False Pretences: The Way Forward

It’s one of those days today – a glorious morn when the designated theme from ‘365 Days of Writing Prompts’ actually throws up something that stirs a response. “The Stat Connection. Go to your Stats page and check your top 3-5 posts. Why do you think they’ve been successful? Find the connection between them and…

Spring has sprung….dammit

Whoever put together the WordPress ‘365 Days of Writing Prompts’ was getting positively frisky by this stage: “Turn, turn, turn. For many of us, winter is blossoming into spring…which season do you most look forward to?” Here in France, the four seasons are quite distinctive, which I suppose makes a pleasant change after our ten…

T(w)itter Ye Not

‘Social Media’. Harrumph. Why am I even talking about this? Because WordPress ‘365 Days of Writing Prompts wants to know, that’s why: “The social network. Do you feel like you ‘get’ social media, or do you just use it because that’s where all your friends and family are?” Should you happen to be a WordPress…

A First Time For Everything – Even Repeats

Consider the statement “I must be getting lazy in my old age”. A close reading suggests that there are at least two areas of ambiguity here: Firstly, ‘getting lazy’ implies that I’m not already. That flies in the face of both conventional wisdom and empirical evidence. Secondly, ‘in my old age’ suggests that old age…

Dude, where’s my poubelle?

Honestly, you wait weeks on end for a new post, and then they all come along together… It has to be said that waste management is pretty well organised here in France. As a matter of course everyone recycles their plastic, glass and paper into the relevant coloured bins at the local déchetterie – and…

Brainless Stupidity #3: GPS

(‘Brainless Stupidity’ is a – very – occasional series of diatribes against state-of-the-art manifestations of bovine idiocy masquerading as aids to moden life. Previous targets have included been the Belgian way of buying fuel and Paypal’s bizarre procedures for identity verification.) This time, though, our egregiously cretinous example is the in-car navigation system more or…

All human life is here (and some I’m not so sure about)

My broad aversion to travel has been well documented in these pages. To be clear, though, while A (home) is always to be preferred, I’ve no objections whatsoever to B, C or – venturing further afield – even D. Being somewhere else is fine, it’s the getting there that I don’t care for. That’s because…

New sins for modern times

If they can update the seven wonders of the world to modern times, perhaps it’s worth thinking about a new list of modern sins. A recent WordPress Daily Prompt – they seem to be on a bit of a roll at the moment – had the great idea of asking what your eighth deadly sin would…

Your prompt response is much appreciated

When I finally managed to shift myself and publish a new post recently I think I was fair enough to apportion blame. Which is to say that I claimed it wasn’t all my fault. In particular, I railed against the absence of sufficiently inspiring daily prompts from WordPress – and it was while doing so that…