Going off on Tangents

Looking down on the port of Mahon

My head has been back in Menorca today, which means, of course, that I’m writing about the island. As usual, I top up my personal experience with a bit of research, so I learn loads more about it. And then I want to go back and see what I missed on my last visit. One day, perhaps.

I also have a tendency to get sidetracked and go off on tangents. Trying to find out more about the gin distillery in Mahon, I discovered all sorts of facts about the tipple. I think there is another article there.

Yesterday, I followed JenaIsle to Helium, joined up and had a look around. She came second in one of their article competitions. Well done, Jena.

Some of the competition titles gave me another idea and I was sidetracked into dashing off something else. It wasn’t right for the competition and now I’m not sure whether to post it in Helium or Constant Content. Potential for more headaches, I fear.

Stourhead and Growing Your Own

I took this picture of Stourhead this time last year.

This last week has been more about cooking than writing. After walking around Stourhead in beautiful sunshine on the Sunday, we stopped off at a little stall outside a house on the way home. They leave bagfuls of cooking apples for sale at £1 a bag, with a box to put your pounds in. We bought 2 bags. That’s quite a lot of apples to peel, core and cook.

We had them first with a delicious stale doughnut pudding, made like a bread and butter pudding with eggs and milk, then on another day with blueberries and custard. I have stewed apple in the fridge and the freezer and there are still four apples left to prepare.

Also, we’ve had a glut of runner beans in our garden. Actually we dithered about planting them this year because we were/are still trying to sell the house. But they went in on the reasoning that sods law says we won’t sell if we don’t plant them, but we might if we do. In any case whoever buys would be welcome to them. Too late now though.

The beans began to form the week before we went on holiday and we had our first feast on the delicious, small young ones. During the 16 days we were away, my neighbour looked after them for me, and I told her to help herself. She said she had picked some. After that they started to come thick and fast. We picked and ate them nearly every day through the rest of August and most of September. Several bagfuls were given away and eventually, last week, I had to blanch and freeze several more bags. I never think they are as nice after freezing, but I just can’t bear to throw them in the compost. I have spent hours stringing and slicing them. The plants are now due to come out but I found enough to go with our roastie meal again yesterday.

There’s nothing like eating your own produce, and we really don’t grow enough different things. Trying to move house has definitely put us off. I remember my dad working in our quite large back garden when I was young. He grew lots of beans and all sorts of other veggies – cabbages, sprouts, potatoes, carrots, onions, beetroot, marrows, etc. It’s becoming fashionable again in the UK to do this. Totnes in Devon was the first town to designate various areas for the community to grow extra produce, and others have followed suit.

We did have some home grown potatoes this August, that we had grown from just one that had gone too soft to cook and started growing tubors in my cupboard. We put it in a tub so it could have gone with us if we’d moved. When we came back from our holiday the leaves had died off so we emptied the tub and found about 3 lbs of good sized spuds that were really yummy when cooked.

I’d love to hear what you grow in your back yards or elsewhere, wherever you are.

On a completely different subject, why not pop over to Rebecca Laffar-Smith’s Writers’ Roundabout to see my guest post which is currently featured there? It gives hints for writers who want to ‘show, not tell’.

The Best Way to Drop Entrecards

Firstly, today I must tell you about this great new blog I’ve found and would like to support. Nathan, the blogger, is a very creative and poetic author. I can’t remember how I found him but it was probably when I was dropping my entrecards.

I was getting frustrated with that recently. My practice had been to open my inbox and start at the beginning of the droppers from the day before. I would simply click on each one in a line, then go back to see the first one. When I delete that one the next one pops up. That way, even slow loaders wouldn’t hold me up. Time is money, after all.

But then I downloaded the Firefox update, and discovered that each one I clicked on opened in the same tab as the previous one, just as it does in IE. I was reduced to opening both browsers and starting one at the beginning of the day and one at the end, so I could flit between them when waiting for something to load. It was a pain because it was taking twice as long.

A few minutes ago, though, I must have right-clicked by accident. And lo and behold, there was an option to open in a new tab. So that’s what I’m doing now. It just means two clicks instead of one, but that only takes a fraction of a second longer. And I can go back to my old practice of opening a line at a time in my Firefox browser. Little things do make a difference, you know.

Perhaps I can do a bit more commenting now and click thrugh to more new blogs that look interesting. I always read new posts as I go, unless it’something that is obviously of no interest to me. And there’s not much of that as I’m a curious soul. But stopping to think about what to put in a comment, or looking for more new logs, are things I don’t get time for often.

Do leave a comment if you think you have a better or faster way with your EC dropping.

Almost Wordless Wednesday - Reach for the Sky

My Himalayan Honeysuckle has gone wild this year. It really must like the rain.

A little drama took place here over the weekend, when the editor at Constant Content found a web link in my submitted article. This is not allowed, so I received their standard email saying they could not accept my piece for that reason. But I was puzzled, as I know the rules and definitely hadn’t put in any links.

Had they made a mistake? I posted my question in the forum and got an almost immediate reply saying no mistake, I should check it again. By moving my cursor over every word I eventually found it and worked out what had happened.

Later I found another message suggesting it might help me find it if I highlighted the whole document. That Ed over there is amazing. I’d have thought it above and beyond his duty to work in the forums to try and help authors even on a Sunday.

Just in case you are dying to know how that link got in there, I will now explain. When I do my online research, I often cut and paste info I think will be helpful into my research Word document, adding the url of the page I found it on. When I write my own article, I paste in foreign names from there, to make sure I get them right.

That’s all it was. One of those darn names had a hyperlink on it. Yet another thing to check when proofing in future.

Anyway, I was able to delete the link, but it took a while before I could resubmit. Kaspersky suddenly screamed at me that someone was trying to insert a virus into my system. I gave it the usual instructions to block it, but it obviously wasn’t quick enough. I was working in Firefox but suddenly up popped IE, then again, and again, and again.

I turned off my broadband and turned on my SuperAntiSpyware, yet again. Forty minutes later it had dealt with about 93 suspicious files, including about nine Trojans. No further problems.

So I was able to resubmit my article last night and at 6 am today I found it had been accepted and was able to offer it to the customer. Finger crossed, it will be accepted.

Working Through a Cold

I didn't get to do my Friday post this week. That was because I spent the whole day, until about 10 pm, researching and writing about Salzburg, a city that I have never visited. It was in response to a public request on the Constant Content site, from a customer that I have sold to before.

I love doing this kind of work, where I learn a great deal about my subject. As usual I got fired up about it and wish I could visit myself. At least it's easier to get to Austria than China from here.

This is the third article I submitted to CC this week, all responding to requests from customers. The first two were very easy, about products on a website, and they were snapped up overnight, along with another which has been sitting around on the site for a few months. I hope this one goes that way as well, though I know this customer generally takes his time selecting what to buy. Of course it has to go through the site review process first, so I hope my own editing and proofing wasn't too impaired by my rather long working day.

I've managed all this work while feeling very under par after going down with that cold on Friday night last week. The weekend was horrendous. I had to do laundry and go out to the shops on Saturday, after which I crawled back to bed, where I spent most of Sunday. It's been one of those really incapacitating bugs that first make you ache all over, especially your face and head, then settles in your chest and back, sets you off in coughing fits, and results in losing your voice.

One of the benefits of freelancing from home as a writer is that you can work in any state of dress or undress at whatever time you like. It's not necessary to be presentable or even to communicate with anyone else most of the time. Anyway, feeling unwell all week doesn't seem to have affected my productivity, even if I have been a little slower than usual, and the ironing board is still up in the living room with piles of stuff waiting in line to be pressed.

The one thing I regret is that this has been the first week since we came back from our hols that the sun has been beckoning me outside, and I just couldn't get up the energy.

Being a Job Hunter’s Helper

My daughter has been a nanny or a childminder for about 16 years. In the last few of those, it has worked well with her other role of being a single mum with her own little girl.

Since my granddaughter started school full time in January, her mother has been thinking about a career change. She’s up for a new challenge and a new way of life. It might also raise her chances of finding a new partner if she’s out meeting people in the world of work, instead of only talking to parents, teachers and nannies, as well as her charges.

Her experience has been varied, and includes a very difficult year when the mother of her small charge had a terminal illness before she died. Then the whole family seemed to rely on her, and she feels she would still like to work in a helping capacity with families or children.

Suddenly the job opportunities seem not just to be crawling out of the woodwork, but literally jumping out at her. She’s completed three application forms this week and just this morning she called about another with a deadline two days away. That’s my girl.

I’ve been advising her by phone and long distance. She does need a bit of help as she’s had no experience of applying for jobs in this way. Nannies go through agencies or personal recommendation. But I've spent many years advising people how to sell themselves in proposals and CVs.

Before applying for these jobs she was thinking of going into higher education. Some years ago she completed an Access to HE course, but didn’t take that any further. It frightens me a bit because she has a mortgage and a child whose father’s record of maintenance payments is erratic. And she would be emulating me. I went into five years of HE at the age of 34 when she was five years old and her father had left us. But I didn’t have a mortgage then. I was eligible for full grants and didn’t end up with enormous loans to pay off.

Anyway, last week she went to see a careers adviser who told her it would be much better to get a job with prospects, especially if she could do on-the-job training.

I pray that she gets something. I think she’s a perfect fit for at least three of the jobs she’s applied for. But of course I could be biased. And, as I always used to tell my clients, it does depend on the competition. Here’s hoping.