poetsquib.com

While I’m away you might like to enter in my GREAT BIG BLUE SHIRT COMPETITION
You never knew how much you wanted a great big blue shirt with the Flying Spaghetti Monster Deity on it until NOW!!! Yes I’m giving one away [I ordered one for someone’s birthday, it didn’t turn up, and then two turned […]

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The Woman in White, by Wilkie Collins, has everything a good Victorian mystery novel should have: a mysteriously dressed woman who appears and disappears, mistaken identity, a dastardly husband, a mental asylum, a count, a secret society, a baronet, a virtuous and delicate bring-me-the-smelling-salts woman, and imperious invitations to tea:

My hour for tea is half-past […]

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This card takes a few minutes to make

Choose a CD that has some relevance to the person you are going to give the card to. Scan the CD (or photograph it on a white background if you don’t have a scanner)
Open a Word document and select Page Setup then click Landscape
Insert the picture on the […]

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Police drama The Bill will soon be airing its 987654321000000th episode on primetime Australian TV. Maybe now is the time to ask, does anybody actually watch The Bill?

Nobody, not even people who watch ANYTHING up to and including Deal or No Deal (at least The Wheel of Fortune had Boethius undertones and an aurally […]

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There are so many wonderful words in Dr Johnson’s Dictionary that don’t get the attention they deserve. Let’s dust them off and bring them back
untrolled. adj. Not bowled; not rolled along.
This is a very odd word about which I can find next to no information. Troll means to circulate, or to move round and round, […]

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A weird little synchronicity. Last Thursday and Friday I was writing a short story that involved an owl, an optometrist, and a French Woman called Fabienne. I wrote that the French woman lived in a flat in Mosman Park. I had some difficulty with a few French words that I threw in
On the weekend, I […]

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1. What Free Dress Day?
I’ve already blogged about how my teenage daughter (14) went to her school’s Free Dress Day last year in my clothes, the theme being Revenge of the Nerds. How about this then. Last Friday morning I was busy getting child number 2 ready for school and did not see my teenage […]

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Sing a Song for Us Tonight is a segment where people choose a song that is special to them and explain why. Today’s guest is Aten and he’s chosen Before the Bullfight by David Sylvian. Here’s his reason why, thanks Aten
Before the Bullfight .. I rediscovered the song in 2002 .. I had always like […]

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Travels with Herodotus, by Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski (1931-2007), is not ordinarily the sort of book I would choose to read. I’m not really into armchair travel, not even if Kapuscinski is, in the words of Rushdie, ‘worth more than a thousand whimpering and fantasising scribblers’. The book was a gift
Basically Kapuscinski describes different places […]

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How do I know this? I was randomly reading Secret Lives of Great Authors, by Robert Schnakenberg, when I began to notice that a lot of the featured writers were Aquarians. So I counted them all
Aquarius  10
Capricorn  5
Taurus       4
Gemini      4
Libra         4
Cancer      3
Virgo        3
Sagittarius 3
Scorpio     2
Pisces       1
Leo           1
And if you’re Aries you can just forget it. […]

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