Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “starts with cal.” Use a word starting with the letters “cal” as your prompt word. Have fun!
Calligraphy is going to be my word of choice, this week
I have always had a huge fascinataion with the ornate writing style, marvelling at the people who use those strokes to create such beautiful handwriting.
My own handwriting resembles a spider let loose over a piece of paper after stepping in an inkpad.
I’m not joking!
You’d think, as a teacher, I would have really neat handwriting. Well, I really don’t! I have to concentrate so hard to write my notes and feedback in children’s books, legibly, but when I aam just writing for me, there are times I forget what I actually wrote, and I can’t even read it back!
That can be a real pain when I can’t, for the life of me, read what I had written on a shopping list!
So, in lockdown, I decided to invest in a couple of courses, to learn the art of calligraphy. I got the pens, and everything.
I love the flow of the ink, but I am the one with a permnently ink stained finger, after clumsily filling the ink well!
After learning the basics, I found I was much more mindful of my writing, but the ink thing? What a faf!
Instead, I decided to learn how to brush letter, or hand letter, and I have had much more fun with that!
Because this week is an anniversary–albeit a mostly miserable one–for most people around the world, I’d like to suggest something different for this week’s SoCS. You don’t have to do it. You can just choose one of the prompt words and run with it as you always do. I might do that myself. But I thought it would be interesting to see not just how everyone has coped, or not, over the last year, but to share our common experiences as a way to connect, to feel a little less alone, perhaps. Basically, talk about your last year is what I’m saying, whether stream-of-consciousness style or not. Or, if you’d rather not, talk about any time period your heart desires. Without further ado, here’s your prompt for this week:
Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “day/week/month/year.” Use one, use them all, use them any way you’d like. Enjoy!
A year ago, we were all sitting, confused. So much was happening, somewhere in the world, the appeared to not really concern us too much… or was it?
A virus threatening to attack huge numbers of people.
Never did we think that it would end up like this, with us in the midst of a worldwide pandemic.
Lockdowns, PPE, hospitalisations, deaths, not being able to see anyone, other than our household…
For me, as a teacher, it was the weirdest, surreal time during those first few months of lockdown. Never having ‘taught’ remotely, online, before, we were all struggling, not sure what real expectations were.
Initially, I thrived. I enjoyed the time at home, working, but also carving out time to write, and I managed quite a bit. I baked, spent time with the kids, and went into school once a fortnight, but otherwise, worked from home.
The weeks slowly turned into months.
My creativity dried up.
Our house became a building site with renovations and decorators.
But, infection rates began to fall. Restrictions started to be loosened.
School started up, again. But not as we knew it.
Life was normal, but not, if you know what I mean.
Then, unsurprisingly, the infection rates began to rise again.
Lockdown #2.
(Yet still, school was open, because we were ‘safe’, apparently.)
Easing, again, just in time for Christmas, even though the easing was quite possibly going to cause havoc…
And it did. Along with the discovery of a new variant.
I found myself in isolation the day before we were due to break up for the Christmas holidays, as a colleague I worked with tested positive. this also meant I was isolating on Christmas Day, too.
Joy.
Still not much writing done, though. I simply couldn’t.
A quiet, but happy New Years celebration, followed by the news that we would be hitting another lockdown, (number three, now) and going into remote learning, again, for at least six weeks.
My class, who I had barely known for three months, ended up away from school for another nearly three months…
They came back, on Monday.
Mostly happy. Some, affected more than others.
And today, I sit here, after my first week back in school with them, grateful to have them back with me, but so sad that they have missed so much time with us in class.
And in our personal life?
I released my debut novel shortly before everything kicked off. Over the year, I have been featured on several blogs, interviewed for two podcasts, and was even on a live radio show, as an invited guest!
My own kids have missed months of schooling, within school, but have been online for neraly 6 months of the last year.
Hubby Dearest is suffering Cabin Fever, being at home, working, for the last year.
We lost one of our parrotletts.
Sonu Singh has been spoilt, thinking thata he’s always going to have someone at home with him.
I’ve not seen my parents for six months. Thank goodness for video calls.
My daugher turned teenager, and she finally got her braces.
My son is preparing for the GCSEs that never were… but he also got into Sixth Form College, so yay!
And me? I’m still not writing regularly, but creative bursts hit, sporadically…
Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “butter.” Use it as a noun, use it as a verb, use it any way you’d like. Have fun!
You know, this is really cruel, Linda!
I aam on a diet, and one thing I am missing is huge hunks of fresh bread, smothered with delicious butter and jam, or hot toast, a hot cross bun, with a huge knob of butter melting over its toasty surface…
Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “-sty.” Find a word that ends in “-sty” or use the word “sty.” Enjoy!
The first thing that came to mind, reading this prompt, was pigsty. And more specifically, the pigsty that is my son’s bedroom.
Honestly, what is with teenage boys?
He has the smallest room in the house, and somehow his room ends up being the one with the biggest mess! I walk in to find random socks in the strangest of places, because he seems incapable of removing them from his person, and just placing them on the floor, or, easier still, in the laundry basket that is literally right next to his bedroom door! Instead, he balls them up, and, I think, bowls them around the room, possibly practicing his latest spin technique for his cricket. I don’t know!
And vests. That’s the other thing. It’s like he takes a vest off, and swings it round his head like some sort of action hero, then flings it, not caring which direction it lands in. I have found then, weeks later, covered in dust, as they may have landed on top of his wardrobe, or fallen down into the crevice between bed and wall, or, when he has deigned it necessary to actually put said vest somewhere, he’s screwed it up and put it back in his drawer… unwashed! When the bloody laundry basket is three more steps away!
Don’t get me started at his ineptitiude in managing to out things in the bin, either. Again, it seems throwing practice is being doen, but a tissue doesn’t fly as well as a ball, so I end up finding tissues strewn across the room…
Empty food packets. Yup.
Dishes, of all sorts. Yup.
And balls.
All the balls.
As he is a keen cricketer, my son is never far from a ball, so you have to be careful where you step, incase an errant ball decides to find it’s way under your foot.
Oh, and that other bane of my life when entering his room… weights.
He’s got a few hand weights there, with the adjustable discs you add or remove. They are heavy. And sometimes I go in, and stub my toe on a weight, where he has left one of the discs just by the door.
It’s as if he is trying to boobytrap the place!
Boobytrapped pigsty
Fitting description, methinks
For my son's bedroom!
Ritu 2021
Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “nerve.” Use it any way you’d like. Have fun!
It really gets on my nerves, you know, how some people are still spouting about COVID-19 and all it’s global implications being a hoax, or a conspiracy theory. Or, that they have lockdown fatigue, and genuinely don’t care anymore, so are beginning to flout rules.
You guys. You are the ones who might end up pushing us back into more lockdowns, if you can’t understand how this thing works. Yes, it’s a virus, and there are plenty out there, but, like various illnesses, they vary in severity, and this one, well, we all know how awful it is.
Just look at the death rates, and way hopsital ICUs are packed. Or take a look at the long term side effects that some people are suffering from: Long Covid. Previously healthy folk, reduced to shells of themselves.
At least we have this vaccine. It might help a little. We may need one annually, but hey, if it gets us out of this mess, I’m game.
Shame not everyone is.
Jsut last night, Lil Man and I were out for a walk and as we walked through town, a woman passed a man she knew. She called out “You getting your vaccination, then?”
His response? “The f*** I am!” He gave her the middle finger salute and waltzed off.
I actually write a huge amount more, but had to delete it because I was getting too het up.
Seriously, my nerves are frayed, now!
(I’m glad I wrote this last night, because I wouldn’t want to spend Saturday wound up, since it’s Lil Princess’s birthday, today!)
But I Smile Anyway... 