oneword.com

jelly. my brain has been reduced to a jelly matter. i want to put it in a mold. have it form again. this is not even a possibility. i can form my thoughts and understand them, but a simple mindless groan is all anyone else understands from my mouth.

Posted By joey On 01.31.2011 @ 3:31 pm

Print – too many images of standing over my printer as it takes an adolescent decision regarding whether it will produce anything recognisable today. essential, of course, in this computer age. but should come with a health warning!

Posted By joey On 01.31.2011 @ 3:07 am

Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look – when we did Julius Caesar at school (a strange play to teach, concerned with overthrowing the government . . ) I played Cassius. Probably because I was skinny, as I couldn’t act!

Posted By joey On 01.30.2011 @ 5:07 am

dropped – I dropped the baby in the bath the other day, which shouldn’t be funny but it was because she was unhurt (though she looked a bit surprised) and somehow it’s still funny in the telling

Posted By joey On 01.29.2011 @ 5:43 am

I used to write reports – long, complicated efforts, about the impact of abuse on children. Not any more. Working in child protection for 30 years is long enough. Now I write about happier things – though the children have found a voice in a short story or two.

Posted By joey On 01.28.2011 @ 3:56 am

Relatives – the word made me feel all heavy. While if you had said ‘brother’ I’d have grinned, launched into childhood memories. But relatives sound like old aunts, people one owes a duty to, that have shrivelled beyond the point of loving them.

Posted By joey On 01.27.2011 @ 6:34 am

I lived in a basement flat once, with a Nigerian woman who was finishing her PhD. She had such an infectious giggle – and was so proud the day she graduated. Oxford surprised with all her friends and relatives in traditional clothes, and me – in careful skirt and jacket!

Posted By joey On 01.26.2011 @ 8:58 am

Rockets make me think of firework night – as a child we always had fireworks in the back garden, lit by my father, with children at a safe distance and my mother in the warmth of the kitchen preparing sausages and jacket potatoes. They were aways the best bit!

Posted By joey On 01.25.2011 @ 8:52 am

I wish – the word conjures up the trivia of family life which, collectively, succeeds on feeling like a Problem. If each incident is taken separately (one daughter with baby and broken arm, another about to have twins) I can cope. But collectively – it needs solving!

Posted By joey On 01.24.2011 @ 7:16 am

Not a great word for today, when the air is damp, my neighbour’s drains are blocked and there are watermen tramping all over the garden! Oh to sit by a fire and read! Rather than endure the chill outside.

Posted By joey On 01.23.2011 @ 5:53 am

I reached across to sip my tea as this word appeared, already sidetracked from the need to concentrate on it! Not quite as bad as serious prevaricating (sorting the washing when i have an important report to write) but still an unavoidable part of trying to work!

Posted By joey On 01.22.2011 @ 5:20 am

A difficult one, this, to write about ‘endless’ in the confines of one minute. It feels like a contradiction in terms. Infinity reduced to sixty seconds. Which ought to spawn a poem, but that will take longer to think about.

Posted By joey On 01.21.2011 @ 5:06 am

i don’t mind spiders, unlike my English teacher. it was years ago – and a large spider strolled across the classroom floor. A gaggle of schoolgirls, plus their teacher, stood on their chairs. I picked it up and put it out of the window. One of the few occasions I made a difference!

Posted By joey On 01.20.2011 @ 5:13 am

My daughter is good with recipes. She reads them regularly, looks for inspiration, feeds her family exciting meals. I envy her – and have no idea where here interest came from. My pasta is boiling as I write; add a tomato or two and there is lunch!

Posted By joey On 01.19.2011 @ 5:22 am

How I hated sports at school. Standing in the cold, wearing stupid shorts (‘divided skirts’ they were called, as if that made us more ladylike!), waiting to see if I’d be picked for the team, knowing I wouldn’t, hating standing like a cow on show.

Posted By joey On 01.18.2011 @ 6:10 am

Down the drain – where most of my writing goes. But I’ve come to believe that, if I can scrawl enough words in the course of a week, a few of them might make sense. And the rest – they are part of the process of being human, and that’s fine too!

Posted By joey On 01.17.2011 @ 8:19 am

I suppose one could argue that needing to write is a whim – if asked to justify it i can think of nothing more meaningful than ‘because I want to.’ But that’s a good enough reason for me. So it will have to be good enough for them.

Posted By joey On 01.15.2011 @ 5:01 am

Oh how I wish it were summer! All those long hot days, lying in the garden with nothing but the buzzing of bees. Evenings that stretch forever. instead – reality is hammering on my window; rain, more rain. Bloody January!

Posted By joey On 01.14.2011 @ 6:49 am

Another multi-layered word. With connotations of early mornings, the drift of sun across the horizon, that lazy stretching that comes with open eyes. At the other end of the spectrum, it is a celebration of death. Quite a contradiction.

Posted By joey On 01.13.2011 @ 5:18 am

Around the ragged rocks the ragged rascal ran – a ridiculous tongue twister we were expected to perfect during elocution classes at school – so long ago now, and even thinking of it dates me. Don’t care – that’s how it is.

Posted By joey On 01.11.2011 @ 4:48 am

Support – can vary from stockings (the unsexy kind, that hold your legs in after an operation, and need industrial help to take off) to the mesh, sexy ones, and even the lines my mother drew on the back of her legs during the war!

Posted By joey On 01.10.2011 @ 7:39 am

How I tried – to be respectable! I had the nice house and nice marriage and nice children and I was oh so bored! Managed to extricate myself without anyone being completely destroyed by it, but it was still not idea -now i live how i need to.

Posted By joey On 01.09.2011 @ 8:41 am

I’m far too knackered to worry about being respectable right now – though what my excuse is most of the time I’ve no idea. It seems such a waste of energy, worrying about what other people think. Now, where’s the wine

Posted By joey On 01.08.2011 @ 12:41 pm

What might we discover if we just allow the words to flow – snippets of unconscious flotsam and suddenly the discomfort of a memory, a childhood misery, and we drift into the egocentricity of recall.

Posted By joey On 01.07.2011 @ 6:48 am

The art of fiction – a great book, by David Lodge I think, though – in the urgency of writing this I have a sudden flurry of forgetfulness, maybe it was someone else. interesting that I suddenly want to arm myself with a fact when prompted to write fiction.

Posted By joey On 01.06.2011 @ 8:51 am

a Phrase is like a phrase of time in between something that you can remember very well

Posted By joey On 01.05.2011 @ 9:48 am

Phrase – goodness, that’s a hard one. Takes me back to English lessons, the tyranny of grammar, or so I thought at the time. Though now I am a grammar pedant so I must have learned something. miss edmunds would be pleased!

Posted By joey On 01.05.2011 @ 9:06 am

Success is like winning the lottery and if you win the lottery then you just got a lot of money witch is success.

Posted By joey On 01.04.2011 @ 9:51 am

We wish – but then stumble over definitions. Who defines success, what does it look like, how will we recognise it? And, if we confine success to our writing dreams, what of the rest of our lives – the dreams of our daughters?

Posted By joey On 01.04.2011 @ 9:43 am

I have noticed that the older you get the more mature you get and if you dont become more mature maybe it is that you are one of the younger ones in your grade.

Posted By joey On 01.03.2011 @ 10:07 am