Friday, October 18, 2013

Spider, viola and arse over elbow

A stray viola seeds itself in a crack in the pub wall. I take the photograph nearly a month ago. Today it is still there and has been joined by another in the angle where the wall meets the paving.

Against the greenhouse door a spider is hard a work weaving its web. Though a lifelong  arachnophobe I have recently taken every opportunity to photograph the creature. As a result I am little less worried by the sight of the them. I take several shots wondering if the spider, which stops and starts as I proceed, is aware of a  hovering a eye a few centimetres from its domain.

This post is as they say arse over  elbow. I posted  it yesterday on my other my other blog One Fine Day by mistake   On One Fine Day meanwhile  I clicked "publish" half way through a story when I meant to click "save". So be patient and understanding when you read this. I will tell you when the story on One Fine Day is complete.

4 comments:

Tom said...

Somehow, this world you describe - a microcosm existing in a larger world - seems to put humanity with all its flaws and shortcomings in context.

Lucy said...

I live in fear, albeit fairly mild, of hitting 'publish' when I mean 'save', and similar errors. Not the end of the world though really.

But I am troubled by 'arse over elbow'. I fear you are mixing your idioms, but don't know what the appropriate one is. One can't tell one's arse from one's elbow when one is clueless, and one goes arse over tit when falling over and upending oneself dramatically, but...

I know! Arse about face!

Roderick Robinson said...

It's an adaptable phrase: arse over tip, comes to mind. But there's something else abroad here, certainly in my case. The schoolboyish glee in not only being able to toy with a naughty word over the ether - in front of a potential audience of millions - but to include the naughty word in the headline. Check your Stats in a day or two.

Pushing Publish rather than Save is no more than a minor irritation. Copy what you've written - assuming it's worth saving - to Notepad, the icon you have cleverly kept in the top RH corner of your desktop. Do the two-stage blitz (ie, total elimination) on your unwanted post. Then reinstate. Nobody need know a thing. Which is just as well since it's a process I have used many times.

Roderick Robinson said...

Have I been wrong for fifty years? Lucy says "Arse over tit" (seems logical but must surely be limited to women) while I say "Arse over tip" (in which an assonance allows a play on words; tip or tipping describing the experience that is occurring).