Writing about writer's block

On the rare occasions when I update this journal, I'm always conscious of my style of writing. Part of me wants it to emulate a weekly newspaper column, where the writer gives worth amusing witticisms of a particular event from the past week, musing on the little lessons of life and the delicacy of beautiful that comes from living. Perhaps if I really tried, it could read a little like the Times' Robert Crampton (or even the late, great, John Diamond).

But only a few blog entries (of which I am nearly 80 now) have ever really escapulated this sense. Usually I end up writing about that forbidden subject of all writers- not being able to write. There is little literary worth gained by investigating the dull world of writer's block.

Adding to this line of thought, I have alot of poems or fragments of poems that have been abandoned. A small porportion of these do show some merit- there is the outline of a solid piece of poetry starting to form form the clay of the raw words. But for some reaosn or another, the piece refused to be teased into a completed formation. In fact, perhaps the beauty of the poetry comes from the fact that the poem does lie unfinished. There are rudimentary sketches, studies for a planned oil painting, which may never actually come about.

It's very hard to say when a poem is complete, when you are happy with each word, comma, nuance, allusion, etc. The easier job is in saying what looks and feels incomplete. Perhaps one should revel in the incompletion, celebrate the imperfection, and say that every once in a while, perhaps things should be left as they are.

Exploring Seals

Perhaps an odd choice for a day out on a sleepy Sunday, but Exploris Aquarium in Portaferry sounded like the perfect way to spend part of the weekend: see some weird looking sea creatures, perhaps stroke a starfish and watch seals going ‘arf-arf’ as they splash about in the pool.

First lesson: seals don’t go ‘arf’. Only sea lions do that. I’m not too sure what the different is really, but I didn’t hear a squeak out of any one of the seals. Exploris rescues and helps rehabilitate abandoned or orphaned seal pups found around the north coast of Ireland. When we visited, five common seals were in the sanctuary, all around four t six weeks old.

One seal, Bubbles, was isolated in a quarantine pen while it learnt to eat feed: apparently she was refusing to eat, and despite being tube fed for a while, had lost two kilograms in weight. Although the trainer said that Bubbles had not ate today, while we were there, we saw her managed to struggle down one fish- a big achievement considering her self-restricted diet in the last two weeks. Bubbles pawed the fish about for ages before managing to manoeuvre it into her mouth and gulp it down. Seeing this small seal pup all alone, isolated in the pen, while the other four seals swam around freely in the large observation pool, getting fed dozens of fish, was quite moving somehow.

Elsewhere, in shallow touching pools, visitors could hold clams, and stroke stingrays, feeling their soft underbelly and in contrast, their rough top surface. Perfectly safe, despite what happened to Steve Irwin, and a favourite with the kids.

If you want to adopt a seal, go to http://www.exploris.org.uk/tour_of_exploris/nie_seal_sanctuary/adopt_a_seal/ to find out more details.