Bonden Minor re-sealing the work surface/wall junction in the Bonden Major kitchen. Theoretically Minor is down for the Hereford Borderlines Film Festival but Major usually twists his arm (a form of noblesse oblige between brothers) into some form of DIY.
The work had its own Damascene moment. Both of us have had disasters before, with silicone plastered to excess round the relevant areas. The answer is to define the area, top and bottom, with masking tape. Then peel away the tape almost immediately afterwards. Preparing the junction takes, say, ninety minutes; applying the sealant takes less than ten. Both the kitchen and the similarly treated bath now look unobtrusively professional.
THE POEM. Julia goes to work – part one. Three attempts to email Julia my unnamed sixteen-liner. None bridged the gap between Hereford and Prague. Why? Because a Prague filter dumped each attempt into a spam waste-bin. Let’s hope this isn’t symbolic.
Finally the grist arrives for Julia’s mill. First instruction: “Write out in prose what (you’re) trying to say, as if… describing it to a class of third graders. Next highlight the fun inner bits, the nuggets the poem is wrapped around. Then look at the prose description and double check if those nuggets are contributing to the meaning, or are getting in the way.”
Hard-nosed sense. Deep down I know the narrative is blurred in verse three. The summary will confirm this. I now enter the post-sealant reconstruction phase.
The work had its own Damascene moment. Both of us have had disasters before, with silicone plastered to excess round the relevant areas. The answer is to define the area, top and bottom, with masking tape. Then peel away the tape almost immediately afterwards. Preparing the junction takes, say, ninety minutes; applying the sealant takes less than ten. Both the kitchen and the similarly treated bath now look unobtrusively professional.
THE POEM. Julia goes to work – part one. Three attempts to email Julia my unnamed sixteen-liner. None bridged the gap between Hereford and Prague. Why? Because a Prague filter dumped each attempt into a spam waste-bin. Let’s hope this isn’t symbolic.
Finally the grist arrives for Julia’s mill. First instruction: “Write out in prose what (you’re) trying to say, as if… describing it to a class of third graders. Next highlight the fun inner bits, the nuggets the poem is wrapped around. Then look at the prose description and double check if those nuggets are contributing to the meaning, or are getting in the way.”
Hard-nosed sense. Deep down I know the narrative is blurred in verse three. The summary will confirm this. I now enter the post-sealant reconstruction phase.
