Cataloging my one-a-day poems and some sad news

Now I am into week 41 of my write-a-poem-a-day-for-a-year I have realised that to track down certain poems is difficult because there is no record of what is in each week. I just have a folder with files numbered by week  so I have to search through each file to find what I want. I have in fact submitted a few poems, but the task of searching is becoming silly. So, today I decided to sort this. Not being a person with a liking for spreadsheets I have resorted to old fashioned pen and notebook. In fact I am using the one but last school exercise book once used by sons. This one is a Year 8 Spanish exercise book!  Once the used pages are ripped out there is plenty of paper left for the purpose. I have a few columns and enter by week the title of each poem written. At present the amount of ticks in the submitted column indicates how many times I've sent it out (where to is entered in another book). There aren't many ticks yet, but one is on it's third submission. This will help a great deal for now. I've written about half the year's poems in so far and noticed a few things, like how awful some of the titles are, and how I love some of the others, how some poems move on from the last written. I can also see by their titles around the time I wrote them in the year, the influences I had to write them. It's quite interesting. There are a mixture of quite silly things that will never see the light of day, a lot of climate stuff later on and I noticed a few poems ended up with titles I'd used already!

I came across some poems I'd forgotten about and were a nice surprise, some cringe-worthy, some laugh out loud and some deep stand out poems. I also realised that some weeks I had more than seven poems and a couple with only six poems (I did add to one to make up the seven, though I shall more than 365 poems when I've finished. That sounds a great deal, but possibly only a handful will be good enough to submit. However, there are others I will edit when I've finished if I think they are worth the effort, even if I have to re-write them.

This has been a useful exercise and the start of the next phase. I hope to have the remaining poems entered in the next few days, though of course I'm still writing, but I see the end of the tunnel now.

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Ollie making himself at home in the new cage

I have written about my son's pet rats before. Having failed to bond the rescue rats with Rizzo, it was time to buy a new cage for Charlie and Ollie. The temporary one was hard work. The doors opened inwards and frequently the hooks caught on clothing, it took two of us to clean and it wasn't easy to get the two boys out. The new cage is identical to Rizzo's and is just ideal. The two settled into their new home, and while we still tried bonding Rizzo with them, Charlie particularly would end up fighting with chunks of fur being pulled from Rizzo. It has been stressful for us to watch and while some fighting is normal we separated them many times to avoid anything worse. Rizzo seems very at home alone these days. I get him out in the mornings and we share breakfast. Well, he would steal my cereal, so I gave him his own breakfast of oats, soya cheese and a dollop of soya yogurt. Sometimes I'd add blueberries and carrot, but the soya products were pounced upon first! Often Rizzo comes out at night too. He appears to like whistling and my singing. He had a rendition of the Bee Gees Staying Alive the other morning!

Charlie

Charlie and Ollie have been out just together lately, but sadly little Charlie died on Friday. I found him lying in the bottom of the cage. There was no warning. He'd been out in the morning, taken food and seemed perky. So this was a bit of a shock. I don't know the cause. It could be related to his start in life, the infection he (and Ollie) had before they came here, or age, though he was only just over a year old (life span of a rat is around two years).

Because it was already dark when I found him we wrapped him in kitchen roll and put him in a small box and left it until the morning to bury him in the garden. I did what I did for the guineas pigs when they died....I put some food with him for the afterlife! (Me and my pagan/Christian ways! - I made a cross too).

Now Ollie is alone and wondering where his friend is. We are trying to lavish love on him. It's not good to have lone rats, but Ollie has always been the biter and aggressive one. I am not sure what we do. I can't see him accepting another rat. Oh, and he bit me on Sunday. Blood everywhere and the bite was tricky to stop bleeding. It's getting better now, though. I should have known better than to stroke him in his cage. Once he's out he is much better, but we are always wary. We are teaching him to go inside the pouch so we can lift him out of the cage. My son is very good (though he's been bitten three times!). Oh, the trials and tribulations of pet keeping!

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Finally, I had a nice surprise yesterday when the Brotherton Poetry Prize Anthology arrived in the post. I'd not won the prize or been a runner up. In fact I'm not in it at all, though I did enter. Maybe it was part of the entry to receive a free copy when published. Whatever, it was good to have a copy and see what I was up against. I guess I can see why I got nowhere! I've only read a few poems so far but I really liked the poems by the overall winner, Dane Holt, especially the first few. I think I've finally realised that these winning poets are in another league to me. I'm not sure how I will ever get to that level, perhaps never.