same old, same old…

Today appears to be completely bland and lacking in controversy, if this screen from reddit is anything to go by:

I probably should be glad that everything’s going so calmly, but, quite frankly, I’m a little disappointed.

see saw

Another BBC website headline that interests me:

 
 
 
 
There’s nothing actually wrong with it, of course. It heads a story that starts:

Serial killer franchise Saw has been named the most successful horror movie series by the Guinness World Records.

But the phrasing demonstrates the problems of trying to write headlines that fit into a measured space on a web page (or printed page, for that matter.)

rocking the boat

From the BBC website, this headline catches my eye:

The story begins:

Four women have set a new record by becoming the first women to row non-stop around Britain, organisers say.

…and counting

It’s hard to build a readership for a personal blog, particularly one which has no single connecting theme. After all, “first person poetry, prose and opinion” is pretty much what everybody else is doing with their own blogs.

Which makes it all the more gratifying to find that Dont Confuse the Narrator has had as many visits this year as it had in the whole of 2009.

So: Thank you to regular visitors and Welcome to new visitors. If you have any suggestions about what you would like to see here, please use the contact page to let me know.

the wayside flower (green and pleasant)

It’s a cliché, but England really is green, and I was amazed at the exuberance of the plants and wild flowers growing on untended verges. There’s a tiny blue cornflower tucked in the among the yellow and red here, and I couldn’t believe how truly blue it was. Here in Spain, they seem to come in a shade of over-washed lilac.

Still, it was a Spanish wayside that inspired this vignette:

Poppy-petal butterflies ride
at anchor on a charlock sea,
while in the depths below
ox-eyed monsters lurk.