Sometimes you hit a log.
Smartasses will say “ Better than the log hitting you” but it feels similar. In my brief association with “proper journalism” (don’t ask) a brusque but likeable editor growled about my copy “There is a piece in here if we could just get to the hook…” He found it second para down, we moved it.
Please notice – all men!
Can’t find a hook.
Go back to the alphabet (there is a new book on the origins of the letters ) and the first letter is A. A for Andrew. I deeply do not want to write about Prince Andrew, everybody else has, seriously and snippily. Look.
He’s an unpleasant waster, wife similar. Daughters ? Daughters. I am deeply aware of the horrors of child abuse in whatever form, the hurt, the harm but I would rather not discuss it through the prism of Jeffrey Epstein and his dubious suicide.
Andrew is an ageing B for brat, the late Queen’s favourite and a lot of good it did him. Am I the only person more concerned about any harm he may have done when dealing with the no-flies- on-them Chinese in quasi diplomatic mode ? Or is some sexual variant always preferable popular discussion to political insecurity ?
And putting aside affection and respect, leaving an insoluble mess to your offspring is not a kindness. Whoever you are, tidy it up, tie it down. Poor old King, cancer AND Andrew.
B is for book(s), my revenge on scandalously unsatisfactory mess that terrestrial television is.
A respected industry friend said “I believe in the BBC” to which I retorted “I’d like to.” “ It’s our BBC” they sloganize ? I wish. In my favourite TV column endless sensible complaints about the music overlaying everything. Who listens ? Not a soul. We’re sick of repeats, yes we know it’s about money – what isn’t ? Not helped by enormous expense in paying legal fees to settle very public messes – only incurred on this management watch. Je reste ma valise, a phrase which was the finest moment of the non-French speaking husband of a Francophone friend..
C is for the corporate model which means everything is about money
– not service, not human kindness.- eroded in its turn by everything having to fit in with the plan. Not P is for personal just the plan. So when you do hit C is for consideration, you almost don’t believe it.
D is for darling which I am begin to understand is a word associated less with the theatre of my youth and more with age itself. My mother used it to me, it was a family endearment. (I suppose D is for dated – fine.)
We are not going to get through all 26 letters including X for mystery in one go so let me forward to R for readers and responders. After the very considerable technological mess I have been through, nothing could have been more generous than the Response of
F for friends. Without them, including one man who doesn’t know me from a hole in the ground, the lid of the Raeburn head would have exploded.
And then there was Y for YOU. People who read and responded, keeping one of my sorely tried feet on the ground. I can still make sentences, they haven’t all gone off to watch Traitors or Strictly.
They do have minds and thoughts and sensibilities and – they know what they like when they read it. T is Thank you – big thank you. Also old fashioned, don’t care, valuable phrase. One of the tall young Asian men cultivated by the friendly neighbourhood pharmacist recognizes me, thawed by assiduous politeness on both sides, and yesterday made a joke. Feet under the table, bless you. Welcome.
F is for flight of ideas
Heavily medicalized description – mine is more benign
(look it up) which is a wonderful image. Most of what I do is that or starts there. Only sometimes the ideas hide. What you write is wooden. It doesn’t cook. There isn’t a link, only the writer has to see the link though it’s wish fulfilment when other readers get it.
I used to think that I would never amount to a hill of beans because I hadn’t suffered enough. I thought I was finished at 19, I hadn’t as my pa pointed out, even started. Did I have a way to go – not a clue beyond doing my best and reading a lot. Hooray for logs.
Annalog 