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Tuesday 4 March 2014

WordPress Daily Prompt: Against All Odds

Tell us about a situation where you’d hoped against all hope, where the odds were completely stacked against you, yet you triumphed. Be sure to describe your situation in full detail. Tell us all about your triumph in all its glory. 

Photographers, artists, poets: show us LONGSHOT.




Van der Sar ready for action


Here we have the ex Manchester United goalkeeper, Edwin van der Saar who always won against all odds, one of the best. I had a bit of a soft spot for him that was why I took the photo from the television at the UEFA Cup final a few years ago. Quality is not so good, but TV pictures never are.

Basically I always triumph; otherwise I probably would not be here to talk about it. Of course, there is a little problem with my Pulitzer/Nobel prize for literature, but you cannot get them all. With a little patience I am sure those stacked odds will crumble and fall and I will win. There is just one thing that bothers me, I am not growing younger. I know I am now in the prime of life, the interesting age, but if this prize thing does not arrive soon, I will not look so good when I have to climb onto the stage to receive it in ten years. On the other hand you can do so much with photos, and I am sure with a little retouching, the prize winning photo will show me in my youthful glory. Just a little clowning with the wrinkles and hair colour and I will fool them all.

Otherwise to put a serious angle on this blog (although I am always serious), I cannot recall that the odds were ever stacked against me. I cannot be bothered to let it happen. I have been blogging for some years now. There was a blogging place called Multiply where they had a weekly photo thing. Someone would suggest a theme and we would all post our photos and visit each other and comment. Of course we all made nice comments, no-one would trust themselves to say what a load of old rubbish, or that was bad quality. The photos were all OK and we got to know each other. Then one day the leader of the group decided let’s have a competition once a month and choose the best photo. That was when I left the group, but not without telling the lady in charge that I no longer had any interest. I do not do competitions, whether it be writing or photos.

I do not need a confirmation that mine is the best. It does not interest me. I am here for fun. I made my way long enough in the rat race we called work and now I am retired and do what I want when I want in that connection. Perhaps that is one of the reasons why I have an award free blog. If WordPress like to give me one of their official things, that is OK. I do not seek it and it is a reward. I do not have to fulfil ten or more various duties to qualify.

I am not a misery guts by no means and I read and appreciate quite a lot of the blogs written on the daily prompt theme, and others, but I do not do triumphs or victories, not my thing.

I did have a feeling this afternoon, however, that the odds were very much stacked. It was time to refresh the garden, get it ready for the summer. This was a mistake. I had everything ready. Three large bags of fresh earth, each being so heavy I could not lift it. I dragged each bag across the lawn to the flower bed. Now that was a triumph against the odds of getting a slipped disk by lifting the bag. After an hour I had succeeded and the garden beds had a good sprinkling of fresh earth, mixed with poultry manure pellets to make sure the plants had a good growing future. Afterwards I raked the lawn to dethatch it. Now I did not know the word for that in English, but it is removing the moss from the lawn. That was backbreaking work and I discovered that I now longer have a lawn, but a thatch patch. I finally refilled the birdhouse and collapsed at my computer to see what exciting and fulfilling work of daily prompt I had to complete today against all odds.

The main thing is, I survived.


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2 comments:

  1. Photography, for me, is about taking photos that i enjoy taking. Most of the groups I'm in are 'just for fun' groups, although there is just one that I take part in that has 'Gold' 'Silver' and 'Bronze' awards each week. I enter each week with no great expectation of winning one of those awards, but I do love to see all the entries, that group has many very good photographers. I was most surprised this week to find I had been given a 'Gold' award for my entry for last week's theme. The awards are chosen by the host of that week's theme, so it is just one person's preference, but it's still nice.

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