Category: Personal
-
No Kebabs for Dr Jaws
It was ’98 or ’99. Again, at short notice I was asked to set up a laptop. For an external consultant : an interviewee. No problem. Download the standard operating environment. Upgrade and…you need to install Dr Jaws. What the heck is Dr Jaws? Dr Jaws is a screen reader for sight-impaired people : the […]
-
The Teddy Bear Principle
In September 2020, I received an email. Somewhere in the middle was a story about how a university professor solved enquiries before he received them. By keeping a teddy bear outside his office. Attached to it was a sign, “Ask Teddy.”
-
Success? Or Failure? Or Fulfilment?
I am writing occasionally in response to Dangerous Meredith‘s Advent Creativity prompts. Her latest is derived from her pamphlet called The Right Questionand poses the following questions which I’ve answered as a poet and trainer (and technical writer) ‘cos they overlap and are unveiling… “How important are the following to you when you assign values […]
-
May You Ever (A Response to May You Never)
I wrote a response to Meredith Lewis’ prompt May you never which details how I stopped writing poetry for years. But how I returned can only be described as a subtle gentling. In every role, whether programmer or system manager or desktop support or service manager, I was always writing whether diaries for recollection and […]
-
May You Never…
I am writing occasionally in response to Dangerous Meredith‘s Advent Creativity prompts. Her latest is titled, May You Never and this quote will suffice: “Today’s challenge is for you to cast your mind back and locate, in your memory, someone who unfairly or unhelpfully sneered at your efforts.“ I heard my daughter’s Elise’s giggle first. […]
-
The Creativity Thing
I have been inspired by Meredith Lewis’ Advent Calendar and today’s most so which is on creativity Meredith’s Advent Calendar. This is my best response… I can still hear her voice in my head. Although long ago she would have sent away mine, unfortunately. She had spend the last 45 minutes describing her failed novel […]
-
Short Run
Again. I drew my hand close, splayed my fingers wide and pressed down hard. On my shoulder. I pivoted and turned left, facing the scorers. “Short run, ” I intoned, making sure my voice carried off field.
-
Help the helpers
“Daddy? What is it you do again?” My daughter looked up from her drawing and fixed me with her questioning stare.
-
Version Control
It began as an easy and fairly innocuous job. The only downside was that it had to be finished by Monday. But I was just the technical writer and my role was secondary. Or so I thought. The content was being emailed to me by another person. A communications document for a new software implementation. […]
-
Letters to an artist : John Keats
John Keats! They made me read you and after Chaucer and Donne (who I ended up liking eventually), I wanted to refuse. I loved poetry having fallen in love with Milton’s, “On His Blindness” and John Masefield’s, “Sea Fever,” but even after having written poetry of my own, the reluctance was strong towards this one. […]
-
The Last Line (Beth McMullen : Obstinate Little Tart)
“Excuse me.”I look up. I’m zero words into a five hundred word short story, which means…any interruption is perfectly welcome. “Do you know you look like David Marr?” I’m laughing now. At the woman waving her debit card. She was about to buy a coffee and has mistaken me. For David. Not David my twin […]
Andrew James Whalan 