Her Grace. It is what I call being truly civilised. Below are links to a couple of Her Grace stories. Yes, it’s unashamed self advertisement but hey, sometimes you gotta do it.
Word count: 90 |
| Other Bikes This is more like an addendum to the previous post and it’s more about motor bikes. So, if my Ducati post didn’t interest you, don’t bother with this one. While writing said post, I was going to say that the Ducati was the only motor bike I’ve ever ridden. But then I remembered that it wasn’t. There was a Honda 50 that my father bought for delivering stuff from his chemist shop. On occasion, I was dragooned into making deliveries on the thing. After the Ducati, it was a pretty disappointing machine. Speed was not its metier. Oh, it was fast enough for most things, but that was never going to be enough for a teenager who had ridden a racer. Worse, it was an automatic. No playing with gears then - just the jerky clunk to get moving and then it did the work for you. Buzzing along at thirty miles an hour - it was good at that. Mind you, I am prepared to bet that anyone having a Honda 50 as their first biking experience would be hooked. It’s that two-wheels thing that does it. Then there was the Lambretta scooter that someone gave me as transport when I got married. Poverty is a great teacher and I was grateful for that old, tired machine. Anything beats walking, after all. But it was a death trap. Clumsy, slow, and poorly balanced, that machine made me feel really vulnerable when I rode it. I was not sorry to see it go when I could afford to buy a clapped-out but charming and aged Morris Minor. And that, too, is a story for another time. Anyway, that explains why I couldn’t claim to have only the Ducati on my motor bike resumé. If you count the Honda and the Lambretta as bikes, that is. They are two-wheeled after all. Word count: 308 |
 Ducati 175 In my last post, I promised myself and anyone who read that episode that I’d write about the motor bike that featured therein. It was a 1960s Ducati 175. Doesn’t sound like much, does it? But there are certain facts you need to know. Especially that it was the racing version fitted up to be road legal. Which meant that it had a silencer (muffler). And, as a result, it was fast. More than that, you should understand about that little 175 cc motor. It was an odd size for racing and, because there was no category for that capacity, it had to race against the 250s. But it still won all the races. That little screamer of an engine humbled all that came against it at the time. And now I had the opportunity of riding the beast. The picture up there doesn’t really do it justice. I chose it because it has the right design of fuel tank. Sexy is the only way to describe those curves and bulges and swooping lines. The rest of the bike that I came to know wasn’t nearly as fancy as the one above. It was stripped down of all unnecessary weight and never as well presented. I doubt that my sister’s boyfriend ever cleaned it and it certainly had no parts painted gold! It was a thing for one purpose only and that was to go fast. Okay, it was tiny compared to the 1,000 cc monsters bikers ride today. But bear in mind that the only bike I’d ridden before used pedal power as its motivating force. I loved that bike. I took it on the old Salisbury circuit that was no longer used. Down the straights it was so quick the tears were streaming from my eyes. Goggles? Nah, who could afford real biking gear in those days? I doubt I got anywhere near the lap record but it was exciting and magical beyond description. On the way home, I leaned into a corner and the foot rest scraped the tarmac. That was when I learned about the murderous side of motor bikes. Fun they are and in incredible quantities. But they’re also killers if you make a mistake. The net result was that I elected never to get a motor bike. I bought cars when the time came (before that, actually, but that’s another story) and did all my crazy stuff in them. The glory and exhilaration of bikes I understand but I knew that I’d have killed myself on one sooner or later if I gave the things the chance. My oldest son has owned and ridden bikes for years now but he was always more level-headed than me. Even so, he managed to break a pelvis a while back. He rides the big ones and has taken lessons and so on - should be safe now, I think. So that was the mighty midget, the Ducati of my teenage years. I only got to ride it a few times but it stays in my memory as a bright star that illuminates a brief period in my life. My advice is never ride a motor bike. Why risk the danger of being bitten by the bug and getting one for yourself? They’re more fun than should be legal. And they’ll get you in the end. Especially if it’s a beautiful Italian job, light as a feather, and just screaming to go. Word count: 574 |
| A Tale of Long Ago Magic’s song, Rude, is a pleasant little ditty with a narrative. This is the first time I’ve heard it and I must confess that it made me think of my late elder sister. So here’s her story. When she was in her late teens (I was in my slightly earlier teens), she fell in with an older guy and became quite serious about him. As far as I was concerned, the only reasonable thing about him was that he had a motorbike. A very fast bike, being a racer fixed up to be road legal. And he let me ride it occasionally. Man, that was a fantastic bike and I scared myself at least a couple of times on it. The real point was that it put me on the guy’s side, of course. Maybe he wasn’t so stupid after all. But it did nothing for my father’s view on him. The bike was probably the start of it but their relationship worsened through various events until, eventually, the old man declared that my sister was to have nothing further to do with him. Bad move on my father’s part. It wasn’t long before the young lady declared that she was moving out of the house. Worse than that, she was moving to another town in another country. Having just turned eighteen, she could override my father’s objections and off she went. It wasn’t long before we heard that the relevant boyfriend had also moved to that town. A few years later they returned, my father realised that his tactics had been entirely wrong, and grudgingly he accepted the relationship. They married soon after. So the story tells us a little about humans and their foibles. Make something forbidden and they are bound to desire it even more. Unfortunately, it doesn’t end there. It turned out that the guy was a money-making machine - in a few years he was a millionaire and the couple had produced two large and bike-racing nephews for me. And then the happy couple got divorced. He cared more for making money than for my sister, apparently. She found another guy (much poorer but a thoroughly decent feller) and they lived happily in obscurity. And what I got out of it was that everything was caused by that wonderful bike (Ducati 175). Had its owner not had it, my father would never have objected to him, my sister would have soon forgotten him and moved on to others, and everyone would have had a less dramatic life. Except my nephews, of course. But you can’t have everything. Word count: 431 |
| A Thought for the Moment If I thought I was going mad, would you say I had taken the psycho path? |
| Reviews and All That I notice I’ve done more reviews than I’ve had community recognitions. Perhaps that means I am the Phantom Reviewer. Or maybe my reviews are hardly worth mentioning, let alone recognising. Yes, I know that CRs are for all sorts of things as well as reviews. But that makes my condition even worse. I shudder to think how few CRs were for my reviews. Although it’s nice that they hand out one for every month in which you reviewed something. Oh, you didn’t know that? Well, obviously, you’re not reviewing enough then! Word count: 91 |
| Telling It As It Is Sometimes you have to speak the truth, even if it makes you sound conceited. |
| Printers I was wondering about a subject for today’s blog post when Andrea started to print something. My immediate thought was, “Do people still use printers?” And there was the subject for today. I haven’t used a printer in ages. But there was a time when I was the printer whisperer. Do you remember how they would refuse to do our bidding and only relent if you knew the right words to speak to them and how to recite the necessary incantations? I was good at that and I don’t think there was ever a printer that I didn’t manage to cajole into doing its job. There was a lot for a printer to do back then. It seemed that we were always printing stuff so that we could… What? What happened to all those pieces of paper we printed off so urgently? I believe most of them were stored somewhere, never to see the light of day again. Which leads to my theory for the day. I maintain that we were in a transitional stage between the age of paper and the age of the computer. The idea of the ‘puter had always been that we wouldn’t have to have all that paper anymore - everything would be stored on the computer’s memory. But old habits are hard to break and, in those glorious, heady, and early days of computer use, we gave in to the need for some tangible thing to hang on to, the paper evidence of our work. And now we’ve learned to trust the machine, especially since the advent of the cloud. We have transferred our affections from paper to the intangible and digital storage of our efforts within the ‘puter. So I ask, “Does anyone use a printer these days?” The answer is that some do, and I shouldn’t ask the question in the midst of writers, most of whom spend hours of their life printing out their novels and poems and suchlike, in the hope of persuading others into publishing the things. But what of everyone else? I suppose some few printers still toil away in offices that haven’t received the (digital) memo yet, but most people will have abandoned the printer in their personal lives. My talent in the use of printers is out of date now and I no longer know all the latest models and which printer manufacturer makes the best ones. Indeed, should I be ashamed to admit that I no longer own a printer? I get a slight feeling of guilt at the thought that I never feel the need to print anymore. How the mighty are fallen. Word count: 438 |
| Zaouli Came across a video showcasing various dances suggested as the favourites of passersby. I have a favorite too but not that I can dance it. It's called Zaouli and comes from the Ivory Coast. Have a look at the video below: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/7sTaItgxBhQ |
| Acronyms America did not invent the acronym but it has brought the art to a fever pitch. Everything, it seems, must have an acronym and just about everything does. Scattering acronyms through your writing and speech has become so prevalent that it becomes too much of a good thing. Rather like baskets in basketball, in fact. The whole idea of acronyms was to shorten the business of writing or speaking of something. Which is fine as long as the abbreviation is understood by everyone. But the proliferation of the little blighters has reached the point when only the smug in people understand what is being referred to. It’s a waste of time and effort when every time you use an acronym, you have to explain what it means. The value of the thing is destroyed and it becomes merely a way to demonstrate your superior trendiness than a genuine attempt to communicate. Back in my day, acronyms were only used after they had been explained first. So, if you wanted to refer to the USA, the first time you mentioned it you would write it in full with the acronym in brackets, then subsequent references could use the abbreviation with impunity. It’s a good system and avoids abuse by snobs. So that’s my thinking on the matter. If you really want to communicate and not merely show off, explain the acronym first. Otherwise I, for one, won’t even bother to ask. I’ll just move on to something else. Word count: 246 |
View Portfolio
Visit Notebook
Send Gift Points
Awards
Badges
Send Email
Community Newsfeed
General Discussion
Sponsored Items
Book of Trinkets
Static Items
Books
Groups
Interactive Stories
Audio
Campfire Creatives
Community Notes
Crossword Puzzles
Documents
Folders
Images
In & Outs
Madlibs
Photo Albums
Polls
Product Reviews
Quizzes
Survey Forms
Web Pages
Word Searches
