oneword.com

notice – can be a verb or a noun. Parish notices, about tedious things like someone not picking up dog poo, or vital things like the old bloke down the road had died and none of us really knew him and suddenly we are sorry because he must have had stories to tell and now we’ll never hear them.

Posted By joey On 01.03.2011 @ 8:59 am

My immediate response is to think of the route home – but this raises the question of what we mean by home. The house I was brought up in? Where I live now? Routes imply purpose, rather than wandering. I think wandering is more fun, even if you end up back at the beginning.

Posted By joey On 01.02.2011 @ 4:51 am

Our local library is in an old victorian building that was once a school. Books line the cold stone walls, and children huddle in drafty corners. We love it, but the government thinks it should close.

Posted By joey On 01.01.2011 @ 9:26 am

Split – can be something as delicious as bananas, with ice cream and cream and fruit, or something as traumatic as relationships. Have known both. prefer bananas.

Posted By joey On 12.31.2010 @ 7:05 am

easy this – my daughter is expecting identical twins. All i wish for is for all three to be safe and well. forget riches, posh holidays – I just wish for the chaos that will come with healthy twins.

Posted By joey On 12.30.2010 @ 3:18 am

Tarnished – makes me think of old brooches, those found when my grandmother died, once gloriously silver and now a dingy grey, forgotten, unloved. I wondered if i should be proud of them.

Posted By joey On 12.29.2010 @ 5:21 am

My daughter would love this one – she spent a year in Greece and came home full of ancient tales to delight and frighten her nephew. I just wish I could remember them better – so many stories, such a feeble memory!

Posted By joey On 12.27.2010 @ 5:56 am

It’s obvious what we should be doing today – I mean, the sun is actually shining, we’ve all eaten far too much – time to get out, take a tramp through the forest, give your lungs an airing. So what am I doing, sitting at my computer?

Posted By joey On 12.26.2010 @ 3:57 am

Yesterday we had the changing kind – and now the sacrificial one, with its mysteries of blood and gifts and the idea of deity. Not sure I can run with that – though it might be comforting, in a weird way, to think of something with a benevolent finger on the button.

Posted By joey On 12.25.2010 @ 2:40 am

As in ‘make something different’? or ‘alter ego?’ The first connection, for me, is standing on a table while my mother shortened a school skirt, only to let it down, inch my inch, over the next five years. Bloody thing still covered my knees!

Posted By joey On 12.24.2010 @ 7:09 am

My father never threw paperclips away; he collected them in old tobacco tins and when he died we found them, neat piles of tins, all full of rusty paperclips that might have been useful one day but never were.

Posted By joey On 12.23.2010 @ 6:34 am

the pain of it – that moment when you realise all that coughing into his beer and muttering about it’s not you, darling, it’s me, I just need a bit more space and you know then that he’s bonking some floozie and you will spend the evening snivelling.

Posted By joey On 12.22.2010 @ 9:31 am

What a great word for such a cold day. My daughter is sixty miles away, hoping to drive through thick snow. My brother has a farm and is digging out his sheep. My ex-husband (not an ogre, just tedious) is waiting for his new partner to fly over from the US. Optimism Lives!

Posted By joey On 12.21.2010 @ 1:40 am

we clambered over the cannons, perched, like sentries, above the south-coast cliffs. the children screamed, as they do, with general excitement, and the boys made explosive noises. As if the cannons were only playthings.

Posted By joey On 12.20.2010 @ 7:08 am

My parents gave me a typewriter for my twentyfirst birthday. They offered me a music system, but I asked for a typewriter. I’m not sure they every understood why. But it was my trusty companion for years. Even now I recall its heavy clatter with a hint of nostalgia.

Posted By joey On 12.19.2010 @ 6:39 am

I visited my daughter when she lived in south america and she took me to los lindos – where we found a boa constrictor underneath an old log. the guide draped it round her neck – and she asked me to take her photo. She was so pleased with herself, and I was so frightened!

Posted By joey On 12.17.2010 @ 11:20 pm

If I could find just one live stick among the debris in my garden I’d be delighted. As it is, my precious plants are gripped with frost, and everything looks dead and forgotten. even the dog is miserable.

Posted By joey On 12.17.2010 @ 5:40 am

being in the wrong is the prime role when parenting an adolescent. Life becomes easier when you begin to wonder which wrong thing you should do next.

Posted By joey On 12.16.2010 @ 6:10 am

I really need to change my bedding – this lot have been on the bed for about three weeks now, and soon my mother will be coming to stay and she’ll look, in the way that mothers do, and I’ll feel like a slob and she’ll wail cos she’s a terrible mother and that’s no way to start Christmas.

Posted By joey On 12.15.2010 @ 8:53 am

My brother collected stamps when he was a little boy, and so my grandfather left him an old stamp album in his will. I don’t think anyone can have understood its value as, when we came to clear my grandfather’s stuff, the album was missing. The money doesn’t matter, but he loved them.

Posted By joey On 12.14.2010 @ 3:19 am

Goodness, what a great word for today. When I got a letter from an old friend telling my why she hasn’t written for ages, and in the middle of the usual twaddle about work and new sheds she hinted that there are dramas at home but she’s not going to tell me as she and her partner haven’t even talked about it yet!

Posted By joey On 12.13.2010 @ 6:04 am

Each day begins with possibility. Every sunrise is new opportunity. Such a shame that everyday needs get in the way of flying. Still, that waking-up moment, when there is always the possibility of sunshine, is worth waking up for.

Posted By joey On 12.12.2010 @ 6:23 am

Huge, enormous – something beyond thinking about. A sloppy word in some ways, as it describes something to big to think about. A universe – here I stumble, as the adjective becomes universal and therefore what?

Posted By joey On 12.11.2010 @ 6:12 am

I’m a – sung with such jollity by The Monkees, and great to sing along to over the washing up. I can’t recall, now, what they believed, though I suspect it was something to do with love. Interesting that, believing taking precedence over love.

Posted By joey On 12.10.2010 @ 6:38 am

I was amazed that she could even do that with her teeth. it was amazing. i wish I could do that. i wish I could do a lot of things. I wish I could play guitar really well and be a star, but that probably won’t help unless I get some divine intervention… 60 seconds is a long time…

Posted By Joey On 12.08.2010 @ 11:13 pm

Useful. You won’t have to think about it very much to find a use for. Not modern fashion. Solves a problem that appears alot. Like a tent.

Posted By Joey On 12.03.2010 @ 10:56 pm

It was the tallest tree she’d ever seen. At the top, her friend, Catherine, sat in awe at the diminishing ground beneath her. The tree was growing, fast and steady, into the cosmos above. A growing divide engulfed them both with fear. She shouted, but she was travelling well over the speed of sound by the time she could call for help.

Posted By joey On 10.07.2010 @ 6:53 am

The smell of rhododendrons filled my world as I stepped into my grandmother’s den. The bright, worn face smiled down at me. “Can you say rhododendron, Joey?” “Rho… rhododendrunnn.” She smiles.

Posted By Joey On 09.12.2010 @ 8:05 pm

I go upstairs sometimes to be alone in my room and think. I can reach new levels of brain stimulation when I am at an elevated level by myself or with others. Being upstairs is my favorite.

Posted By Joey On 09.12.2010 @ 1:29 am

Prince. Latitude. Jimmi hendrix. Soap. Blanket. Alchohol

Posted By joey On 06.25.2010 @ 4:56 pm