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Jan 20

26 Comments

Tea and Cakes

They didn’t know why they were such good friends. They just were.
They’d met on Twitter, electronically laughed and teased one another about the North-South divide, shared early morning tweets over their respective cups of tea, and chatted about Classic FM and noisy neighbours. They hated the same television programmes and shared a passion for lemon drizzle cake, they discovered.

It had been many months before they knew the extent of their age difference, background differences and physical differences. But by the time Carla found out that Joanna was in fact a tall, bony, soon-to-be great-grandmother of sixty-nine, and Joanna had found out that Carla was in fact a short, plump, childless, 27-year-old with a history of drug abuse it was irrelevant to the strong bond they had already built.
They’d got to the core of each other, you see – the bits you often never even find in those you see every day.

They agreed to meet, on neutral ground, on the Norfolk broads and for half an hour they simply took in each other’s appearances and recovered from each other’s accents, making self-conscious small-talk. It was all so polite, none of the usual teasing, and – if they were honest – it felt a bit wrong. As if they’d met up with strangers.

After awkward tea and sickly cakes, surrounded by quiet old couples in a small café, they set off for a walk. Side-by-side they battled, heads down, against the Easterly wind and slowly began to wonder at the sheer horribleness of the whole experience. Tears of wind-beaten pain glistened in their eyes as they turned to each other and roared with laughter. They preferred honesty. They were the same.

‘Fuck this, Jo,’ Carla screeched. ‘I could have shown you a better time in Bexhill, love!’
No one else ever called Joanna ‘Jo’ and she’d always liked reading it in Carla’s tweets. People weren’t pally with Joanna but Carla was pally.
‘All right. How long will it take to get there?’ Joanna offered.
Carla grinned up at Joanna and took her arm as they turned back inland towards the carpark. ‘Bloody hours but we’ve even got pies. You’ll feel right at home there, Chuck.’
‘And mash?’
‘We’ll mash up your chips for ya. You’ll probably need everything mashing up, won’t you, old girl?’
‘Fuck off.’ Joanna laughed but she wanted to cry with happiness. She’d never got to say that to anyone before. It was great. ‘Did you like those cakes?’
‘No. Too sweet.’
‘Far too sweet.’

Jan 16

9 Comments

Boxes and Labels

Avoiding the assumptions

What are you? Who are you? What do you do?
What type of person are you?
Can you define yourself in a few words and guarantee that those few words will remain an accurate description of who you are for many years? Or, like me, will you need several words and the option to change your mind at any moment?
I’m sure there are plenty of life-changing moments within all of our existences where we redefine ourselves because of a change of direction or some sort of realisation. Or we discard a label because we find it too limiting and it groups us with other people that we feel we have nothing else in common with.

I recently read Virginia Woolf’s Orlando and came to the conclusion that we should go no further than ‘human’ or ‘person’ in terms of categorisation. Anything after that – and in the case of her story ‘male’ or ‘female’ – can be subject to argument.

This morning I listened to Hermione Lee talk about the writer, Edith Wharton. Edith wrote about feminist issues but strongly refuted any suggestion that she was in fact A Feminist. Hermione Lee said, ‘Many women write about feminism but don’t call themselves feminists.’
That’s because we don’t like labels and all the connections and assumptions that go with them, I thought. Once you admit to being an environmentalist, for instance you get placed into a box with a label ‘profit of doom’ or ‘hippie’ and the lid firmly closed on you. Isn’t it more sensible to avoid labels and leave everything open to conversation or we may end up inadvertently fitting someone else’s view of what our particular label means?

Are you clever or stupid? Do you see other people as clever or stupid? Do you judge people by whether they have a degree or not? Is it that simple?
I have strong socialist opinions but I am not a Labour Party supporter.
I am a writer but I don’t have a cat sitting on my lap. (I don’t particularly like cats. But that doesn’t make me an animal-hater either!)
I am a mother but that doesn’t mean I want to sit around with other mothers talking about my children.
I keep getting sent forms from the OU, asking me to fill in details about my current situation since finishing this, that and the other course. I can’t do it. I don’t fit the boxes.

Then within the same radio programme as the Hermione Lee interview, an American writer was interviewed talking about her book about optimism. (Look her up if you can be bothered. I’m not sure I can!) She stated that we all have optimism ‘hard-wired’ into us – that it is a human trait. Now any sort of blanket statement like that is like a red rag to a bull to me. How dare she make sweeping assertions like that?!
She then muddled her argument by saying that only 80% of people are in fact optimistic the other 20% are clinically depressed. Gosh. Which box do I fit in? Hmmm…
Oh no… but then she said that British people are pessimistic, because we are really optimistic but we are culturally pessimistic. We put on our pessimism.

Scratches head

Well I had a good long think about this. I am not naturally optimistic. I am not depressed either. I am British. But I am not putting it on. I am plagued by pessimistic thoughts and I fight them regularly. But I love life and never want it to end. So I think I must have fallen out of my box and got lots of different labels stuck to me on the way down. So maybe my parents lied and I am not British then. Or maybe I’m not human.

I did a light-hearted survey on Twitter this morning, by the way, and many – UK-based – people came forward to say they were in fact optimistic.

It must be time to make up a few more box labels because not everyone is fitting neatly into the ones we have so far.

Or shall we just say we are who we are and that’s that. (And even that is subject to the day of the week, hormones, the moon, what job we are doing, who we are hanging out with, what we are eating, and life experiences. Let’s face it – sometimes we just don’t feel ourselves)

Some descriptions are useful for helping us cope or stay away from those who might make us unhappy. I believe being diagnosed with Asperger’s is very useful, for instance, but it’s only one part of who a person is.
I’d probably stay away from someone who defined themselves as a child-hating, capitalist, diamond-obsessive because I’m a family-loving, socialist, sandal-wearer.
But that’s just me.

Or is it?

These ‘not necessarily what it says on the box’ thoughts that prompted me to take the above photo made me think about my Dad.
I have a box in the shed that he wrote on:

What’s in there is definitely not what’s on the label, as he wrote that for a joke. Mum won’t throw anything away (well, not much) because almost everything should be re-used or recycled. Her intentions are good but she never actually deals with all the boxes and piles. She would call herself green and an environmentalist, a recycler… but is she if she doesn’t actually get around to recycling…
I guess that makes her a hoarder.

Or does it?

I’m not wearing sandals today, by the way.
Today I am A Fluffy Boot Wearer.

Grabs labels and indelible pen…

Jan 13

8 Comments

Fast Slopes

A short story/flash fiction


‘It’s what I know. It’s all I know. It’s my whole life,’ she had said.

It had seemed like a fine answer. She’d known she was going to say it. It was true and convincing. All at once it would epitomise commitment, experience, loyalty. She would put in the hours. She would dedicate herself to the role. She knew that was what they would be looking for.

But when she heard herself say it she sounded pitiful:
‘It’s all I know…’

It’s all I have ever done…

Charlie had thought her presumptuous to write an email of resignation so soon after the interview. But of course she wouldn’t click Send just yet, would she? She was getting ready, that was all – preparing for the future. Optimistic. He liked that in a person.
You keep at it, you go up and up, you get more money, you have more choices in life, you have fewer and fewer people telling you what to do, you finally get to the top and you gain control. That’s how the system worked. Why on earth would anyone want to be one of the minions, thought Charlie, doing everything for less money and less respect? Other people clearly didn’t have the drive, ambition or talent that he and Ellen had. Their loss.

Charlie poured them a glass of Pinot Noir while Ellen stared at the screen and chewed the skin around her thumbnail.
‘D’you think you’ve got it then?’ he asked. ‘You seem pretty certain you’re leaving.’
‘Hmmm?’ Ellen was lost in thought. Her eyes scanned left to right to left, quickly, as she read.
‘How long before you hear? Did they say?’
‘Oh yes. I’m sure I’m leaving.’
‘But when?’
‘Now.’ She pressed Enter with a pronounced gesture and closed her laptop.
She was shaking. Her eyes were still flitting and she looked half-crazed as if she would explode into hysterical laughter at any second.
‘Jeez, El’, what if you don’t…?’ Charlie paused and necked his wine.

He’d always admired her gutsiness. ‘My missus has got balls,’ he often joked proudly. But he suddenly felt the exhilarating terror he’d experienced when he’d tried the fast slopes at Aspen for the first time. It was great when it all turned out all right in the end but the loss of control had scared the crap out of him. He began to shake too and poured himself another drink.

‘What are we doing with our lives, Charlie?’ she asked, standing up and pouring her wine down the sink.

‘Hopefully we’re getting to the top – that’s if you haven’t just become unemployed.’ He rubbed his forehead as panic made it sweat.

‘But why? What do we want?’ She was holding her car key and turning it over in her hands – as if it made them dirty.

‘A nice house. A bigger house. No mortgage. Nice cars. No one telling us what to do. To be in control of our lives. You know… and stuff. Holidays. Things. Comfort.’

Ellen released a huge breath and pressed the key onto the kitchen surface. She lined it up neatly next to her phone and her laptop and stepped back pushing her hands into her jeans pockets.

‘I’m going on a self-sufficiency course in Powys. I’ll get the train. I’ll phone you from the landline when I get there.’

‘You what?!’ Charlie spat wine and jumped towards her, reaching out for her shoulders. ‘You’re tired and stressed after the worry of the interview. Just sit down and we’ll talk. I think you’re having a nervous breakdown, love.’

‘Well, if I am, I thoroughly recommend it,’ Ellen laughed lightly and released herself.

Charlie squinted at her. ‘Are you leaving me? Are you having an affair?’

‘No. No. You can come too. I just didn’t think you’d want to.’

‘How long have you been planning this?’

Ellen looked at her watch. ‘About 47 minutes.’ She walked to the front door and opened it, picking up a rucksack from the floor.

‘And what about the job?’

‘What job?’ She raised her eyebrows and kissed Charlie’s cheek.

‘You can’t not work.’

‘Oh, I’ll be working.’ Her phone rang from the kitchen as she stepped outside and slung the rucksack on her back.

‘No. Earning a living. Just imagine for a minute not having the security of knowing you can afford a mortgage, go out for dinner, drive a car, be part of the financial world…’

‘I know. It’s exhilarating.’ Ellen grinned, wide-eyed. ‘I can feel the wind in my hair already.’

Her phone rang again and she strode away down the drive, swinging her arms. Charlie had started to follow her but he ran back up into the house and looked at her phone. A text appeared on the screen.

Charlie stared at the screen and downed another glass of wine.

Jan 5

6 Comments

I Can’t Get No…

A 100-word flash fiction

He didn’t understand it.
There they were – sat under the electric light, leaning across the table to hold each other’s hands.
So that was that, he thought, as he lowered his binoculars…
She really was with who she said she would be with, and doing what she said she would.
Why?
Why wasn’t she lying, cheating, finding comfort elsewhere?
Women stole from him, went off with his sister’s husband, changed their phone number, laughed in his face.
He got satisfaction from being right when it all went wrong.

If she really was “working late” tomorrow, she’d have to go.



There’s a competition run by National Flash Fiction Day (UK) to write a micro-fiction of 100 words or less, here: National Flash Fiction Day Micro-Fiction Competition
UK writers only. Entry closes 31st January 2012.


Oh – and there’s this music-inspired, 100-word one too, for the One in Four charity which looks interesting: Caroline Smailes: A Challenge and the chance to see your story in print


Dec 31

14 Comments

Ludicrous Nostrils

My year laid bare.
Or, 2011: everyone else is doing it so why shouldn’t I?

Me

Me

I had no idea how to sum up my year. So I went through my blog month by month and this is what I’ve come up with:

2011 has been all about me taking myself more seriously. Getting learnéd, finding my own way and trying to accept myself for who I am.

In January, I had some short stories published on the Ether Books app, and I took part in a River of Stones. I felt like a fraud. Me? A writer?!

In February I began a Health & Social care module with the OU – overlapping it with the Advanced Creative Writing module I’d already started in October. It was also, very sadly, the month my father-in-law died and I wrote a poem for his funeral.

In March I started to really assess myself as a writer. I began to worry less about what I had to do to define myself as a writer and instead I found myself thinking and writing about what kind of writer I was and realising that success for me simply meant writing what I wanted to write. I felt I had advanced from budding/wannabe/potential/whatever and was giving myself permission to say, ‘I am a writer,’ instead of waiting for some sort of golden ticket to Writer Land.

In April I struggled with unwelcome feedback on my blog and began to see how when people read your writing they can sometimes try to own a bit of it. They see things you didn’t intend, they offer alternate ways of writing, and they can criticise where it’s not wanted. They can even dare to tell you that you are wrong! I also noticed how people can wave experience or credentials in your face and try to beat you down. When people say something you really totally disagree with you absolutely have to stand your ground and I find that difficult.

In May, after a whirlwind of juggling two OU modules, I finally submitted my final assignment for my Diploma in Literature and Creative Writing. I wrote freely and experimentally away from the course and really enjoyed the release. I decided to stop entering competitions – which made me write total cardboard crap. I think I’ve entered three and also submitted to one magazine and when I look at that work it is the worst stuff I have written!

In June I wrote a blog post about my own late father for his seventieth birthday. I wanted to commemorate everything he was to me and how much of him has been passed down to me. He would have liked the me in my early forties that I am now, and it was a comfort to write positive things after two years of bad memories. I also found myself writing a lot of other non-fiction in reaction to things I saw going on in the world.

In July I wrote blog post after blog post after blog post, loaded with opinions and observations. Some fiction, some non-fiction and some a combination of the two. I was enjoying the freedom of owning my own words and knowing they were just to be read and not graded by an academic marker. I began to feel confident that I could say what I wanted on my own blog without fear of being judged. People that didn’t like what I wrote could bog off.

In August I found out I had passed my diploma and the realisation that I was only one module away from a degree began to sink in. I had taken courses to look at things more closely, discover things of interest, and on the way I was getting a degree. It is, to me, a wonderfully fulfilling way of learning – without a specific end goal. I sent in my final assignment for my final module a month early and celebrated the achievement. I wrote a blog post about the experience and had dozens of comments. I adore that feeling, like no other, of sharing and connecting that comes from writing.

I received my course materials for my Twentieth Century Literature module in September and have really enjoyed reading about other writers’ struggles, the way their writing was received in its time and how there is so very much disagreement between critics and writers about what is good and bad, right or wrong in writing. It’s quite reassuring really. I also turned forty-two and began to notice how much I was ageing. I couldn’t help noting how late I’d come to writing compared with famous and successful writers and it upset me. It still upsets me that I didn’t start sooner.

October was a time of more realisation. I started, and then pulled out of, National Novel Writing Month. I took part last year and managed to reach my target but think perhaps once was enough for me. For now I am a short story writer. The way my life is arranged and the way my head explodes with thoughts seems to suit the short story and flash fiction format. I was also very flattered to be invited to take part in the first National Flash Fiction Day which takes place next May!

In November I finally learned how to deal with negative feedback. I realised that if someone doesn’t “get” your writing you can’t make them. I realised that if you like something and don’t want to change it, even after taking onboard someone’s feedback, then you should get a second opinion. I realised that I mustn’t overreact or take feedback personally ( I’m still working on that one. I find comments about my writing very personal!) All writing needs a cooling off period. As do writers.

In December I haven’t really liked my writing. I’ve been bogged down with Christmas and a very demanding literature course (well, I think it’s demanding). There’s something about tension in my real life that screws up my creative flow. Having looked at December’s posts just now, I’m not very proud at all. It’s great to take nationally enforced time off with the family but I’ve had enough now and am starting to stress about everything I need to catch up with.
I had my degree confirmed this month, though, so I am now officially intelligent even if my writing has got worse!

So that’s brief snippets of my year. In summary: I am older, wiser and a kind of graduate-on-hold while I try to up my degree to honours.
I also noticed today – whilst trying to get a photo of myself, that I have started to sag around the jawline, I have a face that is too fat for my upper body and I have ludicrous nostrils.
Ludicrous, I tell you.

I have to write a writer’s profile for the National Flash Fiction Day site now and have no idea what to say… Should I mention the nostrils?

If you’re reading this, thank you. There are some fantastic people who I have met through Twitter that have given me much encouragement and support this year. I had absolutely no faith in myself or my own abilities and you have changed my life by reading and commenting on my blog/and/or my blipfoto journal. I can’t mention you all in case I forget someone but hopefully you know who you are.

If you’re a stranger – Hello!

The photo is a brave one for me. I usually like a facefull of makeup before I can even open the front door. It’s me, at home, at my usual end of the dining room table, in my favourite black jumper. (Check out the nostrils!)

Dec 14

4 Comments

Imagine: go deeper, wider, further…


I caught a snippet of this quote on Twitter this morning and went looking for the complete version:

Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.
ALBERT EINSTEIN

I frequently notice how some people criticise those who apply instinct and imagination to their daily lives and instead quote statistics and ‘facts’ without really knowing what they mean or being able to apply them far and wide. I think there is a danger of being ‘stuck in facts’ without questioning them. It’s always seemed to me to be more progressive to look deeper, visualise further, and imagine how things could be different or better. I find imagining things to be a much much more thorough way of looking at the world.

Just a thought.

And here’s another one:

Many live in the ivory tower called reality; they never venture on the open sea of thought.
Francois Gautier

Dec 9

9 Comments

Incompatible

A flash

She said:
‘I prefer the brain and the personality I have now to the one I had when I was younger…
What a shame the body I had when I was younger was better than the one I have now…’
She shrugged.
‘But maybe the two were never compatible…’

He said:
‘What a shame we can’t go back in time.’

She said:
‘I wouldn’t go back even if I could,’ and opened the empty suitcase onto the bed, satisfied she was doing the right thing.

Jan 6

18 Comments

Detached

I bought good trainers – expensive trainers. I made trainers my full-time project. I researched trainers on-line for days. I Googled trainers, I compared trainers, I price-checked trainers. I read about arch supports, sweat holes, road trainers, gym trainers, fashion trainers.
I grabbed a Pot-Noodle, went back to the computer and tapped in “On-line Sports Shops”.

I narrowed down the possibilities and looked at the calendar: I’d kept myself busy for four days.
I clicked “Checkout”, I paid extra for next day delivery and then I went to the pub and lost all my cash in the fruit machines and buying everyone else drinks.

Then the next day I ran. I ran and I ran and I ran.
Melly from the pub, stood outside having a fag and laughing at me. ‘Run, Forest. Run!’ she shouted, cackling with smoker’s laughter until she coughed.

I ran out of town.
‘You haven’t dealt with me,’ said a voice.
I ran faster. I ran high and I ran low. I ran fast down the hills so the wind roared in my ears, but the voice carried on the wind and still found its way into my ear. ‘You haven’t dealt with me.’

I ran home. I was red, I was sweaty, I was hurting. I didn’t care. I put the TV on in the kitchen and the iPod on in the sitting room. I watched sad bastards while I ate crisps and made a cheese and pickle sandwich and I listened to angry bastards while I went back online and researched headphones.

I went out and I got drunk.

I woke up in the sitting room, put on my trainers and I ran.
I ran into town and I bought headphones.
“Ever fallen in love with someone, ever fallen in love,” shouted the music into my ears as I ran and tried to cross the road.
‘You haven’t dealt with me,’ shouted the woman in the white Renault. I blinked in the sun. It wasn’t white, it was yellow and driven by a man.

I ran home past the pub, past Melly having a fag. She turned her back on me and Carys from the kitchen shouted “Bastard!”
I ran home. I was red, I was sweaty, I was hurting. I didn’t care. I put the TV on in the kitchen and the iPod on in the sitting room. I watched sad bastards while I ate crisps and made a cheese and pickle sandwich and I listened to angry bastards while I tried to remember what I did last night.
‘You haven’t dealt with me,’ said a voice from the TV.
I looked up at the photo of a mother and baby on top of the TV. The mother stared out at me, crying. ‘You haven’t…’
I grabbed the photo and squeezed the frame so hard it cracked in my hand.
‘No. It’s too much. Stop it.’

I went to the pub and people were uncomfortable around me. I sat in a corner and got drunk.
I woke up on my doorstep at 4am.
A hand touched my shoulder in the half-light and encouraged me gently to my feet. ‘Go to bed. Sleep. Rest. Take your time.’ I looked around and no one was there.

I lay on my bed and saw a face in the dark. ‘No. Go away.’
Pain in my throat. Pain in my eyes. Breath building in my chest. A noise escaped from my mouth as I tried to fight. ‘Ah. Oh. Ow,’ I cried. It hurt inside and out. I didn’t want it to hurt. I just wanted to stay drunk forever.

The sun was high in the sky when I woke and looked at the clock. It was lunchtime. I was starving. I walked slowly to the kitchen, turned on the TV and listened to the news for the first time in weeks. I froze and stared at the screen when I heard the date. I’d been in bed for two days.
Outside. Some roses the landlord had planted were budding. Soft pink. I took the kitchen scissors, went outside and cut the pretty little things down. I dropped them in the kitchen sink and then I took a long, long shower in silence but for the constant, steady sound of water.
I found clean clothes in the tumble dryer. I picked up the roses, cutting my hands on the thorns. I hurt. I cared. ‘Dammit,’ I sighed as tears came too easily to my eyes.
I walked to the pub with the roses in a plastic shopping bag. I walked in, left one on the bar and walked out. Someone saw me, someone followed me. I don’t know who it was.

I went to the cemetery. I found the grave. I stood and read the epitaph.
‘Hullo, Mum.’ I said.
I stood still.
I remembered her good points and I remembered how she thumped me when I puked in the back of her white Renault. I gave her the roses. I screwed up the plastic bag and put it in my jeans and I sat on a bench. I felt my face get wetter and saltier as I thought about loneliness.

Jan 21

20 Comments

Humble Abode

“Frank…” She smiled at him with the same blackcurrant eyes that crinkled and turned up at the corners, making her look ten years old again.

“Rosemary.” He smiled back warmly, yet nervously. “It’s been so long.”

“Too long,” she replied, taking his large, brown freckled hands in hers. “Nearly forty years.” Their thumbs quietly noted each other’s prominent knuckle joints and loose, wrinkly skin.

“And all because…”

“No, Frank. Say no more about it. It’s all in the past. You’re here now.”

“I need to say how sorry I am, though. I was so childish. It wasn’t important.”

“I forgave you years ago, my darling. Come in. You must be freezing. Come and see my humble abode.”
She led the way – not that it was needed – into her tiny, square council bungalow and motioned towards the sitting room.

The central heating hit him with a hot, dry, home-furnished, carpety smell that was unfamiliar.
“Yeah. You’re right. Really felt the cold as I stepped off the plane. Haven’t had my face sting like that for decades. Oh, you’ve made it nice. Real nice. So different to the houses back home. It’s so hot we keep the soft furnishings to a minimum. Oh and look at all the old photos! Oh – and you’ve got Dad’s cigar box!”

“Home? Is that where you call home now?”

Rosemary looked so small and lonely that Frank wished he’d chosen his words more carefully. He looked down at her, wanting to hug her, cry, take care of her. But he felt frozen by years and years of guilt and being here with her, seeing how sweet and fragile she was, only made him feel worse.
But, bless her, she knew and immediately brightened her face for him bravely. “Come and see the kitchen. Tea? Bet you haven’t had a proper cup of English tea for a while?” She patted his arm and crinkled her eyes at him again.

It took three seconds to view the claustrophobic kitchen and overwhelmed by the tight space, Frank wandered out again, leaving her to it. He strolled the four steps across the hall, eyeing the family photos on the walls, recognising an old painting or two, peering into the barometer. “Jeez,” he whispered as he went back into the sitting room, “everything’s so bloody small here.”

He remained on his feet, with his arms behind his back, taking a step or two towards each nic-nac that his eyes lighted upon. He noted their mother’s old writing table, and their father’s footstool. It must have been terrible for Rosemary sorting through their belongings alone. How could he have been so mean and greedy? It was quite clear from her humble surroundings that she hadn’t stolen his coins. She was a good, kind person. He shouldn’t have accused her.

The absence of any photos of children and grandchildren of her own was stark. How unfair that he had been so blessed with a big family and she had no-one.
He chuckled at a cheeky-grinned photo of the two of them as children and thought about what mischief they might have been up to seconds before it was snapped.

Behind the telly was a photo he did remember. A clipping from the local newspaper after he’d found the coins: Local Boy Strikes it Rich! And a small write-up about how his parents were going to keep his coins safe until he was old enough to sell them himself. His future was secured. Or so he had thought…

He tapped the top of Dad’s shabby old, worthless cigar box thoughtfully as he read the article and he thumbed the catch absent-mindedly. It sprang open unexpectedly.
Inside was a piece of paper from the British Museum with details about Roman coins and identification. Mum and Dad must have had them valued for him. He didn’t remember them doing that.
He pulled it out and looked at the date, scratching his head.
1978.
Eight years after Mum had died and 10 years after Dad had died.
Curious.
He went to put the paper back in the box and then he heard it. Dull and unassuming, but nonetheless the unmistakeable chink of old coins.
As he picked them up and turned them over and over in his palm, china teacups rattled close behind him in their saucers.

“You little bugger,” he said, without turning round.



Feb 4

14 Comments

Cathedral

The sound came from above and from the sides in an arc.

The clear, pure, open-throated sounds of voices resonated together like one huge bell and seemed to stroke his temples and the back of his neck, entering not just through his ears but his nostrils, his mouth, his scalp and his skin. He felt immersed in a gentle, powerful experience of something seemingly hugging the back of his eyes, his tonsils and his chest, as if he was singing too.
For five seconds he stood on the same huge grey slate, not moving, in case this was the only part of the building where this magic could be felt.

Then Sarah came and touched his arm.
“I left a fiver,” she said in a low respectful voice. “I hope it’s enough.”

They walked slowly, neither one wanting to break the spell over themselves or in the building by brisk movements or audible footfalls. He found himself wishing her shoes didn’t knock so rhythmically. It would be good to stand still and wait a while longer and become lost again, he wanted to say, but he felt foolish and said nothing.
She pointed, he nodded. She read information cards quietly, he ummed quietly and scratched the back of his neck.

They arrived at the front. He sat on a pew facing the practising choir and she joined him. He held her hand but wished he was alone so that the tears could fall and he could be rid of them. She would ask him why he was crying, if he was all right, try to comfort him, worst still – pity him. He didn’t want that.

He looked up at the ceiling. The physical stretching of his throat and the backward tilt of his head seemed to abate the overwhelming urge to weep. He took a deep breath and heard himself gasp. It would take decades to make a ceiling as intricate as that. People must have died before they saw this place finished.
He remembered putting up scaffolding to fix the ceiling in the village hall last year and the three days it took to paint it afterwards with white emulsion. This ceiling was something else.

From the corner of his eye he saw her looking up too and then looking at him. He withdrew his hand, wanting to swear at her, make her look away. She would see that his eyes were shining with unreleased tears.

He stood up and shuffled out of the pew and strode towards the great doors with the sound ringing all around him, following him. Clear and loud and intense. A whole body experience that had taken him away from the traffic, away from the present, out of the city and out of himself temporarily.

The light, the noise, the dust, the diesel, the outside air swapped places like a spell with the choir, the old wood, the polish and the cold damp stone smells, the red velvet, the tapestries, the stained glass, the wholeness, the oneness whisked away in an instant to be replaced by a noisy bus engine, a distant road repair, wind and busy footsteps. People dashed by so fast in their focussed intent, intense internal manner that he was shocked into sitting on the stone steps to take a moment.

“Andy? Are you okay?”
“Yup! Couldn’t be better.” He answered brightly, jumping to his feet. “Right.” He brushed the sandy feeling from his hands briskly and clapped. “You’ve forced me against my will into a cathedral so now let’s do what I want to do. Where’s the nearest pub?”


Feb 10

20 Comments

A Voice Released




On the 29th of August 2009, at the age of 39-going-on-40, I wrote my first story in 23 years.





I wrote it quickly as a challenge to come up with a story in a limited time from the prompt word “shoes” and it was also my first ever blog post.

I did it again the next day with the word “lemon” and then the next day with the word “mist”.

I didn’t set these stories out correctly, I didn’t edit them. I didn’t really know all the rules about layout. But people read them and enjoyed them and – as the old saying goes – something clicked.
(If you’re interested, look back to the archives for August 2009)

I felt my pulse race. I felt the buzz of childhood Christmases and I felt the high of holding a new baby after giving birth. Letting my imagination loose, arranging and rearranging words, creating and freeing a bundle of thoughts in my brain and making them into a thing, some thing that I had made – oh, bliss…. The whole beginning-to-end process was what had been missing from my life!

I felt as if I was running down a grassy slope with my arms wide, screaming, “Yes, story-writing, take me, take me! I’m alive, I’m alive!”




The way I felt before I opened my word processor and released that first flood of words was like carrying a big heavy rock around my neck for years marked “unfulfilled” . Now suddenly I could take it off and put it to one side. To describe what has happened to me, my head, my self-esteem, sense of self, confidence in my own opinions, etc, etc, etc, in the last year and a half since “shoes” would take pages and pages.

For the last 18 months, I have called my blog “A Creative Writing Journey”. It was to be about me and my journey from a beginner on a soon to start Open University creative writing course and would follow my progress.

But that’s not how it worked out. I was a student, yes and I wrote about the course a bit. But what happened was deeper than that.

I became a writer. A real, proper, writing-for-my life writer. I now think I was always a writer-in-waiting.

I started writing down my thoughts about being a writer, a parent, a member of the human race and gradually stopped shying away from my deep-seated and until then well-hidden values and beliefs. I had been scared of myself, worried that my environmental, socialist leanings would alienate me. Worried that my honesty about struggling with daily life would make me look self-obsessed or in need of medical attention. And I was scared that my creative/fictional ideas wouldn’t be good enough to get me a writer’s badge.

I bravely took the thoughts and concerns that were in my head and I made them into blog posts. Sometimes straightforward rants, sometimes humorous parodies and sometimes short stories with obvious or hidden messages depending on the mood. I now starve, freeze and isolate myself to concentrate on what I am working on or thinking about. Sometimes I’m in pain and I don’t care.
Through this recent writing I have spoken the words I couldn’t speak for years, voiced the concerns about my fellow human beings that I have held close for years and released the creative flow that has been dammed for years.
I have worn away the edges of the stick of rock that is me and found that it has WRITER written right through the middle of it. Whichever way life bites me now I will always be a writer.

So today it dawned on me that my blog is no longer a creative writing journey. It is a website dedicated to sharing my thoughts and my fiction. It is a platform for my voice. My opinionated voice, my writer’s voice and the voices of my characters who – based on my observations of life – have a right to be heard.
I am releasing voices. I am not going on a “journey” (!)

So the new name for my site is A Voice Released. It’s about me and it’s about them.

If you don’t like it…

Feb 16

15 Comments

I Find You There

      I do not find you at your grave,
      Although I stand and read your name.
      You’ve gone but still I search for you
      Where are you now your life is through?

      My hands on the arms of your favourite chair,
      Yes, I think you might be there
      My heart it aches with love for you
      You own a part – you’re in there too

      A happy photo smiles at me
      This is where I want you to be.
      A line in a song and I see your face
      And remember a walk in your favourite place.

      The love you left will never die
      Your life lives on in your family’s eyes.
      I’ll always miss your company
      But you live on in them and me.

      There is no end to the love that is you
      In others your life lives on, and through
      Your life you left enough
      That we might see and hold and touch.

      I rest my head now we’re apart
      And remember that which was dear to your heart
      Your values, dreams and chosen words
      Can still be felt and still be heard.

      I take a moment in my mind
      To think about the happier times,
      The thoughts and loves that we both shared
      Forever I will find you there.

Written on Wednesday 16th February 2011 – The morning of my Father-in-Law’s death, while thinking of my husband, my mother-in-law and sister-in-law’s loss, my mother’s, my own and my sisters’ loss and my brother-in-law (who has also just lost his father) and his family’s loss –

I want this to be relevant to others feeling similar losses so although written with specific personal thoughts and people in mind, have kept it simple, open and accessible and have naturally been influenced by other bereavement poems.

In front of me is a picture of my own father who died two years ago.

In loving memory of Dave Carter, Chris Wood, Roy Johnson
and the many others who are sadly missed

Mar 1

53 Comments

What type of writer are you?

(Just a bit of fun!)




The Juggler?


The Organised?


The Frustrated?


The Avoider?


The Hermit?




The Juggler Writer

You are probably working, have a family, keep a home, have social and extended family commitments. You could be a man or a woman but I think it is more likely that you are a woman. You feel as if you are constantly on the go, running from one job to the next, keeping all your plates spinning. You feel busy, chaotic and disorganised yet still find time to write – but at no fixed time – just whenever you can. You probably see your life as a bit of a crazy circus and yourself as an accident waiting to happen with all those balls in the air. But, despite this, you are no clown. Others are jealous of you and wish they could juggle as well as you. You are not completely happy with your writing output, always wish you could spend more time on it, but are reasonably successful. You may see yourself as too many things to call yourself just a writer and you may never stop taking on other activities. When your family and work commitments lessen you are probably the type of person to take on new activities and hobbies which compliment your writing. I suspect your writing is witty, observant and easy to relate to. Because you are modest your writing is probably better than those around you realise and you often have to write in a house that is less than peaceful.
You are quite happy to scrap an idea and start a new one in life and in writing, yet you remain loyal, friendly and reliable and take your commitments very seriously. I, for one, am very jealous of people like you and admire you immensely.



The Organised Writer

You also have commitments but you have pinned everything down. You have nailed your writing time to evenings, or early mornings or weekends. You have a specific writing time and place. You have a diary. Your plates are not spinning. You have projects that you pick up and put down and when you are not writing you are doing something else. You have an important job or a special duty in life and I see your life planned out months – if not years – in advance. Perhaps you have a farm or you are a carer or have an important job in society – something time-consuming that cannot be put on hold. But you know where your spare moments may be and have scheduled them in advance as writing time. You have probably enlisted the help or support of others or you pay someone to do the domestic chores. I believe you are equally as likely to be a man or a woman. I imagine you suffer from regular health complaints but battle on bravely. You probably write novels that are planned carefully in advance, have serious content and you rarely deviate. You have created a world where others understand your routine and see you as highly reliable and predictable. I see you as the type who knows their genre and sticks to it. You are thorough and detailed. You might write a series of crime novels, historical or family sagas. I am jealous of your organisation and I am nothing like you but you are the type who is good for my motivation!


The Frustrated Writer

ARGH!
You are me a few years back. Life is bonkers. There are no plates spinning because they fell a long time ago and are smashed all over the floor. Life is chaotic. People may not see the chaos – it may be hidden inside your head. You may not be writing at all, yet. You feel like a writer, you feel that writing is something you want to be doing, but if you do get started you rarely find time to finish anything. Your head is a whirl of tiredness, dreams and duties. There is an extremely strong chance that you are a woman! You spend your time looking for intellectual satisfaction – crashing from one idea to the next with a sense of failure and unfulfillment. You are tough on yourself, you can’t or won’t ask for help and fear stops you from making the life-changing decision needed to call yourself a writer. You define yourself as mother, housewife, nurse, policewoman, gardener, whatever, and wait for life to change/ get better, for there to be more money, more hours in the day… You may sneak in time to write a blog and find that your life-rantings strike a chord with other women. It is likely that you are a bit of a martyr and put off things that would be good for you such as taking walks, eating healthily, and talking about your problems. You are probably very modest and surrounded by people who have no idea how clever you are. If you are not careful you may remain a wannabe… Which would be a shame because your writing would be very encouraging to other women.



The Avoider Writer

Shame on you – you procrastinator!
Fear is in your way and you can’t see a way around it.
Either you are frightened that when you sit down and begin to produce a proper piece of writing that it won’t be good enough; you are scared of your own ability and what others will think of you OR you have a fear of what is inside your own head; you have suffered, you have had a tough life. Your experiences may be too much for others to handle or they may even be too much for you to handle. What will happen when all the disturbing truths that you have locked away for years come pouring out? You may start to write a novel but when you write the word “child” your own childhood may develop on the page in front of you without warning. You may end up in a mental institution, you may have to tell everyone what a nutter and a freak you really are when you have spent so many years trying to be normal. What if you can’t deal with your own emotions, your own past?
Or maybe it will just be crap. Maybe you can’t write at all. It’s better to live in hope than to find out the truth, yeah?
No, because if you want to write you should write. If it’s crap, don’t show it to anyone. Or post it on a blog under a pen name and ask for feedback from strangers. There are millions of writers out there who never win prizes or get a publishing deal. We’re all just enjoying the creative process.
I see you as a man or a woman. You probably don’t allow yourself to show emotions often enough and are unsure of yourself. You may have fixed ideas and/or are scared of change. You probably plan things and then are too scared to follow through.
(I recommend a bit of life-writing secretly on the loo and reading outloud to yourself. You’d be amazed how therapeutic it can be! And a troubled life is always very interesting!)


The Hermit Writer

This is me when I am being a writer. We cannot juggle. We have thought explosions. We have moody periods and we have more wasted time than any other type. We can go into our shell for whole days and then come out crying that all we have written is “Turmoil” six thousand times. Our [metaphorical] wastepaper bin is often overflowing. When we have an idea we are possessed and neglectful of ourselves and our loved ones. I believe this type is more likely to be a man. For a woman this way of writing comes with too much guilt attached and can cause depression. A man of this type will often be supported or be single. We can swing from one idea to the next and scrap something that is not going our way. We are in danger of jeopardising our writing careers with our perfectionism and self-punishment. If we are lucky enough to have loved ones willing to hang around, our one good novel may be rescued from the fire by a relative in the nick of time.
For me this is a life of walled personalities with inter-joining doors. I cannot have the doors open and be a writer-stroke-family person or a writer-stroke-businesswoman, etc. I have to shut the doors. I do not juggle. I do not organise writing time and I do not fear or avoid writing. I merely shut the door to my writing self and become the domestic me, the social me, the attentive mother me or the bookkeeper me. My ideas don’t seep through the bricks. It is a difficult type of writer to be because when I haven’t written for a while I become angry with guilt because I know I want to be elsewhere and it seems wrong for a wife and mother to feel that way. And when I am inside the walls of the writing me I am unapproachable, rude, void of routine, unhealthy, selfish.
I see Hermit Writers as more likely to have obsessions or addictions and to deliberately avoid what is good for us because to us nothing feels as good as the process of writing. We can be unreliable and may not be very good at holding down a conventional job. Because of the brain channeling needed, writing for a hermit necessarily involves retreat and not blending with the rest of life.

What about you? Do you fit into one of these writing types? Or are you a mix of different types?
Or maybe you disagree with my observations completely!

Mar 6

8 Comments

Getting my head down

Study Time

Time to study

With a little reluctance and some internal stern talking to, I am forcing a brief fiction-writing and social-networking hiatus on myself. I guess it’s a kind of reverse sabbatical. You see, since 2000 I have been taking OU courses on and off, with no direction and no self-belief, thinking I hadn’t the brains to achieve degree level. Well, at the grand old age of 41, that has changed and I see a light at the end of the tunnel. But recently I keep diverting my attention because of my love for writing stories and communicating with other writers. Hideous family things have blighted my life too in the last 3 years and taken their toll on my study time and course grades.
Today I looked at my study calendar, the work I need to catch up with, my home and bookworking for my husband commitments and made a list. We have a seasonal business, so school holidays are frustrating from a parenting perspective. It is a daunting but, I believe, achievable list and if I get on with it and pass this year’s courses I will, finally, have that degree that I now realise is possible:
My qualifications

From my OU profile page

My Advanced Creative Writing course finishes in May and my Philosophy/Health & Social Care course finishes in September.
I really think this degree will help me with my self-confidence and my goal to become a serious writer but I am the world’s worst juggler and also very nosey about what’s happening out there, so this retreating is the way I need to do things for now.

Homework

Doing my homework


So from now until May I will be very studious indeed.
I’m going to be a good girl.
Yes I am.

Wish me luck. :)




Perhaps if you see me on Twitter or facebook, before the middle of May, you would be so good as to turn me around and point me in the direction of my books again!


(And damn those low self-esteem and self-doubt gremlins for slowing me down for so long!)

Apr 2

7 Comments

If I Only Had (Proof Of) A Brain

Me, questioning stuff and probably waffling too much again



I would not be just a nuffin’
My head all full of stuffin’
My heart all full of pain
I would dance and be merry
Life would be a ding-a-derry
If I only had a brain

Do you have some credentials? What do you do with them? Do you use them as positive proof of your superiority? As evidence of a great collection of knowledge and facts? Do your credentials make you feel more worthy than others? Do you use your credentials on a daily basis? Do you share the great wealth of information and understanding that came with your credentials, pass it down to others? Did your credentials lead you down a path on which there is a newer, better life and you are forever expanding your mind? Are your credentials a tool with which to make yourself a useful cog in the wheels of society? Is there a point to your credentials, other than to say ‘Whoo – look at me! I’m brainy!’

Is there a point to any of this?

Why can’t we just stuff our brains full of the knowledge that is relevant to us, our interests, strengths and possible career choices? Why are we so obsessed with teaching every school child exactly the same stuff in exactly the same way? Why are we panicking when they can’t spell by six years of age?
For example, yesterday our 6-year-old wrote ‘Mudl pudl farm is a gra!t Book I lov it a lot.’
Shall I tear her confidence apart by pointing out all her mistakes or drink in the beauty of the word ‘gra!t’ and continue to enjoy sharing Michael Morpurgo books with her?
Should I start panicking about the school league tables if my daughter’s spelling isn’t up to scratch? Thinking, ‘Oh my God! Key stage 1 SATS! Get the calendar! How long do I have to fix my imperfect child!?’
There’s too much emphasis on performance, figures and positive notoriety for the school from 5 to 16. Until the end of childhood, in fact. Wasn’t that supposed to be the fun bit of life? So why is education now so focussed on schools proving they have the highest number of successful, brainy kids?
And when we say someone has brains/is brainy, what do we mean?
Do we mean they’re academically able? They spell well, they understand Shakespeare, they are in the top classes? Do you notice how people who have trouble spelling don’t get called brainy? People who struggle with school are not associated with brains but with stupidity?
If I think back to my school days, that’s what I would have meant. ‘Brainy’ people succeed at school, stupid people don’t. Simple. Right? There were ‘brainy’ kids in maths and science who actually managed to look like they knew what the teachers were going on about! There were people that passed all their o’levels (yes, I‘m THAT old!) and actually did a few extra. Some children in my year came away from school with 11 o’levels. I knew people at 6th form college who passed 4 A’levels and going to university wasn’t an ‘if’ or a ‘maybe’ for them it was a certain thing. They had brains.

But sometimes we neglect the fact that we all have brains. I was one of those that got called ‘brainy’ (sometimes) in the early days at school but I ended up underachieving and falling through the holey education system.
Do you know what upsets me?: When I began to not fit, when I began to underachieve, when I began to struggle and perform badly, I started to feel stupid. Gradually I felt less and less ‘brainy’.
I thought I couldn’t be a good student. I thought education wasn’t for me. I thought I didn’t have a brain after all. I lowered my expectations of myself.
But as the years went by, I spotted incredible wisdom in the most unexpected people, juxtaposed with a lack of depth, logic or common sense in people who supposed themselves to be in possession of a superior mind. One thing I find very difficult to accommodate is a certain knowledge combined with a judgemental attitude. Judgemental is a word associated with limited knowledge and a closed mind. Those that judge must have, in a sense, shut themselves off from new information and new ideas in order to feel so righteous. Doesn’t sound very clever to me…
I began to notice that some people with impressive-sounding qualifications made less sense of the world than they ought – so-called ‘brainy’ people! I also realised that some health care professionals were a bit limited in their approach to a problem and the information they provided, some teachers made errors in things that they taught my children. I saw things that they couldn’t. So why were they ‘brainy’ and I wasn’t?
Education? Confidence?
What could I do with my observations? Where would my thoughts be relevant? And where would I be valued and recognised as having a worthwhile opinion? I wasn’t ‘educated’ after all.

I could wile away the hours
Conferrin’ with the flowers
Consultin’ with the rain
And my head I’d be scratchin’
While my thoughts were busy hatchin’
If I only had a brain

It’s not really about a brain though is it? Because we do actually all have one (mostly ;) )It’s what we do with it. Swap the ‘brain’ for ‘education’ and you’ve got purpose, focus, ambition and direction. But I mean education in its real sense: acquiring skills and knowledge, learning. The learning that helps you to live well and to follow routes to suit you.
It’s about learning to use your brain.
Okay, so, yes, people that fit the current UK education system that have drive, confidence and ambition can get a string of qualifications. They can get letters after their name, they can work their way up to the top: lawyer, headteacher, surgeon, politician, research scientist… They can spend their lives waving their PDF SWALK ESP RSVP SOS under our noses but they are not the only clever people in the world and they are not necessarily THE most clever people in the country.
Now I have to stop and explain that I am not anti-education or that I think all educated people are academic snobs because I don’t think that. I’ve nearly completed a degree – so that would be a bit stupid!
But… learning, proper learning and not necessarily always exam-based, surely it doesn’t end? It doesn’t have a set of letters that say I Got To The Finish Therefore I Know Stuff So There. An education should make us fit for purpose not fit for superiority.

So here’s what I think – in my trying to be wise and all-encompassing and non-judgemental and now educated (but not that that makes me better than anyone!) kind of way – whatever our field of knowledge, our interest, our concerns, there is not one way of looking at the world, not one way of being clever not one way of doing most things. We should not judge or feel superior and likewise we should not let ourselves feel inferior. We should be questioning ourselves and what gives us the right to say something about something in a certain way. And we shouldn’t assume one set of knowledge is any more valid than another set of knowledge. (If I had my way there’d be GCSEs in gardening and running a home – they are damned complicated and hard work and come with no prizes for doing well!)
And here’s how I’m applying that to my life: I write. I want to continue to write and I want to continue to improve. I want very much for people to read my writing but I want to feel that I am writing the best fiction I possibly can in a style that is all my own but with the influence of a greater knowledge of literature. So I’m taking courses. The way people review and critique literature is interesting to me – particularly the way my tutors tear my writing to shreds! ;) The way people used to write in the past is interesting to me. For example, have you seen the way Virginia Woolf used semi-colons?! And have you noticed how Tolstoy’s observations can still be relevant today?



Are you doing something relevant to you that improves your understanding of it, your success at it and enjoyment of it?



Or would you rather just see Scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz on YouTube ?

Apr 5

13 Comments

Black Dog Days


Having days that are lost or wasted through feelings of worthlessness, unproductiveness, low self-esteem, low energy, lack of inspiration, and sometimes the worst kind of self-hate, are torment. They are also difficult to talk about because people try to fix you by giving well-meaning advice.

‘Go for a walk, why don’t you?’
Are you kidding?! There are other people out there that I would have to be polite to. Being around other people makes me feel worse. And have you seen the weather?! It’s not going to happen, okay?

‘How about a healthy lunch?’
Oh yeah, food… I forget to eat properly when I’m having a black day. Thanks. But would you prepare it please, I’m likely to burn or smash everything. I really am useless today. Oh no – I tell you what – just fetch me the cooking sherry and a massive bar of chocolate so I can hate myself some more.

‘Play some happy music.’
What’s happy music? I can’t remember what cheers me up. If I put on something too jolly it will just irritate me. How about Mahler and a good cry…? Morrisey? Leonard Cohen? Oh leave it… It’s all getting too complicated. I can’t make any decisions today. I’m useless.

‘Think about the positives.’
Positives?! POSITIVES? Are you crazy? There Are No Positives. It’s just bad, all bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. No, not you, you’re not bad. It’s just me that’s bad. You’re too good for me. You should leave. Everybody leave me alone in my sad little head. I know – I’ll see if I can get a bedsit somewhere and you can all get on with your lives. I’ll start looking for something now. Where’s the local paper? Oh I can’t find it, this house is such a mess. It’s all my fault because I don’t tidy up enough. Did I mention how useless I am?

‘Why don’t you go and see the doctor?’
What? Why? What can a doctor do? I’ll be okay tomorrow. And I’m not having my good days ruined by medication.

These days can happen out-of-the-blue or after a tiring or stressful period, they can occur when you have been otherwise happy, they can take over a perfectly beautiful sunny day or a well-planned day of activity. If, like mine, they can happen whatever the weather then bad weather isn’t a cause but an additional problem.
Some people get very angry, some very sad. I get upset and want to slap myself.
I find it tricky to talk to people because most of what I want to say is negative and the theme is always what a worthless piece of nothing I am.

‘Oh cheer up.’
Yes please. Actually, no. It would be pointless being cheerful this late in the day.

As a creative person, having the wind knocked out of my sails when I had planned a productive day is frustrating to the point of desperation. Today is one of those days. I have spent over five hours – no SIX! – hovering around my laptop, attempting to start one thing after another. I could leave the laptop and do something else but, from past experience, this is not a good idea either. This isn’t just your usual lack of drive, motivation or energy, boredom or sluggishness this is lack of a balanced perception of the world around me. Everything is awful. Everything.
I know it’s not really. But still it is.

And yes. I forgot to eat.

People talk of being visited by the black dog or they call these days ‘black dog days’. When I first tried to find a photo of a black dog on the Internet – I had this crazy idea that I would outdo the moody bugger with a picture of cute black puppy – my Internet connection failed. It would, wouldn’t it? Even Broadband has forsaken me, I’m so useless.

The worst thing is knowing I have lost a day. I can bounce back. I will have productive days again. I will dance around the kitchen again. I will see all the positives and enjoy a walk again. But right now all I can think is how I’ve wasted a day – a day when all the children were at school and I had time and space to be productive and yet I wasn’t. I feel illegitimate and it’s not a good feeling.

Now I have to decide between screaming, slapping myself on the forehead or going back to bed. Nope. It’s too complicated trying to decide. Perhaps I’ll pace up and down.

Pity the poor black dogs who have become the representation of such days. And meet my favourite dog:
The flat-coated retriever


They make me smile. Even today.

I’m going to get one some day and outbluff this black dog day thing.

Update, June 25th 2011:
We have a black flat-coat retriever! He came home 3 weeks ago and is now 12 weeks old. His name is Dylan and he’s a little b***** but very beautiful and lovely when he’s lovely. We’re really looking forward to the gentle, loyal grown-up dog that we know he will turn into.

Apr 12

13 Comments

Better

‘Mrs. Mahoney, it is quite clear to me that you need fixing,’ Dr. Schwein said paternally, interrupting Jess mid-sentence and reaching for his prescription pad. ‘I can give you some pills to help you move on from your parents’ deaths and stop you from driving your husband mad by talking about it quite so much. It’s certainly driving me mad. My wife found that taking these after – ’

‘But I don’t want pills. I want counselling. And it’s Miss Mahoney – I haven’t got a husband.’

‘Oh dear, at your age? I’m so sorry. No takers? Having trouble finding a husband? You’ve left it a bit late to have children you know? What have you been doing all these years?!’

‘I’m in a band. You know, a musician? Been touring all over the world. You may have heard of us: The – ‘

‘Having trouble settling down?’
Sense of dissatisfaction, particularly with self, he wrote.

‘No, that’s not it at all…’ Jess stared at him in disbelief.

Dr. Schwein scrutinised her face, squinting over the top of his half moon specs.
‘Manic depression? Bipolar? You mustn’t dwell, you know. Get fresh air and exercise and how about a hobby? Get a pet? My wife found she was able to be much more practical again when she began to control… And you never know, you might meet Mr. Right…’

‘Don’t dwell?! But my whole life has been turned upside down. The two most important people in my life have gone. Just like that!’ She screwed her palms up tightly until her nails cut into her skin.

Dr. Schwein watched. He saw the marks.
Anger, he wrote. Self harm? he wrote.

‘Please. Can you refer me to a counsellor? I need to talk to someone.’

‘Some pills to tide you over, I think. I don’t want you to be a danger to yourself – or anyone else for that matter. I’ll put you on the waiting list, but you’ll find you probably won’t need it after a month of taking these.’

‘I’m not depressed! I’m not a danger! I’m grieving! I need time to talk about this and rebuild my life. I know what I need!’

‘I think I’ll be the judge of that. I am the doctor here, after all. You have some issues I’m not happy with. That anger could get dangerous. And the sadness from being lonely and childless when most people your age have a family by now… It’s understandable. I see plenty of women who have lost their sense of purpose and femininity these days. It’s so sad. You could try dying the grey hair away you know.’

‘I don’t use chemicals.’

‘And what about the way you dress? And that’s quite a scar you have on your face – have you considered cosmetic surgery?… Hang on… a friend of mine… where’s his card…’

‘Look! I realise I’m not flawless. How long is the waiting list for a counsellor?’

Dr Schwein leant forward in his chair. ‘Some things can’t be just talked away you know? What do you think talking will achieve? It won’t fix anything. I know it must be difficult to stop feeling sorry for yourself when you’ve only got yourself to think about – no family to worry about. This sense of emptiness you feel is most likely because you’re not fulfilling your role as a woman. Obviously, yes, the guidance and support you must have received from your father has gone, but if you were married, you’d have a husband to keep you on the right track. You wouldn’t have been gallivanting across the world all these years like a loose canon. Have you noticed how married women are so much quieter and calmer?’

‘Not particularly.’

‘Oh. Ahem. Well, it’s healthy for a woman to have someone to look up to, you know. We men are natural leaders and natural decision makers. Who’s in charge of your er – band?’

‘I am. I write all the songs and I’m lead guitar and lead vocals.’

‘All girl group, is it? He smiled predatorily.

‘No. The others are all blokes.’

Dr Schwein lost interest and swivelled his chair back to the desk to write a prescription. ‘Come back in six weeks and see one of my colleagues. I’m retiring today.’
He turned back and passed the piece of paper over, creating finality to the appointment.
‘Can’t you marry one of them?’

No. They’re my best friends. I can’t marry one of my mates. Besides I don’t fancy any of them.

Oh dear, dear. Are you a lesbian? Hormone imbalance. That explains a lot. Sit back down.



(inspired by the prompt word ‘balls’ )

Apr 14

6 Comments

The Measure of Success

When the given way to success is not your way,
And the arrows point so as to wound your heart,
It is hard to walk with purpose.

When the one-size-fits-all shoes do, in fact, not fit but pinch,

You long to stray
Away

From

The

Path

And run.

Barefoot.
Through cool wet grass,
Shaking off the coat of expectation,
Exploring new sensations.

Ignoring the shouts of disagreement,
That signal failure to cope with differences.

It is not selfish
To want to know what we are,
To place ourselves.

Success is quiet, not showy.
Rows and rows of tiny achievements
Joined up like little stitches on a shawl
To wrap around ourselves
And hug tight, thinking,
I’ve done this and I’ve done that.
To afford time to feel
Settled and grounded –
To discover something that is purely you
And no one else
It is the best kind of success.
That inner germ of you-ness
With miniature tendrils quietly climbing
Just enough to curl around and hold onto a small life.
- And it is small.
It sits in a big world -
To find a place in this world and be happy to be small
Where the measure of success and the greatest achievement
Is peace within the folds of a calmer self,
Is acceptance.

May 5

25 Comments

The Magic Number

Too cold to feel cold, and too numb to pick the pieces of glass from her pockets, Tabitha hunkered in a patch of windowed winter sun with Major the tomcat, slid her fingers into his marmalade fur, and waited.
The brutal easterly wind fought to follow her into the cabin, screaming down the chimney, pounding against the door, and hissing away all warm air that the small open fireplace was trying to breathe into their squalid dwelling.
Away from the full force of the freezing coastal blasts, her ears and face began to defrost first; stinging, while her fingers still felt nothing but the passage of vibrations from a contented cat. She patiently pictured the glass in her pockets: mostly green, but today one more piece of blue, smoothed by tide and time ‘til it gleamed from its dull pebble bed, whispering, ‘Pick me, pick me. You see me, don’t you?’
And now, gradually, the pain. In soft, warm cat fur, throbbing fingers thawed and burned, while Tabitha thought of sharp, smooth beach booty in the pockets of the worn, woollen coat that was made for a child of her mother’s generation and told of poverty and hand-me-downs.
How many pieces now? Her fingers flexed. When she reached the magic number, Mother would return to help her care for poor Father. Slowly, stiffly she removed the coat and emptied the pockets.
Coughing, Father said not to raise her hopes so, but Tabitha knew collecting the blue and green pieces would break the sea’s curse. The colours of a mermaids tail – messages from the sea that her mother was sending home. Tabitha understood, even if Father didn’t. She’d counted the scales on the picture of The Little Mermaid: two hundred. Mother was fighting the curse, shedding her tail. The sea would soon return her.
Major one-eyed the traitorous door that had permitted the icy winds to whistle through, then, with confident paws, quietly assumed his right to the woollen coat.

May 12

9 Comments

Only An OU Student Knows The Feeling…

… of finishing an assignment, that finishes a course, that finishes a diploma (please let me pass it), in a chaotic household – with a glass of wine waiting on the cluttered desk, by the computer full of unanswered emails – with an empty tummy and an aching back, that brings a sense of achievement, a sense of self, a sense that maybe it was all worth it after all, that takes the wife back to the husband (thank you), the mother back to the child’s bedtime story (I’m here for the teenagers too, should they ask…), that brings a moment’s excitement, a moment’s high-flying-speedy-whooshy-whirly joyful whizzing-down-a-very-fast-slope-at-200-miles-an-hour screaming, ‘Yes! I bloody well did it!’

(Oh, how I wish my legs looked like that though…)


‘SUBMISSION RECEIVED Your submission was received by the university at 19.18.33 (UK time) on 12 May 2011′

Now… Where’s that wine glass…?

May 21

3 Comments

It’s not MY fault!

I’m sensing a rise in this kind of attitude over the last few years:
‘I should be able to do whatever I like, whenever I like, and if anything goes wrong I should be able to blame someone else.’

Seven and a half years ago, I broke my wrist. I slipped on a wet floor. It was the village hall, someone had spilt beer and I was wearing the kind of shoes that slip. As I slipped, I instinctively put my hand out to save myself, and all my weight fell onto one hand. ‘Snap!’
It was a bad and very painful break. It had to be pinned back together with 2 metal rods (which were eventually removed). It was my right hand and I am right-handed.
I was three things at the time: a piano teacher, a bookkeeper for our business and a housewife with 2 young children. I couldn’t do much for weeks. My husband had to work less and pay other people more. It cost us money in all sorts of ways and my wrist still gives me trouble on occasion now.

So … whose fault was it? Who should I sue?

The shoes were clearly dangerous, the person drinking on the dance floor was clearly irresponsible, the village hall floor was clearly too well-polished, I clearly shouldn’t have been served so many drinks that I couldn’t even walk safely. It was my sister’s 30th birthday and I was tidying up for her.

‘Someone must be to blame when things go wrong, when things don’t turn out the way I want them to, when life throws up unexpected things that cost us money, ‘ I wail…

Well, of course, it was my own stupid bloody clumsy fault combined with a bit of bad luck.

When I was staying in hospital after the operation on my wrist, there was an old woman in my bay who was confused and uncommunicative. She had a lot of trouble moving and had to be helped with everything. She was at one end of the room, with no one to talk to. I think she was called Ivy.
In the night, Ivy tried to get out of bed to go to the toilet and peed on the floor. I feared for her slipping in her puddle and buzzed for help.
The next day tea was brought to us all and Ivy’s was left on her table, too far away from her for her to reach. She sat, looking down, seemingly unaware. The other women and I decided that Ivy might be less confused if she drank more, so, although I’d had a general anaesthetic, I got up and went to push her table closer to her and encourage her to drink.
Suddenly a voice shouted from the corridor, ‘Stop! You’re not supposed to do that! If you slip, you’re not insured!’

? ? ? ! ! !

Let’s not be like this. Let’s take responsibility for our own actions while we’re able.
And let’s continue to help other people – even if there are small risks attached.

The sooner we stop acting as if there are forces turning a big crank handle and dishing out lives, luck and compensation money the better. We put genuine cases of need and unfairness into disrepute with this culture of blame.

(And, by the way, I did put Ivy’s tea closer to her and nagged her to drink it but it still went cold.)

May 27

18 Comments

Joe’s Garden

Spring brought longer days and stronger weeds but Joe grew tired before his seedlings were all planted and his roses fed.
‘Not yet,’ he pleaded, his face wet even before he turned it up to the April rain. ‘One more summer… Just one more.’

He couldn’t raise his arms above his head to get undressed that night and slept on the sofa, downstairs in his clothes.

His son visited at the weekend and helped him move his bed downstairs – close to the garden door. He mowed Joe’s lawn but he didn’t know about plants or flowers.

Mrs. White from next door brought food and washed his dishes. She lent Joe Mr. White’s old walking stick and Joe shuffled to the flowerbeds.

‘Oh, the weeds.’

Each day Mrs. White thought of something new: extra pillows, binoculars, a cordless telephone, a radio… And she opened his doors so that he might hear and feel the breeze and watch his flowers grow.

‘Oh the weeds, oh the slugs.’

In late May the district nurse started to visit every day to help Joe wash and dress. She brought him a wheelchair so that he might sit in the sun on warm days and watch the roses grow and the tiny apples form on the trees.

‘Oh the weeds, oh the slugs, oh the aphids.’

Joe’s son couldn’t visit in June and the lawn grew long. Wild grass grew upright in the flowerbeds between dandelions, cornflowers, and poppies.

‘Oh the weeds, oh the slugs, oh the aphids, oh the grass.’

Mrs. White wheeled him to the roses and he peered at the holes on the leaves and sighed. He would have sprayed them by now. But the flowers still came and as Joe bowed forwards to breathe their scent he saw ladybirds, moneyspiders and ants hard at work, eating bugs, building webs, carrying off the aphids.

On days when Joe was strong enough to eat outside, the robins, blackbirds and sparrows sat in the trees and waited for crumbs while the bluetits cleared the caterpillars and greenfly from the fruit trees.
Mrs. White pointed to the swifts flying in and out of the hole in the garage wall that Joe had been meaning to fix.

Joe’s son returned in July, cut the lawn and offered to weed the flower beds. But the long grass and ragwort, were flowering with the salvia and the achillea, and the tops of the flowers waved in the wind as equals. Equally attractive to the bees and the butterflies and the shrews that ran in and out.

The blackbirds turned over the leaves that Joe could no longer clear. They picked up slugs and snails, announced the dawn, danced on his lawn and sang out the day when he was no longer sure what the time was.

On a hot day in August, the doctor was talking but all Joe could hear was the swifts calling to each other as the flying ants left their nest.

In September the swifts left, the first leaves began to skitter, and the rose petals feel. The apples blushed in the golden evening sun and Joe closed his eyes as he listened to busy birds, the swish of the trees and breathed in that last earthy smell of summer leaving the ground as the evenings cooled. He let go of his breath, let go of his garden and left nature to do its work.

May 31

13 Comments

The Birthday That Should Have Been

Celebrating the birthday of a wise man

Three years ago on 16 June 2008, my father quietly marked his 67th birthday.

I ordered him a ‘blue’ (purple!) rose called Rhapsody in Blue, which didn’t turn up on time for his birthday, but luckily I found one of the same name in a garden centre. So when the original one turned up, I kept it for myself. It was comforting to have matching roses.

Dad didn’t get another birthday.

This month he should be celebrating his 70th birthday with his family. With his wife, three daughters and seven grandchildren – one of whom he never got to meet. Our older sister would definitely have made it home from Australia for this birthday.

His illness and treatment were thrown upon him and us in a whirlwind. One day he was on a walking holiday, the next he was burning up with a skin rash. A few weeks later he was told he had aggressive leukaemia, and started aggressive chemotherapy almost immediately.

In a photo I took on his final birthday, he looks desperately detached. He had started his treatment and we were still hopeful but he was already on a journey that he would be taking alone and it showed in his eyes.
Mum was at his side constantly – through every appointment, every phone call, and every course of treatment, every sleepless night, every bout of desperation. There were tests and tests and tests. And there was fear. So much fear. I saw them, or we spoke on the phone, every single day. I felt a need to touch base regularly and carried Dad’s pain with me all the time. But he was the only one with the illness.

I don’t tell people how awful it was. I protect them from the details. To tell people what he went though; what we went through, would be like making them see it through our eyes and I don’t want to do that to people. You hear of counsellors getting ‘burn out’ from having to listen to too much awfulness. You may have heard or read this quote by Czech writer, Milan Kundera:

‘For there is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one’s own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels with someone, for someone, a pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echoes.’

I hope I never have to witness anyone suffer that much again. To say it was violent would not be an over-statement.

The other reason is that there were 66 years before that, that have been over-shadowed somewhat by his 9 final excruciating months of life. And that’s a shame.

You see he was something special, something you couldn’t pin down. You would be proved wrong if you tried to put him in any box or label him. He was extremely well-educated (and continued to educate himself throughout his life) and knowledgeable, yet he was humble and down-to-earth. He had good job prospects but refused to apply for promotion, had middle-class and working-class tastes, dressed like a gardener; liked expensive wine, but cheap biscuits, loved jazz and football and films with subtitles, but also watched Ugly Betty, Eastenders, and lots of crap TV. He loved cricket and would line up pots and tins in the kitchen until he found the right implements for tapping along to Booker T and the MG’s Test Match theme tune. He had a good ear and taught himself guitar and a little Gaelic when he went to Scotland. He believed in being able to form an educated opinion about things and not speculating or generalising. So he would watch and listen to what we watched and listened to as teenagers before he told us it was crap!

He worked his arse off as a teacher, always insisted on working in comprehensive schools, with ordinary people and didn’t want be a headteacher or deputy head because he didn’t like power, paperwork or school uniform rules. He wanted to teach, to help, to encourage. He worked late and he always brought lots of work home. (The teasing that teachers get about their long holidays didn’t apply to him)

People drove him mad but he still tried to see the good in everyone. He had Green and socialist values and mourned the demise of British industry. He had no desires for money, possessions or luxury, preferring to marvel (or tut) at the world around him. He had some imaginative (and shocking!) expressions for people with no sense of society or community.

I once said that if he and Mum could win the lottery, they would be able to go on holiday and have work done to their house and he could retire.
He said, ‘If I won the lottery, I’d give all the money to people who needed it. What do I want with a load of money?’
He was very cross at the greed and unfairness of humans.

He was a big and protective man to my 5’2” mother, yet he was a feminist who cleaned, cooked and went shopping (shopping in local stores wherever possible).
He had one of those ‘open’, constantly evolving brains. He had values and ideals but could never be accused of getting set in his ways, as he was responsive and receptive to the new and the different.
I don’t know if this is connected but he had a remarkably adaptable way of altering the way he delivered a conversation depending on whom he was talking to. He would look for a level, some common ground. He didn’t put people down or patronize or confuse – even if others’ ignorance or dogma meant that they misunderstood, insulted or even belittled him. He would be more likely to go home and swear about their ignorance later with a few choice expressions.

He wasn’t perfect. He had a terrible temper, would ignore people if he was tired, and despite being really musical, he really did dance like a dad! But I’m struggling to find anything else significantly amiss. People that don’t judge others are near perfect.

So while I am devastated I am also proud and happy. Proud to have had such a good, genuine, brainy man as my father. Proud of his values and – so importantly – that he lived by them. Proud of his natural ‘feel’ for life, music, language, the arts, politics, people and nature and downright ordinary gutsy British culture.
What he thought, he thought because he’d thought about it!

He should be here now. He should be seeing that I’ve matured, I’ve inherited some of his ideals and I do my absolute level best not to judge people. I’ve shaken off the silly frivolous obsession with appearances that I used to have and am ‘wising up’. Goodness, kindness and making the most of the jot of time we have on this planet – with consideration – are now my priorities. I am happier with who I am now even if I look like a lumpy scarecrow most days! He should witness this. It’s not fair. We could be putting the world to rights together.
Every time I hear or read anyone spouting angry, judgemental, narrow-minded clap-trap I pity them and their lack of human wisdom, and wish Dad was still here to think up one of his rude names for them.

Do you believe in ‘meant to be’? Fate? Providence? Things happening for a reason?
I don’t.
I do not believe my father was ‘meant’ to die yet, ‘meant’ to suffer so atrociously. I believe he should be here with his remaining family of all females who are staring at the big black hole he left.

He was meant to be here on 16 June, celebrating his 70th birthday, blowing out 70 candles (Mum would have counted and made sure of it), chasing his grandchildren around with a camera, making daft puns, dozing off in front of the TV and then waking up and demanding a cup of tea. He was a big-hearted – at times moody git, who would have made a very fine grumpy-old man.
He is missed at my kitchen table and I will never stop grieving. But I celebrate his life and his legacy and the bit of him that I carry in my heart.

Happy 70th Birthday Dad



Rhapsody in Blue
My ‘Dad’ rose


In his memory

The Chris Wood Sponsorship:

http://www.exeter.ox.ac.uk/currentstudents/finance/student-support
(A grant set up by Mum for language students at Dad’s old college)



Chris Wood
(16 June 1941 – 11 January 2009)
Dad

http://www.thisisannouncements.co.uk/5415457?s_source=clsw_tiwk

A comment from Jo (Carey) Belchamber, one of his ex-pupils:

Oddly enough, I was talking to a student about your Dad about an hour before I read this. You forgot to mention his sense of the ridiculous, his gurning, his passionate teaching (although you did talk about… his passionate temper!) and his awful ties! He really was an amazing teacher Rachel, and I think one of the reasons that I have been thinking about him recently is that you remind me so much of him now.

Jun 15

8 Comments

An Interesting Development

Although fictional, this story was inspired by recent local events in our area. Sadly there are quite a few truths in here.
(Any similarities to anyone, etc… )

Charles was sitting alone in a corner, finishing his second pint when the pub exploded with hoots and shouts of mocking laughter. He was chewing the hairs on the back of his index finger and staring blankly at the letters K.C. carved into the wooden table next to his beer mat at the time and barely noticed the uproar until the barman rang the bell and yelled, ‘Probably just a wind-up, but if there’s a Mr. Charles Snuffington-Houghtonbury-Wells on the premises, there is an urgent telephone call for you!’

The man with the stormy expression and purple nose, who had been eyeing-up Charles for the last half hour, turned and stared again as the noise in the room became hysterical.

‘Well that’ll be the posh architect twat from outa town, then. Unless o’ course tis a wind-up,’ bellowed a pink-faced young blonde man, frozen in time with a dart in his hand. Poised and ready to throw he was waiting, like everyone else to see who came forward.

Charles feigned interest and looked theatrically around the room like everyone else as the laughter died down and people turned back to their companions. He pointedly sucked at his already empty glass and rummaged for change in his pocket as an excuse to walk up to the bar.

‘Pint of bitter please… and a scotch, thanks.’ Charles dropped the consonants at the ends of his words and plumped for an Eastend accent, knowing he’d have no chance trying to sound like a local.

‘You’re not Mr. Snooty-Posh-Bloke, then?’ the barman grinned, drawing him into an amicable smile.

Charles found himself grinning back. ‘No, no… not me mate. Surely someone like that would have his iPad and his Blackberry and all manner of gadgetry for people to get hold of him… Who’d been trying to reach him on a landline?’

‘Well between you and me…’ the barman leant forward and lowered his voice, ‘…the chap said he was a lawyer and it was urgent.’

‘Mm-mm-mm… Intriguing…’ Charles drained the scotch and raised his eyebrows conspiratorially.

The barman mirrored the eyebrows and nodded. ‘There’s always lawyers with these guys. Lawyers and dosh.’ He rubbed his fingertips together and turned to serve the next customer.

Desperate for space and privacy, Charles looked back at his table to find it already taken.

Karla… Oh Karla… So soon? Why so soon? Why the lawyers already?

‘Quickly,’ she’d said. ‘I want this over quickly.’

Charles tightened his jaw and blinked away the imagined pictures he’d been fighting off for days of Simon’s hands on her skin and decided to get back to his hotel as fast as possible.
As he raised his pint to neck it, a young mother with a child’s buggy drove into the back of him, causing his legs to buckle just enough to throw his body forward and tip most of his pint into his face and down the front of his shirt.
‘Jee- Sodditt!’ he splurted out, through the yeasty half-drowning as the mortified young woman attempted an apology. Ignoring her, Charles slammed his pint glass down on the bar, wiped his face with his sleeve, and forced his way out of the busy pub without making eye contact.

Two and a bit pints and a scotch on an empty stomach were making fast work on his usually tee-total bloodstream and Charles swayed as he leant to open his car door.
‘Drat,’ he muttered when the door didn’t open and he realised he hadn’t pressed the unlock button on his keys.
He felt through his pockets and found nothing but money. He’d left them on the bar.
Maybe he could get a taxi and come back for the car tomorrow when it was quiet. He couldn’t face going back into the pub.
He started to walk reluctantly towards the main road, not really sure of his plan when he realised he didn’t have his phone. Where was he when he’d switched it off? Had he been in the car or the pub? He wandered back towards the car, feeling clumsy on the irregular surface of the dusty carpark and as he scuffed his toes on loose chippings he inadvertently released a loud, beer belch and stumbled forward.
He was walking around his car, looking through the windows and shaking his head when he heard a laugh.

‘Not thinking of nickin’ it, are you? Not in that state?’ called a female voice from nearby.

Charles spun around until he found where the voice was coming from. A young woman was sitting cross-legged on a grass verge, with a cigarette in her right hand and two large bottles of beer in her lap.

‘It’s my car and I’m not in a state,’ Charles snapped back at her. ‘I’m just trying to remember where I put my phone.’

‘Sure you are,’ she giggled and got up. ‘That’s why you’re walking round in circles, tripping over your own feet.’ She walked over and pointed to his beer-soaked chest. ‘What a waste.’ That’s gotta be a least two quid you’re wearing there.’

‘Do you have a phone I could borrow?’ Charles asked. ‘I need to phone a cab.’

The girl stamped out her cigarette, pressed the beer bottles precariously between her long, thin legs and pulled a mobile phone from the pocket of her skinny jeans. ‘Not gonna try to nick my phone now are you? Here – you can try, but there’s been a wedding down in Newstock and there’s only about three taxi firms round here.’

Charles sighed and limply accepted the phone. ‘So. Do you have some cab numbers on this thing?’ The numbers on the keypad were sticky and faded, and the screen was cracked. He turned it over in his hand looking for an on button.

The girl sighed. ‘Give us it ‘ere then. Where do you want to get to?’

‘Erm…’ Charles looked down and shuffled awkwardly. ‘Combe Cliff Hotel’

‘Combe Cliff? There’s posh. Must be nice to be able to afford to stay in a place like that. But you don’t need no taxi to get there. You can just walk across the fields. You’ll be there in half an hour.’

‘Fields? Oh … I don’t know. I…’ Charles looked down at his shoes and trousers and thought about wet grass and cow dung.’

‘I’ll show you. There’s a couple of gates and a stile and one field where you need to keep close to the hedge but then you get round the corner and you can see your hotel. Come on. I’ll make sure you’re heading in the right direction and then I’ll leave you to it.’

‘Well, I… Yes. Thank you. Okay.’

‘I’m Tilly, by the way.’ The girl smiled and held out her hand.

Charles saw dirty nails and freckles and as he shook he felt her rough bony fingers and calloused skin. ‘Ch.. Chaz,’ he replied.

‘Nice to meet you Chaz,’ Tilly’s eyes danced and she looked away quickly as if afraid to meet his gaze. Charles found himself touched by the gazelle-like quality in her timid body-language and fast leggy stride.

‘Here hold these.’ Tilly passed the bottles of beer and opened the first farm gate.

‘Isn’t this private property?’ Charles followed her into the field and looked around.

‘It’s okay. They don’t mind. People come this way all the time. As long as we don’t leave the gates open or drop litter – and to be honest, nobody does… There’s a kind of general consensus – an understanding if you like, that it’s to be enjoyed by everybody.’
They strode on.

‘After that top field, where… well by the track… you know the old fisherman’s cottage? Have you seen it? By the coast path and the track down to the little mooring? Well, we used to go for picnics there and watch the sunset. Had a barbecue there for my thirtieth birthday.’

‘You’re thirty? I thought you were much younger.’

‘Thirty-six, actually. That was way back when… Well… Do you want to see it? It’s one of the best views in the area. I think it’s such a shame when people come here on holiday and they don’t even know about this place. It’s good to share, don’t you think?’

‘Well. Yes. I suppose.’

Charles followed her up a sloping field towards a track, scratching his head and begging himself to find a way out of this situation.
He’d intended just to sell the land and the plans and get the hell out as fast as possible. He hadn’t reckoned on going back to the fisherman’s cottage or the coast path ever again. Not now. Not without Karla. After all, he’d only been doing it for her. What was the point now? The sooner he was back in London the better.

‘You are on holiday aren’t you?’ Tilly turned and looked down at him, panting. The evening sunlight was behind her and her wispy hair looked golden and childlike. Almost angelic. ‘You’re a tourist?’

‘Oh yes, yes…’ said Charles unused to walking uphill, sweating and feeling light-headed.

‘Well you have to see this,’ said Tilly, still stomping and panting. ‘And make the most of it. It’s been sold to a developer and heaven knows what’s going to happen to it. Are you here with family? I saw you had a wedding ring? Maybe you could bring your wife here tomorrow?’

Charles touched his wedding ring. He pictured Karla, sitting waiting for him in the kitchen four weeks ago, her wedding ring removed and ceremoniously placed between them on the table next to a yellowing photo-booth photo of her as a teenager.

‘Thank you,’ she’d said. ‘Thank you for the house and the horse, for the family holidays. Thank you for showing me the other side of life and all the fine dining and the parties. I’ve met lots of people and I’ve worn some beautiful clothes. And I am grateful… but… I’ve forgotten who I am.’ She picked up the photo. ‘This was me. Where is she? I’ve had my teeth straightened and bleached, and my hair coiffed beyond all recognition at Taylor Taylor to compete with your friends’ wives. My belly was cut open to remove our children on a designated day to avoid inconvenience to your business trips. I’ve sat at dinner parties and shared discussions about who had the biggest this, the best that, the most expensive whatever, the most luxurious holiday. But I’m bored. It’s boring. Your friends are boring. You are boring. And I’m sorry but I’m leaving. I want me back. I just want to be normal.’

‘Who is he?’ Charles had asked. ‘You’re not strong enough to do this on your own. Who’s the bastard that thinks he can destroy my family?’

‘It’s Simon. You know – the paramedic that lives next-door to my sister.’

‘What? The little squirt who bought our second-hand Macbook. That little jerk? It won’t last. What can he give you?’

‘I’ve been seeing him for two years. This is the real thing.’

‘What can he GIVE you though?!’ Charles had roared ‘You’re not taking my money! You’re not taking my children!’ He spat as he shouted and his hands thumped the table.

Karla waited calmly. ‘I know you’re used to getting your own way but it may surprise you to know that you’re not going to this time. I don’t want your money. Don’t you see? I want my life back. I want to grow my hair and forget about my nails or what shoes I’m wearing. Do you know what I was doing last Sunday night when you were sat in your study, counting your money? I was lying on my back in the grass, staring up at the sky and counting the stars. And the children can make up their own mind. They’re old enough.’

‘Karla. Look. We’ll move to this new house and everything will be different. You’ll have your horses and your brand new home to fill with beautiful things and…’

‘No. Not more things. No more glitz and glamour. You’re building a palace there. I don’t want to live in a palace and be cut off from the rest of the world, like bloody Rapunzel or whoever it is… You’ve made a mistake. You’ve made an assumption that what you are doing is best for everyone, yet you haven’t consulted anyone.’

‘I thought it was what you wanted. You said it was beautiful there. Idyllic, even.’

‘Yes. Naturally beautiful and a lovely holiday destination. But it’s not home. Just because something’s beautiful doesn’t mean you have to own a piece of it. Make your mark on it. Change it to suit your own lifestyle. You should learn to appreciate things for what they are and accept that you can’t own everything.’

‘Are we talking about you or the village now?’

‘Both.’

‘Is it possible I’ve just come across the first ever person who’s not stunned and amazed by this beautiful place?! … Chaz? Chaz!’
They were there. Charles saw Tilly standing in front of him, hands on her hips, with a combination of confusion and frustration on her face.
She waved her arms at the view. ‘Are you speechless because you’re overwhelmed or underwhelmed?’

Charles pressed his lips into a half-smile and looked dutifully about him as she pointed and physically pushed his body left, front, right, to take in the panoramic view.

‘Somebody. Somebody thinks you can buy and sell this kind of thing. A view that’s free for all is soon to be only viewed from within the frames of a swanky great house and sold off to someone who will have to come from out of town in order to be able to afford it. Someone has got it into his stupid head that it’s okay to spoil everyone else’s enjoyment of a place. This is beautiful. Beautiful. Why change it? Why tweak it beyond all recognition and put up a sign saying, This is mine. Keep out. Not sharing? Talk about gilding a lily.’

Charles saw that Tilly was crying and felt helpless. He had no room for someone else’s sadness. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Sorry that you’re sad about this. But things change, we can’t help that. And if something is private property it’s up to the owners what they do with it. In fact, we’re trespassing now.’

Tilly frowned at him as if she couldn’t make him out and looked like she regretted being there with him. ‘You don’t understand. How could you? Have you ever had the best, most brilliant thing taken away from you and known you could never had it back?’

‘Oh for God’s sake, woman. It’s just a bloody cottage! There are worse things that could happen!’ Charles had had enough. How dare she? ‘It’s not like anyone died!’

‘But they did!’ she screamed back at him. ‘This is where Kelvin proposed to me. This is where he had his painting studio and this is where he died. This is the only place where the kids and I can come to remember him! This is the most beautiful place in the world to me and I can’t bear to think I could never come here again! Look…’ she stomped to one of the sheds behind the cottage. ‘Look!’ Tilly opened the door and amongst the dirt and cobwebs were easels, paints, dust sheets and half-finished paintings. Charles had seen these outbuildings before and remained stand-off-ish.
‘When Ted lived here he let Kelvin use this place for free,’ Tilly continued. ‘He let anyone come up here. He gave the children apples and they paddled in his stream. We sat on that grassy slope and watched the sunset. Walkers would stop and have their picnics. It was uncomplicated. This person has complicated things. I should have got a good lawyer and tried to stop this.’

‘This couldn’t be stopped. I always get what I want.’ Charles said, noting the initials K.C. on the corner of one of the unfinished pictures and remembering the pub table. He couldn’t be bothered to pretend anymore.

Tilly span around and glared at him. ‘You?…You?! You’re the one doing this?’

Charles raised his eyebrows and shrugged. ‘It will be a lovely house,’ he offered.

‘But it’s lovely now!’ Tilly ran outside and collapsed in a heap, sobbing.

‘Why don’t you come and see it when it’s finished?’ Charles held out his hand.

But instead Tilly roared and charged at him, her beer bottles rolling away down the slope behind her as she pounded her fists into his chest, shouting, ‘Bastard! Bastard! Bastard, bastard, bastard! You always get what you want? What a rotten, twattish, selfish, arrogant, pig-headed thing to say! Are you even human? Do you have feelings?! I hate you! I hate you! You have ruined my life!’ She exhausted herself and turned away to gather her beer bottles, hugging them to her as if they were her last prized possessions on earth.

‘If I thought about everyone’s feelings all the time, I’d never get anything done,’ Charles said coldly watching her as she walked back to the track. His feelings for Tilly had cooled somewhat since she’d bad-mouthed him so rudely but he still felt responsible for her safety. ‘You’d better get home before it gets dark.’

‘ “Get off my land,” in other words?’ Tilly turned to walk away but stopped and looked back at him. ‘Enjoy the sunset,’ she smiled wryly. ‘It’s gonna be a good one. If you walk a bit further round you’re a bit more North-West facing and far enough out to see the whole of Combe. June’s sunsets are better round there.’ She held out a bottle of beer. ‘Here. Congratulations on your new home. I hope you and your family will be very happy. There’s a bottle-opener in the workshop.’

‘Show me.’ Charles felt an unusual desire for human company.

‘On the table.’ Tilly waved at the outbuilding.

‘No. The sunset. I would be honoured if you would join me.’

Tilly stared. Her eyes showed hurt and mistrust but she offered a peaceable smile.

Charles was once again reminded of an innocent wild animal. ‘Please?’

Tilly sighed and fetched the bottle opener from Kelvin’s workshop and Charles saw her whisper ‘goodbye’ as she walked out, her eyes wide and shining with tears. Then they stomped around the corner in single file without talking or looking at one another as the air became fresher and saltier and the strengthening wind pulled determinedly at Tilly’s hair.

‘There’s a rock. Just there. It’s big enough for two, if you like. Quite exposed but…’ Her speech had lost all its earlier enthusiasm and it tailed off weakly in the wind.

Charles nodded and sat down. He opened a beer carefully and slowly, holding it still as the foam frothed over the top. Then he passed it to Tilly, who took it and drank as he opened another.

They sat, sipping beer and staring ahead at the ocean and the surrounding coastline that stretched for miles to their right.
Green, yellow, blue, pink, thought Charles. Simple lines of colour from the farmland that touched the dunes that touched the sand that touched the sea that touched the sky. He thought of the paintings in the workshop.
‘Why are the paintings still there? Why haven’t you taken them away?’

‘No room. I have nowhere to put them. I’ll have to sell them or beg permission from someone with a big loft or something. I live with my parents. It’s crowded enough as it is there. And I always liked them being there. I guess I kind of hoped… ’ She sighed.

‘You don’t have your own house? Do you work?’

Tilly shook her head. ‘I do work. I teach at the local primary school, but no – I don’t have a house. You have to be rich to have a house round here these days. Most of my friends have one of those affordable modern box houses on the estate in town, but they say it’s getting rough there. There’s not enough jobs you see and it’s built on an old flood plain with no views or playing fields. I want my kids to have fresh air and access to the beach so we have to compromise.’

Charles refused to feel guilty. He felt he deserved what he had worked for. But he couldn’t help picturing the massive house and doubting if whoever ended up living there would be someone with local knowledge or be as deserving as Tilly.

In fact, he quietly suspected it would be a second-home to one of his work contacts.

Jun 21

4 Comments

Imperfectly perfect

I’m sat on the ground on a hill and not far in front of me, to the left, are a couple of those smaller wooden pylon/electricity posts or utility poles or transformers or whatever they’re called. To the right on the ground are the remains of a rusting fallen corrugated iron roof. Over the ridge below me a digger is clanking and if I stand up I can see its mechanical orange elbow jutting up and down.
I’m currently sat on rabbit droppings (it was either that or crusty old cowpats), I have a chesty cough and the wind is giving me mild earache. It’s been a lousy, wet and windy June so far, and today – the first day of summer, I am wearing a long black, knee-length cardigan even though it’s finally sunny. The puppy woke us up at 5am this morning needing to empty his rear and in a minute I have to rush home for a grocery delivery, put it all away, arrange tea, and other evening family and household doings.
But it’s easy to ignore all the above right now because between the pylons (or whatever they are) and the corrugated iron is the one of the prettiest views I have ever seen.
I won’t take a photo for you because you wouldn’t see in a photo what I see now.
You wouldn’t see the way the eye sees past the pylons and the corrugated iron and leads us down and through and on and on to the inch-wide scribbles of white water, holding the blue triangle of sea to the rounded green buttocky hills like knicker-elastic. You wouldn’t see the full panoramic view as I turn around and head back to the house. Walking as if towards the new giant wind turbines in the distance. Standing strong and new and proud. Defenders of the planet. You wouldn’t necessarily pick out the way the wind-flipped leaves on the birch tree mirror the white on green of the tiny sheep on the opposite hill.
And the smell. No not dung. Rich warm fertile earth and long strong healthy grasses blowing and growing.
The smell of green and brown. Can you smell the green and brown? Can you feel the blessed feeling of a comforting, rich blue sky that frames the hair that licks about your face? If you don’t have hair you will have to imagine in the same way I have to imagine having a bosom enough ample to bounce or even move when I run down the slope with the black dog. The black 11-week-old gundog who has instinctively begun his inbred training today by chasing butterflies and hunting grasshoppers.
Start small they say.

(A few words written on a walk so I could try out the WordPress app on my phone.I was tempted to edit but that would be cheating)

(okay I added an ‘e’ )

Jun 28

13 Comments

Apparently…

Real women are worth more than cosmeticsI want to live my life but silver strands sparkle on the crown of my head
And apparently that’s not good

I want to appreciate my face but laughter lines crinkle at the corners of my eyes
And apparently that’s not good

I want to enjoy my body but my breasts are only a handful each
And apparently that’s not good

I want to walk with confidence but my rounded womanly arse fits into size fourteen jeans
And apparently that’s not good

I want to embrace my womanhood but my belly tells of three big pregnancies
And apparently that’s not good

I want to wear little dresses in summer but my arms are pale and cushiony
And apparently that’s not good

I’d like to smile as I show and share the history of the pink circle of red veins on each cheek that remind of a day I strongly and bravely pushed out a ten pound nine ounce baby boy. What an amazing feat to remember every day as I look in the mirror.
No. Apparently that’s not good.

So I’ve lived and laughed and have a healthy pear shape and have had three children and my arms make me look like a mother and not an athlete. My face crinkles at the forehead from thinking deeply and I look like what I am and what I’ve done.
But apparently that’s not good?

I should hide my grey to pretend I haven’t lived
Enlarge my breasts to pretend I am not a pear shape
Slap filler into my wrinkles to pretend I haven’t laughed
Laser my veins to pretend I have never struggled
Straighten my kinks to pretend I’m not a woman
Tuck my tummy to pretend I’m not a mother
Suck out my buttock fat to pretend I have never enjoyed food
Painfully pierce the lines of concentration to pretend I have never had a thought about anything.

Apparently I’m worth it…
So that’s good
Isn’t it?

Jul 1

9 Comments

The One Who Stood Up To Clap

It’s not enough to speak from the heart, to have strength of opinion, even to be right. Although, of course, who was right and who was wrong and the shades of grey in between in this instance were still open to question, or rather – open to public persuasion, should I say.
You see it’s not always what you say but how you say it. We are a nation of film-goers, TV watchers, air-punching sports fans. We like catchphrases, anthemic music, rollercoasters, and we get far too drunk far too often, sunburn ourselves dangerously, drive too fast. We don’t care what’s good for us and what’s bad for us so long as it socks us between the eyes roaring, ‘CUH’M-O-N!’ then has meaningless sex with us, throws us from an aeroplane and plays Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive at full volume as we fall screaming for a new kitchen (with stylish backspla-a-a-sh!…)

We are spoilt, over-stimulated, lazy, demanding and impatient. So when Ten-Tonne-Terry with his Braveheart-style rabble-rousing cliché and face like a beefsteak tomato got going, everyone sat up, shut-the-hell up and listened for three minutes. Three minutes. Never a second longer. He knew their limitations… or was it his limitations? There’s only so much received phrasing one can fit into a speech about the drawbacks of putting floral displays on a council estate after all.

I come to the town every year to mumble my well-worn little spiel, promoting the benefits of beautifying public spaces for the good of all, bow thanks for their time and duck out.

Terry’s always assumed – because I am a quiet bachelor – that I am gay. I’m not. Not that I was going to put him right. It made no difference to my job, my impact at these meetings. They weren’t interested anyway. It did mean, however, that how the evening eventually panned out stunned him somewhat. And I couldn’t help quietly enjoying that feeling.

I took my specs off, realised I needed them, put them back on again, fiddled with my papers, scratched my well-shaved chin, coughed, and took a deep breath.

‘Figures show communities benefit from developing a sense of pride in their area, children benefit from being allowed to participate with projects in their local area, the unemployed are better motivated when they can see how working on a skill can be based in and beneficial to their neighbourhood. Vandalism on such projects is in fact relatively low and the actual number of youths that attack community displays is very low – it tends to be the same one or two people and on the whole the vast majority of the community are ashamed and quite often make attempts to repair. Where projects such as these have been going on for a number of years, sense of community, feelings of well-being and contentedness have risen and other beneficial projects have been inspired.’

There was more but I paused. It was the same old, same old every year. It made sense. But it never convinced the committee. They knew what I was going to say and they had stopped listening years ago. Two people left the room before I had finished talking.

These were good points, good facts. Why weren’t they convinced?

Terry started a conversation with the man behind him.
I’m not one for sayings, clichés, well-worn phrases – I find them a bit limiting and prefer to chose my own words but I have to say the words ‘straw’ and ‘camel’ come to mind.

Years of giving up my evenings to travel to village and town halls across the region, years of being ignored, interrupted, shouted down, and never ever thanked for my time, well… I had a point to make and it seems I had never made it. I was angry with myself as much as anyone.

‘Look.’
They looked.
It was a new word and I was standing up this time. I looked too. I looked into the room, demanding their attention for the first time. Oh dear, politicians start their argument with the word ‘look’ I thought.
‘You see…’ I substituted, stumbling. ‘…It’s all very well beautifying the town centre and handsome avenues around the South, but you’re alienating a whole section of the community here. What sort of message are you giving out?’
I was trembling slightly and probably sounding a bit confrontational but … well, shall we just say ‘bee’ and ‘bonnet’?
‘Some people deserve better than others? Is that it?’
And then I saw her.
Second row from the back. Three seats in from the aisle. Light brown hair. Medium build. Pale green fleece top. Rosy, outdoors cheeks. Sat in between two men but, for some reason, quite clearly and obviously alone. Her head was tilted slightly to the right – my right, her left. She was listening. She was interested.

‘It’s all very well Terry spouting, “Throwing good money after bad” and “Leopards can’t change their spots” But what exactly is he saying? Where are the leopards? What is this good money and bad money? And another favourite of his: “What goes around comes around”? What exactly is it that has gone around?
One night an unknown number of unidentified people kicked over some flower displays and trod on some dahlias. And therefore everyone in and around the Mullaton estate is deprived of being part of the Communities in Bloom scheme. Who exactly have we punished here? Onwards and upwards, I say!’

‘Too right,’ came a man’s voice from the back.

‘Get out there and ask people on the estate to join in again. Bring the community back together. Get everyone on side. Forgive and forget. You’re all in this together. There is no them and us at the end of … ’ No I drew the line at that one.

That’s when she stood up. She clapped. She smiled. She nodded wisely.
If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, her eyes said.

It was love at first sight.

Second sight, actually.
Bloody clichés.

Jul 3

5 Comments

Sunday Worship

I have this faith

It doesn’t have preachers, buildings, rules, gods, books, inclusive or exclusive criteria.
I don’t impose it upon others, I don’t judge others that do not share my faith, I do not try to change people.
My faith doesn’t involve labels or belonging or rituals.
It doesn’t involve me hating and rejecting or accepting and embracing other people because of their differences or similarities.

It doesn’t involve arguments, wars, zones, barriers or worship.

It is quite simply this:

I have faith in people.
I believe that everything is real, physical, tangible.
I believe in one life. One chance.
I believe in doing good and being good simply because other people matter, not because an invisible force may be looking down on us or we are scared of punishment. I believe that thinking how your actions impact upon others is a much less selfish motive than thinking about your rewards or living in fear of your judgement. Being good for the sake of being good rewards others by bringing more good. It is a healthy perpetual thing.
I believe we have feelings, strengths, weaknesses, and that some people have better luck in life because of the places we are born, the experiences we have, the love we are – or are not – given, and the genes that carry information to make us who we are.
I believe that impartial information and education give beneficial stimulation that cause our brains to develop and us to see the world better. I do not believe we are blessed – or not – by a higher entity. How unfair would that be?
I do not believe in a god or gods that would make bad men rich and babies suffer. Or a god or gods that would sit back and let that happen.

I do not complain that others have a faith that I do not want to embrace. I do not fight others whose faith competes with my own. I do not stop people from blessing me or praying for me. I do not believe it will do any good but if it gives them comfort, who I am I to take that away from them?

I turn on the radio on a Sunday and religion is everywhere, I do not write to the BBC that this goes against my faith. The church bells strike at 10.45 to call the local community to worship. I do not complain. In fact I believe most places of worship to be very beautiful because man is very clever and, when he wants to, can work very hard.

I believe human kind when it works well is a wonderful thing that should be celebrated.
I believe nature when it works well (and it usually does get by better than man without any religious restraints) is a wonderful thing and this morning I stood in the garden and celebrated the combination of man and nature working together, the coffee in my hand – brewed by my husband, the songs of the birds in our trees and Devon hedgerows – attracted by the provided-by-man safe places to hide, the sun on my face – brought by the tilt of the earth, the flowers and weeds in the garden – placed and misplaced by the harmonious combination of the deliberate and accidental, the guitar-playing from my daughter’s bedroom – not because she has a gift but because she inherited musical genes and has played a lot to improve herself.
I do not worship on a Sunday, but I do feel pleased, lucky and grateful for the things that have gone well. My lack of worship does not make me self-important, higher than anyone or anything – quite the reverse: it makes me feel a small equal part of an interesting world. My admiration for others takes the place of any worship: people with sound reasoning, people with huge intelligence, and people with great kindness.
People. I believe in people.
I think invisible beings get given too much credit for the marvellous-ness of man’s wisdom, hard work, creativity and kindness. When humans do wonderful things they really are amazing.
I believe a cluster of information from my body and a cluster of information from my husband’s body grew into our beautiful, clever children. I believe that every step of their existences is due to something physical.

You can call me an atheist if you want to. But only if you do it in a gentle way. It’s not something I have studied, though and I am not part of a group. You can call me a humanist if you like but, again, I have no books or groups. You can call me unholy if you want to but not if it means you judge me or worry for my soul.

I believe what I believe. It’s what I feel to be right. It’s how I am.
And the best thing about it? It doesn’t hurt anyone.

I don’t argue with anyone else’s faith. So why should anyone argue with mine?

Oh and I also believe man’s discovery of creating a tasty, stimulating drink from some roasted beans was absolute genius.

Jul 8

3 Comments

Zoom Out

… Um… Four… Six… Seven. Huh? Oh. Whatisit then?
Oh – now there’s a queue behind me and they’re all thinking the cashpoint refused my card. How embarrassing.
Oh yeah… that’s the number for my other card. Flippin’ numbers.
Right. Balance.
How much?!
Oh great… Rent, groceries, train ticket and it’s all gone. Still can’t afford new shoes. I’ve been wearing the same pair all month. They must think I’m the poorest girl in the world at work!
Oh god. Now they’re all looking at me. I’ve got money you know. I have money! Was just checking my balance! (I don’t have money)
Oh, I can’t believe – at my age, my parents still expect me to drop everything to spend the weekend with my grandparents. I don’t have time – I look bloody ridiculous and need to get my fake tan re-done before my interview on Monday. Oh great – now it’s raining. Why is it always bloody raining?! Oh man! Look at my reflection! Look at that massive spot on my chin. It’s so red – it matches my coat. Everyone will see my spot and stare at me and think I eat crisps and chocolate all day. Life’s so unfair!

Zoom out

Down below on the Streets of Bristol, a young man is begging for change around the corner from a cashpoint machine. Further along the street a middle-aged man is holding a green plastic charity collection box. A smart young woman in a red coat walks by. She doesn’t appear to notice either of them. She’s twenty-two-years old and has £30 pounds in her pocket for a drink with friends later tonight. She looks like a successful, confident, healthy woman. She’s striding through the Bristol streets on her way home. Her thick, shiny, bronze-brown hair is flying out behind her. She walks past a double-fronted second-hand shop. She looks at herself in the first window. There is a blue and green enamelled vase in the window that her grandmother would love but she doesn’t even look in. There are some nearly new designer shoes in the second window that are exactly her size but she doesn’t buy second-hand. She has a job and a flat and her parents live nearby on the outskirts of the beautiful city of Bath. She often goes to their house for a big roast Sunday lunch. But this weekend is Granny’s seventieth birthday and she has to go to Wales. Her grandparent’s neighbours are pig farmers and it stinks there. She doesn’t like her job. She’s always tired and thinks she doesn’t get paid enough. She feels as if everyone around her has more money, a better place to live, can afford to get their nails done and has more money to spend on clothes and shoes and holidays.

Zoom out

From Bristol, in the West of England, it’s easy to escape to the coast, at the weekend, where it’s cool and fresh in a heatwave. The beautiful, lush, fertile countryside of Somerset, Dorset and Devon are not far away either. Or within no time at all, one can be in the Welsh valleys. Her grandparents live not far from Mount Snowdon and the family have enjoyed many summers in Snowdonia National Park, climbing mountains, or picnicking by a river. She thinks she’d rather live somewhere more cosmopolitan across the Atlantic Ocean like New York or warmer like California, though, and she’d like to have a modern kitchen and nice shoes. Not live in wellies in an old farmhouse. She thinks her family are poor and tatty. She prefers the smart look of the people who work in the cities.

Zoom Out

The British Isles is made up of two big green Islands known as Britain and Ireland. The landscape is varied, the climate is varied, but it is rarely far too hot, far too cold, far too wet or far too dry. There are no poisonous snakes or spiders, no deserts and no predators. The soil is mostly good for farming. The Romans liked Britain. From the air the Islands of Britain look like an old lady in a hat, leaning over her knitting. The coastline stretches, bends, zigzags, curves in and juts out. Waves hurl themselves onto wet black rocks or creep sleepily onto soft golden sands. In Britain you are never more than a few hours from the coast, you are never more than a few hours from the countryside, you are never far from civilisation, you are never far from help. (Zoom in again temporarily. Ironically, though, some of the poorest people in Britain live in the richest, busiest cities. They are nearest to sources and organisations of help and least able to ask for it.)

Zoom out

The British Isles is surrounded by oceans. The oceans cover seventy percent of a round, blue and green planet with patches of red and yellow desert. The planet is home to over six billion people. They don’t all have a red coat and a job, a flat and roast dinners on a Sunday. They don’t all have enough money to pay their rent, buy food and visit their grandmother on her birthday. In many countries people don’t expect to live until their seventieth birthday. In many areas the climate is far too cold or far too wet or far too dry or far too hot and the soil is not good for farming.

Zoom out

The planet turns as it orbits the sun. It creates day and night. Seasons and weather. Cycles of life. The moon orbits our earth. It brings high tides and low tides. A full moon brings light enough to see at night. Before electricity people adapted their lives to the phases of the moon.

Now some cannot even see across the street or through a pane of glass. Some people do not even know where they are.

Jul 15

13 Comments

Be yourself, you say…

(For all my fellow corner-huggers)

I’m worried about what I should do with my hands, if I’m holding myself wrong, standing awkwardly.

Just don’t worry about it, you say. Don’t think about how you hold yourself. Just be natural. Be yourself.

Be natural, don’t think about it. Don’t think about my hands. My hands my hands my hands.
My hands are suddenly huge, arms hanging, dangling. I must not think about them.
And what if I blush? Laugh too loudly?

Ah, a drink. Good. Something to hold. But what if I spill my drink?

Just relax, be casual, you say.

Relax. Be casual. My hands. My big hands. They’re shaking. I’ll finish my drink – then I can’t spill it.
Am I too tall in these shoes? Shall I lean a little to one side? Too casual?

What’s that? Someone spoke to me and I ignored them? Should I go and find them? Apologise?

No, you say. Maybe just mention it if they come over again, you say.

Ah… a tray of champagne. I’ll have another drink then.
I’m smiling. Why am I smiling? Do I look like an idiot? Am I grinning too much? False? A bit false? I’ll just look around the room and then… then what shall I do? Shall I talk to someone?
Oh – where are you going?
Oh yes. Okay. Don’t be long.
Oh no. Now you’re stopping to talk to someone.

A food tray. Now, do I? You’ll tell me off if I don’t eat anything. Is it bite-size? Hmm – two bites. I can’t do two bites.
Dear God, did I really just tell the waiter I have a cooking oil allergy?
Oh dear. Someone’s coming over looking all pally. Who-the-bloody-hell-is-it? Do I know this person? I’ll just turn around and pretend I haven’t seen them. Pretend to get something out of my bag.
Now that’s someone else who thinks I’m a peculiar freak. But I do say the most awful crap in a panic so best to just have another drink before I mingle.

What are you still doing over there? Do come back.
You’re coming, you’re coming. That’s it. Come back. Don’t stop.

Yes. I know they’re lovely and I know I should have come over but you know I don’t like to move when I find a safe corner.

How many drinks? you ask me.
Oh God, why? Three. Or is it four? Do I look drunk? Are my eyes red? Shall I go to the bathroom? Where is it? Ooh… It’s quite a long way. Will I make it do you think?
Okay. Hold my drink. No don’t, actually, I’ll take it.

Now I’m walking like an astronaut on the moon. Why am I doing that? Stop it. Walk normally.

Hello? Did someone say hello? I’m not stopping until I’ve checked my face.
Glass. Where shall I put my glass? I’ll just finish it and then I don’t have to take it in with me.

May as well go to the loo while I’m in here. Whoops. Feeling a bit tipsy, actually.
Burp. Yes. That was me.
Ah. Now I’ve put my thumb through my tights. Praps I’d better take them off. Ha-ha. Can’t seem to do that without falling over. I seem to be giggling quite loudly too. I’m not sure why. I’m sure this is not funny.
Did I flush? Did I even have a wee?
I look in the mirror and don’t recognise myself. Well, would you believe it – that haggard old tart in the mirror is me.
What a sight. I need a drink. In a dark corner.

Someone vaguely familiar has taken pity on me and is asking me what I am “doing with myself these days.”
I wish you were here. What is it that I do?
‘I’m nothing really, I kind of … well…I mean,’ I’m saying with my vacant expression and confirming what they all think about me anyway. Lazy and gormless. Is that me?

Oh you’re there. It’s a bit too middle-of-the-room-y here, don’t you think? I keep bumping into people and I need to be somewhere where the wine waiter can get to us.

Stop worrying. Be yourself, you say again.

Yes. Sorry. You carry on talking to people and I’ll make more of an effort.

Good. I’ve managed to successfully bore a few people away by pointing out how red my eyes are and how it’s nothing to do with alcohol. So now I can get a drink. Although it’s not true that I’ve tried out twelve different types of contact lenses in the last two years. Why do I feel the need to make up such dull rubbish?

Two. I’ll take two. One for me and one for you. You’ll come and find me eventually, won’t you? Now where’s my corner?

Be yourself, you said.

I’ve lost you. I can’t see you and now lots of people are dancing. I’ll just sit here and wait and sip self-consciously. Oh now mine’s empty. Yours is getting warm. I’d better drink it then.
Feeling a bit sleepy. I’m sure I’m officially the drunkest person in the room and I feel a bit overwhelmed.

Be yourself.
Myself? Me?
I’m not sure I’m even here.
I didn’t notice that this table was blocking a door. I’ll just crawl under and… Ooh… It’s not even locked.
Marvellous. A little study: sofa, desk, stereo and books. What more could a girl want? I’ll just stay here and behave myself and maybe listen to some music…
Now, this is fun.

I’m waking up and you’re looking down at me
Ah, found you, you’re saying.
I found me too, I say, smiling and breathing deeply.

…………..

(Not a true story but I am in here… in bits…)

Jul 24

6 Comments

Support where it’s needed most

(All puns intended)

Stand and deliver – your money or your bra!

A few weeks ago, when the scale of the famine in East Africa started seeping into our news, I began to look at which organisation was best to donate some money to and saw that Oxfam were on the case. I shared links via social networks and hoped that one or two people would notice, repost, and that I might possibly have done a tiny bit towards raising awareness. I didn’t donate anything straight away but decided to check with Richard if it would be okay if we donated £25.

Two days later our puppy became very unwell and by the next day he had to be left at the vet’s for rehydration, antibiotics and something else that I can’t remember the name of. The bill was just enough to be not worth contacting the pet insurers (they only pay out over a certain amount) but enough to make us gasp.

The comparison between spending that much on a dog and how much difference the same amount could make to maybe three or four (?) people in East Africa disturbed me. How could we pay that on an animal and then give less money to help literally starving fellow humans? How much would it take to rehydrate one baby, for instance, I wondered?

“Charity begins at home,” is one statement people think they can use to justify that.
Or maybe, “The dog is my responsibility and those people are not.”
Well, as far as I am concerned, the whole planet is my home, we’re all interconnected and we are all responsible, to a greater or lesser degree, for each other. I also believe that famines in Africa, due to past Western interference and extreme and irregular climate change, are the direct and indirect outcome of the way we, in the West, behave or have behaved on the past and therefore (arguably) they are our responsibility.

But of course that still leaves the problem of money. And the problem of explaining my decision to donate my new chosen amount. If I’m going to take £X amount of money out of the (partly because of recent doggy addition) dwindling household budget, do I have to have a manly steak dinner on the table, cold beers in the fridge, no claims to the remote control for a month, the dog walked and bloody good answer to where the money’s going to be coming from?

Knickers.

Currently, I’ve been thinking about replacing all my worn-out underwear. I do this about once year.
Only, I’m not going to. I’m going to make do and spend money on support where it is really needed.

I’ve given donations today to Shelterbox (link) the emergency shelter and lifesaving supplies for families around the world charity based in Cornwall that I know have been out to East Africa delivering supplies this week,
and DEC (link) The Disasters Emergency Committee which covers Oxfam and other charities supporting the East African crisis appeal.

And when you look at my profile pic you can think of me sitting in my shabby old knickers.

Jul 27

11 Comments

Seventeen: a gift


I’ve thought about writing this post for a few weeks now; thought about how I would start it, at least. Every angle I approached it from made my mind go off on a ramble about a different issue. I think this is partly because I am incapable of totally encapsulating any thought – I have a mind like a curious child darting through a labyrinth of rooms and passageways in a massive stately home; eyes constantly lighting upon something new – but also because something that has been a big part of your life for so long can seem to incorporate everything else in some way, somehow. It all overlaps. Eventually. Trust me.

But it’s an interesting story and there are interesting issues. So how do I fit it all into one blog post? Shall I start at 22 years ago or shall I start at 17 years ago? Perhaps I could do a Wikipedia-style page with links to each reference? (That was intended as a humorous comment but I am now wondering if it could work!) I tell you what: let’s not try to fit it all in. Let’s just get to the point.

So. What am I talking about and why am I writing this?

I wanted to discuss identity – about becoming a person in one’s own right, yet part of something and yet not part of someone. I wanted to talk about honesty, endurance, disillusionment, realisation, self-improvement, stress, togetherness, stubbornness, instinctiveness, knowing when to give up and knowing when to stick with something. (I can feel another tangent coming on now, discussing my understanding of the word instinctiveness and how I use it to mean intelligent intuition and not impulsiveness or spontaneity). I wanted to share something on my blog that brought all that together in one piece of writing.

So now I tell you why?

Why? Well firstly because even though I like neat, tidy, rounded symmetrical things and numbers that make pretty patterns – like my birthday for instance: 9/9/69 – how cool is that?! – I also feel pressured by Occasion. To the point of wanting to run away and hide. So weddings, or any birthdays or anniversaries which end in a five or a nought fill me with the dread of social expectation and the requirement to have celebration and fun – even if I don’t feel like it. And what about all the other numbers? The other years? Are they not worth noting? Poor little twelve, poor lonely twenty-three and poor neglected seventeen!
And secondly because I think sometimes we are so geared up for Occasion that we forget what it is behind the whole event. The real stuff we should be working at, the life we should be concentrating on, the people we should be appreciating get forgotten behind things, behind show and behind expectations.
Take Valentine’s Day, for instance. Who wants a gift, a card and a pointed-“because-this-is-the-day-I-have-to-do-it” gesture just once a year? Why?
And here’s something incredibly controversial – which many people will disagree with and that’s fine because this is only me talking about my life: I hate big weddings, loathe them. I didn’t want to celebrate ours with loads of people. I wanted a commitment between two people, a shared identity, and a sense of coming together to build a future and to be settled. Just me, my partner, and our future children. Roots down, hats laid, all the corners scented. All I wanted from the day we got married was a piece of paper and I wanted us to get on with our life. I didn’t want us, my parents or my new in-laws to fork out loads of money for one afternoon and surround us with people we only vaguely knew.

So when, after living together for two years – and being engaged for one and a half of those, we discovered we were expecting our first child, it was a perfect excuse to rush off to the registry office in Barnstaple and have a quickie cheapie wedding. See above photo. It’s a quite beautiful, romantic setting I think you’ll agree ;)

I also wanted to have achieved something worth celebrating first. The first three years of our relationship had been awful, the next two a bit lame…

22 years ago, a rather inebriated young man leant heavily across a busy bar, late at night, looked up through his thick, shiny brown floppy fringe and asked me (the new barmaid), in almost comic slur, if I’d ‘like to go out for a drink shum time.’
I knew nothing about him, other than his name, but had already spoken to him once or twice and had found the wide innocent eyes, tatty t-shirts and dirty jeans, combined with square broad shoulders and a suntan, attractive in a vulnerable, yet masculine, way. There’s something about that look that makes a girl want to mother a man even if she doesn’t agree with her inner mother! But there was something else: I’d seen that he had an open, amicable posture, that he turned himself physically to greet people and be involved with them and he would talk to anybody about anything as an equal. I knew that there was something special about him and, although I couldn’t quite pin down why, I found him intriguing.
‘Maybe you could ask me again when you’re sober,’ I replied, smiling politely and walking off.

He didn’t know it but at that moment an invisible claw soared across the room into my gut and hooked him onto my hardwiring. Call it pheromones if you like but sometimes you really do get physically hooked against your wishes and better judgement.

I wanted to know more about him, ready for if and when he did ask again, but the faces I asked told me I didn’t want to know. I was a pale, young, 19-year-old, still living with my parents and still trying to figure out who I was and where I was going. He was clearly too old, too experienced and too well-travelled for me.
I was told that he had been the British surfing champion 5 years previously and hadn’t quite got over himself. Why should he? Everybody loves a local hero.
Trouble in a pretty package, then.

The hook dug in deeper.

At a party, I let him pull me down into his seat from where I was sitting on the arm of a chair and kiss me.
It was then that I found out he had “unresolved issues” with at least one of his previous girlfriends and all the voices in my head began to scream, ‘Uh-oh! Run! Run! Stay away! Stay AWAY!’
But the hook had grown roots.

Within days I had a long list of reasons why I shouldn’t have a relationship with this man but one morning I found myself in his kitchen, looking at 20 unwashed milk bottles lined up on the windowsill – each one with one green squirt of Fairy liquid in the bottom – and knew then that I wanted to be his other half; the one that saw things that needed doing, the one that knew when it was time to leave the pub, the one that he would miss a surf for.
He was a challenge and I got bored when things were too easy.

It was a disaster, of course. I didn’t know anyone from his past, we didn’t like the same television programmes, I was jealous of the sea, of his friends, of his ex-girlfriends, of anyone he spent too long talking to in the pub.
He didn’t want anyone telling him what to do, asking him too many questions, criticising his taste, changing television channels. In fact it was his remote control that he wanted to curl up with every night – as he had done for years, not me.
I began to loathe the way he fell asleep so easily at night; as if he was so sorted, so complete, so perfect. And I hated the way there was some unwritten rule that, because he was good at it, surfing came first, no matter what. Even on my birthday. There were unexplained codes of behaviour that I had to learn and I didn’t learn them well.
I broke the rules by complaining and I didn’t fit by having different opinions.
After about eight months, the woman in the village store correctly predicted the end of the relationship.

But there was still the matter of the hook burrowing deeply and shifting regularly so that I could feel it. And I still worked in his local. All his friends and acquaintances had gradually become my friends and acquaintances. And he was still stood there, drinking, and being lovely to everyone. When I saw him, I just wanted to hug him.

We found ourselves together again a couple of months later. But the same problems were there and it all fell apart again. Only this time, something was different: we’d got used to each other – there were no more nasty surprises and it wasn’t long before the falling out and the splitting up eventually stopped. We’d both worked out just how much crap we were prepared to put up with and it did us both good to be forced to see things from an entirely different perspective.

These days he has grey hair and wrinkles and puts his family before the surf and even before his business, his home and his wife before the pub, and has learned to ask before subjecting me to football, golf or snooker on TV. He’s currently putting up with Ben and Holly’s Little Kingdom for the sake of our 6-year-old.
I still think he’s one of the loveliest, friendliest people I have ever met and I now know what it was I couldn’t put my finger on when I met him:
He has a good heart.
He doesn’t look down on people, he’s not greedy, he has a deep sense of duty and responsibility that needed a girl like me to nag out of him! ;) and his silly, childish sense of humour and people-watching passion are just like mine. It turned out that we weren’t that different after all. These days there is a lot more that we do have in common than we don’t. We like the same food, the same wine, we both prefer a quiet meal to a big party, we both despair of greedy people, of judgemental people, and we both think that North Devon is the best place in the world to live for us and our children and that being settled here is more important than cars, holidays, money, or any other badges that some other people seem to need.

And some of our differences turned out to be quite useful. I was far happier going for a walk on the beach with little children than going for a surf (something I never got the bug for) when we went to the West coast of Ireland on holiday. I was better at dealing with crying babies late at night and he was better in the very early morning. He’s good at routine, I’m good at planning and detail.
Sometimes we irritate the crap out of each other and our different minds can seem incompatible. But you have to learn in a relationship that you can’t own someone else’s mind, you can only add your side and appreciate another. It took me years to realise that it’s okay to adore someone that wasn’t made the same way as you.

Maybe we are Velcro.

I’ve learned in the last few years that anything can happen to change things quite drastically overnight and that you should never wait to say ‘I love you,’ to be romantic, to celebrate your life. After all, some of the best things happen when you least expect them and days that are specially set aside full of expectation can disappoint.

I’m glad we got married seventeen years ago. I have regretted it many a time – but only ever for five minutes. Not one whole day has gone by without me feeling huge love for my husband. Each year I am happier and more settled and see a kinder, fuller person in both of us. Each anniversary has been crap and ruined by babies, young children, illness, or too much alcohol and I value the impromptu days in between where we have sat up late talking, or have both been in a very good mood at the same time; the days when the sun suddenly comes out and – wow – nobody’s actually ill and we all laugh together, the odd time where we find that for once there isn’t a whole list of stressors to relay to one another at the end of the day.
Right now things are just right. Whatever happens next.

For me, finding out who I was and where I was going couldn’t begin until I had a life partner and was settled. Once I was secure in a relationship I could stop fighting.

I have learnt that you can’t own people, and you shouldn’t use someone as part of your own identity. But I’ve seen that people can and do change. They can change quite a lot and you can learn to put others first.
And when something good happens you should make the most of it.

So I’d like to say Happy Anniversary to my sometimes infuriating, imperfect, salt and pepper-haired, kind, funny, dishwasher-filling husband. My Come Dine With Me-watching pal, my wine-drinking pal, the other half of Team Parent, a brilliant surfer, a community-spirited man – with the most enormous list of contacts in his phone and who he is always available to. My childish, pointless-argument-partner. (A game of Wii Golf, darling? ;) ) We’ve been through a lot together, we’ve put each other through a lot. I have to fish for compliments, I hate the way you say, ‘Uh…loveyoutoo,’ unconvincingly before you go to sleep. You still cuddle the remote control more than you do me. You still sulk horrendously and I have to work out why by going through a check list – but not before I have completely blamed myself and wondered what I am doing wrong and if I should divorce you to make you happy. You make me laugh, you make me cry, you are my wonder drug and you are my best friend. You are the reason I have sat at the computer for 2 hours, writing this as a gift for you and hiding this from you every time you walk past. (Thanks for the cup of tea, by the way)

We have both learned that even when it infuriates us and is totally inconvenient that we must give the other an opportunity to do what it is that makes them tick. Not always though. We have also learned that, even when it infuriates us, for the sake of the other person, we can’t always do what makes us tick.

Happy Seventeenth Anniversary, Rich! Well done to us both for sticking with it.

Oh – and sorry for running the cold tap to rinse the grapes while you were in the shower!

Perfect marriage? No such thing.



And because I’m such an unconventional, hell-raising rule-breaker. I’ve written this and read it to Richard a whole night before our actual anniversary. Go me and my outrageous attitude…
;)

Jul 30

7 Comments

That which must not be mentioned

Picture from Where Did I Come From, by Peter Mayle & Arthur Robbins

Picture from Where Did I Come From, by Peter Mayle & Arthur Robbins

Apart from eventually dying of course, there are a few things in the world that we will all do:
Breathing
Eating & drinking
Producing waste
Growing
Having sex

Even if we don’t have sex often, most of us do it. At some point. More people will have sex in their lifetime than will have a bank account, than will be a Christian, than will kill someone, than will own a house, than will learn to cook. There are more people having sex today than there are people becoming a vegetarian! This is because even though we don’t all have money or a shared faith or live in a safe country, we all have bodies and we all have hormones. Without them, there would be no us. How many adults do you know who have never ever had sex?

It’s up there as one of THE most natural things ever in the world to do. Breathing, eating, drinking, going to the loo… good, good, all good, all necessary. We must keep doing them… but stop having sex or do it badly or thoughtlessly and we’re also in trouble. We’re all in trouble. Rape, AIDS, other STDs, population problems. We need sex. But we need proper sex.
What we don’t need are wars or people beating the crap out of one another.

So… Why are books to do with such a normal, average, everyday human function seen as naughty? Why is violence allowed on TV earlier than sex? Why do we worry about our children knowing about sex? Why is it hidden like a bad thing, only allowed out late at night?
Why is okay to scare the willies (excuse the pun) out of our children with, lets face it – unlikely but very realistically portrayed – scenarios about aliens, monsters, soldiers, danger, death, violence, entrapment, on TV? Children believe a lot of what they see on television. We are hardly protecting them, keeping them safe and prolonging their childhoods by doing this. Unreal fear and violence are not the same as imaginative escapism – something which I am all for.

I’m not saying parents should be giving sexual demonstrations in front of their children (not until they are 16 and can be thoroughly ashamed, at least! ;) ) or allowing them to look at pornography. (I don’t consider pornography safe, thoughtful or realistic…. But that’s another argument) But can’t we allow sex to be normal, and worry less when explaining the ins and outs (tee hee) of reproduction. After all it is more normal and useful than shooting people and plenty of kids have had hands on experience of pretending to murder people on computer games.
I’ve seen stabbings on soaps on TV before 9pm; blood, shootings, violence, punches thrown, and yet the major complaints the public seem to make are often to do with something of a sexual nature – such as a homosexual kiss. And kissing hurts whom exactly?
If it’s less hidden, if it’s less naughty, if it’s less forbidden. If it’s just assumed that it is a natural human function, surely that reduces the mystery, the fear, and therefore the danger and the chances of doing it wrong, badly, illegally.

Here’s something else completely amazing: there are two major body types; the one with dangly bits inside their pants and the one with no dangly bits inside their pants. Apart from some rare and interesting variations, just about every single one of us is one of those two major body types (Yes, really!) So why all the secrecy? It’s no big deal. What is a big deal is the way we try to make out that our bodies are in some way wrong, or dangerous, and naughty even. I’m not about to advocate naturism everywhere – (each to his or her own) it’s too cold here for one thing but can we get over this, please?
Do we go to swimming lessons and say to the teacher, ‘What ever you do, don’t talk about breathing in front of my child.’?
Do we ask people not to use the bathroom before dark, because no one wants to know that they might be having a wee?
Do we put a watershed on cookery programmes, call them The Korma Sutra or The Joy of Woks and stick an 18+ “Contains gratuitous food shots” symbol next to them?
No. Of course we don’t. I know I’m exaggerating ridiculously. But we do let children see adults driving at life-threatening 200 miles an hour on the Grand Prix, getting drunk at any time of day on television and punching each other as if those things are more safe and acceptable than having a sexual relationship.
What the bloody hell is wrong with us!?

Do you want to know what sparked this post?

Hormones.

They’re everywhere. Bloody everywhere. They have a hugely, massively, gigantically significant impact on the way the human race operates and yet we are not allowed to talk about them. Well maybe only titillatingly (OOH- she said ‘tit’!)

Every month, millions and millions ( I know – that’s nearly all of us!)… Millions of women in the world of child-bearing age, go though a pattern of hormones. Then, as we get older, we have to learn to live with a new pattern of hormones. Increases and drops in hormones change our skin tone, our appetite, our concentration levels, our weight, even the water levels in our body, our energy, our tiredness and our ability to deal with stress. Some days we are literally stronger than other days. Literally. Some days we are really quite fabulous and other days we need to be less fabulous or just differently fabulous.
Our society has two major ways of dealing with these patterns: Denial, and humour. Just like sex then.

Some of us treat our hormones with medication; try to make them go away. Some of us load ourselves up with pain-killers, vitamin supplements, herbal and homeopathic remedies. Often we just feel we have no choice but to pull our socks up, grin and bear it, pretend it’s not happening. Everywhere you go there will be women pretending they are not struggling, while – with almost animalistic instinct – they secretly crave a big mug of hot chocolate, a cheese sarny, a nap, ibuprofen, and a hot-water bottle.
Why secretly?
Because talking about it is seen as weak? Because it’s too much to do with body parts? It’s too closely related to reproduc – shhhh…..

I don’t know. I don’t blooming know.
So. I’m going to break this nonsense and tell you that once a month I get constant pain in my right hip for two days so that I can barely walk. I become very pale, and weak and dizzy. I get confused and find making decisions incredibly difficult. I get so over-sensitised that smells, tastes, lights, and noises are extreme. I am clumsy and have been known to have accidents that have involved trips to A&E. I am slow, hungry, unbelievably exhausted, and detached. By the time I have walked upstairs I feel like crying.
It hurts. It’s horrible. It has got worse as I’ve got older. But if I can be honest about it and take it easy for just one day, I’m absolutely okay. Why pretend otherwise?

We seem to have normalised being abnormal in this society.

Women seem to need to look like dolls but act like men to get on in the world.
I blame Lara Croft. What’s she got to do with real women?

The macho barbarian. I bet she doesn’t have periods.
‘Periods? Oh my God, she said “periods”!’
(I’m still trying to figure out how Margaret Thatcher managed to have children…)

I’m not blaming women. I’m not blaming men. I blame the gradual shifts in society that got us here and I blame fear. We’re too frightened to stand out and say, ‘Well actually… you know what… I think we might not be getting it quite right, here. I think I’d rather my kids learned about the reproductive system than how to blow someone’s brains out.’
I think we’ve got feminism all wrong too. Women are feminine. We are as strong as men but in very different ways. Different is good. It works better when we acknowledge difference. Like the dangly bits.

Where did I come from by Peter Mayle – a great book.

Aug 2

20 Comments

Sixteen At Last


In August 1986, the last year of O level/CSE exams in the UK, I was one of the 16-year-olds expecting results. We were supposed to either give a self-addressed envelope to the school or go in to collect our results. I did neither. I went to Cornwall to stay with a friend. I had hated school and the final year in particular. My vision had deteriorated and I had become short-sighted over a year – but I refused to start wearing glasses at 16, so I walked around in a blur. My best friend (the one in Cornwall) had left the year before, and I suffered bullying from other girls and what I can only describe as misunderstanding from teachers. I spent every day in a constant state of worry. It had not been cool to study or do well in our year so I tried to be unimpressive and simply waited for it to be over. To confuse all that, I came from a household where studying and doing well were assumed. At one point, I sat in front of a bottle of paracetamol and a sixth-form college application form, and considered taking an overdose. In fact I took 8 pills, gave up, and went to sleep for 2 hours. I never told my parents.

I knew I hadn’t done well and – in a sense, ran away. That feeling of apathy and being unconnected to my own destiny continued throughout my disastrous A levels.

Twenty-five years on, our eldest daughter is waiting for results at the end of this month. We know she has a better idea of who she is and has more confidence in her talents than I ever did, and I hope she is looking forward to her results day as much as we are. Whatever her results, though, she is a success.
I am also waiting for results. At 41, I’m waiting to pick up (online) the grade for a diploma in Literature & Creative Writing. After many years, I finally felt brave enough to attempt education again. Right now, I’m sat on the floor, half-dressed checking again and again and again like a little kid.

I have literally just found the result as I’m writing this: A Grade 2 pass. I now have my diploma. I’m still waiting for the actual mark for my final assignment, but I know it’s at least 70% now.

Please excuse me while I act like the excited 16-year-old and 18-year-old I never got to be all those years ago!

YAY!!! WOOT!!!! and stuff like that… :)

Now to finish my degree so I can act like a 21-year-old! ;)

Aug 3

9 Comments

Kill Or Cure? the feedback dilemma

It’s difficult to hear someone say they don’t understand the particular part of your writing that, in fact, was the bit you loved most – and what you based the whole piece on – and to know whether it is their failing or yours. It’s difficult to take on suggestions that come from someone else’s head when all the original writing comes from your head. Will their suggestions mix successfully with what’s there already? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. To me it’s like being invaded. Or being spoken to in a foreign language. It’s difficult, above all, to know whom to trust to suit your particular style and voice. If we all received and acted upon feedback from the same critic, wouldn’t the literary world be a dull place?

Sometimes (or maybe often!) I write something and it’s not good. I get so wrapped up in keeping going and producing words I don’t see until I come back later that it’s not working. When I read it again I see that it’s collapsing under the sheer floppiness of its weak characters and lack of structure. It needs to be ditched, begun again or completely re-renovated. But, amazingly, if I show it to someone else they can see what I have lost: a good twist, an interesting starting point or a thought-provoking dilemma. Maybe the skeleton is broken but there are some good bones worth putting back together. Are they right, though? Should I work through it using something that someone else has recommended? Or should I stick with my gut instinct and drop it? Someone else’s “promising” might be my waste of time, after all.

Or sometimes I write something that tumbles out of me. Strong characters play in my head and soar through my fingertips, and interact in ways that make me feel as if I am merely a tool to record their story. Conflicts, dilemmas, actions, conversations, resolutions, all layer up and slide into the laptop, and “afterwords” (do you like my typo?) I sit back and smile, knowing I’ve enjoyed the ride – which surely means that someone will really enjoy the read…? It’s one of the best things I’ve ever written and it will be one of the best things my reader has read for a while, yes? Well no. Unfortunately it doesn’t always happen like that. The very first person who reads it may not get that ride, that enjoyment that I thought I was sharing. Are they right? How many more people should read it, then, until I decide whether it’s as good as I first thought it was? Do I keep looking and waiting for my ideal reader? Do I take advice and change it? But whose advice do I take? Who do I trust? What if everyone who has read it has said something different? Oh maybe I shouldn’t have shown it to anyone! Maybe I should have just submitted it to a magazine or a competition or self-published it or just shared it on my blog!

What about the times you submit something for publication, a competition, an anthology, etc and you simply get no reply? Or after a while you merely get a “No thanks.” Isn’t that worse? Don’t we want to know why?

If you’re writing for the sheer love of it, though, should you be constantly putting yourself in situations where you get knocked back and you’re not sure who’s right or wrong?

I don’t think there is an answer to this. It depends who you are, why you are writing, what your intended outcome for each piece of writing is and what you hope to achieve personally from not just writing but from every individual piece you write. And your favourite person to give feedback may not be the best person to give feedback and vice versa.

I guess I have a kind of conclusion though: Messages can get lost in our writing, mistakes do get made, and clunking great errors do absolutely need sorting out because there’s very little point writing to be read if something isn’t working.
So, in my opinion, it’s important to find out what it is we are writing and find a few people who we would consider our ideal reader and don’t bother with those who have no interest in reading something of our genre – and that includes loved ones.
And learn to take the knocks.
Which ones are deserved, though, and which are not will still always need filtering and I, for one, will never get that right.

N.B. Although feedback and the reader’s experience is something that is always on my mind and this post is a common theme among writers, it has been inspired today by a disappointing grade from my final writing course result. The disappointment has been heightened by simply not knowing why?
I have no feedback to go on other than a percentage, which is at least 15% less than I was expecting. I’m usually pretty self-critical but I felt that the story I wrote was one of the best things I’d ever written and yet it got the lowest mark of all my work this year. However tough to take, if something doesn’t work for someone, I absolutely need to know why.

Aug 6

6 Comments

This, and also that


When my page is blank, you don’t know that earlier I was full of ideas.

When my house is a tip, you don’t know that yesterday I cleaned all day and that it looked nice for ten minutes.

When I say something stupid, you don’t know that the last time I opened my mouth I spoke insightful wisdom.

When I am quiet all day, you don’t know how I love and long to sing.

When I cry, you don’t know that this morning I smiled.

When I write badly, you don’t know that last week I wrote brilliantly.

When I burn the dinner, you don’t know that yesterday’s meal was delicious perfection.

When I am tipsy, you don’t know that I have hardly drunk any alcohol for three months.

When I listen to ABBA, you don’t know that yesterday I listened to Vivaldi and tomorrow I will listen to The Libertines.

When I seem weak and easily controlled, you don’t know that I have had a long fight and am tired.

When I am shallow, you don’t know that I am really deep.

When I am grumpy, you don’t know how patient I have been for so long.

When I ask stupid questions, you don’t know that tomorrow I will have all the clever answers.

And when I create rubbish little blog posts, you don’t know about the good ones.


Unless you follow me on Twitter, of course.

Aug 10

6 Comments

Because You Want It


This thing: you know you should have it?
You want it don’t you? You need it.
Take it, have it, get one, you need it. Take it, have it, get one, you need it.

You know that most other people have one? (Anyone who’s anyone, anyway.)
You’ll get left behind. You’ll look different. Incomplete.
You see how having this thing has made other people’s lives better?
Take it, have it, get one, you need it. Take it, have it, get one, you need it.

You want it, don’t you? You need it.
You should have it. Go on. Have one.
You deserve it.
Take it have it get one you need it take it have it get one you need it.

Listen to my rhyme:
Have this thing; then you’ll fit it.
Have this thing; make your heart sing
You want this thing; all the joy it will bring
This thing this thing; it’s for you and those around you.
I’ll sing it to you. And sing it again. You’ll go to sleep singing it. You wake up singing it. You’ll dream of this thing and how you’ll know the joys that others feel to have this thing.

Who do you want to look like? Most want to be like? They have this thing. They love this thing. See how happy they are with this thing? They were just like you once, and now they are rich and famous and have this thing. See how easy it is?
Take it have it get one you need it take it have it get one you need it take it have it get one you need it take it have it get one you need it. TAKE IT HAVE IT GET ONE YOU NEED IT TAKE IT HAVE IT GET ONE YOU NEED IT!

Welcome to your new Thing. Congratulations on planning to save twice as much as you earn in a year in order to afford to pay off the loan for This Thing. Please choose a category.
I’m sorry – that function is only available on This Thing 2. Update to This Thing 2 for a limited period only at our special price of four hundred and ninety-nine pounds and ninety-nine pence.

This Thing 2: you know you should have it?
You want it don’t you. You need it.
Take it, have it, get one, you need it. Take it, have it, get one, you need it.

It’s more beautiful than Thing 1. It’s more important than love. In fact, it is love.
It is love and the beauty of nature all rolled into one. You won’t want for anything again with This Thing 2. It will love you. Everyone will love you.
Take it, have it, get one, you need it. Take it, have it, get one, you need it.

We don’t care what you have to do to get one.
Just get one.



Welcome to the This Thing 47 helpline. As an existing customer your call is in a queue and is important to us. But not as important as those new customers we are still trying to get addicted to having Things. We hope you are enjoying your something else to dust.

Loser.
All the cool people have This Thing 48, now.

Aug 12

2 Comments

Why I Write

There’s never just one picture.

We are all different. Some people deal with difference better than others. I deal with it partly because I have to. I feel like one of The Different. But I’m not really. I’m just one of those whose differences are social and therefore make me feel noticeably different. Other people have differences they can hide better (even if they shouldn’t). Other than being ridiculously lacking in confidence and having a vivid imagination and habit for wordplay, though, I expect I am probably boringly normal.

I write because it is how I communicate. If I didn’t write I would be taken at face value and for an unconfident person that face is always a lie. Apart from being an occasional slave to the imaginary characters and dilemmas playing in my head, I write to say things about what I see going on around me. I have always been an observer and a thinker. My mother tells me, for instance, how many years ago, at the age of three, I watched famine victims on television and asked why they couldn’t share our food and water. I still think like that now. I think quiet people can take a really good look at things because they are using less time talking – but I would say that, wouldn’t I?

I am quiet and I hide away but I am OBSESSED with people! Sometimes I feel a responsibility to speak out. I get involved by imagining myself in people’s situations, absorbing myself in their dilemmas as if I am no longer me but I am someone else, somewhere else. I may be wrong but I think I am good at this. I learnt to think about others’ feelings at a very young age – I would like to explain why, but for some reason it doesn’t seem appropriate here and now…
I also studied social science courses that forced me to turn my view of the world upside-down, give it a good shake and reassess it – without any judgement or preconceptions. The lessons of acceptance of diversity and – if not trying to see the bigger picture, then at least accepting that there is one, are incredibly worthwhile and valuable. And in the last ten years I have read and seen and felt a lot of what I can only describe as very “real” stuff and am now distressed more than ever by limited viewpoints or dogma.
As I think about things I blend in and out from being an observer to being the subject. I don’t feel like I see things from the privileged viewpoint of an outsider, instead I feel that I know how it is to suffer, to struggle. For that reason I am always very careful not to judge, not to blame and not to assume things. I prefer to avoid knee-jerk reactions and/or stand-off or polarised viewpoints. Instead I like to talk things through, introduce the ideas that are playing inside my head, air my instincts to repair and protect, and reluctantly allow viewpoints that clash with my own to be introduced.
It’s my way of talking.

Talk is cheap, some say?
Well I disagree. Strongly, in fact. Here the difference thing comes into play again. There are those who act and don’t have enough time to think, those who discuss, argue and suggest courses of action, and then there are many, many, many variations in between. These differences are what make things work. Conversing, arguing, and changing course leads to policy changes and societal changes. Take away the talkers and the writers and we are left with those who merely act. All acts must be challenged regularly, if only – at times, to reassure us that we are doing the right thing. Much as we might hate it, we must have our views challenged and we must take on new information. The whole picture, the bigger picture, the various viewpoints must be heard. And talking – outside a situation – is a good way of recording an overall impression and bringing together ideas.
I think a lot of writers don’t feel that they have all the answers, they are simply saying, ‘Please, just take a look, have a think and imagine yourself in these shoes before you judge.’ Far from being removed, writers try to empathise, and, without necessarily condoning behaviour, try to challenge preconceptions.
I heard that Roald Dahl, for example, had a writer’s hut, a fair walk away from the family home, with no telephone and strict instructions that he was only to be interrupted in an emergency, so that he could write for days in peace and not be bothered by life, normality, or social interaction. Yet he wrote so astutely, observedly (oh, apparently observedly is not a word. Can I have it anyway?) and warmly about the human condition that you can tell he was only physically removed from humanity – never emotionally removed. He liked to show the reader that things were not always as they seemed. Isn’t it the best thing ever – to make people think?!?

Writers do care. They care enormously and while they do not have all the answers, their minds are a great holding place for a myriad of observations. And a creative mind can make connections and observations that other people miss. People in the centre of the action often miss what is going on around them and only see things through one viewpoint. Writing can help us to see how, where and when things might have gone wrong. We are not trying to change the world (okay, maybe sometimes…) but we want people to see every viewpoint and I think the very nature of writing has a special knack for achieving that. When we look at a photo of a group of people, we think we know what we are seeing, but each person in that photo will have a different story – as will the person behind the camera. When people explain what is really happening you can be surprised not only by how differently you saw things, but also how there is conflicting information in the stories.
Writing is a good way of taking an argument through to its conclusion. A verbal argument is full of interruptions, twists and turns and can be dominated by a loud or aggressive participant. Someone with their own agenda can often shout down other participants and distort another person’s words in order to say what they want to say. It’s frustrating to be stopped in your tracks and to be told you’ve said something you haven’t or made to shut up because another person thinks you are clearly wrong, misguided or uninformed. People can assume they know what you are going to say and never really hear what you are saying. In writing you get a better chance to make your point, even if there are still those immensely frustrating times when people with preconceptions will misread you.
In writing you can also see the chaos theory at work; how easy it could be for any of us to have had a completely different life but for one action. I don’t know about others but it makes me want to unstitch things and see where they went wrong. It makes you realise that despite some rather hideous behaviours, we are all very similar but victims of circumstance to a greater or lesser degree.

So, I write because my circumstances made me a nervous wreck, a quiet thinker, and regularly dogged by minor health niggles. I’m sick of trying to be something I’m not, of being afraid of being judged for being a thinker and an observer. This is how I do things. How I can be active. If it’s not good enough for some people then it is they who have the problem of not appreciating the beautiful, complicated differences that make up a society, not me.

Quiet writers rock… Quietly…

;)

Aug 17

12 Comments

Not-worthy Procrastination Excuses


Did you know that for the last few weeks I have remained just one assignment away from having done enough work to complete a BA degree with the Open University? (or a BSc, come to think of it.) Weeks of knowing that I am just one last push short of the summit but not actually getting there; of putting off and going and doing something else that seems more worthy. I probably could have finished the final assignment four times over by now and be relaxing and celebrating (perhaps not relaxing), and looking at the reading for next year’s literature course but there’s something invisible that’s stopping me.

Why am I not doing it?

There’s always something that stops me from taking a big, healthy bite of life – as if I feel I don’t quite deserve it. I seem to punish myself and be unforgiving – as if I should never be putting my needs or self-improvement or even enjoyment anywhere near the top of what’s important, and I should never get proud or smug about anything. But also there’s a feeling that’s it’s never enough; I should be pushing myself harder and achieving more. Confused? Me too.

You see, however hard I work, however much I do, I never really feel that sense of what-ever-it-is that I realise must be quite a healthy and necessary feeling in order to keep going and feel as if you are getting somewhere but also to feel that you can enjoy something nice.

Today is the first day since the summer holidays started that the children are all out of the house and my husband is off work, helping to lay a patio– which means there is someone to keep an eye on the 5-month-old house-eating dog. So today is the day to get the assignment, if not finished, at least well-and-truly nailed, yes?

We’ll see…
I’m already thinking, ‘washing, tidying, bills, emails, one of the shop’s accounts needs looking at, it’s about time I changed the sheets and where’s the 16-yr-old’s bus pass application form?… oh – and how about I write a blog post… ’

Aug 22

46 Comments

Educating Rachel


In 1999, I had just turned 30, and was walking through the sitting room with a wet, be-towelled toddler from the bathroom one evening, when I caught the end of Watchdog on TV. They closed the programme with a mention of ‘double u, double u, double u, dot something,’ and ‘email us at something dot com.’ It sounded like gibberish. I didn’t understand. All I knew was that it was something to do with computers. I didn’t like not knowing what they were talking about. I’ve always hated that feeling and still look word meanings up in dictionaries when no one is looking.

When I was at secondary school in the eighties, if you were any good at French you did German. If you didn’t seem to be a natural linguist, you did computer studies. I did German, ensuring that I got to the grand old age of thirty not being computer-literate.

I’m not quite sure how it happened but I managed to get online and find The Open University site. I applied for a technology course called You, Your Computer and The Net. It began in February 2000. I surprised myself by absolutely loving it, passing it, and finding that computers were actually quite fabulous, bloody handy to know how to use and that learning stuff was fun too. Not to mention all the fun people I met in cyberspace – many of whom I’m still in touch with now. I’d got the OU bug and at the end of it, I signed up for another course: An Introduction to the Social Sciences: Understanding social change. I absolutely loved that one too! I started going around saying things like, ‘Oh, you mustn’t judge people. You don’t know why they said or did that. You should be more open-minded. There are different ways of looking at things, you know.’

Then things went a bit belly up. One of the Social Science lecturers asked me what I was going to study next and I said I had no idea. She said she thought I should do one of the English or Lit courses. I said I didn’t think I wanted to (I was still having nightmares about A level English) and tried maths, then e-business, web design and web applications instead. What a disaster! I dropped out of all of them (which would cost thousands of pounds today, now that course fees have gone up).

In 2004, two years after thinking I’d given up studying and it wasn’t for me after all, I enrolled in a little Arts introductory course called Living Arts. I missed the way learning stuff made me feel: as if I was constantly moving forward, evolving and looking at things in a more profound way. Every part of life is more interesting and exciting when you know more about it. I even discovered that poetry isn’t that scary! We also found out that year that we were expecting our third child. I wrote and submitted my final assignment, while in labour with baby number three, in January 2005, and she was born at home later that night. Thanks to the OU online social areas, I came across lots of wise mums and mums-to-be and learned a lot more about pregnancy, birth, and new babies than I ever had with the first two children. I had the best easiest birth ever and coped with feeding and the knackering first few weeks so much better because of the wonders of sharing information online. And thanks to the whole experience of learning communities generally, I had matured into a new way of thinking that included the realisation that there is no right or wrong way of doing things and ‘we should always be very cautious about social norms.’ *does a little curtsey in case any social science professors are reading this*

I completely committed myself to being a mum, family person, cleaner, washerwoman and supporter of my husband’s business from then on, and may have continued to do so if my father hadn’t become seriously ill three years later. The next eight to nine months were completely about him and when he died in January 2009, I was a wreck. I tried to carry on as normal but within two months I knew I would never be the same again. All the things I had taken for granted centred around family and now it was in pieces. I’d lost my oomph, my pzazz, my sparkle, I lost the freedom to be lighthearted and whimsical. Life seemed suddenly short and meaningless. My sense of humour seemed to become more childish and slightly crazy. It’s a very cloudy time for me memory-wise and I don’t know how it happened but I found myself signed up to study not one, not two, not three, not four, but five courses in 2009! (Admittedly some were only short courses). You see I’d been really busy and pushed myself constantly when Dad was ill and then it all ended so suddenly that I felt I was floating pointlessly back into a life of housework, repetitiveness, and just doing things for other people so they could mess them up again. I didn’t want it anymore and yet I needed to do something challenging.

I began to wonder when the next person would die. Would it be me? What if I never did anything with my life other than housework and then I found out I was dying? It wouldn’t be so bad if I enjoyed it or found it satisfying but I was miserable doing it and had always hated the repetitive thanklessness of it. So without giving myself time to think I signed up for arts and social sciences courses – subjects that had been a success in the past. And – mainly because I could do it at home without any tutorial or exams, I also signed up for Creative Writing. I found that I was able to write without much effort – which was nice. And I could finally talk about what had happened and how I felt through writing words. Together the creative writing course and the social science course – Family Meanings taught me to carry on opening my eyes and looking closely at things. I didn’t realise it at this stage but I was doing exactly what suited me and had amassed quite a few points towards a degree. I now also had a Certificate in Social Sciences and a Certificate of Higher Education, which helped me to stop having so many nightmares about my terrible A levels.

It slowly dawned on me where I had been going wrong all those years: Although very shy and socially awkward I was in fact a social person. A people person. Learning about society and people and where we might be missing the point became more and more interesting to me.
I decided to squeeze a psychology course in alongside Advanced Creative Writing in 2010 (Wow – psychology is so interesting and gives you great story ideas!), and I overlapped a Health and Social Care course with the second half of my writing course (2011). Advanced Creative Writing finished in May and I received my Diploma in Literature and Creative Writing a couple of weeks ago. The Health and Social Care course officially ends on 14 Sept, but I have just submitted my final assignment now. Yes, just now. If I pass that final assignment, I have done enough work to get a degree! It was a tough tough course that final one: Death and Dying – it brought back so many sad memories of my father’s and my father-in-law’s deaths. I’m sure people working in palliative care must be saints, as I have struggled to keep going when reading a lot of the material in the coursebooks. So now it is over and I shall reward myself with something light.

It’s taken eleven years, lots of money, lots of stopping and starting, lots of self-discovery, masses of fun and friendship. The most supportive people have been ones I have met online and recently have made all the difference to my life (whoever tells you that online friends are not real, simply does not know what they are talking about).
I have not been to one single tutorial. Nope, not a one. I have not sat one single exam. Nope, not a one. Due to my social fears, organisational problems, debilitating writer’s cramp from a wrist injury, and general weirdness, I have chosen courses with no exams. All of the courses have ended with examinable assessments submitted from home. I have literally studied for a degree completely from home.

Providing I find out in three months (ish) that the last course was a success I can claim a BA or a BSc. I’ve already decided it will be a BA because I’ve signed up for 20th Century Literature, starting soon, so that I can go on and get a BA Honours!

Talk about doing things the hard way.

So thank you to the OU, for the opportunity to do it my way. But what about continuing to support people like me by keeping courses affordable?! I’m really saddened to think it may no longer be that lifeline that so many people have relied on for years.

And thank you to Miss Sarah Fullard, who I met online on that first course in 2000 and who eventually became not only an OU tutor but Mrs. Sarah Horrigan – after meeting her future husband online on that same course. Sarah, you are fabulously encouraging and I will never forget how one day you said something that changed my view of myself: you said one of the only things I didn’t know was how clever I was. (Getting a bit emotional now). Little things like that that adjust our faith in ourself make a big difference.
And massive thanks to the people who have encouraged me in my writing this year and said amazingly supportive things that have given me an enormous boost. I really didn’t know I had it in me.

Completed:
* T171 You, your computer and the net (2000)
* DD100 An introduction to the social sciences: understanding social change (2001)
* Y152 Living arts (2004)
* D270 Family meanings (2009)
* A172 Start writing essays (2009)
* A177 Shakespeare: an introduction (2009)
* AA100 The arts past and present (2009)
* A215 Creative writing (2009)
* DSE232 Applying psychology (2010)
* A363 Advanced creative writing (2010)
* K260 Death and dying (2011)

In progress
* A300 20th century literature: texts and debates (2011)

Ps. And thank you to my husband who hasn’t come storming in, asking me why, if i submitted my assignment 2 hours ago, am I still hiding away in here xxx

Sep 19

14 Comments

Definitely Not Dabbling

I was thinking, this morning (it has be known to happen!), about the importance of my writing to me, and the still, as yet, undefined portion of my life I give to it.

Selfishly, I looked forward to September all summer and the less complicated period of time I have (in theory) between 9am and 2pm, Mondays to Thursdays. It is still unpredictable and disrupted but, in general, I should have a nice chunk of creative time on 4 school-day mornings.

Because of this feeling of freedom and relative safety from distraction on school days, most of my ideas happen just after the children have gone to school and college, and most of my best flow and speediest word tapping-out happens between 10am and 1pm on a weekday in term-time.
But in times of stress or a head filled with other responsibilities or when there’s a chance I may be disturbed, this creative time and flow is well and truly stoppered.

I felt an urge to write about this problem and the time-management skills needed to do something that – if it doesn’t involve payment or other people – surely must be viewed as entirely self-indulgent…?
When I hear the term ‘hobby writer’ it insults me and I hope that no one sees me that way. But, if I’m not making enough time for writing, not being paid for it, what else can I be?
Then, within the same few minutes as having these thoughts, I heard the sentence, ‘…he dabbled in the arts,’ on Radio 4.

‘Rachel dabbled in writing’? Yuck.

I absolutely do not want to be a dabbler-writer. I dabble in cookery. I dabble in photography on Blipfoto And I dabble in gardening.
How do I make sure I am not perceived as only dabbling in writing – a ‘superficial’ or ‘casual’ writer; one who merely paddles in the shallows?
How do I spend time concentrating on perfecting my art when I don’t have the status of publication or payment and be allowed to take myself seriously?
I can’t phone my children for a chat in school hours, and I don’t interrupt anyone else’s paid employment because that time is officially defined. And yet, what I want to do – what I think should be my work – is so tenuous in its status that it can be interrupted at any time by anyone and almost any thing.

All I can do, I have told myself this morning, is make up my mind to give myself control, give myself tasks, deadlines, allotted times, say ‘no’ to other things because I have work to finish (or even start!).
It’s difficult. Really difficult.
To get out of this mindset of appearing to merely dabble, I have to prove myself. To prove myself I have to do something that earns no money, pays no bills, washes no dishes and cooks no meals, answers no phones and is good for no one else but me until I have completed something. And when I have completed it, it still may be good for no one but me!

What a curse to have the writing bug and a need to be taken seriously; to feel I have bricks and grand plans and yet no guarantee that I will build anything worthwhile, and if I am right – or selfish – to take the time to construct something.

Sep 23

6 Comments

As Happy As…

A short story

Zizi was dabbing perfume below her nostrils, before entering the cottage, when she saw Bill peering curiously through the glass in the front door. As she let herself in, ammonia burned her throat and eyes.
‘Where is she, Bill?’ Zizi asked, blinking and swallowing.
Bill grunted and waddled away, his fat backside lurching left and right, and his breathing laboured.
‘Rude pig,’ she snapped, pulling her feet up and away from the newspaper sheets that were sticking and tearing as she walked into the kitchen.
‘Mum?! It’s me.’

Bill sighed and settled himself in his favourite place in front of the hot stove, watching Zizi struggle, with exaggerated steps, across the cluttered floor. She filled the kettle and removed a bucket of poultry food from the table. Then she grimaced into stained cups and tilted up an empty washing-up liquid bottle, repeatedly squeezing it in vain.

‘Ziziphus Jujuba! My darling! My little fruit of love! How delightful!’ Cynthia appeared from the garden, ducks and chickens at her heels, and with a bunch of sweet peas in one hand, threw her arms wide and hooted at her daughter in a sing-song voice as if she was clucking over a baby.
Zizi dipped her head and endured her mother’s cooing and petting. A noise resembling a faulty car exhaust escaped from Bill as he turned his head away in apparent disgust and closed his eyes.
‘Oh, Bill. It’s my baby – my little baby! Don’t be jealous.’
‘Mother. It stinks. It really stinks. THEY stink…’ She clapped the birds out of the house, ‘…and HE stinks.’ Zizi stared at Bill. ‘I know you love him in your own little way but…’
‘I love him in EVERY way. My darling little Billy. How could she say such things.’ Cynthia looked lovingly over at the rumbling mass.
‘ “Ev-ery way”? Ugh. Next you’ll be telling me you sleep with him!’
‘Don’t be silly. He’d never get up onto the bed!’ Cynthia laughed. ‘Anyway. Bill knows I sleep with Rose from the Post Office.’
‘It’s not funny, mother.’
‘I know it’s not. Her husband threatened to shove one of my chickens up my rear if word ever got out.’
Cynthia shuffled slowly to the sink with the sweet peas and tried to lift a vase from the cupboard below. She winced and Zizi heard a sharp intake of breath.
‘What’s wrong, Mum?’ Zizi took the flowers and bossily pointed her mother into a chair. Cynthia groaned gently as the weight shifted.
‘Oh, it’s just my hips. Happens to us all eventually.’
‘You shouldn’t be running around after that stupid pig all day. And the chickens. And geese. And ducks. And heavens knows whatever else you’ve acquired since last time I was here.’
‘They’re my grandchildren substitute.’ Cynthia laughed a little too loudly and cocked her head provokingly.
‘That’s a bit below the belt. Anyway – you’re terrible with children. You can’t even name them properly – or take into consideration the terrible bullying consequences.’ Zizi plonked the flowers on the table and turned back to make tea.
‘Oh, come on,’ Cynthia protested, ‘unusual names are all the rage.’
‘These days, yes, but not Latin tree names – in the seventies mother, when everyone else at school was called Kevin, Maria and Deborah.’ She stirred the drinks then set them down on the table and pulled out a seat for herself. ‘At least they smell nice.’ She nodded at the sweet peas, then opened her bag and took out some sheets of paper. Placing them in front of her mother, she began her rehearsed speech.
Cynthia felt tired and let the first few sentences wash over her as she continued watching her favourite old pig resting on the floor but she soon realised what Zizi was getting at and looked down at the papers. ‘A terraced bungalow?’ she interrupted. ‘How boring. How samey. How… Horizontal. Move? I’ve no intention of ever moving.’
‘Not even for my sake?’ Zizi pleaded. ‘I worry about you all the time. Wondering if you’ve had a fall or caught a nasty disease. You must know that this isn’t hygienic?’ She gestured around her. ‘It’s not clean. It’s not safe. Sometimes I wonder if… If you’re coping.’
‘Of course I’m coping. It’s just that one’s priorities about appearances change as one gets older. And you don’t need to worry about me. I’ve got Rose.’

David’s valiant attempts at an amorous connection later that night were in vain as Zizi lay on her back trying to blink away vision after vision of her mother’s stinking, cluttered house, the dangerously unhygienic kitchen, the pig’s huge hairy black backside lurching left, right, left, right, left right rhythmically. Although David still carried the familiar faint smell of hospital, she had not lost the smell from her mother’s cottage and – feeling as if she was in two places at once – struggled to ignore how her husband’s heaving sounding like Bill the pig’s laboured waddle. Then her imagination gave her images of her mother falling on the kitchen floor, of the poultry taking over the kitchen, of animal waste filling the house up and up and up and…

…And the phone rang.
‘Bill’s having a heart attack. Can David come?’
‘He’s a doctor, mother, not a vet.’
‘Yes but I owe the vet money and he won’t come again. Farmer Gavinski offered to put a bullet in his head – Bill, not the vet – but I need more time. There are things I need to say to him first. Please, Ziziphus, please.’

As they entered the cottage the sun was rising and the chill of the night had dulled the stench of animal waste. They could see Cynthia on a chair by the kitchen door, bent over in front of the stove and heard her mumbling softly.

But she wasn’t alone. A man was sat at the kitchen table, drinking from a mug and a woman was filling and cleaning something at the sink. The dawn surrounded the woman with hazy pink and her thick, curly grey, bobbed hair bounced at her shoulders. Her soft pink cashmere cardigan sleeves were rolled up to reveal well-tanned arms and beneath the ties of her apron strings, Zizzy could make out a small waist and well-rounded hips and buttocks inside a thin, pink, flower-print skirt.
She’d never looked at her mother’s friend that way before.
Rose turned and smiled softly. ‘He’s going,’ she whispered. ‘The vet’s sedated him.’
The vet raised one hand silently to identify himself.
‘Did you pay?’ was all Zizi could think to say.
Rose nodded. ‘I sent for him. I wish she’d told me sooner.’

The kitchen still smelled of pig and poultry, and from the piles of paper on the floor, it was clear there’d been some parting ablutions from Bill, but the stronger smell of disinfectant was taking over and Rose had obviously brought her own cleaning products, and was quickly making the place brighter. As she moved closer to Zizi and David to offer them tea, Zizi could smell the gentle scent of pink Camay soap.

Zizi backed into the hall and beckoned to Rose as David went into the kitchen to sit with the vet.
‘Will she leave now? Can I get her to move now? Nearer to us? She can’t look after herself anymore. I need to keep an eye on her.’
Zizi watched Rose’s puzzled eyes narrow then widen again as if in realisation. The vet appeared in the doorway and indicated it was all over. He thanked Rose for the tea and left.
‘But she doesn’t want you to keep an eye on her,’ Rose whispered. ‘Or worry about her. She’s a very independent woman – she has her own way of doing things and she loves it here.’

Rose walked back into the kitchen, removed one rubber glove to stroke Cynthia’s hair and then set to work filling a black bin liner with soiled newspapers.
Zizi drew a chair up close to her mother and held her hand, patting it, with nothing to say.
‘I’m happy here, Zizi. Happy as I can be,’ her mother whispered, not looking up.

Bill lay still, his head on Cynthia’s feet, and under his back legs, Zizi could just make out the estate agent’s property details that she’d brought round earlier, streaked with brown.
If she didn’t know better she’d have said Bill was grinning.



N.B.
Ziziphus jujuba is a chinese date tree (and why not)

Sep 30

9 Comments

Untold Damage

A flash fiction/short story

She had the first appointment. They arrived at the same time.

The new room was a top floor, end-of-corridor, corner room.
He unlocked the door and stepped aside for her. ‘Sorry about the hike to get here. And the smell. Sodding cuts…’

She shrugged. She liked it. She liked corners. She liked having no one above her. And in the chair she chose to sit in by the windows, facing the door, there was no one to the left and no one to the right, no one behind her.

Through one window, the morning sun jutted into the room at a low, harsh angle, shooting blindingly sharp skinny triangles of light onto the desk and wall. She turned and looked through the other window. West? she thought, noticing straight shadows, stretching away from the office blocks, throwing the streets and smaller buildings into darkness. It was grey there now but tonight it would be flooded with evening sunlight, the sunset would fill the room with soft colour, and no one would see it.

In the aluminium window frame she saw a distorted reflection moving up and down, and coinciding with the sound of a jacket being removed and hung on the back of a chair.

She wondered, did she look strong and independent turning away from him like that – as if looking out on the world? Even though she was really watching him.
He liked to be called Paul. But she avoided names. In her head he was The Therapist. As he moved back and forth, opening and closing drawers, and switching on a laptop, a bright reflection flitted across the window frame.

He was wearing a white shirt.

She wanted to say, mysteriously, ‘I see a man wearing a white shirt,’ as if looking into a crystal ball, and then turn around and laugh with him. But instead she said nothing, and watched the window frame.

They weren’t here to have fun – she learned that months ago. When she’d made jokes in the past he looked patiently at her, waiting to continue. No, they were here to “get to the truth” the “real” her. She mustn’t deviate from the task, the questions, the going over old ground. So she’d chosen early morning appointments to get them out of the way. She didn’t even have breakfast. It was like waiting in a long, long dinner queue: something to be endured patiently whilst holding one’s instincts in, politely and unnaturally.

This wasn’t the real her. And yet she had to keep coming, keep pretending, as some sort of evidence that she was functioning properly. Her teeth tapped together inside her mouth and her toes tapped up and down within her boots.

The white reflection enlarged and the triangle of sunlight in her peripheral vision disappeared.

He was TOO CLOSE.

She pushed a hand to her mouth and breathed juddery breaths through her nose.
Don’t panic. You’re in control.

‘Helen…’

Oh God… He’d never spoken her name like THAT before.
‘What, what?!’ She span around, and pressed her back into the chair putting her hands up in front. Ready.

He stood looking down at her. ‘We need to talk.’

A rush of terrifying possibilities played in her head:

‘You’re madder than I thought. You need locking up.’

‘This isn’t really a new therapy room. I’m a rapist and I’ve brought you here to have sex with you.’

‘You know when you lost your memory? Well you murdered someone and the police are waiting outside the door.’

‘Maggy…’ he continued.

‘ “Maggy”?’ she shouted. ‘Who the hell’s Maggy?’

He sat down, at last.
‘A colleague. She’s agreed to counsel you. I think we have a problem – a wall – here – with me being a man. You’re not telling me much… You’re… Well I think you’d be less… Nervous… Worried… I don’t know. You might find talking to a woman… Easier? Perhaps.’

She said nothing.

‘She said she’d be here in a minute and then we could all have a chat. If that’s okay, of course…? Do you…? Well. Would it be a good idea, do you think?’

She looked at her feet; invisible toes tapping. ‘Whatever. I’m not sure what difference it would make.’

‘Really?’

‘Memory loss is memory loss.’

‘But…Your… Fear. Do you think you’re uncomfortable around men?’

‘Well, I…’

There was a knock at the door and a woman entered. They talked. In front of her. She was merely required to nod where appropriate.
He told the woman everything about the head injury, the memory loss, the escape from hospital, the fear of being touched.

‘Do you want to remember what happened, Helen? Or do you feel safer not knowing?’ asked the new therapist.

Ah. The old sprouts or cabbage question… She shrugged honestly.

*

Mummy and Daddy were shouting as if she wasn’t there again, while she sat in the corner shaking her head and biting her nails. It was always about how naughty she was to run away. Why did they say that? That wasn’t how it happened. She would close her eyes and think of funny things to make her smile.

*

‘Well. That’s it. Thank you.’ The female therapist approached, grinning, grabbing her hand to shake it. ‘I’ll see you…’
Helen snatched back her hand, ‘Don’t touch me!’ she yelled, punching the therapist in the stomach. She stood up, slapped her hard across the face. ‘Don’t you ever, ever touch me!’
She ran from the room, wailing. As she slammed the door behind her, she saw the keys were still in the lock. She turned them and leaned against the door, breathing heavily.

‘Well that went well,’ she heard the woman laugh. It was a deep, natural laugh. ‘But Jeez, Paul, didn’t you ever stop to think that this touching stuff goes back further than the memory loss?’

Feeling tears build, Helen unlocked the door and stared at her.

‘Do you like jokes?’ she asked.

Maggie nodded.

‘Just don’t touch me again. I never could shake hands.’

Oct 4

9 Comments

The Life Cycle Of A Pair Of Jeans

A short story
Four and a half months after Constance’s birth Mia tried on her old jeans and smiled. The stiff denim felt good after a year of saggy, baggy, shapeless convenience.
‘Hello old friends. I missed you.’ She turned left and right in the mirror, arching her back and caressing her thighs.
‘Wow!’ announced her younger sister, Emma, ‘You look great!’

Two years later, the jeans were hidden at the back of the wardrobe again and the saggy baggies resumed their dominance.
It took longer for her figure to bounce back this time. But, finally, when Willoughby was a year old, she hauled the waistband over her soft, stretch-mark-ridged hips and tugged the buttonhole and the button together across her blancmange stomach.
‘Fab,’ said Carl, slapping her arse as he walked past.

But Emma’s reaction was one of sympathy this time. ‘Oh, you’ve not had time to go clothes shopping for years, poor thing. How about a trip to town and we get you some fashionable jeans? Those are a bit cardboardy. Jeans have more shape these days.’

Mia looked down at the soft, fading-yet-faithful blue and couldn’t see what was wrong but nodded.

The new, thinner jeans, ‘with 5% elastane’ needed pulling up every two minutes, shrank in the wash and lasted five months before they looked as if tiny maggots were escaping from the cloth.

Carl’s team won a match for the first time in two years and Desdemona was born nine months later.

The parents at baby and toddler group were getting younger. Mia felt tatty and exhausted and didn’t recognise the names of the people or places that they talked about. She looked at the other women’s slimfit jeans – worn under long, sexy boots, and as she watched them totter around on heels she felt old, fat and isolated. Emma had moved to Sri Lanka now, and wore khaki shorts every day, and talked about elephants.

She tried to pull on her old jeans, frowned, tucked them back into hiding and ordered skirts from the Internet.

She and Carl both lost their jobs and moved into a smaller house. Before she folded her old jeans and placed them carefully in a bag to go in the loft, she checked the pockets and found well-washed paper crumbs from some sort of ticket from her past. She thought back to when they used to sit in the prickly old seats in the cinema; when Carl took her to endless horror films, and how she was so thin she could curl her legs underneath her and snuggle up to Carl to hide her face in his shoulder as he laughed.
Now though, they ate too many take-aways, never went to the cinema and never encouraged the other to touch them for fear of disappointment.

When Carl left her to live in Glasgow with Denise from the chippy, he took the car with him. Now so plump and swollen Mia couldn’t remove her wedding ring even though she soaked her hands in ice, screaming with the pain and anguish of desertion; the desperation of betrayal causing her to bruise her knuckle until the veins swelled and her fingertip went blue.

She walked the children one point seven miles to school and back every day, and listened to their cries of indignation in the wind or rain or heat, and noted their dazed silence at the gob-smacking cold of winter early mornings. They lived on jacket potatoes and value beans. She drifted from day-to-day with a permanent headache, always leaving the little cheese and fruit she could afford for the children. She didn’t realise how thin she’d become until her wedding ring came off, as she twisted and turned it in hate, whilst waiting at a bus stop in the pouring rain with holes in her shoes.
Desdemona wasn’t growing well. At six she was the smallest and thinnest in her class and her tiny chilblained toes had swelled to such a size she needed time off school.
Although she tried, no one could employ someone who wanted to finish work at three and spend weekends with her children.

Carl phoned his children and cried, and sent useless, made-in-China, cheap plastic things but said he couldn’t afford to send money.

She was first in the queue at 5am for the first-come, first-served allotments. She took her fair share of free Co-op seeds, and went to the almost-empty, closing-down library to buy shabby 25-pence gardening books. She sold her wedding ring and bought four pairs of good, stout, all-purpose boots, and thick socks, and with her final pounds she bought a squeaky second-hand wheelbarrow and a rusty gardening fork.

She fetched the old clothes from the loft and put on her now too-big old jeans. She looped an old scarf through the belt hooks and fondly stroked the strong thick denim.

The other allotment-holders ran to her rescue as she fainted from weakness and hunger on the first day’s digging and clearing. There and then they all vowed to look after each other. Penny, from the now-closed library, brought Mia cheese sandwiches and pasta. John, from the closed down pub, who kept poultry where his beer garden used to be, swapped eggs and chickens for marrows and carrots, and lent Mia his car to drive to Glasgow so the children could see their father.

Her jeans fitted perfectly now. Smattered with holes and sun-bleached, they were permanently off-colour and they creased where she creased. As she leaned against the car and waited to pick the children up, Denise strolled over and eyed her jealously. ‘I see you’re doin’ alreet for yerself wi’ yer trendy designer jeans and yer fancy car,’ she scorned.

Mia looked down, and thought back to the day in 1989 when she’d got her first job and bought the jeans. She didn’t want them to be fashionable; they were far too durable.



Oct 7

20 Comments

Dear Baby

An experimental point-of-view for me, created from the prompt word: apple

To my gorgeous, handsome son (I don’t think I’ve ever used the word gorgeous before!),

I don’t know if you will ever read this. I hope your mummy keeps it safe and shows it to you some day. What I really hope is that I will have the chance to tell you myself, over and over, throughout your life.

I have never felt anything like this before and I am trying to put my thoughts into words. What I feel is confusing but strong. It’s like everything is both very right and very wrong at the same time.

So, what’s right? Well, you. You are perfect and I cannot believe you are real or that it was possible for me to feel so much deep love and pride in an instant. You made me a grown up overnight. The second you were born life seemed so much more real and full of purpose. I saw how quickly I had grown from a boy to a man and how quickly you would too. It made me want to be something, do something with my life to make you proud. I want to set you a good example – show you how to be a decent, strong human being. And that is why I am going.

You see, everything until now has been kind of casual. For three years I’ve worked at a boring job for not much money and spent most of that money on going out at weekends. It was all okay-ish – getting by, being young, having a laugh. This is the stuff that’s wrong.
Your mummy and I came on holiday to see if we could get on. We never lived together – we still lived with our own mums and dads. Maybe she’ll tell you all this. But I’m scared of losing you and I want to get my thoughts down so you can hear my version of things.
I don’t know what they’ll teach you in school but sometimes you don’t have to be in love to make a baby and you don’ t have to be together to be a family. I’m so glad I met your mummy and over the moon that you came along but it is very clear to me – I feel it very strongly – that we can’t live together, Mummy and me. I want to be with you more than I can ever possibly tell you. To look into your big eyes each morning when you smile hello, to snuggle your clean little body into me after a bath, to hold your hands when you take your first steps, to hear your first words and to be there when you are poorly. But you need your mummy more than I need you right now. She is a good mummy, she gives you everything you want, and loves you with all her heart. And that is why it is me that must go. But how I wish I could bring you to Somerset with me.

Right now, you are sleeping in your buggy outside in the sunshine, and I am sat next to you, looking down at you. I feel so totally helpless and sad. The sun is soft, warm and golden, and your little cheeks are glowing like the golden russet apples on the trees all around us. Did you know they mix different varieties of apples to make the best cider? The next orchard grows a really sharp variety that you would not want to pick from the tree and eat! I’ll tell you all about it one day. Inside the cottage that we rented, your mummy is packing her bag and your bag. Soon she’ll take you back to Bedford and I’ll have to say goodbye and you will have no idea. We didn’t even last a week. The minute we arrived she said she hated it and I said I loved it. I picked up an apple from the ground and took a bite, and I saw a look in her eyes that told me we were in trouble.

Although it’s all gone wrong, it was the right thing to do. How ridiculous does that sound?
What sort of parents would we be to stay together and live a lie?
I’m not going to be a dad that is stuck in a dead end job that he hates, and just sending money once a month and bumping into you in town, either. That would be too easy. Too lazy. No, I’m going to show you how much I love you by growing up for you, and that includes showing you how to chase your dreams, and find happiness. One day mummy and I will find love and you will see that we are better parents when we are not together. You will learn how adults must sometimes take the difficult route to make things right. Even when it feels like your heart is being ripped out.
I want to whisper in your ear every night how much I love you, but instead I will whisper it to the stars and look forward to the times we will spend together in the future.

All my love, always,
Daddy

PS Be good for Mummy and Grandma and Grandad,

(Please, Mummy, when you find this note, keep it safe for him.)

Oct 11

15 Comments

Writing: the rules

I don’t have time for a well-thought out, lengthy blog post but I wanted to share something that has socked me between the eyes recently.

I have begun a literature module with The Open University this month, and the first part attempts to address the question: ‘What is literature for?’
The first text is Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard. It’s my first experience of Chekhov and I was quite nervous so I read about him and his life in the introduction and thought he sounded like my kind of writer: a rule challenger. A bit of a maverick.

I have wanted for ages to write a proper discussion about writing ‘rules’ because a lot of them frustrate and irritate me enormously. It seems, often, that people can follow every so-called ‘rule’ in the many how-to books out there, only to ignore what to me is the most crucial step: to make your writing understood by constructing sentences properly and spelling and punctuating well – or at least getting someone that can to do it for you. Properly. I see link after link to posts about how to write and the rules of writing. I studied creative writing for 2 years and read about some of the ‘shoulds’ and ‘should nots’. It seems we must twist and bend, and force to fit a formula, our beautiful bubbles of creativity that pop from our minds and not share the whole creation if they don’t follow the rules.

Here’s an example:
One of my short stories for my tutor last year was about a coach crash. I wanted to show how incidents involving a great number of people will have several different stories. I knew that I would have trouble getting a reader to grasp several different view-points in a short space but if I could picture it and describe it well enough I could have more than one main character. I don’t always think the good versus bad, or a main protagonist to sympathise with, works. Sometimes things haven’t happened the way we thought we saw them and sometimes there are several wrongs or several rights or several positions that have us scratching our chins. Life is like that.
My tutor’s response was understandably: ‘Just whose story is this?!’ I was expecting that. Even if she liked it the rules were, that in a short story, I should stick to one main point of view.

Imagine my delight when upon reading The Cherry Orchard I found that there was no main protagonist to sympathise with, lots of different characters – each with their own strong story and lots of names and confusion to get our heads around.
I liked this passage in my course book so much, I wrote, ‘Good for him!’ in the margin:
‘None of the characters seems to stand absolutely condemned, or absolutely supported by Chekhov.’ Hooray, hooray, hooray! I may even have clapped.

I think if you want light-hearted entertainment, escapism, something to help you drop off to sleep at night, you never want to re-read a passage because it’s all clear. If you want to have a sense of all loose ends tied up and a feeling of finality when you turn the last page, the message delivered to you by the author, then that’s what literature is for.
Or…
If you want to be made to think about stuff, consider complicated characters, feel as if you have dropped from the sky to visit a world that will carry on once you’ve gone, leaving you wondering what will happen after the final page, have to re-read the odd page to see if you’ve understood correctly, make up your own mind about stuff, then that is what literature is for.
Sometimes we are left thinking about a book after we have read it and have more questions than when we started. I want to write that kind of stuff. I’m so glad I’m delving deeper into literature than I did when I was younger and realising that it’s okay to challenge a few rules and play around with your writing.
If you like obvious beginnings, middles and endings, and baddies, heros and villains that fulfil their conventional roles, then you may not always like my writing. I can write to a formula. But I’d really rather not every time.
My mother said next time someone demands, ‘Just whose story is this?!’ I must reply firmly, ‘It’s mine.’

13 Oct, a later addition. Here’s a brilliant guest post by Mike French on Elizabeth Baines’s blog about the ‘thirst for instant recognition and complete comprehension’: Fiction Bitch – What’s the Story (fiction as art)?

NB I realise the question of what literature is for goes much deeper and people have been discussing it a lot longer than I have – so I shall be continuing to find out more.

Oct 14

3 Comments

Smoke and Shadows


The headlights revealed a straight tarmac road and level wasteland as far as they could shine. Christina assumed the fine mist collecting on the windscreen was from the nearing ocean. A man was discussing infertile fish on the local radio station, listing toxins in a river, but as she flicked on the wipers his voice faded and, before she could hear the river’s name, the radio went silent. Her mobile phone beeped its no signal warning and she felt claustrophobic pressure at her temples and chest as if being enclosed and squeezed momentarily.
Rather than cleaner, the windscreen appeared smeary so she squirted the screen wash.
And then, as quickly as it had come on, the pressure subsided, the radio became audible again and her phone lit back up. She felt as if the air was lighter and bubbles fluttered in her abdomen.

Christina saw the wall she had been expecting, drove behind it, and stopped.
Motion-sensitive lights lit up a long, glass archway leading to a door. She walked through as she had been directed.

The door opened.

They both stared as if neither was quite expecting what they were seeing. Christina reminded herself that she was not at work and Mrs Cook’s health concerns were none of her business… Even if her left eye looked decidedly low compared to the right…

Mrs Cook? I’m Chris Philpotts.
Mrs Cook took her outstretched hand and blinked slowly. ‘Doctor Philpotts?’
Christina nodded.
Mrs Cook gestured her inside and closed the door behind them. ‘Forgive me – I was expecting a man. An older man.’ She seemed disturbed.
Christina looked around at rooms joined by more glass tunnels. ‘Oh, it’s wonderful. And you designed it yourselves?’
Mrs Cook smiled faintly. ‘Yes. 1976. When we were young and adventurous. There were lots of interesting things happening with angles and shapes, and that glass tunnel at the Pompidou in Paris. Bob’s an architect, you see… Was an architect…’ She rubbed her hands distractedly.
‘Oh, you can tell. Oh, I do love the angle of that ceiling.’

Christina walked to tall, wide windows. A terraced garden was floodlit and the steps down were peppered with built-in lights. The planting looked sparse and structural, and there was a large level lawn at the bottom. Beyond she could see nothing but black night. ‘That looks like a lot of fun for kids.’ She turned around smiling.
‘I suppose.’ Mrs Cooke remained by the hall door, looking uncomfortable. ‘Are you a scientist? A Ph.D?’
‘No, a medical doctor.’
‘You’re not what I was expecting. Do you have a family?’
‘No… I…’ Bubbles in the abdomen again. So soon? Could she be feeling him kick at only 17 weeks? ‘Well… Yes. I suppose I do!’ She grinned and placed her hand where she felt the flutter.
Mrs Cook put her hand to her mouth and shook her head. ‘I’m sorry. This has all been a mistake. You shouldn’t have come. Please go.’
Christina hurried to the door, not wanting to upset the poor woman any further. She would come back another day. Maybe the estate agent could show her around next time.
She turned to thank her. Should she mention the eye? No, she couldn’t.

‘You mustn’t touch the residue on your car.’ Mrs. Cook called as she closed the door. Don’t clean the windscreen with bare hands. Not in your condition. And keep your windows closed!’

Christina drove away, sadly. The poor woman. She seemed so confused and upset. Whatever was affecting her face was clearly affecting her cohesion too. Did she know she was dying? Is that why she was selling the house?

The almost-full moon was clearer as she left but it soon became semi-obscured by mist. Two minutes into her journey her phone bleeped and the radio cut out again, and she felt the same sensation of pressure. She stopped the car, flicked off the headlights. She looked around for the moon, the lights from the house wall behind her. She opened a window and felt a weighty presence in the air. As she turned on the interior light, fine, silvery/white curls twisted playfully into the car, exploring her space, dancing with the light.
It wasn’t mist. It was smoke.
She closed the window and drove away from swirling shadows, with the sensation of coming out of a dark tunnel.

‘I have a Mr Cook’s X-ray, for you, Chris:
“Sixty-Five. Shadows on both lungs. Plays tennis. Never smoked”. How was the house?’
‘Beautiful. Individual. Strange. I absolutely loved it… Ah, Mr Cook. You play tennis, I hear?’
‘Well. I can’t do anything now, but yes. We have our own court. Astroturf though. Couldn’t get the damned grass to grow…’

Oct 21

11 Comments

Pink like poison…

Flash fiction from the prompt words: procrastinate, pink and Tiffany.

Her voice was loud. Everyone was a ‘darling!’

No one but Tiffany knew how the almost-mother-in-law secretly killed people with her compliments. The bigger the ‘darling!’ the greater the disdain. And if you received a gushing compliment about the way you looked? Dead. You were the most hated.

‘Oh, pink, darling, pink. I think we’ve agreed amaranth pink. I shall be doing the table decorations and Tiffany’s agreed to let me help with the bridesmaids’ dresses.’ Tiffany could hear the almost-mother-in-law lying so loudly about things they’d barely discussed she would make them fact. She did that.

That’s how they ended up engaged after all, wasn’t it…

She held her head straight, wincing at the way the revoltingly sweet rosé kicked her saliva glands into action on an empty stomach, and eyed James sideways as more people were brought over to him to be introduced. James wasn’t darling. James was ‘James’, ‘My James’. That’s how much she adored him. She watched the almost-mother-in-law stroke his head and loudly announce May as the month they would marry. May for the pink cherry blossom. Tiffany wondered if perhaps she was needed for the wedding after all. Perhaps she’d got it all wrong and James was marrying his mother.

May was traditionally an unlucky month to marry, some old hag was saying. The old woman had better watch out or she might get an OTT compliment about her scarf. She’d already had two darlings and was heading for a third. Tiffany pressed a tissue to where she’d snorted rosé down her nostrils and excused herself to phone her mother. Where was she?
She typed ‘amaranth pink’ into her phone’s Internet browser and stared up at James. He raised one hand, leant his head to one side and half-smiled with only the left side of his mouth. All halves.
Maybe they could get half-dressed and get half-married, thought Tiffany, putting down her half-drunk wine, phoning her mother’s phone and walking into the long entrance hall.
‘Sodding-amaranth-sodding-pink,’ she muttered, waiting as it rang.
But she was here already. There she was striding towards her. Glamorous as ever in a black suit with her thick, long grey hair twisted elegantly behind her head.
‘Mum!’ They hugged tightly and Tiffany indulged in a brief second of escapism, closing her eyes and drawing her mother’s familiar scent into her head. For once she was taller than Tiffany with her knee-length, high-heeled boots over her trousers. The almost-mother-in-law would hate the black.

Maybe they could get married in black.

‘You’re fab,’ Tiffany whispered, squeezing her mother’s hand and leading her into the room.

‘Oh daaaarlings! There you are! You beautiful darlings! Look at them, everyone. Don’t they look exquisite?! The most beautiful women in the room!’

Murdered.

Yes. Black. In January. In five years. Whenever really…



N.B. I read an article by Germaine Greer once where she attacked the colour pink. Although I disagreed with her claim that ‘Nothing beautiful was ever pink,’ I remembered it today and did a search for it. It was written in November 2007. She also wrote, ‘Pink is the colour of hypocrisy,’ and ‘Pink, like poison, must be used sparingly,’ which was where my title comes from.
I wonder if she still stands by everything she wrote that day…
Here’s the article if you want a laugh: Why has the world gone pink mad?

Thank you to @sleepycatt and @simiansuter for giving me the writing prompts on Twitter!

Oct 22

10 Comments

Sticks and stones may break my bones but words…

… and insults will slowly and painfully eat me up from the inside.

Before we judge someone – anyone – we should make sure we’re not just being a nasty bastard.

Name-calling
Judgemental comments
Bitching/backbiting
Throw away insults
Unnecessary criticism
Assumptions

They’re all forms of bullying and I hate them all.

We’ve all done it though.
Some more than others.
Before we insult anyone we should make sure we know what we are talking about. Chances are by the time we’ve found out what the people we think we have the right to judge are really like, we will want to withdraw our comments.
And I suspect the comments we make about others are quite often more to do with our own failings than theirs.

I think name-calling and derogatory comments are far worse than swearing. And yet I see people complain far more about swearing.
I think insults are possibly even worse than a single punch.
I was hit once at school. Thrown to the ground by a girl in my year. My arms were full of books and I couldn’t defend myself or even balance myself. So I ended up on my arse on a cold, hard floor. Bruised my backside.
But what really upset me – and still upsets me – are the names that girl called me on a daily basis. Nasty names. Insulting language.
The most interesting thing about it, though, is that she didn’t know me. She really didn’t know me. If she knew me, she would have known that it wasn’t true. She might have seen that she was hurting me, and being unfair, she might even have cared that she was hurting me, and quite frankly talking crap, if she really knew me.
She wasn’t the only one. Other girls made assumptions about me. And even some teachers. Someone even gave me the wrong report once at 6th form college and I was too shy and upset to point out that they’d got the wrong Rachel.

It’s happened a lot to me. I bet it happens to everyone at some point.

And throw away comments about people’s appearance and behaviour, and name-calling those who think differently from us happens far too often in social media.

Before you call someone a leftie-greenie-hippie or a prophet of doom because they care about the environment, or a softie, middle-class liberal because they care about libraries and the arts, or even stupid because their spelling is bad, or scum because they live on benefits, or a grumpy unsocial git because they seem angry, opinionated or moody, stop and think about what you are saying. Do you know that person? Do you have the right to judge them? Are you, in fact, just being short-sighted and narrow-minded? What gives us the right to name-call? When we do this are we not instantly making ourselves a less worthwhile human being?

After all, name-calling is the stuff of childhood, of misunderstanding, of naivety…

Is it perhaps just a lazy way of saying we don’t understand a person or a type of person? And that lack of understanding surely means we actually don’t have the right or enough information to be so unkind.

I think if someone thinks they are wonderful enough to be prime minister then perhaps they are setting themselves up to be called a lizard but what about the rest of us? Us mere mortals?

I name-call. I shout insults at the TV when Question Time is on. I call the government ministers names when they make plans for things that I can see will hurt lots of people and I think they are being ignorant. I have called Margaret Thatcher a cow and Boris Johnson an idiotic prat, but what I really mean is I really have no reason to agree with how they do things and I am absolutely frustrated by the way they see the world. I shouldn’t do it though. It’s cheap.

When I hear environmentalists called ‘prophets of doom’, or people that write about or fight for social justice ‘do-gooders’, or ‘softies’ or ‘liberal whingers’ I think that those throwing away those easy insults are being lazy and narrow-minded. They’re not thinking about what they are saying. People that fight for things, stick their necks out and see a bigger picture outside their own sphere are not soft, they are actually very brave and taking the difficult option in doing something for their fellow humans that risks small-minded judgemental nastiness.

Next time I’m about to reach for the easy insults I will try to remember how it feels and work out what I really want to say.

(I’m going to really struggle whenever Jeremy Clarkson appears on my TV screen, though… )

First person to call me a ‘softie, liberal do-gooder, out-of-touch with reality’ gets a slap ;)

Oct 30

18 Comments

National Novel ‘Starting’ Month

There are lots of blogs, articles, and opinions out there about National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), so I wasn’t going to add to them.

But I felt an unexpected compulsion to share a thought this morning.

It’s just this:

People will tell you what NaNoWriMo is for. They will tell you what it is not for. They will tell you how great it is or they will tell you what a waste of time it is. They will share their experiences of doing, or reasons for not doing, NaNoWriMo.
Some people pick up random snippets of information about NaNoWriMo and think they know that it is all about wannabe writers completing a hurriedly written novel in a month and then sending it straight to a publisher to be – most likely – rejected. Well that may be what a small percentage is doing. But I don’t know anyone who has done that.

What no one can tell you is what you will get from NaNoWriMo. The NaNoWriMo book: No Plot? No Problem! written by NaNoWriMo creator, Chris Baty, couldn’t even tell me what I would get from participating in NaNoWriMo!

Why?

Well because NaNoWriMo like many other ways and implements of writing is a tool. It is something to be picked up, used and taken advantage of in a way that suits the user.

I used NaNoWriMo last year to START a novel. To put aside a month and ask for help from my family to concentrate on getting words on a page, with less outside commitments than usual – just for a month (I couldn’t do this in the summer). I could give them definitive dates that I would stick to. Otherwise every idea I get gets ditched when something else demands of my time. I can manage a short story once or twice a week but can I sit and write out the bones of a novel day-by-day-by-day? No.
I used the recommended daily word count as a way to encourage me to push my story on and out, and worry about editing later (over the next months or years). I used NaNoWriMo as writing permission, a reason, a driving force – a retreat almost. I even had a place I went to (with a t-shirt and a mug!) that was a NaNo-only zone. I had no story plan, no plot, no characters, but by the end of the month I did – I had 50,000 words and a story about a bunch of people doing and saying some interesting things that I think other people might find interesting one day.
One day. After lots of fiddling. No hurry.

I hope to pick up and use NaNoWriMo again for a month on Tuesday – in my own little way.

National Novel Writing Month: It’s just another tool of the job. You may very well use it differently from me. But don’t knock it ‘til you’ve tried it.

Nov 4

28 Comments

Dragons

A flash fiction in dialogue

But I thought you liked ballet.

I do but I don’t like people watching me.

Let me check your hairpins. Stop frowning. It’ll be good for you.

Yes, Mummy.

Competition gives you something to strive for.

Yes, Mummy.

We all need to step out of our comfort zone sometimes.

Our what? Mummy?

Comfort zone. It’s like… Well not just doing things that we find easiest all the time. Erm… Taking risks, being brave, pushing ourselves. Does that make sense?

I’m not sure, Mummy. Do you mean doing things that scare me?

Yes. That’s it. Clever girl!

Why do I want to be scared?

Well, because when it’s over you can say, ‘I’m glad I did that.’

Why would I be glad to be scared?

Because it won’t be as scary as you thought it would after all. You’ll have conquered your fear.

Like slaying a dragon?

Yes!

But I’d rather not.

Why?

I’m not a fighting person. And what if I don’t win?

You’ll have done your best and you’ll be better prepared for next time.

Next time? You want me to be scared again?

No. I want you to face your fears and step out of your comfort zone occasionally.

I think that’s silly.

You do?

Yes. People that want to be scared can watch scary films and do a bungi-jump and be in ballet competitions. The rest of us can carry on not being frightened. And stay in our comfortable zone.

It’s not that kind of comfortable.

Oh?

No. It’s comfort – as in easy, sometimes too easy. Maybe even just doing what’s familiar because you’re scared of the unknown – of taking chances.

I do like the unknown, though, Mummy. I like learning about new things. But I like familiar things too. I don’t have to choose, do I?

What about when you grow up? You’ll have to do all sorts of new and scary things.

Will I have to win competitions?

Well, er, only if you want to.

Well I don’t want to. So can I go home now?

But darling, life is full of risk and fear and I want you to be strong and be prepared. You’ll be okay, I pro –

- Sorry folks. You won’t be performing tonight. The last dancer’s vomited all over the stage. Scared witless. Never seen anyone so white.

She won’t be so scared next time, will she, Mummy? Now she’s slayed her dragon?

No, darling.

- I wouldn’t be so sure of that, love. That’s the third time she’s puked in a competition.

I think she wins, then, doesn’t she? She’s been the most scared. I hope she can go back to being comfortable now.

Nov 11

13 Comments

Window


She opened the bedroom window, almost absent-mindedly, to dilute the noise in her head. She often found she had opened the window without considering it. It was an instinctive thing. Sometimes her skin tingled with itchy heat, sometimes the air inside felt too thick to breathe and sometimes she simply felt so inquisitive she knew she just had to peer into the treetop views that she felt so much less in touch with throughout cold autumn rainy times.
She took two nostrils of cool breeze and then ducked her head back in again quickly to avoid the light droplets of rain that were falling with increasing persistence. Then she stood at the windowsill with her legs twisted so that her feet were positioned on the wrong sides, exhaled deeply, and listened.
The wind purred with the gentle noises it was tumbling together: The distant ocean, the air whooshing though the rows of half-bare trees, the fickle tickle of bramble leaves still clinging determinedly within the hedges, a helicopter so far away that its blades seemed to scribble at the air like a pencil on a hard surface under a single sheet of paper. Someone, somewhere was sawing something – lopping off a tree branch or cutting slates to fit a kitchen floor, or maybe even building a birdhouse – she liked that idea and dwelled on the positivity of it.
Birdcalls came in piccolo spurts and sea-saw violin bowings and oboe parps like a modern uneven symphony, while the jackdaws chacka-chackered percussively and the rain pattered below her on the plastic conservatory roof like impatient fingernails. Road traffic engines growled higher and lower, changing gear on the hill, coming closer – almost too close – before fading away again.

She saw that she had missed the designated countrywide silence for 11th November, and wondered if that made her a bad person. She had read Wilfred Owen’s famously ghastly war poem many times in the last few years and winced in horror at the ‘froth-corrupted lungs’, she had heard news of deaths from war on television almost daily and taken a moment to think of awfulness, sacrifice, and loss, and wondered at the futility, the people who benefitted, the people who were left with nothing. Regularly war bothered her. Loss bothered her. The shortness of life bothered her. And the wasting of lives all over the world bothered her. Of course she wasn’t a bad person; she took moments out of every day to consider, and to care.
She knew when sadness washed over her to go with it, to take time, not to force it to either come or go. She had seen terrible suffering, felt loss and understood pain.
Moments came and went. Remembrance came and went. Sadness came and went.

She was distracted by a tractor struggling noisily uphill in front of her. She thought of the nagging hunger in her stomach, the lonely dog downstairs, and the washing to be done.

A little sadness was carried with her daily, unforced. It was always there.

Oh look – she’d left the window open again.

Nov 14

7 Comments

NaNoNoMore

Some brains don’t do busy very well.

Today I made the important decision to draw a line under my mad NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) dash this year.
I have written nothing for it for ten days. But I have written other things so I know that I can only blame my finger injury and family life for three of those days, and the rest has been me just not getting down to it, and maybe a feeling that perhaps the time isn’t right this month.

Because I’d enjoyed the experience and was pleased with how I managed to squeeze everything in last year, I wanted to achieve something similar this year. I cried when I finished last year. At the time I was taking creative writing and psychology modules with the OU and probably just about got away with not putting enough effort into my studies for a few weeks.

It turns out that that the literature course I am doing this year involves me thinking a lot more than I have ever had to before and when I’m not thinking I want to play with the washing or the garden or go for a walk, or even talk to my husband. When I am writing for anything other than OU at the moment I want it to be with little or no commitment; a piece of flash, a blog post, not part of something I’m tied to. It’s possible that reading about how other writers write is so interesting that I’m taking longer reading and thinking about the discussions in the course books than the suggested hours of study. I can see how some of it relates to the way I write – and some of it doesn’t – and empathise with the lives I read about in their letters or by the people who have studied them.

I have one of those infuriating heads that is probably equally as infuriating to those who know me as it is to me. I just cannot have a lot going on in my life or even my ears, in my vision, in the same room as me! I think this is why I am terrible socially – it’s sensory overload plus thought chaos. Sometimes I can’t even read Twitter because the thought of having to cope with a conversation overwhelms me. Odd I know. It can make me seem rude or selfish when sometimes it is quite the opposite; I’m internally wrangling about the best way to deal with a situation.

Yesterday I had what I suppose is commonly described as a meltdown.
I felt that I might as well have been spinning on the spot singing in Elvish at the top of my voice while the room turned onto a whirl of indefinable whooshes of colour and I tried to catch random curve balls. I was and am getting nowhere, completing nothing and wondering how to prioritise. I was also coming down with a cold and felt something’s got to give before I end up with post-viral fatigue again.

So, I’m clearing the decks in order to limit the ‘everything and nothing’ feeling. I can’t focus – I don’t know how to but I can make sure I have only one thing in front of me so that when my eyes or my mind wander they can’t stray too far.

Good luck to everyone still on the mad, fun NaNoWriMo ride. I love it, and wish everyone well.

Maybe next year…

Or maybe I’ll have my own private NaNoWriMo without telling anyone. ;)

Nov 20

4 Comments

Make. Perceive. Communicate.

Auden in 1946 for LIFE Magazine

Auden in 1946 for LIFE Magazine

I read this just now in A Twentieth Century Reader: Texts and Debates. It was written by Auden in 1938 for the introduction to The Oxford Book of Light Verse:

‘Behind the work of any creative artist there are three principal wishes:
the wish to make something;
the wish to perceive something, either in the external world of sense or the internal world of feeling;
and the wish to communicate these perceptions to others.’

I liked it very much because it is exactly how I feel. He went on to say:

‘Those who have no interest in or talent for making something, i.e. no skill in a particular artistic medium, do not become artists; they dine out, they gossip at street corners, they hold forth in cafés. Those who have no interest in communication do not become artists either, they become mystics or madmen.’

So we’re all mad, or gossipy diners, or artists. I wonder if I could fit everyone I know into just those three categories!
;)

Nov 22

5 Comments

Responsibility Planets

Or How do I stop my creativity becoming like Pluto?

It comes back time and time again this topic: getting down to writing; finding time, getting permission, clearing one’s head, finding peace, finding inspiration, finding a reason (or giving others – who don’t see why you do it – a reason). This is related, I suppose to my previous post: the wish to make, perceive and communicate something. And is, I think, why so many people that enjoy one art, have an interest in other arts.

Tess Daly has recently written and published a novel, I hear. I know nothing more than that, except she has a busy life and very young children. How did she do it?
I couldn’t have fitted enough creative time into my life to write a book when I had young children and I didn’t have to host a television show. In fact, I could barely stand up straight I was so tired all the time.
Now the children are at school I still only write when I feel safe from the risk of interruption. So, how on earth did she manage it?

I’ve come up with a shortlist of possibilities:

a) She cheated and had help writing it
b) It’s crap
c) She had time out and domestic help in order to think
d) She’s one of those amazing people that can write amid chaos and possibly with a completely unrelated buzz going on around her.
e) She is not human (or can cope on little or no sleep).
Or, f) A combination of any of the above.

I know I couldn’t have done things like that. Even when my kids were sleeping it was about making food, tidying up, washing, shopping lists, showering before they woke up again. Often one can’t even take a pee with little people about. My children were Jupiter when they were little – always the biggest responsibility in my solar system.

You see I have ‘Responsibility Planets’ that spin around me constantly. I’ve probably described this differently in past blog posts. In fact, I know I have. But it’s the same principle: there are things I know I ought to be doing, I want to be doing, I have to be doing, I could be doing, other people want me to be doing, society thinks I should be doing, things I have entrusted other people to do but I’m worrying about whether they will do them right, things I haven’t done, even things to think about in the future that I’ve already started worrying about.
Now… These responsibility planets should be arranged in order of size according to importance but for some reason in my brain they are not.

So how do I swat away that Jupiter-sized responsibility telling me, for example, my daughter’s swimming kit needs washing – even though it’s another week until she’ll be needing it? Or Saturn with it’s annoying little ‘You haven’t bought your Christmas cards yet,’ ringing out over and over again as it turns (Did you see what I did there? ;) )

Well…. I tried other people’s ways, and other people’s advice, and guess what? It turns out I’m not like other people, just like other people are not like other people. But what I did spot were the things going on in the wider Internet community that I could slot into my life that suited me. So now I have a mercury-sized piece to write for my daily journal on my blipfoto and photo to take everyday; in January I will have a Mars-sized (or maybe even a Mars Bar-sized) small stone written every day (Yes, you WILL, Rachel) And here’s last year’s small stones, if you’re interested. And whenever the big planets swing out of the way, I write a flash fiction or a blog post. And that’s how I’m handling my planets at the moment. Sometimes I fly too close to the sun and I have a few days with scorched wings feeling empty and useless. (Just coming out of one of those periods now, touch wood) and then I’m back doing my best to duck and dive those great hulking responsibilities that just will not go away even when poor old Pluto (who was asked to leave the party and can now see things clearly from the outside) points out to me that fancy rings may be eye-catching but they are just fancy rings. Maybe he’s jealous, because he’s just like the iron these days, baby – completely out of the picture. Oh, and I have noticed how the vacumm cleaner gets jealous too and takes on the form of Uranus to grab my attention. But size isn’t everything…

So here’s my advice to me to help me be creative every day in some small way. Because I’m not Tess Daly, and there’s no one else weird like me so I’m guessing no one else needs this advice:

Keeping a Blipfoto Journal
Completed once-a-day in order to include a small amount of writing into every day and something to look back on for inspiration, or just a laugh, like a diary. Includes a daily photo that can be as artistic – or not – as I have time, energy or inclination for. Some of these have been atrocious, which actually was kind of fun in itself. I can end each day with the thought: ‘Today I’ve been creative in some small way,’ even when I’m ill.

Learning to roll with it
What’s important in life is a very subjective thing, and a tough one for me.
If I get a creative idea when I have just opened the dishwasher or turned on my hairdryer or started tidying the sitting room, or opened up an Excel sheet to do some bookwork, I should stop what I’m doing and go with the creative idea before it evaporates. The rest will wait. Housework is good at waiting and so is the mirror. Accountants and HMRC less so… Society has taught us to be too concerned with appearances. So: No getting taken in by fancy rings. If Saturn says, ‘Vacuum,’ Shout back ‘Schmackuum!’ (Oh no, hang on – Uranus was the vacuum, wasn’t it?)

Accepting there is no such thing as the perfect mother-slash-writer…
(…called Rachel Carter who lives in North Devon and writes this blog) But there is such a thing as fulfilment – which has positive knock-on effects in all sorts of directions. (take a breath here:) Seeing a mother who is not conforming to gender stereotypes and instead is looking at the world around her, and trying to make some sense out of it all in her own way before her brief time on this planet is over is better than watching a mother whirl around crying that she can’t keep up with everything and doesn’t see the point in it all. I get things wrong on a daily basis. I have regrets about what I have or haven’t done every day but I have less of a feeling of worthlessness now – which has got to be better to be around than Mrs. Weepy-‘get-out-your-feet-are-dirty-I-can’t-believe-you-all-treat-me-like-an-unpaid-cleaner’-Mop.

Keeping madness on the page and not out in public
Stifled creativity and years of suppressing natural needs is destructive. Forcing myself to do things time and time again and not obey the little light inside means that occasionally I had little outbursts of creative thoughts that Jo Public really isn’t interested in. I remember once, saying, ‘Sometimes I look out and see the view and sometimes all I see is dirty windows.’ Most people would rather you didn’t have weird little outbursts like that and may go around telling everyone you’re mad. But put it on a page and – hey presto! – You’re a writer!
(Unless of course, you’re a member of the Bloomsbury group and can just go around being arty farty all the time and ‘Bravo!’ing each other. Personally, I’d rather be able to watch Come Dine With Me occasionally and not worry about academic snobbery or keeping up a continuous persona)

Find a non-obligatory, non-judgemental, fear-free way of communicating creatively
Being part of the Friday Flash, once-a-week flash fiction community is great and – if it works for you – so are short story competitions, sending stuff to magazines, etc. But I like to throw some thoughts and words around without fear of being judged, or clashing with someone’s taste. Different opinions are often just that and can stunt creative freedom. Occasionally, the feedback I get on my stories can be unwelcome when I’m not in the mood, and I write differently when I am not paralysed by the burden of fear. I believe I write better when it’s just me being me. So getting involved in something like small stones. (See January’s A River of Stones) is a great experience, freedom, practice, discipline, for finding an individual way of looking at the world. And I think that’s important. We do all have our own individual way of looking at the world and it should flourish and not be confused by expectation, or clouded by received thoughts handed down by others. I’m guessing most people haven’t even found theirs. It’s a shame because we can all find an artist within if we give our imaginations a chance. The world would be a far better place if people used their imaginations a bit more, instead of blindly repeating stuff other people say or do without thought or good reason. Some people work really hard just to make lots of money. I find that soulless, pointless and vulgar and instead work really hard just to make sense. Oooh… Hello… I’m going off on the wrong spaceship…

So, there you have it – I mean, there I have it – my top themes for me: Regularity, acceptance, freedom, sanity (– or doing it to stop me going mad and being hell to be around), and planet-sized stereotypical conventions and guilt ducking (I must find a snappier way of expressing that one). I still hear the housework calling because I hate clutter and find tidiness, light and open spaces more inspiring than a house full of pointless piles of crap (can you hear it getting to me?) but I have to fight my perfectionist Virgo and even hide her ‘to do’ list if necessary.

Star signs are supposed to be all about how the planets are lined up when we were born.
Curious.

Nov 25

16 Comments

Memory Test

A short story/ flash fiction

They send you back in time. Sometimes you want to go, sometimes you don’t. But you don’t get to choose.
Your mode of transport arrives without warning: a word, a smell, a face, a familiar object, sometimes just a sound, and then there’s music of course.
You can be sitting eating a cheese sandwich, with the radio on, looking out of the window and
Whoosh!
Suddenly you’re back in time twenty-five years. Right where you don’t want to be and there she is coming down the stairs towards you.
‘Dog, slag. Slag, dog. Dog, dog. Slag, slag, slag. Dog. Dog. Dog! DOG!’
Sigh
That staircase. That face.
What lesson was it I was always going to? History? French? I don’t remember.

Does she go back in time too? Does she remember it with pride – how she sorted me good an’ proper and how someone behind her in the shadows baa-ed her name in encouragement?
I see her around now and then. Maybe every couple of years or so. Once, I leaned over her to get some bananas in Sainsbury’s. I needed to prove to myself that she didn’t bother me anymore. Funny how memories have other ideas though.
Bother, bother, bother.
I didn’t look at her. I’d already seen her. I walked away, thinking, ‘I hate you. I hope your tits fall off.’ But I don’t really. I just hate the memory.

And then there are the times when you slide back willingly with a smile and you’re glad that you’re there. Someone mentions ‘sandlewood’ or ‘bathcubes’. Ahhh…. Christmas stockings… I can smell them now…
I move my feet under my covers, feel the weight, hear the sound: Shrinkle. Yep – there it is, shrinkle-ing whenever I turn over. I’ll never go back to sleep now. I’ll have to sit up and just touch it. Stroke it. Lump. Bump. Scrunckle. Peanuts, apple, orange. Crinkle, scrunch. Sharp, pointy…
Burning, heavy eyes.
I’ll just lie down and wait. I know I’ll never go back to sl…

Sometimes it’s better if you go back on your own, don’t you think? Other people change it for you. They say, ‘That’s not how it happened,’ and they take you back to their memory, and it’s not how you remember it at all.

Patrick said I made the first move; said I gave him a look as I ‘sauntered’ (his words) past him to the loos.
‘I know a come on look when I see one,’ he said later.
So that was it; the rest of the evening all panned out – according to him. I’d given him a look and that sealed our fate. And we were going to end up in bed together that night.
Only, that’s not how I remember it. I don’t even remember seeing him until he came over.
A drink, a pleasant enough chat in a roomful of strangers, someone taking a welcome interest in me. The dodgy comment about ‘… all nurses…’ that I put to the back of my mind. The endless compliments that I chose to absorb gushingly and not deflect – which, of course, is what I should have done.
So, yes, I supposed it was my fault. In a way. Lonely young women shouldn’t go to bars on their own. Not like single men do.

The lawyer is wearing a short skirt, she smoothes it and walks towards me, looking down and then back up at me. We all see the relevance.
‘Am I asking for it?’ she presses me. She knows how much I’ve come to doubt myself over the years.

But I went to his house. I let him kiss me.

‘If it’s not what you want, it doesn’t matter what you are wearing. Can you remember what you said, when he started to take it too far?’

I am shaking my head. ‘Every time I see him around, it’s like I need to get away. I feel like I’m in danger. Just his face, and the fear comes flooding back.’

‘And you’ve spoken to him since?’
I nod. ‘He cornered me in a shopping centre about a year later – after I told some friends – and he told me I’d misremembered everything. Told me his friends had seen how I was “all over him.” ’

The lawyer looks like she is counting something in the air.

‘That’s six girls now who he claims have misremembered everything. Not a very memorable date, is he? Why didn’t you just go home?’
‘I was waiting for a taxi. He called me a taxi but it never turned up.’
She’s holding up a novelty Simpsons phone and pressing a few buttons.
‘Eat my shorts!’ says the phone. I’m sat on his sofa biting my nails. He’s laughing like an idiot.
I shudder.
‘Do you remember this?’ the lawyer is saying.
‘I do now.’ I’m desperately clutching my hard chair because it feels nothing like a sofa. ‘That’s what he used to call me a taxi.’
‘D’oh!’ says the phone. His breath smells of Listerine.
I grit my teeth and nod, blinking myself back into the room.
She nods back at me and turns it over. ‘No wires.’
No more questions.

Nov 30

3 Comments

A Celebration of Many Experiences

The art of avoiding being pigeon-holed.
I found out, by chance, yesterday afternoon that I have passed my final assignment in my previous Open University module. If I have done my sums right (and I’ve done them often enough!), this means I now have a degree.

‘What is your degree in?’ ‘What does it mean?’ ‘What does it do?’ I’ve heard recently. Oh, and, ‘Does this mean you can get a really well-paid job now?’ joked our 14-year-old son, who likes expensive gadgets.

What is it? Well it’s an ‘open’ degree. Because it includes technology, social sciences, psychology, health & social care, the arts, literature, and creative writing I got to choose whether to define it as a bachelor of science or a bachelor of arts. What is it a degree in? Well all of those things made up my degree, and I’m proud of that. Jack of all trades? Maybe! And what’s wrong with that?

What does it mean? To me it’s my degree in learning to learn, learning to think about lots and lots of different things. It means when I write, when I look at the world, when I talk to my children, when I make important decisions, when I read the news, when I make purchases, when I listen to the radio, etc, etc, etc… I have all this learning and thinking experience, all this knowledge, all these eye-opening lessons to draw on. I don’t believe the things that are passed to me though the TV screen or newspapers so easily anymore. I question things, I think, I see the point in finding out about things before jumping to a decision.

What does it do? It’s what it has done that counts. I didn’t start a degree with a chosen goal in mind, a particular job in mind. I didn’t even start with a degree in mind. I just wanted to know more about all sorts of things – and now I do. Things such as autism, the make-up of a family, lie-detectors, how to fiddle statistics, how to appreciate a poem… Even medical ethics!
Through the OU I have gained a Certificate in Social Sciences, a Certificate of Higher Education in Humanities, a Diploma in Literature & Creative Writing, and now, finally, I can call myself (hopefully, when my OU homepages updates) a graduate. That’s a lot of letters. And they all came as by-products – bonuses, if you like – of things I wanted to learn about anyway. I’m even glad I know how complicated a subject medical ethics is. I have thought how it relates to the losses of people close to me and my family.

‘Does this mean you can get a really well-paid job now?’ I doubt it! I want to write first and foremost – and that doesn’t pay well, if at all. But I do use much of the knowledge I have gained, and my multiple ways of looking at the world to write with insight into how complicated our heads are, how complicated accommodating differences can be, and I aim to write thoughtfully. I am inspired by what I have read and heard discussed. That’s good enough for me. I hope it’s good enough for other people… Because it’s a shame when you feel the need to explain yourself.

I’ve always had a problem with definitions. That’s why I like having a non-specific degree. I feel non-specific myself in many ways. Okay, so I’m clearly a woman and a mother and a wife… But having been born in a tiny flat in Hull in Yorkshire, spent 8 years living in the black country in The West Midlands, and 33 years living in Devon, I’m not clearly a Northerner or a Southerner; I’m just British. Having parents from different areas of the country and different backgrounds means I don’t feel of any particular class. There are teachers, miners, farmers, shop-keepers in my family – and my father was adopted. So there’s a feeling I wasn’t born into anything in particular. Being environmentally conscious and concerned more about our individual actions on each other I feel I don’t have a particularly definable political belief. I am just more left than right wing. I know what it is like to not know where your next meal is coming from and be so skinny I was accused of being anorexic. I know what it is like to have so much food that it gets wasted. I know what it is like to belong and be surrounded by people, I know what it is like to feel like a lonely outsider. I’ve seen the diversity, and sometimes nasty attitudes, within big towns and cities and the apathy and unimaginativeness of small communities.

I don’t like elitism, snobbery, inverted snobbery. Divisions, winners, losers. Labels, badges, badges of success. Status symbols. I don’t like the bitterness that can come from a feeling of difference or unfairness.

I am currently studying twentieth century literature, and if I pass that, I will have a BA Hons, sometime next year. I am pleased to mark my achievements but even more pleased about what I have gained from them. The workings of other writers’ minds and the way critics perceive them are very interesting and useful to me.

I’m just Rachel that writes and learns and lives in Devon and who likes to drink red wine, worries a lot, and loves music. I watch crap on TV, I watch interesting programmes on TV. I listen to Vivaldi, I listen to Stevie Wonder, I listen to Jeff Buckley, Dolly Parton, Oasis, Bach, The Detroit Spinners, Queen, Nina Simone, Mozart. I play the flute and the piano badly, I love singing and the feeling it gives me in my chest; if I could, I would play electric guitar. I’ve always quite fancied playing the drums. Too far? Yes, I think so.
I like to make up stories for people to enjoy and hopefully to make them think. And I now like to take photos too. I hope I never stop learning stuff. Growing is fun.

Rachel Carter BA Yeah, whatever! ;)

Dec 2

The Room

A short story/ flash fiction

Ducking her chin to catch limp, yokey toast, Chloe watched Audrey Jeffries slip out from ‘that room’ across the hall again, glancing bird-like towards the dining room to see if she’d been noticed.

Quickly hiding her face behind a huge bowl-style coffee cup, Chloe flicked her own eyes to the other two tables of B&B guests as they mumbled enthusiastically over their adventurous, only-when-on-holiday style eggs.

Dad had his maps out again, and Mum was talking to no one as usual, while Josh nodded in time to an indecipherable Ka-tick, ka-tick. Ka-tick, ka-tick. Katickatickatickaticka from his headphones and piled whole hash browns dripping with combined cooked breakfast goo into his gob.
Chloe responded with a safe, neutral, ‘Yurp,’ at whatever caused her mother’s voice to rise questioningly and looked again at the door across the hall. She squinted, thinking she could see a key still in the lock.
Yesterday Mrs. Jeffries had locked it every time, and, with habitual deftness, had slid the key into a front pocket on her clothes. Maybe she’d forgotten something and was coming back with one of her mysterious bundles.

‘Right!’ Dad was up, wiping his face. ‘Are we ready?’
‘Loo folks,’ said Mum. ‘Everyone go to the loo. And no texting this time, Chloe, please. Leave your phone here, will you?’

Chloe was alone in the hall. Just inches from the door now she could see that, yes – the key was still in the lock. Mrs. Jeffries must have been intending to bring another of her cloth-covered bundles but got sidetracked by breakfast. Why did things go into the room but nothing ever came out? And why all the secrecy? Maybe she was a kleptomaniac and was stealing from the residents. That would explain why she did it at mealtimes.
She heard her father whistling in the front porch. He would be re-lacing his walking boots again. From the kitchen clearing-up sounds clattered. Chloe put her hand on the handle and the door opened six inches. ‘Whoops,’ she whispered, feeling around the frame and snaking into the dark room.

It was warm – beautifully so. She shut the door behind her and headed instinctively to a wide, open fireplace. Without quite knowing why, she settled herself into a large old, high-backed armchair, angled so that it had a view of the door and the rest of the room but so that the occupant would still catch the warmth from the fire. She heard herself groan deeply and felt an ache lift from her muscles as her back was supported by the firm padding. She hadn’t realised how tired she was. A clock was ticking with the hollow richness of old wood and the enormous log fire blazed ferociously, with more logs freshly laid at the sides. That was a good fire. Just how she liked it. She lifted her feet onto a raised hearth surround and grunted approval. As she closed her eyes, she could smell animal… A dog?
That’s okay, it was just old Bruno.
‘Been tracking fox scents again, have you?’ she asked, without opening her eyes. ‘I know you. Don’t think I can’t smell it.’ She laughed a low, chesty laugh that made her cough weakly. She patted her chest and wasn’t surprised at all to find that she no longer had breasts. She reached down and touched Bruno’s head. He licked his master’s hand lovingly.

Rose had done a good job of the fire. Chloe must remember to tell her. Where was Rose anyway? They needed to talk. They couldn’t have Audrey going off with that Jeffries boy.
Ah, there she was. She’d been sitting opposite all the time.

‘How are your hands today?’ Rose smiled. ‘Up to a little tune? How about a wee rendition of Father O’Flynn?’ Rose fetched a fiddle from its case on a side table and passed it to Chloe, whose hands were bent with fingers bulging at the knuckles.
‘Is the rheumatism bad today old boy, would you rather the whistle?’
‘This lovely heat has fixed me fine dear, don’t you worry,’ replied Chloe, taking the fiddle and warming up. An old man’s boot on the end of Chloe’s left leg began to tap a 2-beat jig and the fingers played the simple old tune from memory.

There was a voice in the hall and Chloe dashed from the room handing the fiddle back to a disappearing, smiling Rose. She shut the door behind her just as Audrey Jeffries appeared from the kitchen with a cloth bundle. It was obvious now that it was an armful of logs wrapped in a traycloth.
Her mother was already in the hall.
‘Chloe! What are you doing?’ her mother asked.
‘Oh nothing,’ she answered brightly, heading to the porch, and singing, ‘Taahhh… Dee da da, dah da da. Dah de da, dah da da.’

‘Mmm… I must have smoked haddock omelette for breakfast when we get back,’ belched Dad, happily. ‘What’s that tune you’re humming?’

Jan 24

24 Comments

Study Burnout?

I’ve decided to sit myself down at my desk.
(Well… at a kind of surface)
To have a meeting with myself about why I’m not doing my work.
I am the student and the adult and the person who has had to dish out all the money for all these studies over the years. I am both frustrated with myself and in need of guidance.

It’s weird.

Facts:

I’m on my 12th OU module

I was 30 when I took my 1st course. I am now 42. (I stopped studying for 4 years when child No.3 was born.)

Although I have completed 11 modules successfully, I dropped out of 6 (4 of those were only short courses) before I knew in which direction I wanted to head.

I have stuck at and passed every single assignment and every single module in the last three years despite the grief of losing a parent and my son suffering from a head injury.

I now have a BA, and if I finish this current module, I will have a BA honours.

I’m already 3 assignments into a 6-assignment module.

The final 3 assignments are in Feb, March and April. Plus 1 end-of-course assignment (instead of an examination) in May.


But…

I have stopped opening my books.

I am worryingly behind with my reading.

I like what I have been reading but I don’t want to do the work bit.

I keep thinking, ‘Maybe tomorrow’ … ‘Maybe later…’ … ‘Maybe I don’t want to do this at all…’

I should have started work on the next assignment but I’m in no position to and I have no inclination to.


Why have I stopped?


What if I drop out? It’s no big deal is it?

If I drop out of this course I will not complete my honours degree. I will have spent A. Lot.
of money on a course I didn’t finish. I will have sniffed at but not touched the finish line.

The regrets may build over the years. The me in the future will be cross with the me of now.


What am I doing?


I know I can do it.
So why am I not?

I don’t know.

The student’s not talking to me.
I can only assume she has some sort of burnout.

Jan 19

7 Comments

Yucky things I’d rather people didn’t say…

…but I put up with them…

…although I do secretly crumple with sadness and worry for humankind a little inside.

1. ‘I’m good’
When asked how they are if people respond with, ‘I’m good’? I think, ‘That’s great but didn’t ask how well behaved you are.’ What wrong with ‘I’m well thanks,’ or ‘I’m fine, how are you?’ or ‘Oh you know… getting by.’ Or how about surprising them with, ‘Still getting over that lottery win!’ Or ‘Just had to have my dog put down and I really need a hug.’

2. ‘My bad.’
Yucketty yuck balls. spit spit spit. Since when did people perform ‘a bad.’? How about the original and best: ‘My mistake,’ or ‘I’m sorry.’ It seems to be the new way of skating around accepting you’ve done something wrong. And it’s twee. I don’t like twee.

3. ‘I apologise.’
Go on then…
We don’t say to our children. ‘I cook your tea,’ and yet do nothing.
We don’t say to our betrothed, ‘I marry you.’ and then not turn up for the ceremony to say ‘I do.’
Worse still is if someone says, ‘If I offended anyone, I apologise.’
No you don’t. Because you haven’t accepted you’ve done wrong.

There are plenty more but I’m going for a walk now. I’m hoping the fresh air and exercise will make me less picky.

‘Catch you later!’
(When you fly through the air and almost land on me)

Dec 22

3 Comments

Sweet Charity

A flash fiction

She was. And then she wasn’t. And then she couldn’t.
But she knew she could. And she knew she shouldn’t.
But what else could she do?

So she did.
And she did it again.

And then she waited. And she listened.
And slowly…

…the words were aimed at her and not anyone or anything else.
The problems were due to her and her alone.

She became the focus of…

Well, of what?

And that’s where the problem lay. There was a problem and she’d been made to feel as if it was her problem but when it roared drunkenly across the room at her it looked like it wasn’t her problem at all. And the looks on people’s faces told her it wasn’t her fault either.

The problem was hate.
And cunning and concealment.

And spiking a drink with alcohol in order to prove all that to a roomful of people was the worst – and best – thing she’d ever done.

Despite the rumours.

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