Walking The Dog

What a difference a day makes - 24 little hours. Friday was a day of Spring. Yesterday wasn't. Today isn't great either. All of which illustrates how rubbish I am with numbers - Friday plus yesterday plus today being a little more than 24 little hours.  While I try to calculate how many hours it actually was, here's a picture of a daffodil. In the sun. On Friday afternoon. 55 little hours ago. Just the day before - approximately 32 (!) hours earlier - the frost had been so danged heavy on those daffodil heads; it looked like they were praying. Friday's springing of Spring heralded the day to test the new trickle charger. The positive crocodile clip had fallen off the old one and the expression on the face of the motor-spares salesman when I suggested I could attach a new one - before he pointed out the lack of protective sleeves to keep fingers off the metal of the clips and the total lack of a safety fuse to prevent accidental electrocu...

Why is it always so much easier to motivate others than yourself? Other than struggling to find the right words to encourage piano practice and homework and bedroom tidying and putting your plates in the dishwasher, I can usually find the right words to motivate others. But although I know what I should be doing,  and know what I want to be doing and why, I find it almost impossible to get down to the elusive it that I need to be doing. The self-directed motivational words blur and disappear. Perhaps because I don't believe them. I stray into a life of procrasti-tidying, procrasti-gardening, procrasti-ironing and procrasti-writing. Today was a fine example - Procrasti-gardening = ball topiary, admiring a wall and pruning climbing roses My 'balls' - 'very satisfying even if part of me is thinking tennis balls, yellow shorts and goggles: minion topiary ... ? I'm not sure if Bertie Baggins agrees with the minion idea The minions/balls sit a...

No one can tell me, Nobody knows, Where the wind comes from, Where the wind goes. AA Milne The last line of the full poem is, 'Where the wind comes from Nobody knows.' Clever chap that Nobody. AA Milne was pondering, in a Pooh-stuffed-full-of-honey sort of a ponder, on the peculiar nature of the weather type of wind; that it has strength and direction, comes from over there and goes to the opposite over there, and varies from day to day. All very puzzling to Pooh, a self-confessed bear of little brain, particularly one who asked, "Did you ever stop to think and forget to start again?" Which is a trait I share with Pooh. Practised on a daily basis. Weather wind can be cold or hot or anything in between. Temperature can also be applied to figurative wind. Politicians stir up a lot of hot wind; very hot wind - sometimes, and this seems to be a problem particularly experienced by loud blond politicians and those that are also property developers, it does str...