Have faith?

There's a bit of a to-do in town at the moment, because one of the pubs has renamed its upstairs function room as The Buddha Bar. I have friends who are practising Buddhists and they are very upset about this. Can you imagine The Jesus Joint, Mohammed's Movie House, Krishna's Cafe? There is, of course, Mecca Bingo, but how would you feel about the Nazareth Nitespot?

Whether the pub intended to cause offence I can't possibly know, but certainly it's brought it some publicity. Am I offended? To be honest, I'm not sure. I mean, I can see that it's at best a bit tasteless and thoughtless; but is it my place to be offended on someone else's behalf? If I don't speak against it, am I implicitly supporting it, or expressing neutrality?

It's all a bit of a minefield. I'd be interested in your thoughts.

Concrete mixer

Image: morguefile.com

I am indebted to my mum for the inspiration for today's short post.

Her latest writing-group challenge is to write a poem in the shape of the subject - for example, something about a cat in the shape of a cat. A quick Google search revealed hundreds of very clever examples of what I now know is called concrete poetry. (I won't post any here, out of respect for copyright, but they're easily found.)

I rather like the idea of fusing words and images in this way, and I'm looking forward to seeing what she comes up with.

Are any of you practised in this form?

Goodness me, look at the time!

I don't know where the time has gone since my last post. Did you miss me? Although this blog is a way to keep my hand in when it comes to writing and of course it's lovely to connect with you folk out there, sometimes it has to take a back seat because real work comes along.

It's funny how often just when I'm on the verge of packing it all in and getting a proper job, things pick up: and that's what's happened in the last few weeks. People I haven't worked for in ages have resurfaced, and my regular clients seem to have perked up, too.

Not only that but I've also been commissioned to write a book! I can't tell you what it is, because I'm ghosting it for someone. That means my name won't be on it, of course, but I'm hoping I might get a mention in the acknowledgements. It's going to be hard work, I know, but I've made a promising start.

By the way, in case you were wondering, my public speaking engagements back in October went well. Since then, I've also done my first WI presentation, which was great fun. I spoke a bit about my writing and read a couple of my short stories (one from Nine Lives and a piece from Stripped-back Yoga), but the meat of the session was getting them all to write something.

This week's public appearance is playing my uke tomorrow night for a community gathering. Never a dull moment!