Getting Shorter

This week’s Six Word Saturday is

Getting Up In The Dark Again

I get up at 6.15 each morning and all last week, for the first time in months, it has been dark when I’ve been getting up.

Not Stygian blackness, (though that can’t actually have been totally dark, how would the ferryman have found his way across the Styx, he might just have rowed around in circles. And how would he know you’d given him the right money, you could have given him an “I Am 4 Today”button for all he’d know) but just dark enough that I’ve had to turn on the light in the kitchen while I was making breakfast.

Autumn is upon us.

Over the years people have tried to make Autumn sound like a Good Thing. The Autumn section of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons has the nicest music of all of the four sections. Keats burbles on about mists and mellow fruitfulness (though remember that he died young from consumption, probably from hanging about in the mists). Sky Sports keep reminding us that the new football season starts in Autumn (they’ve actually been rabbiting on about that since May since they’ve no decent sport to show during the summer). Americans refer to it as Fall, making it sound less forbidding and also easier to spell.

If its all that great then why do birds gather together in their hundreds, fly around in circles for a while like looners, then sod off south until spring.

No, the fact is that Autumn is the warm-up guy for the main act of Winter, though warm-up is the wrong expression. This week has been chilly, and coming from an Irishman that’s bad, we regard anything above 18 degrees as stifling.

Soon it will be dark not just when I get up for work, but still dark when I get there. It will be dark when I leave to come home.

Any day now a Christmas ad will appear on the TV, and I will throw something at the screen.

The only good thing that can be said for Autumn is that without it the apple would not have dropped onto Isaac Newton’s head. In that case he would never have invented gravity, and my laptop would now be floating just above my head, slightly out of reach.

(For more Six Word Saturday posts, go here:)

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Oh You Pretty Thing

It’s time again for Six Word Saturday

and this week I must proudly say:

I Have Got A Lovely Mug

I’ve always known this, of course. Johnny Depp’s eyes are the same colour as mine, George Clooney has exactly the same number of ears as I have and my name and Brad Pitt’s often appear in the same sentence (though admittedly the sentence is “Tinman looks absolutely nothing like Brad Pitt”).

But my Adonisness is not what I’m referring to here. I am referring to this:

I bought it online here at the Literary Gifts Company (have a look through their whole website, there are about a million things on it I’d love to have). I got it after seeing it on my friend Speccy’s blog, so if you all decide to buy one (and who could resist) then if you’re reading this, LGC, it’s really she who should get the commission.

But does it work, I hear you ask. Does using it stir my muse whilst I am stirring my tea?

Well it inspired today‘s post, so I’d have to say so far so good.

(For more Six Word Saturday posts, go here:)

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A Moving Post

This week’s Six Word Saturday is

Work Is Looking A Lot Brighter

This week we moved office. That’s not strictly true, our company is still based where we have been for the past five-and-a-half years, but our continued expansion means that we have taken two floors in another building about a hundred yards away, and my department (all two of us) were among the ones who got to move.

We’ve spent the last five-and-a-half years in the coldest part of our office, with a door to our right, a window behind us and the air-conditioning positioned so that the cold (always cold) air bounced off the wall beside me and into my face.

Polar bears, penquins and icebergs on their way south to attack White Star Liners refused to stop there.

Bob Cratchit, sitting with his half-gloves on, spent one morning working there and rushed sobbing back to Scrooge begging for his old job back.

But now we’ve moved. We even have a little room of our own on the fourth floor, full of warmth, natural light and a really nice plant (well ok, we bought the plant).

There is an outdoor balcony the whole way around our floor and already I have forced myself (I’m afraid of heights) to walk all the way around it, which to be honest was the hardest work I did all week.

And where previously this was our view (if we turned and looked out of the window behind us):

This is it now:

See, even the weather is better in the new office.

(For more Six Word Saturday posts, go here:)

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Now That Smarts

It’s Saturday, time once again for Six Word Saturday, and this week it’s a struggle.

It’s four o’clock in the afternoon here, so almost half of the day has gone without any inspiration. The Tinkids have all gone out, doing nothing interesting or newsworthy before they left. Mrs Tin dropped and broke a glass, but would not be happy if I broadcast that fact all over the internet, so I won’t.

I’ve done nothing exciting either. “Went To The Shops, Bought Newspaper” is not the kind of story that wins you Best Thriller Writer awards.

I was pretty close to not playing this week, when suddenly I had a stroke of good fortune. I was cutting my nails and nipped my finger with the nail-clippers. So:

Ouch, That Really, Really Did Hurt

Mind you, it’s a sign that blogging is more an addiction than a hobby when you’re actually thrilled to have hurt yourself so you’ve got something to write about.

(For more Six Word Saturday posts, go here:)

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Back in the Fold

It’s Saturday, and there are only six words that I can use:

Back In Contact With The World

Last Saturday I wrote that I had missed Friday’s post due to our modem/router/whatever-the-hell-it’s-called staging occasional unscheduled work-breaks. It seems to have taken offence at this (of course it read it, the post was chanelled through it as if I was a ghost, it was a medium and the internet was a séance) so ten minutes after I published the post it stopped working altogether and has remained resolutely on strike ever since.

The couple of posts that I have published since have been sneaked out at work to let you know that I’m still here, since I’ve discovered before that when a man who writes about his heart problems and his bouts of depression suddenly vanishes off the internet for a few days (especially when he has pledged himself to Post-a-Day) then it tends to scare the crap out of his internet friends.

Anyway, we now have a new thingummybob and the world is again my oyster, if the world will forgive me for called it salty, slimy and disgusting.

I am back, sitting in front of my machine and looking forward to reading more of your own posts than I got to do last week.

In short, I am expecting a very pleasant Saturday.

(For more Six Word Saturday posts, go here:)

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Out of Contact

Here is this week’s Six Word Saturday:

Internet Was Broken – That’s My Excuse

I had no post here yesterday for only the second time this year. The first time was simply because I forgot to hit “publish” when I had finished writing, the kind of mistake that could be made by anyone, so long as they’re a total idiot.

Last night was different – I arrived home with my post already written in Word, all I had to do was cut-and-paste it onto my blog, but I found that I couldn’t get in. A big sign should then have appeared on the screen saying “the internet is down – sorry for any inconvenience”, but that would mean Microsoft, or Eircom, or Al Gore, or somebody admitting that they had screwed up, and this is not what happens in the computer world. If your computer suddenly crashes Microsoft will tell you, not that some of its programs are crap, but that you have performed an illegal operation and have been shut down, which makes you sound like a badly-behaved robot.

Anyway, instead of the big sign I kept getting helpful messages suggesting that perhaps I was typing in the wrong address, or that the site that I was looking for no longer existed. Since it was my own site I was looking for this was like being told that I was too drunk to find my way home, or else that some Government agency had erased all record of my existence (it happens, I’ve seen it in films), possibly because of the illegal operation that I performed in the last paragraph.

Just when it got to the stage that my language had moved beyond “fruity” to “consisting purely of symbols” (e.g., *!@#!!&*#@?!!) Tinson1 arrived home and told me that the internet wasn’t working, that he had rung Eircom and they were looking into it.

I kept trying at intervals during the evening until eventually midnight came and I accepted that I had lost.

It was still off this morning and since this is a Bank Holiday Weekend here in Ireland I reckoned that was it until Tuesday, but Tinson1, suffering World Of Warfare withdrawal symptoms, rang them again and got someone to do something technical that probably involved turning something off and then turning it back on again, and we are back.

Which is just as well. Six Word Tuesday just doesn’t have the same ring to it.

(For more Six Word Saturday posts, go here:)

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Questions and Answers

Time again for Six Word Saturday:

I Want To Hold Your Hand

Since a six-word description of most of my Saturdays would be Snoozed In Front Of The TV I sometimes have to borrow from other days. Last night I went to a quiz which was a fund-raiser for a new soccer team which is starting up in Greystones.

There are many oddly-named football teams. Scotland has Partick Thistle, England has Accrington Stanley (sorry, Accrington, Spellcheck doesn’t even believe your town exists, never mind its football team) and Sheffield Wednesday. Then of course there is David Beckham’s current club, LA Galaxy, which when you think about it doesn’t really mean anything.

Let me introduce you to Three Trout Rovers.

In fairness there is a Three Trout Stream which flows through our town, so the founders didn’t just think up the name while on a drinking binge. Anyway, the quiz was great fun and my team finished third. We actually finished joint second, but they had a tie-break question (what is the population of Galway) and the bloke we sent up from our team got it more wrong than the bloke from the other team.

I did apologise to the rest of the team when I got back to our table.

As I said the night was great fun and I wish the club every success.

What? Oh, the six words. It’s the Beatles’ highest selling single. I knew the answer and, judging by the lack of cheering when the answer was read out, I was the only one in the room who did.

Possibly because I was probably the oldest.

(For more Six Word Saturday posts, go here:)

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What I Choose It To Mean

Here is this week’s Six Word Saturday:

Plaudd Tedness Tuddleth Chrapts Nishoses Cetator

“Wow,” I can hear you all thinking, “when Tinman said he was on holiday this week he didn’t say he was going to spend absolutely every second of it in the pub.”

I am not in fact drunk, nor have my meds suddenly worn off. On my trips around the other 6wS blogs last weekend I noticed that many of you have Word Verification, and noticed as I have before how tantalisingly close some of them are to looking like words with real meanings.

The above six are actual words that I was asked to type by various blogs last week, and this is what they actually mean:

Plaudd: the hesitant but determined applause that you give at the end of the First Class school play, even though the leading actress forgot all of her lines, one boy sat facing away from the audience crying throughout and another one loudly wet himself onto the stage floor.

Tedness: a compulsion to wear sideburns.

Tuddleth: short and very sweet. What your two-year old asks for when he needs hugs.

Chrapts: otherwise known as Car Crash TV, those awful reality shows about obese people being shouted at, people with messy houses being shouted at, or Jerry Springer, where everybody gets shouted at. You stare raptly at them, even though you know that they are crap.

Nishoses: part knickers, part fishnet stockings, part panty-hose, a garment worn by women who want to look sexy when they go out for the evening, but don’t want to get involved in what they refer to as “that sort of thing”.

Cetator: part Sports Commentator, part Bull. Could be any of them really.

I realise that this is not exactly telling you anything about my life in six words, but it tells you quite a bit about Mrs Tin’s, who has to live with me.

(For more Six Word Saturday posts, go here:)

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Down Time

Here’s my Six Word Saturday:

I’m Off Work For A Week

Actually, since I’m new at this I’m not sure if that’s allowed. Does “I’m” count as one word?

I could have gone for

I Am Free For A Week

but that sounds as if I’ve been released from jail on parole, while

No More Workin’ For A Week

leaves you feeling that you’ve been cheated of two words and leaves the song “Summer Holiday” stuck in your head for the rest of the day.

Anyway, I’m on holiday this week, not going anywhere or doing anything. There might be this:

or there might be this:

Either way I don’t really mind, because what there won’t be is this:

(For more Six Word Saturday posts, go here:)

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Jumping With Glee

It’s time, yet again, for Six Word Saturday, a chance to tell the story of what’s happening in your world in six words. There can be only one topic today:

Glee has descended upon our house

Doris Schwartz of "Fame" fame- see what I mean about the hair

The massive hit TV show Glee (essentially 80’s programme Fame with better hairstyles) brings its live show to Dublin today. Tingirl and six of her friends are going and, while I can’t speak for her friends, the normally icily-sophisticated Tingirl (she’s 14, says it all) may burst like bubblegum any second in a high-pitched squeak of excitement.

This tale starts last November when Tingirl confidently told the others not to worry, that I would get the tickets online. So on the morning that they went on sale I was hunched at my computer at work, ready for the magic hour of eight a.m. like one of those mad people who wastes Christmas Day camped outside some shop so they can be first in the queue to buy some coat for four euro that they’ll probably spill wine all over on New Year’s Eve.

The time arrived, the doors metaphorically opened and I went for tickets for Saturday. And couldn’t get any, although it was not yet 8.01. I went for Sunday, with the same result. After that I just kept trying every option – any tickets, dearest tickets, best tickets, would-it-help-if-I-donated-a-kidney tickets, all to the background accompaniment of daughterly messages saying “did you get them” appearing every thirty seconds on my phone.

Just when I was resigning myself to the awful prospect of having to tell her (and have her tell her friends) that I couldn’t get them I noticed something flashing at the bottom of the screen. It said “new shows now added!”, I clicked into it and thirty seconds later owned eight tickets for this afternoon’s show and was my daughter’s hero forever (with teenagers that’s like BFF, it doesn’t necessarily last) .

The six friends are all part of Tingirl’s drama class, who had their end-of-term showcase the following Saturday, and parent after parent came up and willing handed over their eighty-five euro (Glee doesn’t come cheap, as any TV evangelist will tell you), thanking me profusely for getting the tickets.

Those of you who are good at maths may have noticed that I keep mentioning eight tickets, Tingirl, and six friends. The eighth ticket is for Mrs Tin. Because they are all under 16 they must be accompanied by one person over 18, and Mrs Tin has got the gig of going to the gig. The parents from the previous paragraph all thanked her profusely too for giving up her afternoon to enable the whole thing to take place, and each time she would sigh gently and say “ah, well, sure somebody had to do it.”

Which just proves that Mrs Tin was the best actress in the room that day. She’s a bigger fan of Glee than any of them.

(For more Six Word Saturday posts,go here:)

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