Word Of The Day Story

Morning all

So here is the poem/short story I wrote using the word of the day this month!

It's been fun. And strange. Some great words that I didn't know before (marcescent, gynecocracy and thrasonical being some of my favorites) and some words I'm sure I'll never use again, such as Poikilotherm: An organism, such as a fish or reptile, having a body temperature that varies with the temperature of its surroundings. Doubt I'll ever need to use a term for that specific thing again!

It was funny how I would get four or five words in a row that made complete sense to lead on from each other, and then suddenly I would have a word that would take me somewhere completely different. Cowpooling was one of those words, which means 'the practice of two or more parties jointly purchasing all or part of a butchered cow and dividing the meat between them. God, it was SO frustrating having to put that in!

Of course, the result is a very odd piece of text which goes in several strange directions, not my best work, but I think it was definitely worth doing! In terms of improving my vocab, I actually think this is a useful exercise. Looking over what I have written, I know exactly what each word means because I've given it context. And it has given me a few ideas for some other pieces :)

Perhaps something to try when I'm stuck for ideas in the future would be to create a whole poem around one new word, or maybe even a small collection. Definitely worth trying!

New challenge tomorrow, until then, enjoy.

The men had turned marcescent

And were blown away at the hands dynamitards

Put to sleep with a dwale

Now stuck in a wheel with a pawl

Turned around by the fine upstanders

Every crank sends a quilisma through them

Invisible mitraille wedging between their vertebrae, paralyzing

Still they kept to their tapinage

Waiting. To bring down. The Gynecocracy.

The women’s thrasonical demeanour had begun to take its toll

Bunched together, botryoidal, they swelled with pride

But with this came niaserie

And a thrave of rebels were ready

Unsonsy to the victors soon to be victims

As if they were poikilotherms the sun seemed to boil their blood

They had hardened with their torture and not a single flebile man remained

Watching the women nurdle on about their current state

Living in this cacotopia they had created

The rebels met under the cromlech

Their numbers increased in chilliads until an army had gathered

It was the neomenia and the new moon stirred in them an animal

Their long oppressed gene pool had left them all with illiteracy and dyscalculia, their lack of 

                understanding of the world around them only adding to their rage

But their leader, strong and cool headed, spoke with such parrhesia you’d think he was a scholar

His henotheism had helped to heal; the knowing that there was always another way

And his plan to escape this ergosphere they had been placed in was coming to a head

They dined; meat and bread and stolen cymling

They filled their pockets with dittany, prepared for their wounds

And the ethnarch led the way

His team of close friends by his side, knowing they may never cowpool together again

Time to stop being dapifers. Time to take action.

The Vocabulary Challenge

Greetings friends.

It's a new month, it's a new challenge.

In August I set myself the challenge of writing every day, and I was pretty happy with some of the stuff I came up with. Since then I have been doing a lot of performance poetry, which has been going really well. And I've rekindled my love for writing. I did attempt to write a novel in November, but I didn't quite pull it off. Still, I will not be deterred.

I wanted to do a challenge that would contribute to future writing adventures. As an actor, writer, and lover of good books, having a good vocabulary is pretty important to me, so I thought I'd do a challenge that would help me to expand mine.

So I present to you a challenge of my own design: The Vocabulary Challenge.

There are a few layers to The Vocabulary Challenge

1. They say the best way to improve your vocabulary is to read. I myself love reading, but don't make enough time for it. So I am going to commit half an hour a day to some reading.

2. I will also commit half an hour a day to playing on vocabulary.com which is a great website where you can test your vocabulary. It's kind of like a game you play in rounds to get points, and it keeps testing you on words until you solidly know them.

3. This is the fun one. I will use my word of the day app on my phone to get a new word, and I will use that word as a stimulus to write a paragraph, which of course has to contain the word. I'll be writing a new paragraph every day, and I'm going to do my best to make them link together so that at the end of the month I will have a short story, which I will post on here. I'm sure it will wind up being very silly in an effort to include all the words I'll be getting from my app!

So, as a starting point, the word of the day today is 'marcescent' - meaning 'withering but not falling off, as a blossom that persists after flowering'

And the paragraph is:

Forty two years of marriage had brought Peter and Judith, among other things, three children who had for a time consumed them completely. Their house had been full of noise and laughter, and their lives full of long working days and family filled evenings that then ended comfortably in each others company. Now their children had flown the nest to have seven more between them, and Peter and Judith had reached their long anticipated retirement. The house was empty, and their lives filled primarily of each other. Faced with the incessant ticking of the clock every day, their previous state comfort seemed to shift towards something they didn't quite have the words for. Soon, Peter and Judith began to realise that their marriage had become marcescent. Hanging by a thread that seemed determined not to break. 

I look forward to writing more :)

Day one of thirty down!

How The Budget Challenge Came To An Early End

So, this post comes a bit late, but at the weekend I decided to finish my budgeting challenge.

If you've been following this challenge, you know it was a rocky month. The challenge was already on the rocks, and I had bent the rules a bit in order to continue. I had £16 left for nine days, which I knew would be doable, but difficult.

Then I had an encounter with a homeless man called Danny.

We've all been there, when a homeless person comes up to you and tells you that they are trying to get enough money together to go to a shelter. Sometimes you are inclined to believe them, and other times you are not. But I personally don't care whether it was true or not. What was abundantly clear was the fact that this young man was homeless, cold, tired and dirty, and he needed help. I try to make an effort to give money out to the homeless, and so I immediately handed him a pound. But then we got talking. It was obvious that Danny was not only physically starving, but he was also starved of attention. He wanted someone to talk to. So my boyfriend and I were talking to him, and he told us a little about himself.

He told us about how his state of health was so poor, that he couldn't drink hot drinks any more because they destroyed his gums. I could believe this looking at the state of his mouth, half empty of teeth and blackened. He told us about how some of the more violent people on the street harass him for the little money he manages to make. He told us about how one time he stayed in a shelter, his possessions and his sleeping bag were stolen, and that's why even though the shelters were more comfortable, they didn't feel any more safe. He told us that the reason he was trying to get to the shelter was mostly because he was desperate for a shower. He was holding a carton of whole milk in his hand, which I imagine was his main source of nutrition for the day.

A poem I wrote about the encounter

I think the reason he was sticking around to talk to us was because we, as a group, had shown him the most kindness he had seen all day. Between us he had made four pounds, and he only had two in his hand when he approached, so we had significantly boosted his earnings. He told us that he needed twelve pounds to stay in the shelter.

For a millisecond, mostly out of habit I imagine, I thought of how I needed to conserve my money for the sake of the challenge. This thought immediately repulsed me. There was no way I was going to hold back from giving to a person in need for the privilege of pretending to be poor. So I dug out six more pounds, and gave it to him.

Danny was overwhelmed, to say the least. And I was glad that I had done it. Whether his stories were true or not were irrelevant to me. I can't imagine what it would be like to be homeless. I could barely manage to stick to this challenge. And the way the homeless are treated in this country disgusts me. How can we call ourselves a civilized country when we can't even keep our citizens fed and sheltered?

So yes, I finished the challenge early. The finish line had been warped and altered so many times now I couldn't really see the point any more. But here are some good things to come out of it:

1. Because of the challenge, I have still managed to come under my usual budget this month despite buying a new phone. If I hadn't have done the challenge, I still would have lost my phone and bought a new one and therefore I would be in debt to myself, so yay for the challenge!

2. I have learned a lot about myself and my relationship with money. I am not as good at going without it as I thought! Even though the rules of the challenge were very clear, I was making compromises, knowing that it would make me end up over budget. I really struggled to tell myself no! It's important that I know this about myself, because I'm pretty sure one day soon, as a poor out of work actor, I am going to have to learn to make myself say no.

3. I have discovered I can still make delicious food on a budget. Good times.

4. I am now in the habit of looking for the cheapest thing on the menu. I feel this is a good habit to be in. In fact, I realized that a bowl of chips will fill me up fine! And this must be better for my waistline than the burger and chips I would usually go for, so I'm saving pounds in multiple ways.

5. I think, having experimented with being on a much smaller budget, I should be able to manage a happy medium between my old one of seventy pounds a week and the tiny sum of eighteen. Perhaps forty, that feels like a luxury amount now! If I can stick to this, I'll be saving thirty a week for when I have finished uni! Not bad at all.

So all in all, although it didn't turn out anything like I thought it would, I am happy with this challenge. But most of all, I have been really touched by my encounter with Danny. It seemed so perfectly timed, spooky in fact, and it really made me appreciate my situation.

It's also made me very thoughtful about the future. I have been becoming more and more passionate about the homeless situation ever since I moved to Birmingham. I really care about it, and I think now I've realized I want to do more than just give a quid out to each homeless person I see. I want to get involved on a higher level.

I haven't quite figured out how yet, but I will.

For now though, love to you all, and I shall announce my new challenge soon!

x