1000 Words or Less

 You might like to check out my main blog: The Joy of Retirement.  The address is jandme3.blogspot.com.

  Sometimes when I’m writing a story I experience something like a ghostly presence guiding my hand so, when I re-read what I have written, I see that my narrative has gone in an unexpected direction.   There are names I hardly remember and occurences whose origins are a mystery.   I’ve come to depend on the phenomenon and am now in the habit of setting out on a story project like an unprepared sailor putting his life in the hands of the vagaries of the weather.   Recently, I started to write a story about Queen Elizabeth’s visit to Australia in 1954 and was surprised that it became a polemic on the machinations of a Prime Minister intent on cementing a win in a forthcoming election.   It’s a phenomenon called psychography or automatic writing.   The Chinese called it Fuji writing and it was used by Zen monks who were said to communicate with an ancient Taoist sage credited with the creation of the kung fu system.   In the...

  I read somewhere that an extraordinary percentage of home buyers regard a dishwasher as an absolute necessity when they are considering a prospective purchase.   I don’t suppose it’s surprising; everyone is keen to cut down on labour intensive activities and washing-up is one of the least popular household chores.   But does having a dishwasher stack up as a positive addition to a household?   I can only talk about the experiences of a relatively elderly two-person household and accept that things might be different for a family of 6.   When people reach our age, their diet changes.   No longer do we have complicated dinners which need multiple cooking utensils and mixing dishes.   We’re more likely to take something from the freezer and cook it in the plastic dish it came in.   Or we will have a toasted sandwich or bowl of soup.   A normal meal in our house might produce two dirty plates, 2 knives, 2 forks and, if I’m allowed to ha...