Mikeydred In 2024

Introduction

I was not too sure how to approach this Vocal Challenge and then thought I would document what happened and what I discovered in some of the months of 2024. month in my life.

I have a modus operandi of "There Must Be A Better Way" and sometimes there is and sometimes there isn't, so I am always looking to learn things and find better ways of doing things, and my Vocal writing is included in that.

January

The first month of the year can be a downer for some after Christmas, but luckily I have Fiona's birthday on the Epiphany and my Dad's birthday at the end of the month

In January of this year, my mate Jim turned sixty and asked me to sing at his birthday bash. While slightly nervous I was also excited to do it and I wrote him a poem to mark the date which I have included here.

I know it's November now, and photos were taken and recordings were made, as yet there are are none published so this is a recording of me singing with Spoon (Tyneside) from twenty years back, which sounds good.

When the Twin Towers were hit in 2001 Jim was supposed to be working there, and this is a document of how concerned I was at the time.

February

I continue to publish on Vocal almost every day apart from when I am short holidays away, and that is something I have built into my writing, although I do record ideas on Google Docs and take lots of photographs.

At the moment, I have stopped holidaying abroad, not because I dislike flying or other countries, but because I have so much to still enjoy and discover in the United Kingdom.

Also around February, I had hit the time when the number of my Vocal Publications started to coincide with the years of the twentieth century. That gave me a source of inspiration and I learned a new poetry format the Pantoum, and this is an example that combines that with a significant twentieth-century year:

March

One of the drugs that I have been on to help control my weight has not been available for six months and as a result, my weight has gone up. There is an alternative, but because my weight has gone up the nurse I have said that they couldn't prescribe it. With exercise and relatively good eating habits, I am keeping my weight from going up any further.

My blood sugar readings were not too impressive and I had an operation coming up and the NHS wanted to know that my blood sugar was really under control. They gave me a device that monitors my blood sugar 24/7 and they have access to the readings. This worried me a lot. I felt that I was being spied upon.

If I fancied something sweet, THEY WOULD KNOW!!

Also, it is a very convoluted device to apply, until you know how.

It turns out to be absolutely brilliant. With the test strips and finger pricks, it was easy to miss readings and you needed to have a tub or test strips and a finger pricker always available. With this, and a phone app, I know exactly what my blood sugar readings are and if they go up or down I can pinpoint why this has happened.

As a result, the operation went ahead and a potential future health problem has been removed.

I documented my initial feelings here, but this has made my life a hell of a lot better.

April

I mentioned in February about my stories coinciding with significant years, and the more I write, the more I realise that sometimes I forget what I have written. This is not a failure on my part, as you only need to remember so much, but you do know how to be able to look for things that you need to know.

I do find Vocal's Search Facility to be particularly good for this, so I think of some words in the text, title and and them into the search with "Mikeydred" and that usually brings back the story that I am looking for. Here are two pieces I wrote on their excellent Search facility.

I have over two and a half thousand Vocal Stories and this is the piece where I documented these stories:

Vocal Updates

Vocal did some upgrades and I feel that the change to the Home pages is atrocious, and the exclusive stories feature is a bit pointless as it stops your Vocal audience from reading but is fine if you have an external audience that is willing to subscribe.

The huge improvement was to the Editor which meant that we could now adjust the title, lead image and subtitle.

November

Vocal dropped seven new challenges and it really hit me badly. Eventually with help from Vocal friends and I came to terms with it and this is the fifth of those articles/stories.

I have noticed that the poems specify a minimum of a hundred words, but you can still submit a Senryū (川柳). I don't know if poems will be disqualified for being less than a hundred words.

I also noticed that the last four challenges require 750,1000,1000 and 1000 words each, rather than the normal six hundred words. This one requires a thousand words.

This was my piece on it.

This month I had the first week of holiday since about March, this time in Thirsk, and all my writing was on a reconditioned Lenovo laptop, that was a Christmas present from Fiona. The performance is excellent and the only tiny grip is not having a dedicated numeric keypad, but I could buy one if I really wanted.

December, An Annual Conclusion

Writing this, I am halfway through November, so the final month of the year will be celebrating Christmas and starting in Settle where I intend to visit The Huntress, and the highest single-drop waterfall in the UK, Hardraw Force so look out for a piece on that while I am there.

This is a three-year-old piece about Settle but we will be in a new cottage and hopefully discover and visit lots of new things.

Thank you so much for bearing with me on what I have seen and learned throughout the year of 2024.