Michael Harling's Blog, page 16

Holiday

We’ve just returned from holiday (or, as you in the US might say, We just got back from vacation) and, as usual, it already feels like we never left. There is laundry to be done, dishes to wash, and it seems that no one did the hoovering while we were gone.

And right now, what sticks foremost in my mind, is not the relaxing time we had, but the driving.

In traveling to and from the cottage—as well as nearly every excursion we went on during the week—we routinely ran into ROAD CLOSED signs. As yo...

Closing the Barn Door

My Postcards books were published a decade ago, and some of the essays in them are nearly twenty years old. So why did I suddenly, and so belatedly, re-release them?

Am I really that vain? Do I crave riches and glory? Have I run out of things to say?

Okay, I’ll cop to some of that, but the real, honest-to-God reason I began this revision journey was because, incredibly, people are still buying the books.

It remains a source of pride, humility, chagrin and incredulity that every month a dozen or ...

Summer, Revisited

2020

I’m sitting in my office with a limp breeze floating in through the open window, bringing with it the scent of dry grass and sun-baked tarmac, as well as a distinctive “new clothes” smell, as I am wearing a shirt I just bought from FatFace. The odd combination brings to mind vivid memories of the first day of school, and an ache of nostalgia.

My intention was to write about the blue skies, blazing sun and record-breaking heat we’ve been enjoying (well, I have, anyway) this past week or so, b...

Faking It

The US 2020 Presidential Election is beginning to gear up, and we all know what that means: the tidal wave of Fake News (real Fake News—not opinions you don’t like) that is currently swamping Twitter and Facebook (and wherever else virtual people gather in virtual meeting places to argue with virtual strangers) is set to swell into a tsunami.

For the most part, people seem unwilling or unable to do much about Fake News other than spread it. I do not; I’m one of those obnoxious people who call it...

The NeverEnding Story

During those long-ago days, when Lockdown first began, I—and almost everyone else in Britain—began a Lockdown Diary.
For me, this wasn’t a big change. I have been keeping a journal since the age of eleven and the only difference between the Journal and the Lockdown Diary was that I proposed to update the Journal every day and number the entries accordingly. Therefore, I am, as of today, up to Lockdown Day plus 117(reminiscent of the WWII designations of D-Day plus ##).


Initially, I determined to k...

Adventures in Baking

I’ve always had a fondness for baking bread. It was a nice winter pastime, something to do on a snowy afternoon when I had no place to go and nothing else to do. I hadn’t done it in a few years, mostly because I’ve been too busy. But then came a lot of free time, and my thoughts turned to baking—along with about 47 million other people’s. (I’d say 60 million but I assume some people must not be baking, though I have no proof of that.)

Consequently,… but you already know this; there was no flour t...

Lockdown Letup

Sorry I’m late with this post, but I’ve been sorta busy.

I had to take the car in for service this morning and the traffic was bad. And then I took it to get washed. We filled the tank yesterday for the first time since March, and it cost so little I didn’t think it was done pumping. And last Friday, I actually double-booked myself and had to chose between a Zoom Book Club Meeting and visiting our friends for an afternoon of seared meat and alcoholic beverages. (Guess which won.)

We’ve also had to...

It’s a Classic

One day, while I was still in single-digits, somewhere around 6 or 7, I went exploring in my parents bedroom closet. This was because I was young, unsupervised, and very bored (there was no Netflix back then; explain it to the youngsters). At any rate, I dug through the shoes and boots, and crawled beyond the bags of cast-off clothes, into the far, darkest reaches, and discovered an old cardboard box filled with what looked like magazines.
Now, in a normal house, this would have been my dads...

Quarantine Quandaries

To start off, I have to say that,  if someone put a gun to my head and forced me to pick a period in my life where I had to suffer through a global pandemic, this would be the perfect time to choose.
Neither my wife nor I have jobs, so we dont have to worry about losing them, yet were still young enough to escape being put on the Vulnerable list. We dont have anyone depending on us, were not dependent on anyone else and were not stuck in a one-bedroom, inner-city flat with three kids we...

Once More Into the Breach

Early in 2013, while wrestling with the plot of my hopefully-to-be-published second novel, I stepped back from the tangled mess I was making and diverted myself by writing a quick story for my grandsons. It involved them being transported back in time, and to England, where they faced a dragon, evil knights and a band of ruthless outlaws. (Hey, it could happen.)
In this dark-ages tale, they met an old Druid and encountered a magic stone called the Talisman.
Oh, and Arthur, they met King...