The Word Cloud

In the continuing spirit of levity that is abounding on Cloud now, I am beginning a humorous blog to see if we can raise a few more laughs.

So, who is going to own up to any particularly silly incident/s in their lives?!

Well me, for starters.

There was the time, when hairpieces for ladies were all the rage and I was a newlywed.  Mr J and I used to travel to work together from  country to city in a Mini.  One day there was to be an evening  'company do'.  Posh frock etc.  Jill puts curled hairpiece in its box on Mini roof, while loading rest of stuff into car.  Jill forgets said hairpiece and you can guess what happened.  I was so embarrassed when the neighbour who had retrieved it from the middle of the road handed it to me the next day, but we had a good laugh!

.... and that is one of the milder silly incidents in my life.

I'm sure Prop will forgive me a second Tuesday laugh then if we are lifting the mood.

Q - Why don't Gypsies use contraceptives

A - Because they have crystal balls and can see it coming.

An old, blind Aussie wanders into an all-woman biker bar by mistake.
 He finds his way to a bar stool and orders a shot of Jack  Daniels.

After sitting there for a while, he yells to the bartender,> 'Hey, you wanna hear a blonde joke?'  The bar immediately falls absolutely silent.

 In a very deep, husky voice, the woman next to him says,  'Before you tell that joke, mate, I think it is only fair,  Given that you are blind, that you should know five things:
 1. The bartender is a blonde girl with a baseball bat.
 2. The bouncer is a blonde girl.
 3. I'm a 6-foot tall, 175-pound blonde woman with a black belt in karate.
 4. The woman sitting next to me is blonde and a professional  weight lifter.
 5. The lady to your right is blonde and a professional wrestler. >

Now, think about it seriously, mate.. Do you still wanna tell that blonde joke?' > The blind Aussie thinks for a second, shakes his head and  mutters,

'Nah....not if I'm gonna have to explain it five times!'

This has been a melancholy place recently. Thoughtful but melancholy. So a challenge to lighten up a bit. An exercise in imagination and in writing verse.
Nonsense verse changes pattern, changes rhythm and uses made up words. The only rule, so far as I can see, is that it should be silly.

I think it's time to be silly, so here are my 8 lines of nonsense. I invite the cloud to write more in tandem. Let's say min 80 words, max 120 in 8 lines, or less (no more). It must be capable of scanning within acceptable norms for nonsense and I should like to avoid profanity - because it's more of a challenge that way.

To start:

In the land of the whazambamdoodle, they eat only chicken and cheese
For although the koozles like bacon, it makes them go weak at the knees.
In the land of the whazambamdoodle, the chickens are thin on the ground
For although their numbers are plenty, they don’t seem to stay long around
 

The koozles thought much of their chickens, not just the way that they taste,
But because they are fun to play games with, to eat them seemed such a great waste
So the brains of whazambamdoodle, decided to work up a fix
For if koozles could tolerate bacon, then porkers would be in the mix

Imagine you're standing outside a door in dark, wood-panelled corridor. You can hear a child singing a nursery rhyme. Something about the sound of the child's voice sends a shiver down your spine. When you open the door, no one is there.

Which nursery rhyme would be most likely to give you the heebie-jeebies in these circumstances?

(A little bit of market research for my latest book...)

Top five regrets of the dying

A nurse has recorded the most common regrets of the dying, and among the top ones is: I wish I hadn't worked so hard. What would your biggest regret be if this was your last day of life?

A palliative nurse has recorded the top five regrets of the dying. There was no mention of more sex or bungee jumps. A palliative nurse who has counselled the dying in their last days has revealed the most common regrets we have at the end of our lives. And among the top, from men in particular, is "I wish I hadn't worked so hard".



Bronnie Ware is an Australian nurse who spent several years working in palliative care, caring for patients in the last 12 weeks of their lives. She recorded their dying epiphanies in a blog called Inspiration and Chai, which gathered so much attention that she put her observations into a book called The Top Five Regrets of the Dying.

Ware writes of the phenomenal clarity of vision that people gain at the end of their lives, and how we might learn from their wisdom. "When questioned about any regrets they had or anything they would do differently," she says, "common themes surfaced again and again."
Here are the top five regrets of the dying, as witnessed by Ware:

1. I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
"This was the most common regret of all. When people realise that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled. Most people had not honoured even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made. Health brings a freedom very few realise, until they no longer have it."

2. I wish I hadn't worked so hard.
"This came from every male patient that I nursed. They missed their children's youth and their partner's companionship. Women also spoke of this regret, but as most were from an older generation, many of the female patients had not been breadwinners. All of the men I nursed deeply regretted spending so much of their lives on the treadmill of a work existence."

3. I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings.
"Many people suppressed their feelings in order to keep peace with others. As a result, they settled for a mediocre existence and never became who they were truly capable of becoming. Many developed illnesses relating to the bitterness and resentment they carried as a result."

4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
"Often they would not truly realise the full benefits of old friends until their dying weeks and it was not always possible to track them down. Many had become so caught up in their own lives that they had let golden friendships slip by over the years. There were many deep regrets about not giving friendships the time and effort that they deserved. Everyone misses their friends when they are dying."

5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.
"This is a surprisingly common one. Many did not realise until the end that happiness is a choice. They had stayed stuck in old patterns and habits. The so-called comfort of familiarity overflowed into their emotions, as well as their physical lives. Fear of change had them pretending to others, and to their selves, that they were content, when deep within, they longed to laugh properly and have silliness in their life again."



And yours?

Ok! Here we go with both feet, I've done this as an exercise in style and I would welcome any comments on the style of the piece. Many thanks to anyone who is willing to take the time to look this over.

 

WARNING! – Stay off the Beach.

 

Never mind about water quality or snorkelling through sewage, there is a far more sinister problem on our beaches. There I was yesterday, strolling down the seafront, clear blue skies and the tang of rotting seaweed in the air when I started to feel a little strange. It wasn’t the sweltering heat or the residue of the morning after the night before, it was a vague sort of uneasiness, the sort you get when you think you’ve forgotten to do something incredibly important just as you’re boarding the plane to Majorca.

 

After a few seconds of furious mental gymnastics; not easy when you’re still hung over, I decided my persistent malaise probably was due to the six pints the night before and so I sucked in my tenacious mid life crisis stomach and doggedly resumed my relaxing stroll.

 

Another few steps and I stopped again, there was definitely something funny going on. The usual crowds had flocked down to the beach and just like in that Boots telly advert, mums were caking kids in factor 50,000 sun block, Grandmas with skin like 300 year old leather were basking in all the deck chairs and I was feeling definitely out of sorts.

 

Suddenly the group of young people walking in front of me came to a grinding halt and being somewhat preoccupied, I bumped into the back of a petite brunette, my forward swinging right arm coming into inadvertent contact with her absolutely perfect left buttock. Stumbling backward and sub-vocalising apologies, I couldn’t help but notice she was wearing one of the worlds smallest bikinis; you know the one that’s in The Guinness Book of Records, for being the smallest amount of material that anyone would pay for.

 

The young lady in question turned languidly toward me, looked me up and down and dismissively dropped me from a great height, straight into her Dad’s pervey mate’s category. Her devastating green eyes glanced over me once more, lingered fleetingly on my marginal pot belly as she slid her gorgeously tanned and beautifully manicured hand over her bottom and absently brushed away whatever it was had been left there by our brief contact.

 

So much for looking cool; I was now 3 inches tall with a very small penis. Oh well! I hadn’t really been looking at her ass all the way up the seafront and I wasn’t really stopping at the beach kiosk just so I could stand behind her: or was I?

 

Oh my God! Maybe I am turning into a stalker! I can see the headlines now “Middle Aged Perv Stalks Teen Beach Beauties” There’s nothing else for it, I’m going to have to stand my ground. I can’t slope away without inferring guilt and thereby losing the rest of my metaphorical genitalia. I’ll have to queue and completely dis her. Trouble is, I’m last in the queue and there’s nowhere else to look.

 

Fifteen agonising minutes later, I’m still furiously not looking at her and I’m still last in the queue. Twenty minutes and my bottle is going, any minute now I’m going to look at her ass and she’s going to catch me doing it; why’s that rotten kid at the head of the queue ordered seventeen portions of chips?

 

And with that, my guardian angel belatedly notices my dire straits and comes to my rescue. Footsteps and voices behind me, someone I can have a banal chat with and ignore little miss minikini. I turn toward my approaching saviours and there sweat Aunty Ivy and Aunty June. At least that’s what I imagine Aunty Ivy and Aunty June might look like if you stripped them naked, rolled them in last nights leftover Bisto and then shoehorned them into matching lime green Speedo swimsuits.

 

Two mountains of walking overcooked cellulite with thighs that would do justice to a well fed wildebeest look me up and down, smile winsomely and;

‘Lovely day,  init?’

‘Yeah, lovely’, thinking No, it’s bloody awful.

Aunty June’s left eyelid droops suggestively mimicking her triple G frontage and asks ‘Where the best place for a girl to get a drink round ere then?’

 

Oh bloody hell! They’re on the pull and everyone else in the vicinity is looks either under 16 or over 80 so it must be me they’re intent on befriending. My vague unease suddenly accelerates in outright panic; little miss perfect buns is looking over her shoulder at me with a malevolent smirk on her face; Cow! And Aunty June is edging closer with a predatory claw extended.

 

With that my entire life flashes before me as I realise what’s been nagging at me. This is what I’ve got to look forward to,  I’ve got to face up to the fact that I’m never going to pull a supermodel look-alike. There’s no going back and I really don’t want to go forward. Roll on state pension and plaid slippers.

 

So there it is in a nutshell, if you’re of one of my unfortunate comrades in arms coping manfully with middle age in a world full of nasty surprises; stay away from the beach, it’s bloody dangerous down there.

My book club is having the 10th anniversary party this week (I've been to nearly all the meetings too) and I've made some bunting from the covers of the books we've read. 
I'm really pleased with it so if you'd like to see some not very brilliant picutres of the final product they're here:
http://victoriacorby.wordpress.com/2012/02/19/book-bunting/

My reader could have noticed that I have been whinging on about my total inability to progress my latest novella. NO COME BACK (ha, ha promotion).

My M/C, Mitch, has no-one to bounce off - Soo has gone missing and it's too soon to confront the baddies. So there I was stuck in internal conflict. I posted a critique - and got helpful responses. Still no breakthru. I went swimming and bike riding, no breakthru. I have spent 4 days waiting for inspiration - nothing.

Then tonight, my mind harked back to what one of my critiques mentioned. 'Why not kill off a minor character?'  Nearly but not quite, however...

CHARACTER - that was missing. I've cracked it. I'm phoning Bill. (A constant character in this story.)

Yippee  - I'm rolling again peeps...