Blog Reunited

The remnants of a cleared community on Mull



This is the first post on my blog for many months. There are many reasons for my neglect but the main ones are:

1. Nuisance Comments and Spam

I know many people read my blog because they tell me they do, but being shy types they never leave comments. The blog has never attracted many comments so when I do get one posted I am delighted and normally publish it. In the past few months I have been deeved with comments, some blatant spams but others seem genuine. A few months ago I was naive enough to publish what looked like a genuine comment from an anonymous poster and caught a rather nasty virus. I now refuse to post any comments from Anonymous.

Why do people do this? What benefit does it give them? It is sick and evil. I raged at the time and inadvertently took it out on my blog.


2. A Novel to finish

After my return from The Gambia I shut myself in my own personal writing cave and edited my novel The Incomers to the final draft. I passed it out to my early readers and went to Mull to sleep and try to forget it. On my return, after receiving some feedback, I edited again. It is now time to face the horrible task of sending The Incomers into the world, to agents and publishers and anyone who is prepared to look at it. I know rejections are inevitable, I will just have to keep positive until someone, somewhere, likes my story enough to take it on.

Balsalt Columns with snow moving in behind from Ben More - Ulva, Mull



3. Start new Writing Project

One aim of the Mull trip was to put me in the mood to start another writing project. Last November I took part in Write a Novel in the Month of November. I wrote roughly thirty thousand words of a young adult story called The Mongrel. The idea came from a dream I had a few years back and like Robert Louis Stevenson I reckoned it was too good to waste. I picked up the reins of the plot a couple of weeks ago but things are on a slow trickle, the pace must pick up if I want to have a first draft finished by the end of August.

4. The Garden

It's gardening time again and with variable temperatures that confuses the plants plus six new vegetable beds to tend, I spend more time in the garden than ever before.

5. Dentist visits

Note the new profile photo with creamy crown to the fore.

I broke my front tooth at the age of six and ended up with a fang that would not look out of place in a Twilight movie. My smile closed and I suffered this indignity until the dentist agreed to crown the tooth when I turned sixteen. That first crown, although NHS, was a pretty good match and I learned to open my smile again. But these things never last and I have had to bear the treatment of three subsequent crowns, some better than others. The last one, carried out six years ago, was the worst yet. It was cream coloured and solid block. But by this stage I couldn't turn my smile off and each time I was handed a photo of me beaming at the camera the only thing I saw was a great big horrible cream crown sparkling in my mouth.

Now, I am at the age where things are beginning to rust in and around my body. The elasticity in my skin has gone like weak knicker elastic, my visits to the hairdresser are more frequent and last longer and additional hair is appearing in unwanted places. The one thing that hasn’t changed is my smile. My teeth are still strong and relatively white despite being coated on a regular basis with coffee and red wine. I decided to splash out and get a new crown, a proper crown, one that I would pay lots of money for.

My dentist agreed and after my first visit she sent me to the lab (many miles away) for a tooth colour match. Imagine my horror when, at the final fit, just before she sealed the deal, my dentist sighed and showed me the mirror. The new tooth was a worse match than creamy crown.

I returned to the lab today to be greeted by a very contrite technician. She called in her colleague for a second opinion and asked me to return (the many miles) next Monday to ensure they don’t make the same mistake again. I hope to have a new profile photo soon that I can look at without seeing a creamy crown - I just pray I don’t spot something I have missed all these year.