Well, it’s race almost run. The year which bequeathed stark episodes as frequently as a Costco employee hands out food samples, lays moribund on a ventilator. The annus horribilis taking its final shallow breaths while 2021 patiently waits outside the ICU in readiness to grasp the almanac baton. At some juncture on its watch the new year hopefully granting the global populace some semblance of normality….. Whatever the heck that is.
Personally speaking, I bear not any outlandish aspirations for 2021. Yours truly not seeking the impossible, such as going a day without using the word unprecedented, or unearthing exactly how many kids the old woman who lived in a shoe bore.
My simple wishes those of, at some point in the coming months, quaffing a pint while pub in situ, watch Yorkshire play a T20 fixture at Headingley, a chance to meet up with Slugsworth to ask for the everlasting gobstopper back and, finally, become the best writer in my house…… You should see my fridge Arthur’s blogging site, it bears far more accomplished penmanship than this flimflam.
Footnote – It’ll not surprise you to hear the sentence claiming my fridge Arthur has a blogging site isn’t true….. He’s called Harold.
Oh yeah, and if it’s not too much to ask of 2021, maybe a holiday somewhere hot…… Or even cold. I just want a flipping holiday before the moths completely devour my Speedos…… Apologies to anyone who was eating when I gave you that image of me in moth-eaten Speedos!!
Quite clearly, until the completion of the COVID vaccine, there’s not going to be a big change in global existences. However, like everyone on the dysfunctional planet, hopefully at some juncture in the coming twelve months the restrictions to our liberty introduced in 2020 will’ve significantly diminished.
It may, or may not, interest you to read my hopes and aspirations (in bold below), which I penned in the blog published on the first day of 2020. Written around ten weeks before the UK went into COVID induced lockdown……. Happy New Year Folks!!
“New Year 2020 has dawned. Amongst the objectives I’ve given myself during this next twelve months is the perennial promise of addressing the paucity of my gym visits, exploring options of narrating yours truly’s prose into podcasts. Along with a desire to instigate world peace with an online campaign bearing a work in progress title of ‘Don’t Be A T**t!!’
Some may deem the latter as highly improbable, if not impossible, to achieve. However, trust me, there’s a darned sight more chance of me succeeding with that aspiration than with the gym visit resolution.
Additionally in 2020, I’ve resolved to reduce the number of blogs I pen, and subsequently publish on website writesaidfred.org. This aspiration not borne from the fact I want to reduce the amount of time I spend writing. Moreover to free up time to allow me to revisit and edit a 360+ page literary project originally penned in spring 2010. A weighty tome that’s laid dormant on various memory sticks and ‘clouds’ for over a decade.
Words quilled upon chaste pages, portraying the fictional tale of an emotional support organisation (based on the Samaritans). Prose incorporating an amalgam of the whimsical along with those seeking a comfort during deeply dark life episodes. Among them, anxious callers seeking a friendly voice and liberty from the mental solitary confinement afflicted upon them by capricious emotions.
Through manipulation of the book’s characters, this literary topic gave (and will give) the opportunity to relay a host of emotions and styles. From the mischievous, such as a man ringing to ask if the group could help him locate his missing red socks, to real despair suffered by members of the public unable to purge their demons, with subsequent notions of contemplating the unthinkable…… No, that’s not moving to Hull!!
It’s a piece of work that requires a fairly significant re-write before I’d let Richard & Judy read it. However, I feel there’s enough decent ideas within those 360+ pages to warrant me persevering with the project. I’m confident, given the correct literary attention and creative thought, a significant edit of the tale utilising the penmanship experience acquired in recent years there’s a decent end product in there.
It’s ages since I read any of this work of fiction, so am unable to recall great swathes of my lexilogical outpourings. However, once re-acquainted with the characters, hopefully I can transform the tome into a worthwhile piece of work.
One fictional element I do recollect about the tome is an emotional support team member losing his wife from cancer in her 40’s. Bearing in mind this was written six to nine months prior to my own wife being diagnosed with the same illness there’s a certain poignancy surrounding those related chapters.
At the time of it’s original draft, a scene I was painting bereft of any experience of living with this odious disease. When penning this section, little knowing that within months I’d be experiencing the very same rollercoaster as the fictional character – Caring for a wife in the exact scenario of coping with incurable illness.
Within the chapter of his wife’s funeral, I wrote a poem that the widower commenced orating during his eulogy, but was unable to finish after becoming overcome with emotion. A scene I found so powerful it genuinely brought a lump to my own throat and brought tears to my eyes as I relayed it onto the pages of my laptop.
In the above paragraph, I was going to pen ‘An emotive scene so powerful it brought a lump to the throat of the Word document upon which I transcribed my words’. However, that would’ve been a ridiculous notion…….. After all, Word documents are notoriously black-hearted souls who’d never exhibit their emotions!
Being a far more sensitive soul back in the spring of 2010 than I am now, yours truly actually wept more writing that poem and funeral service than I did delivering the 20 minute eulogy I wrote and delivered for my dad at his funeral in 2017…… Words I published back then in the narrative NON TIMEO SED CAVEO
I did start re-writing this fictional prose, with a working title of BEST (Birtdale Emotional Support Team) earlier last year. However, after revamping the first twelve pages I stopped, returning to channeling my creative time into journaling my daily observation into a blog format.
At some point, I owe it to myself not to waste this work that took scores of hours to create; consequently revamping the tome into literature worthy of a read. Keeping the good stuff and purging the less fit for purpose.
On completion will I, with unashamed hubris, print off the hundreds of pages of overhauled literature to store in folder, wasting paper as I did with the original?…… You bet your ass I will!
