My definition of fluffery is the art of talking around a subject or losing the reason behind what a group or organisation is in existence for. I have come across so many incidents of fluffery in my life that I feel I could write a dissertation on the subject. You get fluffery in all walks of life.
I bet as you are reading this you will recognise fluffery at work in your lives.
Take a football club. Lots of talk about restaurants, kids parties and other things that have nothing to do with football (yes I know it's a business and that's the way they make ends meet to be able to pay top players ridiculous sums of money), but all this detracts from the fact that it is a football club and most people are only interested in what is happening on the pitch. Unfortunately that gets lost all too often through fluffery.
I have been part of groups over the years that are so obsessed with internal politics, with writing policies and strategies that they completely lose sight of why they exist and what they are there for. They fail to get to the heart of their existence and at times seem more likely to implode within themselves.
I always say "please get to the crux of the matter, please remember why you exist."
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You might have gathered over the past few years that I love writing. The older I get the more I love it and I have been looking at a number of new outlets following two requests.
Firstly I was contacted by Chatterbox, the talking newspaper, as I've already mentioned and asked if I wanted to contribute articles. Then the Wymondham magazine said they are always happy to take any features I write about the town. So I have sent them a piece about a family who are/that is buried in the Abbey graveyard.
I have sent Chatterbox a piece about the Rope-Pulley family and I have blogged about these people before. I will tell you a bit more once my article has been published.
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On Monday I had a chat with Shaun Reynolds about a book he has just brought out. Shaun is an electrician by day but also one of the best astral photographers in the UK. He takes stunning pictures of galaxies and nebulae thousands and thousands of light years away. Astral photography is something that fascinates me although I don't pretend to understand it or astronomy in general. It's such a vast subject.
The figures are just, well at the risk of using a pun, astronomical. Apparently there are over two trillion known galaxies, each with millions and trillions of stars. Just thinking about it makes my mind boggle (that is if minds can boggle). What we are seeing now in our night sky is what happened on these stars thousands of years ago. Shaun made the point that we may be seeing light from stars and planets that no longer exist and we won't find out that they no longer exist when they stop emitting light and that could be in hundreds of years time before it fails to reach us. Mind boggling.
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I currently have this obsession with playing a game called Yatzy on my phone. Yes you got that correctly it's Yatzy and not Yahtzee which is the usual game. There's virtually no differences between the two games. I end up playing strangers online. You never know who you are playing or how good they are. I have played 314 games, winning 160 and losing 154. That's probably why they call me Mr 50%.
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Sorry but I have to finish today by talking about the cricket test between England and New Zealand - so if you don't like cricket or don't understand it you might like to stop reading here because this is going to verge on the sporting technical. Tomorrow something a little more light-hearted surrounding The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.
To my mind England's one run defeat against New Zealand was brought about by a number of undisciplined factors. I know many fans will applaud the new gung ho way that England are playing cricket and they will say they have brought excitement to the game. But this defeat was a step too far in gung honess.
It was only the fourth time in the history of the game that a team being made to follow on has won a test match.
It was the joint smallest winning margin of all time, although there have been two tied tests and this came within an inch of becoming the third. Only two previous tests have been won by a single run.
What I can't understand is
1/ Why England declared their first innings when they still had two wickets left. This to me smacked of arrogance although I know some will argue that it was the right thing to do and put immediate pressure on New Zealand and this paid off as they were skittled out.
2/ The strange decision to declare after one ball of an over. Why not bat for the rest of that over. This would have brought another six to 10 runs which would have been enough for victory. Yes I know that hindsight is a wonderful thing. Better still why not use those last two wickets to add another 20 quick runs.
3/ Although he played a responsible innings in the second innings, Ben Stokes seems determined to give his wicket away by trying to hit every ball for six. This brought about his downfall in the first innings. There is a thin line between attacking and being irresponsible and I feel Stokes sometimes crosses that line.
4/ Joe Root scored a massive 248 runs in the match but will almost certainly have lost the game for England by one of the most ridiculous run outs you will ever see. He hit the ball straight to a fielder and ran out Harry Brook before Brook had faced a ball. Ultimately to my mind this piece of lunacy cost us the game.
And it must be remembered that this was just a two match series and England only had to draw it to win that series. I know it's hard to criticise what is a revolution in test cricket but sometimes you can attack just too much and pay the consequences.
But now we go on to the important stuff. An Ashes series against Australia. Bring it on.