Hello again, deviantArt people. Time for an update - which is less of an update and more of a rambling recount of thoughts and events.

1. I'm being annoyed by bad poetry on dA. The kind of poetry that gets to the front page and gets 3,843 views and 186 favourites and three critiques with four and a half or five stars, and three pages of gushing comments. The kind of poetry that's about love and ribs and writer's angst, that says nothing and regurgitates a cliche a line. Perhaps I shouldn't be annoyed. Perhaps I should be glad that poetry follows the general rule of dA - that most stuff that gets to the front page is shallow and very much loved by teenagers. I should be flattered that my poetry doesn't get there. But really, why does the bad, shallow, meaningless stuff get so much love?

2. I've set up a blog (another blog?) - but this time I write about thoughts and feelings and events, not fandom and squealsome things. It's called The Non-Adventures Of... and so far I've mused on insomnia, feminism, tantrums, and the inevitability of children vomiting. Seriously, check it out. You might enjoy it. If you're more in a fannish mood you can look at my other blogs, but it seems that Peter Graves and Route 66 are niche interests

3. I'm still in a photographic mire, and can't take a nice shot.

4. I'm still being anonymously harassed by 'someone' (we know who it is) continually calling the authorities to tell them how we neglect our children. Most recent stunt is to post a newspaper clipping through the door with pieces highlighted to tell us how we are cruel and lazy and neglect our dog. Next up? Who knows? It would be far easier if they didn't do it, because it upsets our lovely health workers to have to keep coming to us about these things, when they know our children are fine. But I get a lot of poetry writing out of it

5. I'm building up to writing another based-on-real-cases story for the North Wales Mental Health Research Project, but I don't have my notes to hand right now. Very annoying. I want to get started. My last story was about a woman who killed her young daughter. My next will be about a man whose first sign of madness was to keep his hat on in Chester Cathedral. A very Victorian problem. There's a hope that these stories will eventually be published in an anthology.

6. I haven't been uploading enough poetry recently, but I have been trying to write a poem a day since early January. I upload all of them on my regular facebook and my tumblr, and some of them on my author facebook page. Some of them are good. Some of them are not.

7. I've lost a stone in weight since I started exercising every day a month or two ago.

The End