It's countdown in our house as our youngest son prepares to go to University in two weeks time.  I'm putting a 'survival box' together with stuff like first aid contents and toiletries, scissors, tea, coffee just to give him a start so he doesn't have to spend his first weeks buying essentials.  I'm sure he will have a great time socially, I just hope he takes to the studying!  I envy him this chance.  I could never have done this when I was his age - I never had the confidence - but I read all the stuff the Uni send through, devouring every word!  He did well in his BTEC courses and gained a Pass in Media and two Distinctions in Sport and is now going on to study Media Arts and Film and Popular Culture.  The media course sounds far more interesting than his BTEC which only covered TV and film whereas his brother's media BTEC covered video and editing as well as radio.  It sounded a much more rounded course.  Now he'll get the chance to try these things out for himself.

I shall miss him, though he's not going far at all but Uni life will suit him as he is a very social lad, with his friends anyway! He's always out and never declines an invite unless he's at deaths door. I hope that before Christmas I'll get a chance to redecorate his room and get rid of the terrible carpet that was once off white and is now grey!

Both sons have been showing me how to put a Powerpoint presentation together.  It's easier to pick up than I thought and I've had fun doing it as a little project.  And I've been back on the Open Learn site of the Open University and have been working my way through 'Starting with Psychology' which is quite fascinating.  Some of it I've come across before because I've read articles and books about the right and left hemispheres of the brain and which side dominates which area of our function and also about attraction in relationships.  I particularly enjoyed learning how to remember lists, the techniques involved and I now know about 'schemas' (a sort of filing cabinet system for knowledge).

I'm also working my way through a book on writing poetry and doing the exercises.  These give me ideas and I've written a few new things - not all worthy of publication but good to try.  I've just written one on goats.  Not quite sure about it - one to ponder on.  I was in bed the other night and was 'writing in my head' - I do this but it keeps me awake!  In the end I got up and came downstairs and wrote everything down because I knew that come morning I would have lost most of it.  I have three to tinker with now as well as the goat one.  Earlier this week I sent off my entry for the Areopagus competition having changed the line order about three times but hopefully it's right  now and it's too late anyhow.  But a poem is never finished.  Even some that I've have published I'll look back on and see a different way of doing it, change of word, a line I'd alter or take out.  I think also that as I progress and (hopefully) improve my writing I see how far I have come and would approach that same poem different now.

Here's a poem from a favourite poet of mine, the current Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy.

Valentine



Not a red rose or a satin heart.

I give you an onion.
It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.
It promises light
like the careful undressing of love.


Here.
It will blind you with tears
like a lover.
It will make your reflection
a wobbling photo of grief.


I am trying to be truthful.


Not a cute card or a kissogram.

I give you an onion.
Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips,
possessive and faithful
as we are,
for as long as we are.


Take it.
Its platinum loops shrink to a wedding-ring,
if you like.


Lethal.
Its scent will cling to your fingers,
cling to your knife.