in defence of the ordinary

socks

I went to hear Paul Feldwick speak the other night. Apart from being a top ad man, he's also a committed poet and lover of poetry. He was thinking about the connections between the two and  started to think about praise (Odes and Praise Songs).

He read Ode To My Socks brilliantly and made me realise exactly what I want to do with In Defence Of The Ordinary.

His thought about Neruda's poem was that in going so over-the-top in praise of something as ordinary as his socks he actually came out the other side of funny and ended up being quite serious and profound. I'd love to do that. I can do the hyperbolic examination of the apparently banal, the question is, can I come out the other side? Now that's a proper challenge.

toothpaste

Another fantastic observation from Russell Duncan.

crumbs

My friend Russell is a fantastic photographer but slightly less enthusiastic blogger. He took the good pictures in the ebcb book. I think he's too busy taking pictures. Fortunately for me though he's started taking pictures of some of the minutae of his daily life and he's going to email them to me so I can stick them up here. They seem the perfect accompaniment to my musings about the ordinary and the everyday (always assuming I get round to those musings). This is the first one, a marvelous portrait of the detritus that lurks in your toaster tray.

cornershops

Great Radio 4 programme on corner shops - Shopkeepers Of The Nation.

pebbles

I definitely mean to write something about skimming stones. This poem - Small Boy by Norman MacCaig - has an interesting thought in it.

"He wasn't trying to fill the sea.
He wasn't trying to empty the beach."

queues

This is a brilliant blog. Makes me think I have to do something about queues.

mugs (and the indent on the bottom)

Now I've read this I have to do something about mugs.

philosophy

This seems related, I should probably go.

pencils

I was sitting here, chewing my pencil, conscious that I'd not added anything to this list for a while, wondering what I should add. Then it struck me - pencils. They're good. They're ordinary. They're probably even interesting, I remember being interested by the pencil museum in Keswick. And by Henry Petroski's book, which I've got somewhere. And I also remember reading about the discontinuation of the Blackwing, apparently the best pencil ever, only now available on ebay. Maybe I could order one from there and write about how good it felt to write with it. But when I googled 'best pencil in the world' looking for Blackwing info I discovered that there's a rival claimant for the ultimate pencil title - the Dixon Ticonderoga #2.

So now, here's a real mission. Get them both and have a pencil off. I'm going to enjoy this. Plus I'm delighted by all the brilliant pencil resources out there. Doug Martin has some brilliant stuff here (including the blackwing picture above). And the wikipedia pencil section is fascinating.

bollards

Funkypancake and bollards