JANE’S JOTTINGS


SSEWBA It


‘Shll I cmpr thee 2 a mob ph?’


was like losing a limb or sitting through a power cut.


Nothing really prepared me for losing my mobile phone, which unaccountably was there one minute and had gone the next.


After a due period of searching and grief, there was only one thing for it. Buy a new one. But it was as tricky as replacing an old friend.


I’m not in denial and know the truth. I’ve become addicted to texting.


It’s not that I was an early adopter. It was probably only a couple of years ago that I was introduced to the genre. Ever since I’ve been hooked.


As the Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duff y, a personal hero whom I’ve been privileged to meet, said recently: ‘Texting is like poetry, a way of saying more with less’.


“It’s a kind of time capsule. It allows feelings and ideas to travel big distances in a very condensed form”, she wrote in a national newspaper.


However, get this:


‘I wndrd lonly as a clwd Dat fl o@s aloft o'er vales n hilz, Wen ll @ 1s I saw a crwd, A hst, of goldN dafdils; B d lak,


Bne@h d trez, FluttriN n danciN n d breez’


Ptry in mtn? Backspace over that ‘vales’ bit and it’s short enough to put on Twitter. My mission on hitting


Jane Webb has lived in Eltham since '85 with her husband and daughter. She has taught at several local primary schools'


all know the answer to that – it was E Nesbit of course but The Sunday Telegraph questioned, in their article of March 20, that E Nesbit may have used a story line by another author – Ada J Graves.


Who really wrote The Railway Children Who


Marion Kennett


really wrote The Railway Children? Well we


Did E Nesbit take elements from Ada J Graves’ book and use in hers? I suppose we will never know for certain but some light may be thrown on the subject


8


when the grand daughter of Ada J Graves, Anne Hall-Williams comes to the Edith Nesbit Society’s Annual General Meeting on Saturday 15 October in the Dobell Room of Sherard Hall, Eltham Unit ed Reformed Church, 1 Court Road, The


Eltham, SE9. Vote at elections, it is your right


meeting will start at 2.30pm and the business of the AGM will


follow after a short interval.


That might sound like a contribution to Pseuds’, rather than Poets’, Corner and I noted that, next day, a correspondent described her words as ‘trsh’.


SEnine or Someday Soon, Everything Will Be Acronyms


Eltham High Street was to fi nd a ‘fl ip phone’ with clear text and big keys for clumsy fi ngers.


“Not possible”, said the man from ‘Phones ‘R Us’. “Flip Phones ‘R Out”.


To the rescue came shop assistant Cheryl from Carphone Warehouse, whom I hereby nominate as Sales Trainee of the Year.


Having quickly identifi ed my needs and made them manifest in one small handheld device, with a new SIM card in place, out popped a week’s worth of pent-up messages, like coins from a slot machine.


A lunch date here, some gossip there and numerous exchanges of daily life from friends and family. How had I survived so long without it?


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40