A Comfy Kind Of Restless

Hi 😀

From Textfixer

There was an explosion of sorts:

A slippery ooze coated the floor

As the machine began to empty

In a suddy uprising.

Harold kept humming that annoying song

As he got to grips with the guidebook

(Our contractual handyman privileges: expired)

And I, the eternal cynic, criticised all his efforts,

Poked at his ego with my tongue,

Goading him until he grabbed me;

Dunked me in the soapy sludge

And made me furious.

You’ll notice that I was good and kept the subject matter clean 😉

I also kept Jon Bon Jovi out of the poem. 

Do I get a medal?!

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Copyright © 2017  Montaffera All Rights Reserved

Please do not use any of my content (posts, pictures, poetry etc) without my permission, but feel free to link back to my blog if something catches your eye. Thank you!

Hey 🙂 

Ok, what the actual?!  I know it’s a Jimpix selection but…???

I Googled ‘Nottaway’ and found it to be a rock band who list their influences as Metallica, Korn and Seether (among others) which all appeals to me.  I listened to a couple of Nottaway’s tracks on YouTube, and they are not bad. 

The band formed in Louisiana, and their name is only one letter different to the plantation resort, which was frustrating at first!

‘Cronz’ didn’t throw much back, so I just decided it would be a surname.

‘Ultracrepidarian’ was a new one on me!! I thought it would mean ‘very broken or old’ but it doesn’t…which made it a bit tricky to incorporate!!

Nottaway  Chelsea  Northern  Berlin  Wrestler Cronz  Mouse  Ultradecrepidarian  Special

“Nottaway” he replied;

“A rock band from Louisiana,

Not to be confused with the plantation

In those parts.”

I was half asleep and

Half way to Chelsea;

Hoping for the northern chill

To be shaken from my bones.

The other guy had been in Berlin –

Flown into Edinburgh

Just the night before:

“…and there was this wrestler guy,

Cronz or something,

Built like a Rhino

But spoke with this squeak

Like some tiny mouse.”

A laugh, more derogatory guff,

Like he was competing to appear

In a “ultracrepidarian special”

On some failing network’s list.

I expelled him and other voices,

Turned up the white noise,

And slept like a child.

😉

Not the most exciting poem ever, but it tells a wee story and paints a little scene. 

I was trying to get my phone to show its white noise button for the page pic, but it refused; so I found this one online instead.  I love that you can manipulate the sliders!!  I put the green ones up and felt like I was in a car travelling through the rain…

What noises put you to sleep?

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Copyright © 2017  Montaffera All Rights Reserved

Please do not use any of my content (posts, pictures, poetry etc) without my permission, but feel free to link back to my blog if something catches your eye. Thank you!

Hello there 🙂

From RandomWordGenerator

Burial  Meadow  Fence  Endorse  Addicted  Scale  Current  Act  Partnership

After the burial,

She thought about that meadow

With the bluebells,

Where they’d crawled through the fence

To escape the rows.

When the DVLA

Had been forced to endorse more points

He’d lost his job,

Became addicted to stuff –

The scale of which pushed her and mum away.

He’d been sad when he’d heard,

Staggered out of the hovel

To his current residence on her couch.

Every act of cowardice a guilty load,

No partnership that marriage, more a crutch.

So there they were, at last,

Daughter and Father – united in grief.

So many possessions and words

Weighing heavy between coffee cups and sighs;

No clear egress from their pain.

I have been watching a lot of Hoarders episodes on YouTube recently (hence the poem).  It started on our Skye holiday, when I happened to flick on the CBS Reality channel and Eldest got interested in how anyone could live in a home that messy.  It grew from there into a message for me and the menfolk that we really need to sort through our house and get rid of some junk so we can access the things we love more easily 😉

I have decided to make a major decluttering of the house our mission for the last few months of my thirties.  The kids and I made good progress today, because we sorted through a box of random school and miscellaneous papers, as well as a rather large pile of artwork.  I hate chucking out the kids’ masterpieces, but they are rather good at it!  We started with a large, empty, Ikea recycling bin; and had filled it by the end of our efforts – the kids even enjoyed helping…we spent well over an hour sifting and junking!

I had been wondering about whether I should just keep everything that had come home with Eldest from P2, but he was very good and threw out about a third of it, while also telling me what he’d liked about the lessons he’d kept things from.

Later in the day, I presented him with his P1 folder and (although he was a little reluctant to do the work at first) he again whittled the pile down quite a bit.  Soooo much easier on my conscience when the kids willingly part with stuff!

I spent the rest of the day wandering about, attacking little junk piles in the kitchen, vacuuming, and clearing off the mess from the TV sideboard.  There is still a lot to do, but we’ll get there if we keep pulling together as a team.  Tomorrow Hubby has pledged to tackle the garage a bit, and maybe do a run to the local dump 😉

I also made good ‘head’way with a crochet project a friend has commissioned me to make for her.  Busy busy! 

Not a bad lot for a mostly rainy day…

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Copyright © 2017  Montaffera All Rights Reserved

Please do not use any of my content (posts, pictures, poetry etc) without my permission, but feel free to link back to my blog if something catches your eye. Thank you!

Hiya 🙂

Train  Cast  History  Meat  Yummy  Lush  Pin  Versed  False

I stood on that platform

Free but burdened,

Thought about things

Once forbidden;

And I wasn’t as nervous

As you’d probably think

I should have been.

I boarded the train,

Cast a look about me

Aware that I was

Making history here –

But not really present.

I could smell meat,

Someone’s yummy lunch in a bag;

Prompting me to wonder

What I’d have for mine.

Some lush was starting early:

Drinking on a weekday

From a tall McDonald’s cup.

This was so different

From when I’d pulled the pin

And watched the fallout;

Because, this far down the track,

I kind of realised

That no matter how well-versed our greeting

All interaction would be false.

As, later, we sat on wobbly chairs –

Sucking rubbish hot beverages

Through thin plastic lids –

I wondered why I kept smiling;

Why I let her talk to him like that,

Why I hugged them…?

Why I’d needed

                            this

                                      at all?

My subconscious is back, making me examine things I didn’t think I wanted to today.

I remember that Pink’s Great Escape came on my Spotify playlist shuffle as the train doors shut behind me, too.  I could attribute that to many people I miss, cosmic synchronicity or some other grand force – suffice it to say that it made me smile. 

I have always had that small assured voice in my head, and a feisty part in my heart that has saved me so far. 

She gets really bored with the amount of times I cry, eventually boots me up the a**e, and takes over for a while.

She gets me a haircut and colour, pens my poetry without me, demands a dancefloor, and also tampers with my playlist quite a lot 😉

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Copyright © 2017  Montaffera All Rights Reserved

Please do not use any of my content (posts, pictures, poetry etc) without my permission, but feel free to link back to my blog if something catches your eye. Thank you!

Hello 🙂

Galloping  Adopter  Hooligan  Hotly  Elimination  Bead  Hometown  Ballistic  Generation

Giddy, galloping,

Advice adopter.

Heartwrenching hooligan’s

(Hotly hyped)

Excruciating elimination.

Bead bracelets,

Happy hometown;

Bath bomb ballistic –

Gesticular generation.

This poem just floated into my head when I saw the words.  I have a penchant for alliteration - which you have probably figured out by now, if you've read much of this blog ;)  

['Penchant' is a lovely word.  My pen does chant about a lot of favourite things, often in a rhythmic and soothing way... :-D ]

The poem reads, to me, like a character sketch of a young woman; in note form.  Maybe my subconscious has a crafty plan for a longer work I’m not aware of?!

How devious for it to tease me in this way 😉

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Copyright © 2017  Montaffera All Rights Reserved

Please do not use any of my content (posts, pictures, poetry etc) without my permission, but feel free to link back to my blog if something catches your eye. Thank you!

Hi 🙂

It’s another Jimpix day…

I wouldn’t have written ‘freethrow’ and ‘datatype’ as compound words, but then this generator has always been a law unto itself, hasn’t it?!

My definition of ‘clapper’ here is the little part inside a bell, but I am not entirely sure what the rest of the poem means 😉

Pitcher  Least  Clapper  Draw  Freethrow  King  Pebbles  Felix  Datatype

He put down the pitcher,

Stared at me incredulously

Thirst forgotten.

At least I had his attention.

Somewhere a clapper vibrated

And the clang of his realisation

Reverberated through me.

I did not look away.

I sometimes wish

I could draw his expressions;

Have a freethrow at artistic licence –

Scribble in a smile.

He likes to think himself

King of all he surveys –

We sink like pebbles

Through the vastness of his scope.

But now Felix is frowning.

I’ve flabbergasted him;

And he does not comprehend

My datatype, at all.

What has the speaker (I think ‘she’ but could be either gender) done?  What relationship does the speaker have with Felix?  What age is Felix?  How does the situation resolve itself?

Discuss 😉

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Copyright © 2017  Montaffera All Rights Reserved

Please do not use any of my content (posts, pictures, poetry etc) without my permission, but feel free to link back to my blog if something catches your eye. Thank you!

How do?

Carrying on the food theme from yesterday, I wrote about a lady who appears a little obsessed with the subject…

Overeat  Abolish  Particular  Notebook  Lake  Observation  Prefer  Rain  Instal

She hated to overeat –

Thought we should abolish

All particular references

To ‘seconds’.

She kept a notebook,

Filled it with calorific details

‘Til her eyes swam

In a lake of regret.

Her diet observation

Hurt me to watch;

I’d prefer to rain

On the parade of perfection:

Instal a little ice cream in the regimen.

Have you ever been on a strict diet?  How long did you last?

As I have probably mentioned before (!) I lost three stone between July 2015 and March 2016 through using the My Fitness Pal app…but I definitely ate chocolate every day!  I was just sensible, made better choices than I had before, and gave myself a manageable goal (1,800 calories a day before exercise, to begin with.  I also aimed to lose 28lbs by Christmas).

I took up the Lifepoints Diet around the time I gave up smoking (at 28), and kept track of my daily progress using paper and pencil –  that was excruciating!  I stuck to it, but it made me (even more) neurotic, and I did not have much fun following it!

Give me an app that reads barcodes and remembers what your go-to foods are, any day!

I have been feeling the cold a lot more these last two winters. Sometimes being thin is not all it’s cracked up to be, you know 😉

Before

After

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Copyright © 2017  Montaffera All Rights Reserved

Please do not use any of my content (posts, pictures, poetry etc) without my permission, but feel free to link back to my blog if something catches your eye. Thank you!

Hi!

Yesterday, Hubby and I went out together while my mum took care of our lil tearaways at her house 🙂

We had a nice relaxed late breakfast/lunch at an American-style diner we like, then went and did most of the M&S school-clothes shop while we had the time (and patience)!  We met one of my friends by chance in a café after that, and had a blether before heading back to the car to drop off our shopping bags.  It had turned into a nice afternoon, so Hubby and I had a wander around the park I used to go to as a child, then headed up to my old university to really play the nostalgia card. 

From Randomlists

Unfortunately, this is when my food choices at the diner caught up with me, and I belatedly remembered that chasing two fried eggs with a dessert that includes cream and ice cream is not very clever when you have my stomach…!

Consequently, I went 24 hours without food, and only ate a tentative brunch about midday today.  I still felt really ropey, as if I had copious amounts of alcohol last night. 

This being my train of thought, the speaker in my poem has a hangover…and is still valiantly mothering through it 😉

Corn  Rule  Puncture  Nerve  Grip  Chunky  Arrest  Ruin  Smoke

I looked at my cereal –

All that corn goodness

(As a rule,

It* usually can puncture

Any diet plan)

But my nerve this morning

Was not there.

In the grip of a wave

Of threatening, chunky yuck;

I decided to arrest the plan

To fill my tum.

Instead, I watched my son

Deftly fold his pyjamas,

Beat me at board games,

And squish me with hugs.

Why let a few bad choices

Ruin time with my baby?

I’ll do better tomorrow –

And wash off this smoke…

* I changed ‘flakes’ to ‘cereal’, but forgot to change ‘they’ to ‘it’ in my notebook!

 ->slaps forehead<-

Hubby is continuing to teach the boys to swim, and has taken them out separately today.  What the kid in the poem was doing mirrors Youngest’s antics with me this morning. 

He was really sweet and kept stroking my head and playing with my ears in concern.  He still didn’t let me win any games, however 😉

Both kids helped me put away their dry washing; luckily they seem to find doing small piles of folding quite therapeutic!  We iron as the need arises around here, I live with three ‘drawer foragers’ so would need to press their stuff all over again anyway, after they’d flung it about looking for something.  Life’s just too short for that nonsense!!

Now I’ve had dinner, the headache that decided to join my dodgy tum is finally subsiding, so I’m feeling much more like myself again.  I will try and remember that I am not invincible, in the future!

The carrot cake was very yummy, all the same…

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Copyright © 2017  Montaffera All Rights Reserved

Please do not use any of my content (posts, pictures, poetry etc) without my permission, but feel free to link back to my blog if something catches your eye. Thank you!

Hello 🙂

An astronaut

Fixed his collar

And promised his young son

Salt from his planetary adventures.

The boy

Pressed his toy grasshopper

Into his father’s hand

And said he hoped there was no crash.

These days

That alien salt

Sits in an airtight jar,

Twinkling its crystals on the mantelpiece.

The astronaut

Brought back many molecular mysteries

But did not fail

His starstruck son.

Dear reader,

You can decide whether this poem had a happy or sad ending. 

When I googled ‘molecular mysteries’ this (and this) article came near the top.  Did the astronaut’s time in space present him with more than he bargained for…?

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Copyright © 2017  Montaffera All Rights Reserved

Please do not use any of my content (posts, pictures, poetry etc) without my permission, but feel free to link back to my blog if something catches your eye. Thank you!

Hey there 🙂

Well!

I felt like this Jimpix selection took a little more ‘cobbling’ than usual to give me a poem!!  Maybe I should just present you with what I came up with and see what you make of it, before I colour your view by telling you how I did it…?

Evaporate  Blaze  Erosion  Galloway  Competing  Menorah  Cheshire  Draconian  Beel

As I felt the will to create

Evaporate,

I took a packed train

To blaze a trail

Through the erosion of my wits.

I stuck with Galloway:

Kept breathing through the voices

Competing for dominance

In every carriage –

Channelled the menorah within:

My attention branching,

All wicks getting low…

But the golden buds were forming

Even as I read.

I’ll shine

From the highest point in Cheshire

After traversing rough terrain

In Draconian weather.

I will then face the heat,

Stir up some beel –

From still waters

Cultivate a crop worth harvesting.

So…thoughts?!

Well, here are mine:

One of my favourite authors is Janice Galloway, so when I saw her surname come up, I knew she had to feature somewhere!  Her best-known novel (see picture) is also one that I focussed on in my university dissertation, so I refer to that in the poem, too 😉

The origins of ‘menorah’ are described in a Wikipedia entry, and it goes into detail about how Moses was instructed to fashion the first one; so I borrowed some of that imagery.

Moses was told about this lamp construction while on a mountain.  The highest peak in Cheshire is called Shining Tor, which went well with the light theme 😉

The above link says there is ‘mixed terrain’ on the mountain walk, so I modified this and threw in some bad weather to use ‘draconian’…

I read about where a ‘beel’ could be found, thought about the climate and how it could fit into my theme, then made use of the information I had gleaned about rice-growing in Bangladesh.

Hopefully, all these images meld together ok, to leave you with a poem about: feeling creatively drained by my situation; travelling to Cheshire (the ‘train’ representing both my thoughts and the actual mode of transportation); finding inspiration in Galloway’s words and feeling that sprout into other creative thoughts; then wrestling with my depressive tendencies and writers’ block etc, to finally come out on top, face new challenges, and present the world with fresh work and renewed faith in my writing… 😛

Phew! 

Three days to go until the next Jimpix workout 😉

P.S – am I the only one who has ‘Walking in Memphis’ (Cher’s version) stuck in her head since reading ‘beel’?!

P.P.S – I love that the link for ‘draconian’ also has an option to explore other words that had their first known use in the same year! (‘Buckshot’ and ‘Clotheshorse’ are two, if you’re interested)

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Copyright © 2017  Montaffera All Rights Reserved

Please do not use any of my content (posts, pictures, poetry etc) without my permission, but feel free to link back to my blog if something catches your eye. Thank you!