I was reminded today that I hadn’t written a blog for some time, in fact it’s been eight days so it spurred me on to more scribblings.

The reminder came from the writing group I have attended every Friday for the last year, where for 2 hours budding and more established writers read their work out loud to about 6-8 fellow authors and they offer a critique of said work. The group  stimulates thoughts and ideas for stories and poems. I suppose the ultimate aim is to get something published, and some of our number enter poetry or short story competitions and have varying degrees of success. Of course in the ‘old days’ one had to have a literary agent or a publisher to get work out to the public domain, but in the modern era, e-publishing is now the easiest route to well, maybe not fame and fortune, but some recognition. I’ve always had a bent for writing, and even today I read out my narration of a hike I did when I was 12 and in the scouts. Fifty years later it doesn’t sound too bad which could mean one of two things: I haven’t improved much, or I reached the limit of highest achievement when I was 12. You decide, anyway every week we have a ‘chair’ who basically runs the meeting and sets either a bit of non-compulsory homework and/or something to work on during the meeting. It is a disparate group, mainly women, with the three token males being very much in the minority. We have: a retired photographer, a retired teacher, a retired aerospace engineer, a budding journalist, a building restorer, and others whose occupation or former calling is unknown to me or I haven’t taken any notice when they said what it was. But it works and that is the main attraction. We’re all a jolly bunch and bounce ideas and inspiration off each other and clinically dissect each others efforts.  The trouble us despite all this stimulus and inspiration it doesn’t translate into going any further, like getting something published on Amazon or publishing an e-novel. Now I have no idea why this is, it may be lack of confidence or more likely sheer bloody laziness. Generally writing isn’t my first love, but music is and this has inspired me to put a tune and backing to words written by Dianne, one of the writing group. This could be actually where the future may lie, not you understand as some ancient Gary Barlow or Adele, but putting music to words. Having done some research I found that the classic pop song normally has the sequence: verse, chorus; verse, chorus; middle eight; verse, chorus; verse, chorus. At the end or in the middle you can also have an instrumental break, but without this, the classic average length of a pop song  of 3 minutes 25 seconds can be achieved. Watch this space, mine and Dianne’s effort may appear as an MP3 file for you to enjoy (or not!).

Well not much happening on the news front, fury over energy prices, a cabinet member resignation and a proposed devolution referendum for Scotland. As I said in my last blog, let Scotland at least decide what time zone they want to adopt and leave us to what we want to do, that is hopefully to tie in with Europe. One advantage of casting Scotland off to independence would be the billions of pounds we send north of the border to keep it solvent would be stopped, improving our balance of payments. Frankly I don’t know how Scotland could exist without that income, but obviously Alex Salmond had that all figured out. One of the stumbling blocks is what to do with the RAF, Royal Navy and Army stations in Scotland, will they all be closed down? If that is the case, who will provide protection from the North should we be invaded? At the moment the RAF’s Typhoon jets scramble from Leauchers to intercept Russian bombers flying in our air space testing our defence systems. Will Scotland’s politicians replace that protection with their own? Do they even know that goes on now? I doubt it for both, if that us the case, if anyone wanted to invade us from the North, there would be no opposition, which could be disastrous. Don’t say it couldn’t happen, it could.

And so to Bonfire night. It horrified me how many people get injured or even killed by fireworks every year.  OK, there was the incident a year ago when the M5 was covered in smoke causing multiple pile-ups and tragedy but those are extremely rare.  Please try to go to a public display, not have your own back garden one. I know you  are the safest person ever, but accidents can and do happen.  Good luck and  see you soon.