Never say I can’t
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Author and Artist
February 21, 2016
January 27, 2016
Here’s a game I play when completely bored – usually when I’m in the waiting room at the doctors or dentists – I write a sentence, translate it with an online translator, then another with a different language and so on, until I’ve circumnavigated the globe and arrived back in good old English …
This :
The result is never the same as the original, and frequently isn’t even similar to the original sentence.
became :
The residue is nowhere indefinable as the first, and often carries no level resemblance to the primary imprisonment.
Digital translation shouldn’t be relied on, especially translating from English into another language, because English is notorious for having many words meaning the same thing or the same word having several different meanings.
What do we mean when we say mean?
Do we mean average, spiteful or signify?
Shabby perhaps, skilful or poor?
August 4, 2015
July 24, 2015
June 28, 2015
My memory was wiped away by my first stroke at the age of thirty, but over the years, little snippets have emerged from dormant and damaged braincells. I still cannot remember my schooldays or the friends from my youth, but word-by-word, line-by-line I have reconstructed the poem I learned in my teens, or at least, the first half a dozen verses.
Four years ago, I started to write poetry. I have a favourite, but I couldn’t recite it, or any other of my work as they seem to pay but a fleeting visit in my mind, yet that poem, The Highway Man by Alfred Noyes is here to stay. Even two more strokes haven’t taken it away!
This poem is called Russet Leaves and is one in my Poetry Compilation available from Amazon.
When that old chestnut shed russet leaves
And the sycamore golden brown,
Though autumn chilled my reddened cheek
And cold my fingers numbed,
I took my Granddad’s homemade rake
And set about the chore.
Granddad watched from a rocking chair
And when the job was done,
He said, “Let’s not burn them yet a while,
For the critters will make a home.”
When that old chestnut shed russet leaves
And the sycamore golden brown
With tears of mourning on his cheek
To his grief succumbed.
My father bought a stiff wire rake.
And set about the chore.
No one watched from the rocking chair
But when the job was done
I said, “Don’t bag them up yet a while,
For the critters will need a home.”
When that old chestnut shed russet leaves
And the sycamore golden brown
From the havoc beetles reek
They to death succumbed.
The bark began to peel and flake
Tree fellers had the chore.
Alone I watched from rocking chair
And when the trees were gone
I left the leaves to lie a while
For the critters to use as home.
April 21, 2015
Without ceremony, without ado, I slipped my latest novel onto Amazon as an e-book for Kindle this morning.
The Flower Angel is a disturbing read and centres around a girl named Angela, whose heroin-addicted mother sold her into child prostitution.
A childhood pregnancy results in Angela or Angel being placed in foster-care. Despite medical records showing she underwent an abortion, Angel is convinced her baby survives. Encouraged by her social-worker, Angel returns to her mother’s flower shop. Police become interested by an increasing incidence of suicides among men accused of child sex crimes, especially when flowers appear at their funerals.
March 17, 2015
January 27, 2015
My wife is trying to buy something from a UK bookseller Website: She’s having trouble and can’t find a place to leave comments or even a help page, but there is a search facility so she types: “How can I contact you” … the reply: a book entitled: “Learn to use a ouija board.”