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Hello! I'm new to writing and to the Forum.

edited May 2017 in Writing
I've used the name Codger because I am in fact a codger in my 86th year. I'm a writer with a small 'W'. The stuff that I write is intend to make folk suffering from ill health to smile and maybe even laugh now and then. This they frequently do. Whether this purely out of politeness is what I'm here to find out. I would appreciate your help.
Example:
I do my shopping all online
It’s easier to do.
Except for just one little thing
I’m going to tell to you.
The problem that I have I fear
Is a misbehaving mouse.
It orders stuff I shouldn’t have
For delivery to the house.
I do my best to grab it back
Come back here I wail
But now it’s gone all wireless
And it doesn’t have a tail.
It wanders up and down the aisles
Clicking there and here
I try to keep it well away
From where they keep the beer.
It knows I’m diabetic
But it doesn’t give a fig
Clicking on the chocolate
Has me looking like a pig.
And so I’ve had to cage it
When I go to shop online.
The keyboard now it has to be
Though it takes a bit more time.
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Comments

  • Hi Codger. Welcome to Talkback. Your example made me smile. Technology can be frustrating at times.
  • Hello Codger, glad you've joined us. :)
  • Welcome, Codger. :-*
  • Hey there, Codger, and welcome! And I love your poem. Just the thing to cheer people up.
  • Hello Codger. Excellent reason for writing.
  • Hello codger! Good to have another pensioner on board!
  • Hey there, Codger, and welcome! And I love your poem. Just the thing to cheer people up.
    Thank you Liz and all the other lovely people who welcomed me here. That's my only aim really, to cheer people up. Especially if they are poorly.
  • Hello, Codger, and thank you for cheering us up too!
  • Hello, Codger, and welcome. Your verse rings true with a lot of people, no matter their age!
  • Sometimes I try to make people cry on behalf of dementia sufferers.

    Memory loss is a frightening thing,
    The pain you can't explain.
    When you love your faithful little dog,
    But can't remember her name.
  • Welcome Codger.

    I think I once knew your father.....went by the name of Old.......

    :-*
  • Love it, Codger! Made me smile more than once :)

    Welcome aboard!
  • edited May 2017
    Welcome Codger.

    I think I once knew your father.....went by the name of Old.......

    :-*
    Now that's going back a bit! The 'Old Codgers' used to write a columnin in The Mirror newspaper back in the 1940s. I used to wait for my Dad to come home from work with the paper in his back pocket so that I could read them. ;)

    Correction:
    "The Old Codgers", a fictional pair who commented on the letters page from 1935 to 1990.
    I should never have Googled them. That was worse than being told there was no Father Christmas.
  • Hi Codg, and welcome.
  • Hello Codger :) welcome to the forum.
  • Hello C2, thank you for the greeting.
  • Hello Codger!
  • Hello Heather!
  • Codger came back on another thread saying:

    "Oh dear me, I'm afraid I'm one of those. Logged in May 2017, got a lovely welcome, them disappeared. :/But I have been busy and must have written over 200 poems/rhymes since them. Now I'm newly subscribed to the mag and determined to put myself around a bit. I'll be 88 later this year so I'm running out of time! "

    I thought I'd bring this thread to the top again to alert those of you who might not see his post on the other thread. 
  • Oh my! How clever this that! It's as though I've never been away. Well as I said I'm still writing humorous rhymes, more than I first thought at over 300 now. I suffer from chronic obstructive pulmonary (COPD) and the British Lung Foundation have a website group https://healthunlocked.com which offers support and advice for fellow sufferers. Obviously the subject is not a pleasant one so to try to brighten things up with the stuff I write, incorporating mention of some of the things associated ailments. This is a recent example:

    Thinning Skin.

    I think I'm becoming invisible,

    I recognize all the signs.

    My skin has now become so thin

    I can almost see inside.

    So seek out the advantages.

    That's what I always do.

    Like when I do my weekly shop

    I'll no longer have to queue.

    I won't be done for speeding,

    No police would ever dare

    To say he stopped a motorcar

    And found there's no one there.

    There is of course a drawback..

    I can hardly bare to tell.

    They won't know if I've past away

    Until I start to smell.

    (Who said that I always did anyway?👿)

    • The trouble is I'm running out of ideas .



  • Welcome back, Codger! I'm pretty certain you'll get some new ideas, soon... 
  • Excellent! Welcome back Codger.
  • Welcome back, Codger. Certainly raising a smile and nod of the head here!
  • Welcome Codger. We seem to have similar ideas. I write poems, some humorous some serious, which I read line by line at my weekly Parkinson's Group Exercise class and the rest of the class recite them back to me for their voice therapy. I suspect they like the longer poems as they get a break from the exercises!
    An example:
    ALTERNATIVE DIET
    No matter how often I eat five veg a day
    My Body Mass Index stays just the same way
    If they fed us less data but gave us more food
    I'm sure it would improve the Nation's mood
    All these diets and methods of keeping us slim
    Can be replicated by going to the gym
    So take any diet book off your shelf
    And eat one page a day to improve your health

    Keep it up, Codger. People with disabilities need all the fun they can get.
  • Hello, Codger, and thank you for entertaining us with your poem! (You, too, NH!)
    I don't remember your name. Have you changed it since you were last here? Or maybe you left before I joined.
  • Tiny Nell said:
    Hello, Codger, and thank you for entertaining us with your poem! (You, too, NH!)
    I don't remember your name. Have you changed it since you were last here? Or maybe you left before I joined.

    I only posted the once then ran away, frightened by all the expertise here.

  • Ah, a kindred spirit NH. They say that laughter is the best medicine so I bombard them with'em.😉.

    Why do my lungs get all the care?

    I've other organs inside there.

    I know it's all because I smoked

    And poor old lungs there nearly choked.

    So now they reckon they'll pay me back

    By causing me to cough and hack.

    And give me many sleepless nights

    Including exacerbation frights.

    I'm sorry lungs I didn't know.

    Deterioration was so slow.



  • Hi Codger.  Your poems are fun.  Ta for the chuckle.
  • Hi codger, welcome back - though i think I've said that on another thread. 

    Fun poems, and i bet you will come up with more ideas soon. 
  • Hi Codger!

    I like your poems.
  • Thank you. I write them mainly in my campervan, with my dog Midge and a knitted  doll called Dolly.🙄
  • Oh! I do a lot of my writing in a campervan. They make excellent mobile writing retreats.
  • Nice to be able to chose your outlook isn't it. Mine is small, similar to a Romahome R30.
  • Certainly is!

    I know the kind of thing you mean. Very handy for narrow lanes and small parking spaces.

    We have a Swift Rio 340, which is a bit bigger than yours. We take quite long trips (up to three months) and my husband is a photographer so his gear takes up quite a lot of space. 
  • Hello, Codger.   :)
  • dora said:
    Hi Codger.  Your poems are fun.  Ta for the chuckle.
    Thanks Dora, they might not have much literary merit but I enjoy writing them.
    Have another:

    My old Mum was of her day
    And had some funny things to say.
    Which now because of how things be,
    Would be regarded non-pc
    She had some problem with her health,
    And sadly lacked much earthy wealth.
    But always battled on despite
    No NHS was then in sight.
    Unlike old Mrs Whats-her-name
    She never would admit to  pain.
    Who she described with little stealth
    As much enjoying her bad health.

  • *clipperty claps*

    Very good.
  • That paints a very vivid picture both of Mum and Mrs Whats-her-name. 


  • It's great Codger. I'd transpose the penultimate two lines:

    She never would admit to pain
    Unlike old Mrs Whats-her-name 
    Who she described with little stealth
    As much enjoying her bad health.

    Then all three lines to do with Mrs Whatsername are together. I hope you are going into retirement homes etc and reading these? Or would that be impossible for you?
  • Enjoying your poems, Codger, because they are honest and simply done.
    Some lines stood out: I'm sorry lungs I didn't know. Deterioration was so slow. - This made me gulp and a bit and think of my father and uncles who all suffered early deaths due to smoking.
    As for: As much enjoying her bad health. - That line could have been written about my late mother!

    p.s. I enjoyed Noodlehendon's poem too

  • I keep banging on about smoking, Claudia. I can't help wondering if it has any effect:

    Childhood Memories.

    A fag behind the bike shed,
    Wasn't that great fun.
    So long as no one split on you,
    And went and told your Mum.
    They said 'tud stop me growing.
    Maybe they were right.
    I must admit I'm challenged,
    When it comes to height.
    I wish my Mum had found me,
    Behind that bike shed when,
    I puffed on my first Woodbine,
    When I was only ten.

  • Oh, the different path you might have taken, Codger. Retrospect would be a wonderful thing if it came at the right time!
  • I certainly wish I'd found my son smoking. He is now on those woowoo pipe things which smell of fruit. I knew he was when he was older, but we viewed it as something he was doing to rebel and as other friends were doing a lot worse, OH thought it would be best to let him do it, so much better than the alternatives, and pretend we didn't know. OH gave up easily himself, despite being on 40 a day for 5 years. That was a big mistake. As son can't. I knew it was the wrong thing to do but if your partner does not support you, you can't actually do anything. IOH put his pocket money in his account and in any case he had hundreds in there because he acted and it was always payed to him. 
  • That's true TN. But then I smoked a pipe from about 18 onwards and I'm 88 this year, so I was let-off pretty likely.
  • You are very lucky, Codger. Lung disease is an awful condition to live with.

    Liz, maybe if your son watched some medical footage about the damage smoking does, it would make him think. 
  • Liz - My wife stopped smoking about 20 years ago and I followed her shorty after. She died of lung cancer 2012, my son who never smoked at all died two years later. And here I am still plodding on, life is so unfair.
  • NT - I frequent my local hospital and usually find nurses leaning on the boundary wall smoking. These are people trained to treat patients with COPD, unbelievable!
  • Nell, we have Dr friends coming out of our ears and have been given all the footage. But he thinks he can't do without it. It has to come from him. Unfortunately. He's not allowed to in the house obviously. 
  • Sorry to hear about your wife, Codger. And son! 
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