HOORAY! I Made A Mistake!!!

Guess what? I got it wrong! Today is not our last day, Soyoung, we’ve got another week. How good is that? I can’t believe my luck! Excuse me for a minute or two while I open a bottle of wine to celebrate (well, it is the weekend, after all).

Before I go any further I just want to say a very serious thank you to all the readers who’ve been so generous in their comments about these blogs. It is great to know you’re all out there and finding at least some of this useful. It’s a shame you can’t post photos of yourselves so I can see what you all look like. Anyway, we’ll have a proper chance to say goodbye at the end of NEXT week.

Meanwhile, back in Korea, Soyoung’s been back to her favourite café, started a yoga class and remembered an old flame. . .


Dear Soyoung,

Many thanks for your blog. I know exactly how it feels to wake up and not to want to get out of bed. It happens to me every morning, in the winter. In the summer, however, I’m sometimes up at 4.30 or 5.00. It’s the best time of day for jogging in the park, with only the birds (especially woodpeckers, herons and jays) and the animals (deer, rabbits and squirrels) for company.

The weather here is very much improved. It’s so mild again that as soon as I’ve finished this I’m going out for a two-hour run (Kilimanjaro training).

You said nothing about my haiku. Maybe you didn’t like it very much? How about the Limericks I wrote for you? (They’re unique, you know. OK, so they’re not exactly works of genius, but they are unique.) Soyoung, have you read the poems and rhymes that our readers have been writing this week? Not bad, eh? Maybe I should just say a bit more about Limericks.

Limerick: an English verse form with five rhyming lines [a, a, b, b, a]. The third and fourth lines have two stresses each, and the others have three. It is usually humorous and features the names of people and/or places (EXAMPLE – the words or syllables in bold text are to be stressed: There was a young girl called Soyoung,).

Try reading this one aloud. Stress the words or syllables in bold text. You should now discover the characteristic rhythm of the Limerick.

There once was a teacher called Stephen
Whose nose was too long and uneven.
His head, it was bald
And his face, it looked mauled…
Oh my god, here he comes, now I’m leavin’

I think Limericks may be culturally alien to you, Soyoung, but how about haiku? Do you Korean writers use this form? Or just the Japanese?

You mentioned your friend who works for Design-Jungle, and then you asked about my house. It gave me an idea. I will take some photos of the inside of some of the rooms in my house (rooms which have been cleaned and are tidy!) and I’ll post them on the blog sometime over the weekend. Would that be of any interest to you?

Now, your love story. Oh, Soyoung. It is so sad. So beautiful and so sad. Do you write? In Korean, I mean? If you can write, I think you should write it as a simple love story and try to get it published. It is so lovely.

I have re-written that part of your blog, below, with a few corrections. Read the two versions – yours and mine – side-by-side to check the corrections and small changes I’ve made. I have tried to keep the lovely simplicity of your original version. Sorry, if I’ve failed.

I have a feeling that there may be quite a few of our readers – men as well as women – who have love stories they might want to share. If we were a little bit nearer 14th February (Valentine’s Day) we could have done a ‘love story special’ blog. But I suppose that would mean I’d have to share a love story with you. Mmm? Maybe it’s not such a good idea, after all.

The weekend starts (for me) just about now. After my long run, I’ll take a long, hot shower, shave and put something smart on. Lucy’s had a hard week at school – she had to complete a mini-thesis by today – so we’re going out for a meal tonight. Tomorrow, I’ll go up to town (i.e. central London) to see friends, do some shopping – there’s a new novel by one of my favourite US writers, Carl Hiassen, published this weekend and I want to buy a copy – maybe go to a movie (what do you recommend, Soyoung?) and see the exhibition of Indian sculpture at the Royal Academy of Arts, in Piccadilly (a street in central London).

I’ll blog again sometime during the weekend – with those photographs I promised you – and fill you in on all the fun I’ve had.

Have a great weekend yourself.

Bye for now,
STEPHEN



SOME USEFUL WORDS AND EXPRESSIONS
an old flame
an idiomatic term for a former boyfriend (or girlfriend)
woodpeckers
A woodpecker is a bird with a long sharp beak which it uses to make holes in tree trunks so as to remove insects to eat.
herons
A heron is a large grey water bird with long legs.
jays
A jay is a bird from the crow family. In Britain, jays have black-and-white wings and a pink body.
deer
Note: the plural of ‘deer’ is ‘deer’ (like ‘sheep’ for example). See earlier blog for definition.
rabbits
A rabbit is a small furry animal with long ears.
squirrels
A squirrel is a small furry animal with a long bushy tail. Squirrels are expert tree-climbers.
bald
without any hair
mauled
badly damaged (scratched and cut) by a wild animal, especially a lion or tiger
alien
foreign; unknown; strange
mini-thesis
an academic project, shorter than a thesis but longer than an essay
fill you in on…If you ‘fill (someone) in on’ something, it means you give them all the details.

A LOVE STORY
by Lee Soyoung

I started a yoga class this week. Wow! When the class was almost finished, the teacher switched the light off and we closed our eyes. She told us to keep silent and think of nothing, just to keep breathing. Suddenly, I remembered my first love.

It’s silly. I don’t know why he appeared in my thoughts just then…

I met him at the riverside when I was 19. He was alone. I was sitting down near the riverbank and he was not far from me. I looked at him and then turned my face back towards the river. He watched me for a while and then came and sat next to me. He said he came here to feel refreshed. Me, too.

We started to talk about our lives. We were very young and it was easy to open our hearts to each other. We became friends, not lovers.

We phoned each other every day and met once a week. He was a student and I had a part-time job. I hadn’t gone to university after high-school. He was surprised but understood: he wasn’t enjoying studying physics. He was clever and bright. I liked his good nature. He was tall and good-looking.

I began to love him as time went by but I couldn’t show my feelings for him because I didn’t want to lose his friendship. I never really found out whether he loved me. A friend advised me to hide my feelings for him.

We did our two years of National Service in the army. I visited his camp to see him whenever he wanted to see me. Then, after he graduated he went on to do a master’s degree. We were still good friends.

Almost seven years later I didn’t exactly love him but I wanted to meet him again, as a friend. I wanted to keep in touch with him forever. I think, he had begun to love me, but I didn’t know how to deal with that. So I did nothing.

Eventually, he stopped calling. We didn’t see each other for almost two years. Maybe the relationship was over. One day I left a message for him to meet me at work but he didn’t receive the call. He had left for Vancouver to study at the theological academy there (he had sometimes told me that he might study theology). When I decided to study abroad a friend suggested I go to Vancouver, nowhere else. But I believed that if we were fated to meet again we would.

But we didn’t. He married another woman. It’s fate that he didn’t come back to me. It’s over. I sometimes wonder whether he’s all right and happy.

The past is sometimes very beautiful in my mind like this.

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