SYW: Zozays to Zeezays

Hello, and welcome to January 2019. Please unfasten your seat belts, it has been a bumpy ride, but you’ve made it at last and we have landed.

Last night I watched The Big Fat Quiz of the Year 2018 on replay, and minutes after it ended I moved onto the main event, Jools’ Annual Hoontenanny.

It seemed more subdued than previous years, and a lot of the usuals who pump up the energy were missing.

One of the acts performing live was Rudimental feat. Jess Glynne and Dan Caplen singing “These Days” which I heard as “Zeezays”, so the title of this post is actually – Those Days to These Days.

Jools Holland told a story about one of his first TV gigs one New Year 25 years ago. He apparently broke rules, and was told by some powerful bossy type that he’d never play a New Year gig ever again.

I wondered if that was perhaps the incentive behind the lasting success of his much loved Annual Hootenanny.

And by telling that story last night, did he finally break the spell of the spur to succeed, is that why it was so subdued, he no longer needs to prove anything to anyone. He’s made it, he has finally landed, he can rest and relax now.

Of course he made it a long time ago, but maybe he never quite felt like he had until now.

That’s all fanciful musings on my part… as will be the rest of this post.

The rockin’ Melanie of Sparks From A Combustible Mind rolled out this week’s Share Your World 12-31-18 … it’s monkey business as always in blogland.

The SYW questions are in bold, and my answers are obviously the scribbles which come afterwards.

For the parents in the crowd:  What would be the absolute worst name you might give your child? If you’re not a parent (I’m not), then what’s the worst name you could give your pet?

Someone once asked me to write a post about why I had chosen not to have children. I never did get around to writing about that.

One of the reasons I thought it would be a bad idea for me to become a parent is because as a teen, me and my boyfriend had a chat about what we would name our kids.

I have no idea how that conversation happened because neither of us had any intention of being that serious with each other. But our relationship did include a lot of messing around and banter.

We both agreed that we’d have a daughter and a son, and that our son would be called “Warren” and our daughter would be called “Peace”.

See why I chose not to have children.

I do have a cat, or at least a cat has me. She came with a name which was given to her by the animal sanctuary. She’s okay with that name, it’s a very nice name, but she’s not quite so keen on all the nicknames I give her and the songs which go with them. One is cutie papatootie bambatootie nambookittie – that’s the only one I can actually spell out with letters.

What mildly annoying curse might you wish you could curse annoying people with?

Also when I was a teen, I was into witchcraft. It’s the sort of thing you get into when you feel powerless and vulnerable and would like to not be that.

Mostly I wanted to blink things (not people or other living entities) into being or out of being. Blink and my room was tidy. Blink and my homework was done. Blink and I’m was dressed in something nice.

Occasionally I wished that I could point my finger at people and zap them, like a stun gun not a disintegrating laser because if I could de-materialise people that shit would have gone very awry.

Curses seemed to be a bit too complicated, and I’d read that rather tricky smallprint about having to be careful with spells and curses as they can boomerang back on you with a vengeance if you cast it wrong.

The chances of me casting the spell or curse wrong were high… so best not to mess with that.

Overall annoying people are already under some sort of curse which is why they’re being annoying, so I don’t think cursing them again is going to solve anything.

However if it did, I would probably go with something along the lines of that famous gypsy curse – May you get what you wish for and want what you get.

But what if the reason they’re being annoying is because they find me annoying, and they’re wishing that I ceased to exist.

Pepper & Carrot – Shy by David Revoy

What’s the weirdest thing you did as a child?

Um…

Is this a thing which I think is the weirdest or which other people thought was the weirdest when I did it back then?

Pretty much everything I did as a child was weird since I was a weird child, and I only kept getting weirder. More so when I tried to not be weird and do weird things.

If it’s up to me, it would probably be those days me doing something not weird for a change by accident. But I can’t think of any of those.

So, what about the time I stalked the family cats while they foraged in the garden. There was this one plant, some type of clover, which they loved to nibble the leaves. So I nibbled the leaves too and it was delicious… there was nothing left for them once I was done with it.

Or that time I ate the bird biscuits, and got addicted to them until there was nothing left for the birds.

My parents had a huge cage (you could fit two adult humans in it, actually you could squish at least six adult humans in it…) with some sort of fierce parakeet mob living in it, and they were fed these biscuits which are very similar to the health bars they sell to humans these days. Birdie num num.

Do you believe things happen for a reason or are random?

Everything happens for a reason, it’s only random when we haven’t got a clue what the reason for it happening is.

Whether the reason is reasonable, or at least something we consider to be reasonable… it depends, doesn’t it, Fandango.

And Finally, in the spirit of New Year’s:   What’s a resolution (if you make them, I don’t) you’re making for the New Year?   How confident are you in keeping it a reasonable amount of time?

I am making resolutions this year.

Most of them are private, not for audience participation. In other words I’m not sharing them with anyone else because I don’t need people to judge my resolutions, and I don’t need to know whether according to them I have scored a fail or a pass.

The one I’ll share with you is – to write shorter blog posts.

It’s for audience participation.

Will I fail? Will I succeed? Does it matter either way?

Do you want me to succeed or would you rather that I failed?

I made this resolution due to the fact that ever since I started blogging the lengths of my posts have been an issue for me. I’ve battled with myself over this issue. This time it’s not a battle.

My post writing will most likely be affected by at least one other resolution I’ve made.

All my resolutions are challenges from me to myself… they do not require confidence or to be kept for any amount of time, it’s just me having some fun with myself.

Featured image is Pepper & Carrot – Cloud by David Revoy