Wind and Wuthering*

A sideways look at age, Colin McQueen - writer, Getting Older, Humour 2 Minutes
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Having recently scheduled some pre-prepared nonsense and taken a week off from writing, I am finding it very hard to get going again.  I have tried using both hands, a variety of pens and a dozen different pads, but inspiration, as yet, has refused to put its weasel face above the parapet.  Not that I blame it of course, look what I do to it when it does.  My day has become locked into the kind of aimless listlessness that has me wandering from three chords on the guitar to three on the ukulele – not the same three chords, even I am not that listless (it has just occurred to me that when I am not listless, I must be list, and I have no idea what I should do about it) – a half-hearted scan through The Times Crossword, and a change of socks (due to the overwhelming conviction that the previous ones were, for reasons best known to themselves, holding me back).

Having not eaten meat for almost four decades I cannot fall back on chicken soup as a remedy so, in the hope that ceps are not sentient, I resort to mushroom which looks a little similar, but does not contain livestock, and a mug of camomile tea, the look and smell of which always brings hot Baby-Bio to mind.  I drink it because, in my mind, it earns me a whisky.  It also earns me, because I am driven to a period of cupboard scouring, a rogue Walnut Whip that was orphaned at least two Christmases ago.  It probably had a Best Before date, but if I don’t read it, I figure I don’t have to abide by it.  It is an immutable law of nature that if you do not read the Use by date, it cannot make you ill.

On days such as these I graze like a Dugong.  Like a pigmy shrew, I feel light-headed if my jaw stops chewing for even a second.  Bowls of fruit and boxes of chocolate are ravaged like fields of wheat in the path of a locust swarm.  I fear that if the food runs out I will almost certainly eat the curtains.  I would like to blame lack of sleep, an impoverished upbringing, sun-spots, lay-lines or, preferably, somebody else completely, but the problems are all my own.  I constantly boomerang between periods of extreme productivity and the kind of lassitude for which a sloth would seek therapy.  I ride the beast of abundance until I can hold on no longer and then I spend a wholly inappropriate period of time down amongst the feckless catching my breath and counting my toes.

Unfortunately for me, when the compulsion to write does return, it almost always does so unencumbered by any knowledge of ‘what about?’  It sweeps over me like a wave, plonking me on my poor, benighted swivel chair and whispers in my ear, ‘Well, I’ve done my bit…’  So, I stare at the paper for a while, I employ each of my favourite pens, I write right-handed and I write left handed (I’m not sure if it’s the curse of the ambidextrous that I never know which is which) I listen to something old and familiar and generally, sooner or later, things fall into place.

Although sometimes, of course, they don’t…

*By Genesis and on the player as I type…

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19 thoughts on “Wind and Wuthering*”

  2. Not the Genesis of an idea? Nothing struck a chord, nothing resonating yet? Some days the fields stay fallow, all you can do is scour the memory banks, and the back of the cupboards for more stray choccies. Kick back with a 2020 Kit Kat and wait for the inspiration to kick in.

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    1. Oddly, such insperation as I have usually arrives when I start reading through draft #1 and falls into place around draft #3 – but at least they all occur on the same day.

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  4. Ah well I can outdo your walnut whip…I have a chocolate Easter bunny with a best by date of 11/08. I never could bring myself to eat a bunny even as a child. There was a time when walnut whips were a real treat. Last time I encountered one was sometime in the 60’s…oh dear. Are you really ambidextrous? I can’t even write with one hand, never mind two!

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    1. Yup. Both hands (and feet) equally useless. PS sit the bunny on the windowsill so that it melts slightly in the sun. As it will no longer look like a bunny, you will be able to eat it.

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  5. Good idea but I don’t want him to melt after all this time and I actually don’t much like chocolate, except in Milo form. Interesting about being ambi. That’s neat. (Americanism, sorry)

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  6. Not a walnut whip, but I have a box of Weetabix (hard to come by in the States) from the back of the cupboard that has to have expired at least 5 years ago (that’s when the store where I bought it went out of business). I can’t bear to toss it. Looks about the same as it did when I opened it. Dare I eat it? If it goes poorly, at least I’ll have an excuse for posting so infrequently.

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  7. I think we all have those lazy nothing but grazing days. Mine are multiplied in the grey winter days. As for writing, my blogs are such ridiculous fluff to begin with I never worry.
    😉

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