The morning after the morning after

The dust is slowly settling but there could be challenges ahead over the Barnett formula and the West Lothian question.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I have found my usual pleasure visiting various blogs.  I say visiting rather than reading as some of my regular stop-offs are more visual than. . .   They've got more pictures than words!  Photo-essays, some of them.  The blogs that are made up of writing do, some of them, have illustrations - many of which I enjoy - but it's often the writing that gives me the more pleasure.

There are so many different styles of writing, and I have to say that in some cases a blogger manages to adopt at least two different ones.  Some are full of facts, possibly spiced with a touch of wry humour, some are plain amusing, occasionally laugh out load-ish.  What is put before me sometimes makes me get hot under the collar, sometimes makes me squirm.  But just as a rainbow is made of a range of colours, so a variety of reading matter adds to the enjoyment of life.

I have at times been tempted to sign up for a correspondence course in creative writing.  The promise that my fees would be refunded in full if I failed to earn them from sales of my writing within 18 months is, on the face of it, attractive.  But the adverts promise that students will be taught to write copy that sells.  Well, that's all very fine, but my dream would be that other people would want what I write, not that I would write what other people want.  There is a subtle difference.

Another thing that puts me off is my experience of a course in producing photographs that sell.  I was set a project to produce a photograph of a Brighton hotel that it could use in its advertising.  The tutor questioned the fact that I had majored on the car park.  "All hotels," he (or maybe it was she) pontificated, "have car parks."  I was tempted to point out that of all the hotels in Brighton (and Hove, too) only two have car parks.  (That was the case then.)  Just one seafront hotel out of however many had a garage - and that could accommodate only half a dozen cars.

I just lost interest and wrote off the cost of the course.  Since then I have concentrated on taking photographs that (occasionally) please me.  I was not too unhappy with this one, the last of the daylight fading over Patcham one evening this week.