Funfare for the Common Man

We’ve made it to the end: Part 10 (of 10) of my August 2020 Challenge.  Where do we go from here? If you’ve missed any of the previous 9 parts, a recap: Part 1: A decade in quotations: Part 1 (of 10) of the August 2020 Challenge Part 2: My readers ask, I answer: Reader Mailbag, part 1 Part 3: We live in a haunted house Part 4: The Joy of Getting Away From It All Part 5: Looking for truth in all the wrong places Part 6: From the wilds of Western Ukraine to the wild 1970s Soviet Union: Yaremche v Tiraspol Part 7: My wife tried to kill me: [mis]adventures in the Carpathians Part 8: Why my language skills suck: Part 1 Part 9: Why I speak such lousy Ukrainian – even after 10 years in Kyiv So what comes next? First, a quick English lesson: the past simple versus the present perfect. This should be easy for most of you. Compare: This pandemic period was difficult. This pandemic period has been difficult. Are they both correct? No. In the first example, the use of the past simple – was ...

“A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word on paper.” (E. B. White) I’m hardly stooping so low as to refer to myself as a ‘writer’. But this is the situation I always seem to find myself in, and life during this quarantine is only exacerbating this. The time, the mood, everything always has to be just right. If I don’t have a chunk of quiet, private, guaranteed uninterrupted time, then I’m hopeless. Just the mere hint of interruption is enough to send my heart into palpations. BUT…this quarantine has been a blessing in disguise, at least as far as writing goes. I’ve not only written more, whenever I can squeeze it in, but I’m being a bit more social in terms of keeping in touch. But ‘paper’? Good lord, how old-fashioned can one get? Am I cut out for this world and its impatience? I’ve already written one excessively long diatribe about the news and newspapers and what a dying art sitting down to read in long stre...