Hopscotch in the rain

You don’t see chalk on the pavement much anymore.

My daughters used to do it outside our house and up the street with the neighbours’ children.

I was walking to school the other day to pick my daughters up when I saw some lovely pastel chalk drawings on the pavement and it took me back to when I was a kid.

So I wrote a haiku about it.

As you do.

 

Hopscotch in the rain.

 

Chalk on the pavement;

Hopscotch memories fade, in

Fine summer drizzle.

 

 

You have 30 seconds to relax…

The other day, instead of doing something useful like bettering myself, I was taking a little time-out to play solitaire on my phone. (Sometimes I think it’s this kind of lack of commitment to work that the economy’s in the state it’s in.)

Anyhoop, it was a new app I’d downloaded so I was having quite a few go’s. After game 5 or so, a message flashed up saying: New fastest time!

I hadn’t realised I was playing against the clock.

I hadn’t even realised I was actually ‘playing’ against anybody or anything.

I don’t know about you, but when I play solitaire I do it to relax. Not to flap through a deck of cards like David Blaine on Soho market.

At first, I did try to beat my previous time. But I soon found that I was getting myself all in a tizzy because I’d only got 10 seconds before I slipped further down my own self-imposed rankings.

This was no way to live life.

So I got one of those little red stickers, the sort you see next to paintings in an art gallery, and I put it over the timer on my phone.

So now, when I’m playing solitaire, I’m blissfully unaware of just how pathetically slow I am.

It’s much more relaxing.

Bit of a bugger when I’m texting though.

What’s next – Speed meditating?

(P.S. If you do want to know: 2’54”)