When tasks Seem like too much Do one bit at a time And soon you’ll find that you’ve achieved Not much
Category: Humour
A Haiku About How I Miss The Administrative Red Tape Of Having To Book A Room In Order To Have A Meeting
Did we really have This many meetings back when Meetings needed rooms?
Fifty Shades Of Blue
According to some, today is Blue Monday. ‘Blue Monday’ is the pseudoscientific name often attributed to the third Monday in January, which is purported to be the most depressing day of the year. Although obviously complete nonsense, it does hold up to a small amount of scrutiny – Christmas is now long forgotten but the…
A Haiku About How Social Media Has Challenged My Understanding Of Language
If I don’t ‘like’ it It does not always follow That I dislike it
A Prosaic Post About Productive Posting And Pretentions Of Prodigious Poetic Performance
According to the Gods of WordPress, this is my 900th post since I started this blog, back in the fifth month of the year that I like to refer to as 2015. 299 of those posts (including this one) have occurred since I started, what is now comfortably, my longest ever blogging streak on the…
A Tanka About Why It Is Important To Consider When You Drink
As it is Friday I’ll probably have a drinkI drink on most days So I could not even think Of not drinking on Fridays
A Short But Inspiring Poem
If we want to achieve change Everyone must do their bit Everyone except for me Sadly, I’m a hypocrite
A Haiku That Offers Unhelpful Reassurance About The Current State Of Everything
Please do not worry I know the world seems broken But it always was
James Explains The Rules For ‘Lockdown 3’
We’re roughly a week into to what the cool kids are calling ‘Lockdown 3’ in England and there appears to be continuing confusion about what is allowed and what is, in fact, not allowed. Which is in itself confusing because everyone fully understood all of the rules during the last two lockdowns. Except for the…
A Matter Of Fact
Sometimes a fact can be attacked for being inexact But it is, in fact, inexact to claim that a fact is inexact For then it would not be a fact Because a fact is backed by the exact An unbacked fact is not yet a fact Though it may yet become a fact when it…
A Cinquain About How Sundays Aren’t What They Used To Be For Some Reason
Sunday A day of rest Maybe breakfast in bed But if you live with a toddler Less so
A Tanka That Continues A Recent Theme Of Mocking A Flawed Public Health Campaign While Also Trivialising Another January Health Challenge And Revealing That I Have A Similar Attitude To Nutrition To That Of A Small Child
Dry January Might still be easier than Veganuary I could manage without beer But I’ll always need ice-cream
A Haiku That Demonstrates I Have Deliberately Misunderstood A Flawed Public Health Campaign In Order To Mock It
Dry January ?A month without any rain? I will drink to that!
Lockdown 3 – The Miracle Of Science
And so here we are in another lockdown. It is officially ‘Lockdown 3’ in England, and we must distinguish between the UK and England, because other parts of the UK have been doing things differently, but with, it must be said, similar levels of success. Which is to say hardly any success at all. ‘Lockdown…
2020 Foresight
The return to work after Christmas is always a difficult one. January is not the best of months anyway, what with all the obligatory self-improvement and cold weather, and having to work seems to just be adding insult to injury. January 2021 comes with some bonus challenges of course, thanks to the ongoing pandemic which,…
A Haiku That Tries To Justify Its Own Existence But Probably Fails To Do So
Back to work today No time to write anything More than this haiku
A Haiku About Lessons That Can Be Learned From Father Christmas To Help Ease The January Blues
Christmas is over But like Santa I’ll remain Jolly and quite fat
On The Ninth Day Of Christmas…
On the ninth day of Christmas My true love gave to me A reality check, “Christmas is over Now take down the bloody tree!”
Resolving To Be Resolute
As is customary on the first day of the year I intend to make some resolutions in order to stop being the rubbish version of me that the world has come to know and instead become a really good version of me. Maybe even to become the best me that I can be. But that…
The Inevitable James Proclaims New Year’s Eve Review Of The Year That Was
Ever since I started this blog, back in 2015, I’ve posted a sort of ‘review of the year’ on the 31st of December. It’s the kind of innovative idea that has made James Proclaims the ‘go-to’ blog for literally tens of people the world over for several years now. I’m surprised nobody else does it…
Another Twixmas Poem
The Christmas presents have long been unwrapped And the tree has seen better days But still the Twixmas party goes onThough it all seems a bit of a haze I’m not even sure what day it is Or when I last left this room I’ve eaten my own weight in chocolate But there are more…
A Tanka About The Perks Of Responsible Parenting
When my daughter asks For another chocolate I always say no Because like all good parents I’ve already scoffed the lot
James Complains About Christmas Greetings
And so we enter that surreal period of the calendar, known to me (and possibly to some other people) as Twixmas, when Christmas is sort of over, but it isn’t really over because we still have New Year’s Eve to ‘look forward to’. If I’m honest I’ve never been a big celebrator of New Year…
Thinking Outside Of The Boxing Day
While I always like to write a Christmas Day post, I don’t always bother on Boxing Day. There are only so many times you can make jokes about festive pugilism after all. Still, I find myself with a few moments to kill today, as my daughter is enjoying her afternoon nap and my wife, who…
The Sixth Annual Christmas Message from James Proclaims
Merry Christmas! Sorry, my mistake. I forgot that Christmas had been cancelled this year. Being an established misanthrope I would have no doubt chosen to spend today with my wife and child and absolutely no-one else, regardless of any pandemics, so here at Proclaims Towers it really is starting to look a lot like Christmas.…
The Fourth Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films – Door 24
And so another pointless Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films reaches it’s conclusion. Because it’s Christmas Eve and that’s how these things work. But what it the cinematic offering behind door 24 of The Fourth Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films? Why, it’s only 1987’s The Princess Bride. Which came out when I was eight…
The Fourth Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films – Door 23
There are some movies that are so interwoven with my childhood that to say I love them would seem somehow inadequate. Obviously (as anyone who read my blog in May this year will know) the original Star Wars trilogy are the definitive movies of my youth, but there are several other films that are not…
The Fourth Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films – Door 22
Back in 2017, when I first started doing The James Proclaims Advent Calendar Of Christmas(ish) Films I included Rocky IV in the line-up. Because it is a bit Christmassy, albeit one of the weaker entries in the Rocky franchise. It is something of an oversight then, that I managed not to include the original 1976…
The Fourth Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films – Door 21
2014’s The Equalizer is a fairly ‘by-the-book’ action flic, that is elevated by having a decent cast, headed by Denzil Washington, and a director in Antoine Fuqua who knows his way around a generic action movie. But while it more than adequately passes the time for those of us who enjoy occasionally turning off our…
The Fourth Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films – Door 20
According to his Wikipedia entry, Mike Newell is best known for directing Four Weddings and Funeral, Donnie Brasco and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. While I have watched and quite enjoyed all three of those movies, it’s fair to say that anyone watching Donnie Brasco on the basis of the other two might…
The Fourth Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films – Door 19
Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men is a pretty joyless affair. Set in a dystopian future, which is the not too distant 2027, it depicts a world in which no children have been born since 2009. Given that as a species we still appear to be procreating in 2020, it’s up there with Back to the…
