Hi All,<\/p>\n
Welcome to Alphaday 7. Isn\u2019t it strange that we\u2019ve already worked our way through one half of Season X? Six Alphadays either side of today and five out of ten challenges dusted off so far\u2026<\/p>\n
There are suitable clich\u00e9s for the occasion: \u2018Time flies\u2019 (very banal), \u2018Time and tide wait for no man\u2019 (sexist, but otherwise good). I\u2019m sure there are others, and perhaps Zena, our quotation expert, could suggest a few. The gist of it is that there\u2019s plenty happening on the Alpha front and we need to make the most of it while we can: Oh, \u2018carpe diem\u2019 of course.\u00a0 And don\u2019t forget: \u2018The glass is still half full\u2019.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve bombarded you with clich\u00e9s because I can\u2019t think of any brilliant original expressions. But we are a busy group and most of us don\u2019t want to miss a thing, even when \u2018life generally\u2019 gets in the way. And we let it, because after all\u2026<\/p>\n
So let\u2019s start on the 2nd<\/sup> half of this season. There\u2019s a great line-up of Alpha treats to study, work on and comment on.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s the Alphaday 7 agenda:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n That should provide plenty of opportunities for the pleasurable pursuit of practising our penmanship. (I \u2018pologise!)<\/p>\n We\u2019ve had no real debates yet this year. I can only think of a very \u2018old hat\u2019 subject that came to mind when I disapproved of a sentence I wrote in an email: \u201cOne member has\u00a0informed me\u00a0they\u2019ll be unable to enter.\u201d<\/p>\n I\u2019ll take the opportunity to point out that it\u2019s really helpful for a challenge organiser to be informed if you can\u2019t enter. So let\u2019s make a habit of this and make the challenge organiser\u2019s life a bit less stressful.<\/p>\n As for the prickly he\/she problem I\u2019d have been much happier if the English language had allowed me to say, \u201cOne member has\u00a0informed me\u00a0it\u2019ll be unable to enter.\u201d No doubt I\u2019d only get a snigger for that, and there\u2019s still no better option available than to use a plural pronoun despite the grammatical number clash. It\u2019s a pity, because it\u2019s aesthetically obnoxious.<\/p>\n They say you should write about what you know. The Costa Prize for a first novel has just been awarded to Nathan Filer, a 32-year-old mental health nurse from Bristol who did just that. (Did you ever meet him, Fran?)<\/p>\n I was listening to Radio 4 recently and they mentioned Angela Carter who most likely did not write from personal experience. Her horror stories based on fairy tales were nevertheless something she knew about from her extensive reading. So \u2018what you know\u2019 seems to be just as slippery an entity as the length of a piece of string.<\/p>\n Angela Carter also has a Bristol connection. She took her degree in English Literature at Bristol University. She was before my time, but I\u2019m convinced some of the professors who taught her were still there when I was a Bristol undergraduate. I have a sneaky feeling they wouldn\u2019t have been her greatest admirers. Following the programme I listened to, I\u2019ve now re-read the stories in The Bloody Chamber <\/em>and I\u2019ve become a great fan of hers.<\/p>\n Which just goes to show that long-held opinions are sometimes slippery entities as well.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Hi All, Welcome to Alphaday 7. Isn\u2019t it strange that we\u2019ve already worked our way through one half of Season X? Six Alphadays either side of today and five out of ten…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alphaday-bulletins"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=250"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n