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DAILY PROMPT ON WordPRESS ~ 20th SEPTEMBER 2015

22/9/2015

DAILY PROMPT on WordPress

Exhale
"Tell us about a time when everything seemed to be going wrong — and then, suddenly, you knew it would be alright."

"Dawn" ~ Image from the net"

EXHALE SLOWLY
by John Yeo

The first thing that led me to believe that this was going to be one of those days, was when my absolutely reliable, dependable alarm call failed to sound I woke two hours late for my work, to discover that my mobile phone had stopped working, exactly one hour before the alarm was due to sound.

I immediately attempted to telephone my office to say I was running late but my landline was out of order and I still had no signal on my mobile phone. l switched on the television to catch the news, the newscaster was rambling on about all the troubles in the world, but there wasn't anything about local communications failure. I switched it off in disgust.

I thought I may as well accept the fact that my morning was missing and I thought why shouldn't I indulge in a good brunch and start work in the afternoon. I put some toast under the grill and eggs were frying in the pan when there was a knock at the door. I rushed to answer the door to find my neighbour on the doorstep. "Have you a telephone that works?" He asked.
"No!" I replied. "I am going in to work this afternoon!"
Suddenly I smelt smoke and my smoke alarm went crazy, I realised what I had done and slammed the door in her face. I quickly went to the kitchen to find the oven was on fire so I raced to the sink and filled a bucket with water and tried to put the fire out. I then realised that water and electricity do not mix, just as the lights fused with a crack and a mains fuse blew.

Then sirens sounded and bells were ringing as three fire engines raced up, summoned by my neighbour who had smelt smoke at the same moment I did when I slammed the door, and she had stopped a passing car-driver who had immediately raced to the fire station.
I held my breath as the electricity company arrived to restore the power, and the telephone company arrived at the same time to carry out repairs to the communications systems.

My telephone line restored, my mobile phone rang with a call from my Mother to say she had one of her headaches and would I mind bringing her some tablets after I finished work. I took another deep breath and attempted to quickly explain the situation, but I had to hang up on her as my landline sounded and there was a loud knocking at my door at the same time. I answered the door to find a policeman on the doorstep investigating a burglary at a local store where the thieves had disabled the local communication systems.

The call on the landline was the telephone company apologising for the break in communications. Next I got a call from my mobile phone company apologising for the failure of the mobile signal, neither of the two incidents were related. I took another deep breath as I called my house insurance cover company and after much argument and clouding of the issue they promised to send an assessor to assess the damage. I finally got through to the office and my employer said this chain of circumstances was so far-fetched it had to be true.

I then exhaled loudly as I realised everything would turnout OK and it would be another day tomorrow.

Copyright (c) Written by John Yeo ~ All rights reserved

"Sunset" ~ Image from the Net ~

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Daily Prompt on Word Press ~ 3rd September 2015

5/9/2015

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Sep 2, 2015
DAILY PROMPT
Your Number One
What was the #1 song when you were born? (not sure? you can find out here.) Write about how the song relates (or not!) to your personality.
~~
CHATTANOOGA CHOO-CHOO
by John Yeo

Well according to this link, the song that was number one when I was born was "Chattanooga Choo-Choo " by Glen Miller and his Orchestra. I actually have heard and even danced to this song many times in my early life, without realising the significance of the year it was number one.
I don't think this wonderful big band sound has any relation at all to me or my personality. I have to admit that the music is pleasing to me and I find myself humming the tune, now that I have heard the music on the world-wide-web again after many, many years.
Strangely I have an idea that as this song was number one at the time of my birth, I think of my parents happily enjoying this music. It was towards the end of the Second World War and music must have meant so much to them to lift their spirits from the gloom of wartime.
~~~
Strangely by a sheer coincidence the prompt for "Flash fiction for Aspiring Writers" this week is a photograph of a steam engine. I decided to use the theme of Chattanooga Choo-Choo in answer to both prompts in one post.
Having done quite a bit of research on the story behind the song, I find that there never was an actual train that gave rise to the song "Chattanooga Choo-Choo". I do think that the images that come to mind from the words of the song, and the many variations of magical performances by many artistes are very inspiring.
From just this research and my background reading, I have developed a great interest in Chattanooga and the Appalachian mountains. Although I am not a steam train enthusiast, the draw of a trip through some beautiful scenery soaking up the history of the American railroad is magnetic and very tempting.

© Written by John Yeo

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DAILY PROMPT on Word Press ~ 2nd SeptEmber 2015

4/9/2015

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Image © John and Margaret "Sunrise on the Allotments"

DAILY PROMPT on Word Press ~ Sept. 1st 2015
Golden Age
If you had to live forever as either a child, an adolescent, or an adult, which would you choose — and why?

~~~~~

ETERNAL LIFE
By John Yeo

Living forever is a very wide, frighteningly difficult prospect to imagine indeed.
The three categories all raise some very difficult and probably unanswerable questions. My first impulse was to think adult, certainly, but even so this choice raises some very formidable questions.

(1) I will start with the prospect of living forever as a child? The questions leap off the page. Would I forever have the mind of a child? I don't think so. A steady accumulation of knowledge gleaned from every source would certainly alter the thinking process, the mind surely would develop and grow. Would living forever as a child require the same dependence on adults to shelter, feed and provide for the needs of the everlasting child. As the birth parents would inevitably live for a normal average lifespan, who would take on the responsibility of caring for an everlasting child at their deaths. Then any potential carers would also die and replacements would have to be found continuously through the succeeding generations.
One of the dreams of the idea of living as a child would be the magical world of discovery, a continual living within the dream of fairy tales and exploration. Sadly this could never happen as the magic and the glitter and gloss would soon wear off and I suspect there would always be an adult inside of the person who opted to live life as a child.

(2) I think the prospect of living forever as an adolescent would be even worse than the prospect of living forever as a child. Adolescence is a time of discovery and finding the path through the pitfalls and heartbreaks that one inevitably encounters on the road to adult-hood. A time of falling in love and facing rejection or a long relationship of give and take, ups and downs with the person desired. Adolescence is a time of hard study as the future beckons and the choice of which road to take beckons the young person. Adolescence is a time of discovery of both good and bad experiences. Friends made now are usually friends for life as the young men and women grow up together, sampling and discovering the pitfalls of this world together. The worst aspect of an everlasting adolescence would be the fact that your closest friends would outgrow you, as they made their way into adulthood. I am writing these words in the belief that I would stay with the physical looks and outlook of an adolescent. Sadly my early friends would slowly die as the limits of a natural lifespan took their toll and I would be hampered from making new adolescent friends as my inevitable growing mind wouldn't allow for the boredom that would ensue by going to college again. Once again as eternity slowly passed, I suspect that I would eventually become an adolescent in name only.

(3) So far, I think most people who have read this far would say then, the answer to the question is obvious. Alas nothing is as easy as it looks, living forever as an adult could be just as frightening and difficult as the other two alternatives, if not more difficult. As one enters adulthood, there is no actual borderline between adolescence and adulthood as many people become adults at very different times in their lives. Some grow up very fast and to some the phase of adulthood comes very slowly perhaps with a nasty shock as new responsibilities become apparent. I will say that an adult is a person who has developed an individual way of life, settled in a chosen career, or not, as fate would dictate. Perhaps they are in a relationship with a spouse or a very good friend, and they have children, or perhaps they are loving and living an individual lifestyle with a circle of firm friends. Now comes the difficult harsh truth, you are going to live forever! Loved ones will die, your children will age and die, your friends will age and die.
I suspect living forever in any of these three stages of life could be the loneliest prospect imaginable.
Unless the whole generation and the following generations were all going to live forever as fully matured people. I am sure that from childhood through adolescence to adulthood is an unalterable natural progression and to be stuck in any one mode would be sadly unnatural.

Copyright (c) Written by John Yeo ~ All rights reserved.

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DECISIVE PONDERING ~ 1st September 2015

3/9/2015

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THE DAILY PROMPT on Word Press.

DECISIVE PONDERING
by John Yeo

Decisions, Decisions
How are you more likely to make an important decision — by reasoning through it, or by going with your gut?

Now this question is not as straightforward as it looks, at first sight. My first instinct would be to say that whenever I make a personal important decision, I look at the obvious outcome from every conceivable angle, before I act. I would like to say that most of the major decisions I have made in my life have been the result of a very great deal of logical reasoning. However if the truth were to be systematically arrived at by thought and clear memory, there have been an extraordinary amount of split-second actions made by obvious split-second decisions.
Every day in the course of driving a car from point A to point B, many important decisions are taken in a flash to enable a safe journey. Should one overtake the slow-moving car in front? If the road ahead is clear then the decision to overtake is taken instantly. I would refer to this sort of decision as very important, as life and death is certainly involved. Yet this could be referred to as an instinctive reaction that doesn't require a great deal of prior thought at the time, as all the thought processes have already been in action to build up the instinct.
All the major important decisions in my life are usually the result of a great deal of prior thought and reasoning. The question above asks would you go with your gut feeling or reasoning a decision through? I would suggest that both angles of making a decision are usually important. In my view the gut feeling starts the process of the logical reasoning. For example if your gut feeling about a decision is negative, no reasoning is required as the decision will never need to be made.
All of the major decisions in life should never be taken lightly as the repercussions could be life changing, however this deliberation can be a terribly long process and the instinct is sometimes to go by the gut, or lose out on some unrepeatable opportunities.
Planning a vegetable garden is full of both types of decision. The type of crops to grow in the available space, and type of soil they will grow in, crop rotation to prevent the spread of disease. These are examples of very important decisions that require a great deal of thought and prior planning.
The gut feeling decisions are faced when a friend has surplus crops and you receive some totally unplanned for plants that you know nothing about and you just plant them, regardless of the risk of disease or crop failure.
Life is a an amalgam of many many prior decisions, some good, some bad, some very reasoned and well thought through, and a great many instant decisions based on a pure gut reaction.
If I were to be pinned down to answer this question one way or the other, my pure gut reaction would be to answer that I always reason and think things through, but that would certainly be a gut reaction!

Copyright (c) Written by John Yeo ~ All rights reserved.

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DAILY PROMPT ON WordPRESS ~ 20th SEPTEMBER 2015

Daily Prompt on Word Press ~ 3rd September 2015

DAILY PROMPT on Word Press ~ 2nd SeptEmber 2015

DECISIVE PONDERING ~ 1st September 2015

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