My "bump" was in 2016 when, aged 48, I suffered a stroke. This blog charts my recovery. (Header clipart licensed by pngguru.com.)
When my eyesight was still good, I was a bit of an amateur photographer. This is one of mine.
Cancale, in Brittany, in mid-July. Cancale is just 10km or so along the coast from Saint Malo. I used to go across on the ferry to Saint Malo, with my bicycle. We arrived around 8 AM and this was a wonderful place to enjoy petit-dejourner.
Paradise.
I once met a tree,
Who was nursing a sore throat.
Was a hoarse chestnut.
Making you groan… any day of the week!
inspired by Fandango’s One Word Challenge (FOWC) of 28 November 2021, spot.
Once my uncle worked down at the docks,
Loading ship, as the crane slipped a box,
When he spotted the crate,
It was, sadly, too late,
And the only things found were his socks.
After I had an attempt at that Shakespearean sonnet the other week, I read about Petrarchan sonnets, read that they were more complex to write, in English, than Shakespearean sonnets.
So, I chanced my arm. I wrote this as a more traditional love poem, and that itself is way out of my comfort zone, let alone the structure. I’ve also found several nuances with things like theme, rhyme scheme etc. The obvious ones I followed, but I’m sure there are sublteties I missed out on. Meh.
Someone suggested I give this to Mrs Bump for christmas. But I don’t want her keeling her over just yet – she still has her uses!
Doubt if I’ll write any more sonnets, but I said that last time.
Continue reading “The Proposal”Speaking real slowly,
Prisoner took fifteen years
To finish sentence.
Making you groan… any day of the week!
inspired by Fandango’s One Word Challenge (FOWC) of 27 November 2021, squander.
Pair won lottery one sunny day,
Hit the jackpot with numbers they played.
But they squandered the lot,
Couldn’t piss in their pot,
And the repo men took it away.
This is my response to this week’s Flashback Track Friday prompt, where they asked us to:
I’ve kinda done the rounds with presents. For her fortieth birthday, I gave Mrs Bump some diamond earrings. They were set in gold, elegant, and she still wears them today. I was lucky at the time, I was earning well and was up in London every day, so I was able to get across to a particular area reputed for gemstones, where I not only found a good selection, but avoided High Street rip-offs.
Those were certainly the most valuable, just in terms of money. But at the end of the day, they’re just chunks of metal.
A lot more meaningful was a Christmas gift I bought for my daughter. Just a cuddly crocodile I picked up, by chance, while Christmas shopping in Hamleys in London. With it being a crocodile (we inventively called it Croc) we were able to play all sorts of games which usually involved it eating one of her limbs. Very Peter Pan!
We had that one for years, but I haven’t seen it since she left home. Perhaps she took it with her? Perhaps she still has it? Perhaps the memories are as fond for her as they are for me? I doubt that, but I don’t know.
Nowadays, I tend to go for small things, really just tokens to show that I care. I like giving poetry, it’s nice, I think, to spend creative time and energy on someone. I think it’s all too easy to give meaningless presents like money, and poetry does at least mean you thought about the person some. Besides, people these days already have too much, what use is buying them more junk on top of all the junk they already have?
My friend had her birthday earlier this year. I knew the day, but not that it was her fiftieth, until she told me, so it was a spur-of-the-moment thing. Because it was a milestone, her husband had whisked her away for the weekend. I wrote a limerick for her. Like them all, I hope it raised a tiny smile and I hunted the message out today. Most of all, I hope it reminded her not to eat too much 🤣.
For her fiftieth birthday vacation,
She was treated to great celebration.
Had a massive sponge cake,
Which then gave bellyache,
And at bedtime caused huge complication!
Another friend has their fortieth coming up, I’ll spend a bit more time crafting that one.
A sweet-natured dentist called Kevin,
Met a widow, and he was in heaven,
But with her six times wed,
And the husbands all dead,
He did not fancy being number seven.
Mister Bump 
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