NaNoWriMo Day Three

Dohhh!!!!! I was at a late Council meeting last night (didn't get home until 9.45 pm). I got up at 6.30 am this morning and managed around 500 words, but now it's nearly lunchtime and I'd forgotten it was fat club today, so won't even be able to knock out another couple of hundred at lunchtime.

Then I've got another evening meeting tonight. This is so unfair!!!!!!

(Holds head in hands). Why oh why did I say I'd do it?

Day One - Nanowrimo

Well, managed 2,442 words in just over two and a half hours this morning, but it was completely uninterrupted writing time as hubby - very wisely - left me alone and technoson didn't fall through the front door until 5.30 am and so was in bed in an alcohol-induced stupour until midday.

I'm a bit concerned about tomorrow's word count (Monday). I'm at work all day and then have an evening Council meeting. I've got out of the habit of my early morning sessions, so I'm torn between going to bed now - 9.30 pm on Sunday and getting up at 4.00 am to write, or trying to write a little bit more before I go to bed.

The novel is called 'Horns of Angels' (working title) and is set in the Lake District and Crete. I have never visited either place, although I'm sort of hoping for a fact-finding weekend in the Lake District during the re-write. I'm not holding my breath, though. Hubby is not really a weekend break sort of bloke, especially during the shooting season.

NaNoWriMo

The cuckoo has taken flight again, as of this week, following an edit. I was thrilled to bits to get a second read from the RNA and have had some valuable feedback from them.

Following my holiday in August, I began work in earnest on 'The White Cuckoo', and have really put everything I've got into the rewrite. I've examined every sentence, every single word and analysed the plot, scene by scene. I've been ruthless and cut out huge chunks of text that don't either (a) move on the plot, (b) characterise or (c) add vivid imagery. I've added an equal amount of text to strengthen characters, add conflict and tension and made the whole story more 'edgy'.

It's done now. I don't want to revise it any more. If it makes it then I shall be ecstatically happy, but while I'm waiting to find out I thought I might as well join Debs and Sally and sign up for NaNoWriMo. Probably a bit crazy of me, but I did so enjoy writing the Cuckoo, and my next novel 'Horns of Angels' (working title at the moment) is jumping around in my brain like heated popcorn and needs to be let out.

On a lighter note, hubby went to do the shopping yesterday and found two objects: one lying on the car park and one left in a trolley in the trolley park. I always think it's a good job we don't live near the sea, or he'd become one of those long-haired ageing hippy beachcombers, wombling along the shoreline for things that might come in useful one day.

The first object he found was a box of laxatives. The second was a rather funky little pink pen with multi-coloured inks. I'd take a photo, but I'm recovering from piggy flu and can't be bothered to get up off my backside to find the camera. He very proudly presented me with both objects when he got home, literally just minutes after I had signed up to NaNoWriMo. How very quirky and synchronised. I just hope the end result of my NaNoWriMo is not just a load of old c**p.

The White Cuckoo lays another egg

I have some news about the Cuckoo. Remember, it's the novel I wrote in a crazy, manic attempt to banish the writing blues during May this year? (See previous blogs).

I have never been much of a romantic fiction reader. I prefer a good crime, or thriller - can't be doing with all this slushy romantic stuff. I used to titter at my mum's favourite books, but then secretly take them all on holiday and enjoy the feelgood reads. (Ohmigod, I've never admitted that before!)

I think every writer should have an ideal reader sitting on their shoulder: an actual character they are writing for. With me, it's my mum. I am writing solely for her, knowing that her type of books were my grandma's, and my great aunt's. In fact, my mum's paperbacks were always well worn and passed around amongst her friends until they ended up at my house, dog-eared and tea-stained, with a 'you really should read this, our Anne ... it's such a lovely story.' Mum could never get to grips with Ken Follett, Jeffrey Deaver or William Boyd and I remember her throwing her hands up in horror when she saw Dennis Wheatley in all his dark glory lurking under my coffee table. She would stand at the kitchen sink, or turn around while hard at it over the ironing board, iron in hand, and tell me all about the books she was reading. She'd describe the characters, comment on their shortcomings and give her opinion on which hero was her favourite. I didn't realise at the time just how much I was taking it all in.

I wrote 'The White Cuckoo' for my mum. I just poured my heart out and wrote a romantic novel especially for her. I wish she was here to see it.

I submitted the Cuckoo to the Romantic Novelists' Association New Writers' Scheme a couple of weeks ago, and as my friends at work will testify, I had my tongue firmly pressed into my cheek and a cynical smile on my face on the day I posted off the manuscript.

I heard today it's got a second reading! I'm ecstatic, to say the least. Apparently, only about ten manuscripts each year get a second reading.

I can't believe I have actually written Romantic Fiction!

I've learned a lesson, I think. I actually feel quite ashamed that I used to make fun of mum's favourite books. Since I've been writing seriously, I've been reading some of her favourites and I've actually got to know some of the authors through facebook and at Caerleon.

I always imagined writers of Romantic Fiction to be all girly-girly types - belonging to a club I could never be a part of. You see, I'm not a pink, fluffy, Barbara Cartland type of woman. I hate wearing make-up. Long fingernails get on my nerves when typing, so I cut them off with scissors. I fall over in high heels, doing a fair impression of Dick Emery's 'Mandy' and want to stick my fingers down my throat at sentimental films and suchlike. I've never watched The Sound of Music, either.

But underneath I am all woman. I must be.

Please can someone give me some lessons?

Prevarication

I think I must be in serious need of a psychiatrist. This time next week I shall be in Ibiza and I have loads still to do. I had my Saturday all planned out and this is how it went.

1. Get up early, have a leisurely bath and then hit the town centre before the crowds.
2. Walk briskly past the library.
3. Marks & Sparks for new underwear to take on holiday.
4. Walk briskly past Waterstones.
5. Zoom into Boots for holiday toiletries.
6. Walk briskly past Waterstones.
7. Look the other way when walk past extremely tempting display of luxury choccies in Thorntons.
8. Walk briskly past the library
9. Wave to colleagues in the tourist information centre (to be polite) but not to pop in for a chat (which might appear rude)
10. Back home by 10 am at the very latest.
11. Pack cases for holiday.
12. Clean oven, fridge and the cupboard under the kitchen sink.
(Middle son is house-sitting Daughter will feel sorry for younger brother and will cook their dinner every night in my kitchen. Daughter's fridge and cooker are always much cleaner than mine. Daughter will tutt and puff and will probably put something up about my mucky oven on facebook. So you see, that is why I must clean my oven, fridge and the cupboard under the sink.)

This is what has happened so far.

1. Slept in until 8.45 am.
2. Watched BBC News while idly checking through documents in travel wallet and eating bowl of porridge.
3. FOUND £100 WORTH OF TRAVELLERS' CHEQUES IN TRAVEL WALLET FROM LAST YEAR - WAHEYYYYY! (Sorry, got quite excited about that)
4. Went on facebook to see if daughter on-line so I could tell her good news.
5. Just had a little browse on facebook and then read all the comments on Novel Racers
6. Visited Debs' blog and left a comment
7. Daughter rang. Spent 10 minutes or so on the phone.
8. Visited Mother X's blog (a bit worried about her because she sounded down the other day)
9. Looked to see what the temperature was in Ibiza
10. Logged into work e-mails and answered a couple of urgent ones (you stupid cow, Annie - it's Saturday for goodness sake!)
11. Visited own blog and decided to write a post about prevaricating when the ONLY day I have to get ready for holiday is today!

At work yesterday

I made a huge, long 'to do' list of things I needed to do before I finish on Wednesday night. I made another list of things other people need to do while I'm away. I made another list of things I needed to do as soon as I get back from my hols. Made coffee. Checked e-mails for the entire week to see if I had not dealt with anything I should have done. Found one I had originally opened on Monday morning, groaned, and then shut again. Dealt with it. Offered to help someone out from another department (WHY?). Checked all room bookings for meetings while I'm away. Checked food ordered for meetings while I'm away. Replied to a thank you e-mail I'd just received regarding a meeting I had last Monday. Got one straight back. Replied. Got one back. Replied. Got one back. Replied. Got one back. Made coffee. Wrote two letters. Crossed off two things on to do list.

Then it was lunchtime, and all I had done was written two poxy letters!

Now it's 10.50 on the only day I have to get ready for my holiday and I'm not even dressed.

Now, just had a great idea for Novel Number Five. Must jot it down ... otherwise I'll forget ...

Things I Have Noticed About Writers

I haven't a hope in hell of adding anything constructive to Debs's brilliant review of Caerleon so I thought I'd share ten of my little observations about writers - mostly gleaned during my week in Wales.

1. All writers are extremely clumsy and drop/spill/throw/trip over/bump into things everywhere, all the time.
2. Writers do not appear to know left from right and have absolutely no sense of direction, wandering aimlessly through wrong corridors and getting distracted by other writers at every turn or in every doorway
3. Writers' bags are all very heavy - without exception
4. Getting food into a writer's mouth without spillage is nigh-on impossible (gravy on white skirt, beetroot on yellow top, lasagne on sleeve, superglue-like substance in hair, something white and slimy on sandal and something sticky in handbag - and that was just the first day)
5. Packing a case with suitable clothes is a definite no-no for a writer. A gloomy weather forecast, torrential rain and chilly temperatures ought to, by rights, equal more than one long-sleeved top and something more substantial than open sandals. I felt quite uplifted when I discovered there were at least a dozen other writers in the same predicament!
6. Writers don't always carry pens. I couldn't quite believe this until I was asked by someone if they could borrow my pen - and guess what - I didn't have one!
7. Writers tell fascinating stories and then forget (a) what time of day it is, (b) what course they are supposed to be on, and (c) what their husband's name is
8. Writing is classless, ageless and some writers are very witty and funny indeed (I'm not one of them)
9. Published, successful writers make it all seem so easy - and it's really not!
10. Writers take their shoes off under tables.
11. Writers are all very nice people and make friends easily
12. Writers, without exception, display varying degrees of contempt for numbers and can't count to save their lives. (Oh dear, I have twelve points - well, never mind - it's near enough).

Update

I've posted on 'Cutting it Fine' for those fellow writers who are members. I can't quite make up my mind whether I am pleased with my agent's comments or a really despondent. Still - at least she thinks the Cuckoo is a 'jolly good story'. So that can't be bad.

I'd just like to know who makes up all these rules about genre.

Byesie bye for now. Still, it's all part of being a writer, isn't it. No pain, no gain!

It's a Funny Old World

I'm back in the world of the unpublished blogger after a hectic six weeks or so, when the day job has seriously got in the way of just about everything. Over this period I haven't had the time to do any serious writing, let alone eat a proper meal. I've really missed it after the crazy month when I went a bit hyperactive with my writing and wrote an entire novel with a meticulous obsession usually attributable to some of the lovely autistic children in my daughter's school!

Trying to grab the odd hour to write during this busy time was like scratching the type of itch that hurts when you scratch it, and so you have to stop because you know you'll make the itchy spot sore and the itch will intensify.

Just as the day job was calming down a little, I got a call from Gerry at The Writers' Holiday, where I am spending a blissful week at the end of July. I had planned to follow the course 'Plotting and Coursing your Novel' but it was oversubscribed. 'Would you consider the Advanced Novel Writing course,' he enquired, 'if you have a finished novel to submit?'

This was just under a week ago. There was just a teeny, tiny amount of work to do before I submitted the first 50 pages and the last 10 pages of a finished novel. Just a brief little list of characters, and a chapter breakdown, scene by scene. I had time, according to Gerry. There was nothing to worry about. (What is it about a soothing Welsh lilt?)

'Fine,' I said, biting my lip at the little white lie. Advanced Novel Writing! Scary, scary!

Bloomin' 'eck. It was like trying to squash an extremely grubby super king-sized duvet into a washing machine. Just as I got one bit under control, another bit popped out! I eventually managed to come up with something reasonably respectable to submit to Marina Oliver, the course tutor, but in the process the duvet disintegrated in the wash and came out full of holes.

A few months ago I had thought the second book in the trilogy, 'Melody of Raindrops', was reasonably OK and wouldn't need much work. Ooo-er! I think I've just realised the wisdom of leaving a manuscript alone for a while and then going back to it. These published writers know what they're on about, after all. Still - at least I'll have some holes to patch in Wales!

On another note if I was a dog I'd be a lumbering, gentle St Bernard. The scene I have in my mind is this huge, clumsy dog digging up a perfectly matured bone when suddenly this lean whippet-like Jack Russell tears up behind him and snatches it out from under his nose just as he is about to enjoy the fruits of his labours and patience.

Fellow writers - I will reveal all on 16th July when we meet up. Damned plagiarists, they are. All of 'em!

Redundant Words from the Cuckoo's Nest

Last week, I finally confessed to J that I had completed another book and the response was that she wanted me to send it to her straight away. I suspect it might need quite a bit more work on it before she gives me a verdict on whether or not it is good enough to send out to publishers. But hang on - 'The White Cuckoo' was a just masochistic tool to oil my typing fingers and knock the rust out of my synapses, so anything more than a sympathetic, slightly worried smile in my direction from her will be a bonus.

Now the nail-biting starts all over again.

After contacting J about 'Cuckoo' she gave me some quite exciting news on 'Sunlight' but I'm not counting my chickens and all that (ha ha) until they start to hatch.

Anyway I now find myself looking at the aftermath of the Cuckoo's parasitic behaviour, because I have almost 40k redundant words. I started a novel 'Doubled Lives' over a year ago, but abandoned it because it was so dull, but one of the characters was really strong and I knew I just had to use her now I had created her. I really liked the character, but hated the novel, so I abandoned the novel, but kept the character.

I then had an idea - a bad one as it turned out because it didn't really work - of telling two stories in alternate chapters, set in different times. I started 'Going Back' using two of the characters from 'Doubled Lives' in one of the story strands. Something still wasn't right, though. I just knew it in my bones - even though I was spending some very enjoyable time in the local library researching the archaeology of the area - interesting but completely off piste!

Then came the conversation with my uncle about the premature baby, and the visit to the Natural History museum late last year when I eavesdropped a conversation in the queue in the restaurant. The idea for 'Cuckoo' was sown. It wasn't long before my strong-willed character was tapping on my brain, wanting to be let in. She'd brought an odd assortment of friends and a couple of relatives with her. They are a right motley lot, I can tell you! (I really do hope you'll all get to meet them one day.)

I reworked the original idea of two stories in one and the whole thing just came together in one fantastic explosion of light and colour (or a damp squib, depending on what my agent thinks).

I've now got nearly 40k words worth of broken sentences, paragraphs, sights, sounds, smells and other bits and bobs that are left from 'Doubled Lives' and 'Going Back'.

I suspect they are just flotsam. What a flaming waste!

Any ideas as to what I can do with them?

The Very Scary Bit

Yesterday, after thoughtful help from hubby with the copying etc., I sent out my manuscript to my three remaining readers, Emily and Katie having had a sneak preview.

I have broken some rules.

Rule No. 1: A reader should not be a close member of the family

The wisdom behind this is that they won't want to upset the writer, so will pin a happy smile on their face and pretend it was wonderful. Well, let me introduce my daughter to you all. Emily - the Queen of the Straight Talkers and very much her undiplomatic father's daughter. She is also spending lots of time pretending to be a cow at the moment (no, not a 'cow' a cow as in a milk), so needs something to do while my baby granddaughter thinks she actually is one.

Rule No. 2: A reader should actually like reading

Emily's never been much of a reader. When she was six/seven she was such a little perfectionist (again like her father) she wouldn't try anything unless she knew she could do it. Reading out loud was her worst nightmare. Enter scary teacher who forced her to do it in front of whole class even though she cried real tears. Result: one little girl who started out quite liking to read to herself quietly, but ended up at the age of seven being so scared of not being able to read out loud it put her right off.

Rule No. 3: A reader should not be a teacher (broke that one twice)

Enter very nice teacher who understood perfectly what poor little seven/eight-year old Emily was going through and made her laugh with Roald Dahl and Michael Rosen. (I don't think I ever thanked you for that, N, did I?) N is also one of my readers and I'm really grateful to her. She's a colleague of Emily's, although they teach in different schools, and that's how I've ended up with two teachers.

Rule No. 4: A reader of women's fiction should be a woman

But he's my best buddy and makes me nice cups of tea on a Thursday lunchtime and really doesn't notice if my hair is a mess or I've just taken my shoes off and put my feet up on his sofa without realising.

Rule No. 5: A reader should not be, just possibly, the cleverest person in the whole world with an IQ of about 200

But he knows what long words mean and can read (some) Hebrew and other clever languages like Latin and Greek. He does the cryptic crossword in the Guardian every day. Okay - I know 'The White Cuckoo' will be like Janet and John compared to the literary stuff he's usually got his nose in, but A's a bloke and there are blokes in my novel.

Rule No. 6: Readers should not be your daughter-in-law to be

Okay. Okay! I know. I know. She might hold it against me and tell my future grandchildren what a nutcase their granny is to even think she just might get published. But then again, I could earn lots of Brownie points and be a fab mother-in-law for trusting her with my precious manuscript. Not so daft after all, am I?

Rule No. 7: Readers should not be a work colleague

Well, H did a good job with Novel No. 1 didn't she? And M did offer! She's such a scatterbrain, though, I hope she doesn't leave it on the bus or anything.


So now it's being read by five people. This has got to be the worst bit of all. It is far, far worse than knowing that total strangers are reading your work.

Once I've got all the comments back I'll do another complete edit, or rewrite if necessary, and then send it to my agent.

The written novel

Good morning.

It is done. I actually put the final full stop on the page at 5.45 pm on Saturday, but that wasn't the end of the first draft, because I always edit the previous session.

I finished editing yesterday's work just twenty minutes ago at 5.55 am. I then made a cup of tea, sat in the dawn sunshine in my garden and listened to the dawn chorus. (We live about a hundred yards away from a spinney - so the noise was actually quite deafening.) I was joined in my garden by a pair of collared doves, a finch of some sort, a blackbird and some starlings. Did I imagine it, but did they line up on my fence in a sort of avian fanfare in tribute to The White Cuckoo?

It's like pure, white fragrant-smelling linen - just the thing to place in your bottom drawer. It's a story to lift your heart. There is not a single ounce of grittiness; there are no (bad) swear words; no bawdy sex scenes. It will make you laugh and it will make you cry, sometimes at the same time. There is too much of me in it. I have exposed my soul.

Will a publisher want it? I don't honestly know - I doubt it. It's probably too simple and honest. But I know I needed to write it like a drowning man needs a lifeline.

There is a lesson for all of you here. I almost lost something so fundamentally a part of me because of this dream we all chase that is 'publication'. Okay - I know I have an agent, and I'm grateful for that but never, ever again am I going to let anything get in the way of writing just for the pure enjoyment of it. The pressure suffocated the words in my head before they could reach my fingers. It made me sterile and made me think too much about what I was writing.

Full stop. The end.
RIP The White Cuckoo - 4th April 2009 to 3rd May 2009.

(PS - final word count 96,361 if anyone's interested)

The finishing of a novel

Righty ho!

This is yesterday's word count.

End of Thursday's session: 77,855
End of Friday's session: 86,068 (blimey - a palindrome no less!)
Total words: 8,193
Time spent writing/editing previous session's work : 7 hrs (give or take a few minutes)
Average words written and edited per hour: 1,197

Now. I must make a conscious effort not to rush the remaining story in an effort to finish the book. It's a bit like when I'm knitting and running out of wool. I knit faster to make the wool last to the end of the row and usually end up ruining the pattern because I'm knitting too fast and not paying attention to the instructions.

Note to self. It is not possible to run out of words. Don't rush Annie, don't rush!

The Writing of 'The White Cuckoo'

I've taken two days annual leave to tag onto the bank holiday weekend so that I can get this novel completed by the end of Sunday (3rd May).

I'm expecting the first draft to come out at about 95-100k words, but it might be a little more or a little less.

Well, I'm about to hang up my computer mouse at the end of a solid day's writing. It's now 8.20 pm and I've been writing since 10.30 am, with about a couple of hours off at lunchtime and then time off to cook tea, etc and do the domestic bit.

At the beginning of this session today I'd completed just shy of 70k words and my word count now stands at 77,855 words.

I hit a small problem though. Yesterday, my ornithological adviser (thank you, councillor - you know who you are if you read this blog) informed me that the species of cuckoo that the entire book is based upon has never been seen in the British Isles. It is native of South Africa, India and the southern hemisphere.

I was gutted. I'd been putting all my eggs in one basket and the white cuckoo now appeared to be a white elephant.

Isn't it funny how things happen? I've changed the plot ever so slightly to accommodate the elusive Jacobin Cuckoo's very inconsiderate migratory habits and it's now woven a very nice sparkly thread through the entire tapestry of my novel.

My targets:

Tomorrow (1st May): 85k words

Saturday (2nd May): 92k words

Sometime on Sunday (3rd May): Enter the final full stop with fanfare and a theatrical flourish of the hand.

Monday: I'm having a day off!

My fourth Novel

Have I gone just a little mad?

This novel really is a Cuckoo in my life at the moment. It's shoving everything else out. At lunchtime on Saturday, 4th April I wrote the opening paragraph of 'The White Cuckoo'. At the end of the following Monday early morning writing session I'd written 14k words. Two weeks later I was on 37,209 words and this morning (22nd April) I shut down the document at 45,788 words. It feels as if the story is draining away a part of me that has always been there - I just didn't know it.

I feel exactly like I do when I'm reading a novel I can't put down - I just can't stop writing. I've gone from one extreme to the other. I'm constantly turning over and examining the plot in my mind. There's a strange kind of synchronicity going on - loads of odd coincidences that are eloquently presenting me with answers to questions I have about aspects of the plot.

I thought I'd share one of these moments with you all.

I've been asking around since I first had the idea for the plot to try and find someone over the age of 70 who was born prematurely. I wanted to get some first hand anecdotes about what it was like to look after a tiny baby with no access to modern technology or incubators, etc. Yesterday I gave someone a lift to a meeting. I nearly didn't offer the lift, because it was during the day and I am really, really busy at work at the moment. On the return journey we hit traffic, delaying me even more. Then, this 78 year old lady, who doesn't know about my writing, completely out of the blue told me that when she was born she weighed just over two pounds and was a 'seven month baby'.

Voila! In one ten-minute car journey I'd all the information I needed. There was only one problem. You can't write it all down when you're driving. So as soon as I got home from work last night I made some notes.

The first draft of this novel will be written in just four weeks, and it is the most magical writing time of my life. Will it get published? Who knows, but it will certainly land on my agent's doormat with more unique selling points than she can shake her hat at!

Cuckoos and Loos

The Cuckoo in the Nest

I really do love getting up at 4.00 am or thereabouts and savouring the purity and peace of the dawn hours. I write so much better at this time of the day. I've just had my cup of tea, I'll write until seven and then go back to bed for an hour or so before getting up and going to work.

Two days of bank holiday freedom has seen the word count for the cuckoo of a book I've very unwisely embarked upon soar from around 13.5k to a smidgeon over 27k.

I've asked around a bit for people's opinions and tips on writing in the 1st person present and got a mixed bag of responses. It seems to be a bit like Marmite - people either love it or hate it. It's either spectacularly good to read, or like wading through treacle.

I'm not making it easy for myself, am I? The plot makes me shiver with excitement. I hope I'm not wasting a good plot on a no-brainer of a novel, structured narratively in a way that hasn't a hope in hell of ever getting published. I am so enjoying writing the damned thing, though, I really don't want to burst my own bubble, especially after the disastrous three months I've just endured with the dreaded writers' block and feeling like I write rubbish.

My uncle told me about a premature birth at the beginning of the 20th century and I was captivated. I thought to myself that if I was captivated by the story, then other people would be too and I resolved to write about it one day. Then I remembered that, in November last year, I overheard an interesting snippet of conversation behind me in the queue for lunch in the Natural History museum about someone researching a family tree that wasn't their own.

I got the idea for the new novel from these two five-minute conversations. The conversations then dove-tailed (ha ha!) quite nicely into an abandoned novel I'd got bored with. Voila! 'The White Cuckoo' was born and now it's growing so quickly, and needing so much energy, that it's squeezing everything else out of my life until it's finished.

Target date for completion of first draft, I hear you ask whilst scratching your chins pensively? End of May. Yes, really. I need to do it. I can only meet this target if my family help me, though.

Emily - stop rolling your eyeballs upwards: I need you to sit, quietly nursing Sophie, and listen to me reading out loud. Labradors - likewise. Rob - sorry in advance about the housework: you'll need some new rubber gloves and a pinny. Tatie Katie - feel free to log-in whenever you like and tell me when you get bored with the story. Lee - likewise but from a male point of view. Garry and Nicky - coffee duty and amused tolerance/indifference is all that is required of you, but any (constructive) comments will be gratefully received. Tyler - when Granny is busy writing you really must remind her that, although you are sitting quietly pretending to play with your Nintendo DS, you are really watching Power Rangers on Jetix. You mustn't wait until 55 minutes after it's started to tell her that it's on.

(NB: Tyler is not allowed to watch Power Rangers - his mummy and daddy have banned it.)

The only thing that will stop me now is seeing a pig flying past my window in the form of a publisher for the trilogy.

The Loo

Our downstairs toilet broke last week. It would not flush. After many mutterings of frustration at having to actually climb stairs to spend a quick penny, hubby investigated. It needed a new syphon, apparently. New syphon = £12.5o. I took the broken syphon to bits, being curious like I am, and it was just a piece of thick plastic that had gone. After telephone calls and visits to various DIY places and Plumbing Centres it was ascertained that said thick piece of plastic was not a spare part and new syphon was essential if flushings were to be restored. So I removed the plastic with the bread knife (no not really - I'm not that mucky), found a piece of similar thickness and cut a new one out with my dressmaking scissors. Hubby most impressed! Reassembled it works perfectly.

Now ... how about a little change of career ....

Back on the Straight and Narrow

Yesterday I gave myself a 'Writers' Migraine'.

Some of you might know that I've been suffering from something of a writers' block just lately, mainly as a result, I think, of the stress of anticipation, rejections, anticipation, waiting, wondering and generally just beginning to feel panic at the thought that I might be losing the pleasure of just writing for the sake of it.

I still have no news from my agent. The trilogy is still alive, I think. So I'm still waiting. Apparently it is very hard to get anything new taken on at the moment, according to my agent. Sign of the times, I suppose.

Anyway. Back to the writers' migraine. It was those damned birds again! (See previous blog about magpies). Only this time it was a cuckoo.

I decided to go back to a previously abandoned novel and re-work it. In fact, I've re-worked it so much that I've completely changed the plot. And the title. Anyway I decided to try writing in the first person present tense.

'Doubled Lives' is now called 'The White Cuckoo' and I am on a roll. Nearly 14,000 words in a weekend (although about half of that could be classed as a re-write). Yay .......

(but it did give me a headache through too much screen-staring - ooops)

Any tips on writing in the first person, present?

Skating on thin ice

I have to visit the Minor Oral Surgery Unit today. My appointment is at 10.25, but I have to get there for 10.00. I'll spare gory details, but one of my teeth must come out. It's the one next to the big one at the top on the right-hand side. When I feel it with my tongue it feels alarmingly near to the front of my mouth but a probing fore-finger reassures my tongue that it's quite far back really. I did a little test at work the other day ... I stuck blu-tac on it and smiled, beamed and laughed in the mirror in the office. Trouble was everyone else smiled, beamed and laughed too!

I had to know, you see. When it had gone, would I look like a toothless old hag?

It's a slippery slope! It's important to remain vigilant and ward off the age-gremlins when you're in your fifties. In the last few weeks I've:

• Cooked liver for tea and actually enjoyed it instead of pretending to
• Moaned about the price of fish
• Got in someone's way in the aisle at Tesco's
• Obsessed about magpies and silly superstitions
  
• Indulged in some bad driving
• Been praised for having a miniature sewing kit in my handbag
• Become a granny again

And now I've started losing teeth .... oh my gawd!

To keep the grim reaper at bay I've decided to take some positive action.

1. I have 101 Housework Songs (as advertised on TV). Oh joy! Will dance naked to the first track on the first CD with a new and handsome domestic appliance
2. I will drink a Jack Daniels and Coke in the pub on Sunday
3. I'll listen to Radio One and not Radio Two in the car
4. I'll smile seductively at the first handsome young man I see today
5. I'll ask Emily if I can borrow an item of her clothing

Do you think that might do it?

Kissing Frogs

I am a masochist. I know I'm not alone because all writers are masochists.

We put ourselves through the hell of rejection but still keep doing it. We are like toddlers trying to stand up under a table - we bang our heads once, but then swiftly forget where we are and do it again, and again and again.

I have heard back from my agent about the publisher who was/is interested in the trilogy. They have suggested further work and have given me some substantial general notes to work with.

My agent says the notes might be worth thinking about (she has e-mailed them to me) but says there are plenty more fish in the sea and 'we only need to kiss the right frog'. She states she is confident we will get there eventually.

I now have to go through it all again, because she has sent the m/s out to more publishers.

So I'm afraid the news on the writing front is not good news, but it's not horrendously bad either.

Anyway - the news on a personal front is BRILLIANT!

I have a grand-daughter so the magpies were right the other day. "Three for a girl". Here she is with her very proud granny.

Her name is Sophie Rose and she was born at 10.00 am on 11th March. She weighed 9lb 8 oz. Her big brother, Tyler, was very pleased to have a little sister because 'she will have her own girls' toys, won't she?'

Mum and baby are doing just fine and she is a little princess. She's very good and sleeps well. She is absolutely beautiful.

So who cares about a book deal? If it comes, then to say I'll be happy is a massive understatment, but if it doesn't then I'll just write another book and dedicate it to my lovely grandchildren.

And anyway, I've just joined the Novel Racers, so that is good news too.

Traffic Lights, Magpies and Furry Dice

There are roadworks on the main route from my home to work and traffic lights that take ages to change. Over the last week or so, I have been indulging in a bit of rat-running, but yesterday yet more roadworks on the rat-run resulted in traffic lights breeding like rampant rabbbits, so I decided to make the most of an enforced few minutes of nothingness in the long queue by the park and indulge in a spot of mind wandering ....

Oh my god! There's a magpie. On its own!

[Eyes frantically search the skies and scan the grass verge.]

One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl and four for a boy ... what's five? What if you see ten or twelve magpies? I bet the superstition doesn't cover twelve magpies. Oh ... please let there be another. Come on. Come on ... where are you?

[Said magpie takes to the air and gracefully glides to the ground about twenty feet away. Edge forwards in first gear whilst casting eyes up and down the hedgerow searching for the elusive second magpie. Move about twenty yards before realising that car in front has stopped. Hasty jabbing of right foot on brake pedal just in time, because - oh joy of joys - the solitary magpie has just been joined by another.]

Two for joy. Hmmm. I wonder if that means it will be today ... please let it be today. I wonder if J will ring and tell me I have book deal for all three books. What would I do? What shall I say? What about: 0h what wonderful news! Or shall I just say a simple thank you for letting me know, or shall I just jump up and down and scream? Nahhh ... too obvious ... I need to rehearse what I'd say ... what do other people say when they get the call? Oh my god ... what shall I say if she rings? What if it's a rejection? I hope it's not at work. Mustn't cry at work.

[A third magpie joins the two that are pecking for worms on the verge. Smile to self.]

Ahhh ... three for a girl. How lovely! A grand-daughter! I wonder who she'll look like ...?

[Suddenly realise that there is a rather large gap in the road. Car in front has obviously moved forwards whilst I was watching the magpies. Release handbrake - try to move forwards, nothing happens. Realise not in gear. Glance in mirror. Grumpy Victor Meldrew driver of car behind seems to have just a teeny tiny road rage gremlin jumping up and down on bonnet.]

... a little girl, eh? Thank goodness there wasn't just one magpie. Oh look ... there's some collared doves too. I wonder what that means? Three magpies and two collared doves. Sounds like a Christmas song. (Sings in head .... three magpies, two collared doves and a partridge in a pear tree .... ha ha.)

[Crawl forwards a little way. Magpies disappear behind car out of sight. Glance in the mirror for a last view of them. Sneeze. Then sneeze again. Rootle in bag on passenger seat for tissue. Sneeze again and then one more time. Find half a packet of Polos in bag and pop one in mouth. Just in time realise car in front has stopped. Phew. That was close.]

What was it grandma used to say about sneezing? One a wish and two a kiss, three for a letter ..... did I sneeze four times? Yes I did ... must be the CK Summer perfume ... hope it's not the start of a cold ... four for something better. Whaheyyyy! Something better and a little baby grand-daughter? Book deal and grand-daughter? How lovely ...

[A solitary magpie drops from the sky into hedgerow just a few feet away.]

... or another little boy would be just as nice. Four for a boy .... oh-oh ... hang on. Was that another magpie or was it one of the three behind me just fluttered up the road a bit. It could still be three for a girl. Oh no! It could be one for sorrow. It's just one ... all on its own. Come on little magpies where are .....

[Jab right foot on brake. Didn't realise was creeping forwards.]

... it's all just stupid anyway. Who cares? Boy or girl ... doesn't matter. Only sorrow and joy matters.

[Glance in mirror. Car behind has furry dice hanging from rear-view mirror. They have initials on them. B and R. Man is obviously not Victor Meldrew or would be V for Victor. Red traffic light is now only a few cars in front]

Bert and Rose? Brian and Ruby? Brenda and Ron? Beryl and Roy ... ha ha. I wonder if their grandchildren bought them for Christmas. Or if Roy gave them to Beryl on Valentines day? I wonder if they are married or geriatric lovers. Perhaps they are eloping ... perhaps they are not really going shopping in Sainsburys but are really an elderly Bonnie and Clyde going to rob a bank and Beryl has a 2.2 pistol tucked in her knickers .....

[Loud toot of car horn. Red light has turned to green and the car in front of me is way in the distance.]

Ummm ... what a nice few minutes ... must write this down ... could be a short story somewhere ...

Confucius say: Many traffic lights makes writers bad drivers!

Losing It

For most of my life I have been like a child wandering barefoot through a wild garden on a warm summer's day. I've gone just where I want to, stopping to pick daisies and buttercups, blowing dandelion clocks and breathing in the fragrance of honeysuckle and roses. I've chased butterflies and listened to the buzzing of various insects. I've been perfectly happy, playing in my garden, alone. I've needed the company of no-one. I've been content.

About eighteen months ago I tiptoed outside my little garden and was delighted to find some playmates. We skipped along together and frolicked in each other's gardens, we became friends and found that although we liked to play with different things, it was good to spread our wings and run free within the security of our own little community. We built up trust with each other and one day we decided to try and step outside our safe little world. We knew we were good - well at least as good as some of the other people who had gone before us and had made their way in the wide, harsh world outside the village boundary. We said we'd stick together, and give support to each other on our individual journeys. We've collected some more friends on the way and have never lost sight of what is important to us.

It's hard outside the village. People you don't know tell you not to wander aimlessly, and stop dawdling and dragging your feet and to ignore the little things that take your fancy, but that others won't understand. If you want to make it in the big world outside you must stop playing with the frivolous things you like and concentrate, listen and take notice of the rules.

It is the way. The only way.

Since I stepped into the world of the big boys and girls I've come to realise how precious my little garden was (and still is). I want to be able to visit my own little piece of paradise and not have to worry about all these silly rules. I want to run as fast as I can through the long grass, feel the wind in my hair and not have to think about anything at all. I want to be able to sit cross-legged in the grass and pick petals off daisies, one by one if I so choose, and then close my eyes and feel the warmth of the sun on my face and hear the buzzing of the bees and the singing of the birds.

But I can't find my garden any more. I've searched and searched. I know it's still there - somewhere.

I'm stuck outside, in this vast world where people I don't know are talking about the things I created while I was alone in my garden, and didn't have to worry about what other people would think. I've listened to others and manicured, chopped and pruned. I've got rid of the greenfly and picked off any withered, imperfect blooms.

These people I don't know are judging my creation - right now. They are passing it between themselves, turning it over in their hands and prodding and prying at every aspect of my work of art.

Until they tell me whether they are going to keep it or give it back I know I won't be able to find my precious garden again. And right now I am wondering if I will ever be able to go back there.

25 Things About Me

I was tagged to do this a while back, but prevaricated somewhat. Captain Black has put me to shame - so ....

1. When I was a child I felt ‘different’ from everyone else

2. I once ended up in A & E for two separate accidents on the same day

3. At the age of 7 I had a reading age of 14 and was thought by head teacher to be gifted (huh!!)

4. Accelerating me a year did me no good at all, because

5. I failed my eleven plus

6. I suffered from alopecia between the ages of 11 and 21 but refused to wear a wig

7. Rob and I were owner/occupiers at the age of 18 with a hefty mortgage (£46 a month)

8. I was pregnant from October 1979 until May 1982 (well - nearly all the time!)

9. I have taken part in international medical trials

10. I don’t like driving – it scares me

11. I am cross-coordinated (right-handed, left-footed, left-eyed) and don't know left from right

12. I used to be able to read music, but now I’ve forgotten

13. It is 222 steps from my office to the library

14. I used to wear glasses but my eyes got better with advancing years!

15. I can ride a horse and even galloped once without falling off

16. I like thunderstorms, big waves and wild weather

17. Sometimes I pretend to be stupid when really I know the answer (why I ask myself?)

18. I have eight grey hairs in my head, which I pluck out :-)

19. My best friend is a man

20. I can’t see the point in being secretive

21. I hate conflict and arguments – anything to keep the peace, I say

22. My head is full of useless information, untold stories and unanswered questions

23. I liked being a housewife when my children were small

24. I enjoy my job, but

25. I WANNABE A WRITER

(Gawd knows what a psychiatrist would make of that lot!)

News

Hiya. For those of you who want to know, I'll pop a little note on CIF.

Annie
x

Diamonds

My mum, Margaret Rose Beasley, was one of this world’s little rays of sunshine. She never had a bad word to say about anyone. ‘If you can’t say something nice, then don’t say it at all,’ she would reprimand when Julie and I were slagging off some poor hapless soul. We’d give each other a guilty sideways look and stop being bitchy straight away. Mum had that effect on you.

She wasn’t old by today’s standards – only in her early 70s – and she was my best friend.

She’d make excuses for people who were moaners, or were discontented with their lot in life and make allowances for their behaviour. ‘It doesn’t pay to be nasty, girls,’ she’d say to us. ‘There’s always someone worse off than you. Be thankful for what you’ve got.’

Just before we all went to Ibiza on a family holiday at the end of July 2006 I was in my office, looking across the Council Offices car park towards the Art Gallery and Library. I just caught a back view of my mum, marching across the car park, Burberry shopping bag in hand. She was going to the library to change her library books ready to take on holiday on the following Monday.

Her house was about 35 minutes walk away from the town centre. She used to walk to town, go to the library and then walk home again. Fit as the proverbial fiddle she was. I kept one eye on the window, waiting for her to walk back across the car park.

About half an hour later I spotted her coming back and stood up, waving with both arms. She looked up at my office window and waved, a huge smile splitting her face and I swear I could see her cheerful eyes twinkling as she lifted up her sunglasses to make sure it was me who was waving at her. I ran down the stairs and she was already sitting on a seat in the foyer of the Council Offices, waiting for me.

We had a conversation. I told her to catch the bus back home, because it was such a hot day. (She didn’t!) She joked with one of my colleagues, Jean, about our forthcoming holiday and said she was hoping to meet a millionaire.

A couple of days later, just before we were all due to leave for the airport, mum was watering her lovely garden. She stood up with two watering cans full of water and felt something ‘go’ in her back.

That was the start. Fifteen weeks later the monstrous ‘C’ word had deftly side-stepped chemotherapy and claimed another victim: my lovely, gentle mum who was incredibly funny but didn’t know it; who’d never said a bad thing about anyone in all of her life; who loved us all unconditionally and hadn’t an enemy in the world.

I miss her so much and always will, and the memory of her walking across the car park, waving to me on that glorious summer’s day in July 2006 might be ordinary, but it is the one I treasure most of all. It shines like a precious diamond in a garden crammed full of beautiful memories of her.

One afternoon just before she died I said simply, ‘I love you, Mum’. I was expecting her to tell me she loved me too but she didn’t.

‘I know,’ she whispered. Although the words were small and light they were heavy with meaning. At that moment I knew she was content and at peace with the world and people she was leaving behind.

Oh My Word Part 2 and Predictions

Thank you to everyone for their kind comments on my previous post and also to those of you on 'Cutting it Fine' who have given me their feedback. I really appreciate it.

Captain - Hypnolove did indeed start out as a post on Cloud Line as my contribution to the Valentine's Day exercise last year. I revised the story a bit for the competition.

Note to all those on Cloud Line: I've grabbed a smidgeon of success out of our little exercises so get out there and let's make a huge effort in 2009 to have a little sidebar of Cloud Line successes.

Lane - I wonder what it feel's like to have your name on a book cover? I've always wondered what it would be like to be browsing in the library and see your own book on the shelves.

Caroline - I'm keeping my fingers crossed for your exciting story ;-/

Helen - A successful and excitement filled 2009 to you too.

TF and Pat - I hope 2009 brings you all you have ever dreamed of.

L-Plate - If only publishing fiction was so easy, but you feel so cheated, don't you when a Committee report you have written has your boss listed as the report author, or your work is copyrighted to the organisation you work for with no reference to the author.

Debs - It was a lovely Christmas present. Happy New Year to you too.

Dar - I'm still a wannabe really, just like the 37 other authors in the book. Some of their work has taken my breath away - there is some real talent out there

Tam - Me too, but the next time my name is in print will be in the local paper tonight on an official notice about the budget consultation at the Council!

Femin Susan - Thanks for visiting my blog and a Happy New Year to you too.

The Dotterel - Hi Tim. What's it feel like to have made it? I bet you are up there on Cloud Nine, swinging your legs watching the rest of us struggle up the ladder.

Karen - Yeah, I was disappointed My Weekly didn't publish 'The Yellow Balloon' at Christmas because they had said back in May that it would be in the December issue. Still, they have paid for it so it's up to them when and if they use it.

Mother X - You too. I'm glad you're back on track again after your hectic Christmas with your gorgeous boys. I bet you are glad they are back at school, though!

2009 PREDICTIONS

I couldn't get to sleep the other night, so I thought I might make some predictions for 2009 (I only thought of about five before my brain went on a three-day-week and I fell asleep)

1. The first Facebook Wedding - Two people who met on Facebook will appear on the TV. 20,000 gatecrashers will then go on the rampage, causing tailbacks on the motorway and a trail of destruction. 'Tracey' will then appear on the TV with tear-streaked face and 'Darren' will sport a black eye.

2. The murderer who killed Rhys Jones gets beaten up in jail (now I thought this and then it actually happened a couple of days later, but it wasn't really a prediction - just no surprise was it?)

3. There will be some scientific revelations about the Moon - triggered by India's recent mission.

4. There will be more Royal shenanigans. This is a fair bet anyway - happens most years.

5. 'Sunlight' will nearly get published but not quite. The publisher who is interested will say it's because of the economic climate blah, blah, blah. My novel was not quite good enough, burble, burble, burble. It's the story of my life. I am such a 'nearly' person. I might cry, but then I'll look back at this blog post and remind myself that I was expecting it anyway.

I've kept one New Year's resolution and broken another. One of my resolutions was to try and keep up with blogging. The other one was not to let Facebook and Blogging get in the way of my early morning writing time. 'Nuff said!

What are your predictions for 2009, both personal and in general?

Oh My Word - I am Published

It's a funny feeling! Although I was published under my Grandma's name in the 1980s (thanks Grandma) this is different.

I sold a short story earlier this year to My Weekly. It was a story set in December and they said it would be published at Christmas. It wasn't. Apparently it can be years before My Weekly uses a story they have bought. I was gutted. Ah well ... perhaps next year ...

This has made up for it. I know it's not on Amazon and only on sale from the Author v Author website, but listed in the back are the titles of over two thousand short stories that were submitted to the competition nationwide. The thirty-eight winning entries from all over the country have been published in this anthology.

I feel humbled.

And happy.

And published at long last under my own name and not 'Rose Foster' or copyrighted 'Kettering Borough Council'.

What a lovely Christmas present eh?

A huge thank you to all the people who voted for my story from all over the country, whoever you are.

This is the website if anyone is interested in entering the 2009 competition. It starts again in January. www.authorvauthor.com

Little Things that Warm your Heart

I suspect am going to be alone on Boxing Day and until this morning I didn't quite know how I felt about it.

Traditionally, until mum died two years ago, Boxing Day would be spent round my mum's house with my sister in law and nieces and much womanly and girly jollity would be enjoyed by all. I'd give anything for just one more Boxing Day like that ... but then would I? Maybe not. Maybe those types of Boxing Day belong in the past, just like the Boxing Days of my childhood, all warm and fluffy to be plucked out of the memory box when feeling gloomy. The songs may have ended, but the melodies linger on.

It's only 8.30 am and three nice things have happened already.

1. Barney arrived for his day with Zak (Barney is my son's dog and we have him during the day so he's not alone in the house). He tried to get on my lap and then snugged his head into my neck and licked my ear. Aaahh. There's nothing like a doggy hug!

2. My friend rang me. 'Look,' she said. 'I've been thinking. Why don't you come round to mine on Boxing Day and we can have a game of Scrabble.' Now ... this is tempting. Could this be the first of many memory-making Boxing Days, I wonder to myself? My friend is single and has devoted her life to her disabled brother, who despite his learning difficulties is a demon at Scrabble!

3. I had a Christmas Card 'To my Special Friend'. It was from a Councillor. I am not supposed to be 'special friends' with Councillors - because the Member/Officer Protocol for Local Government says so. Stuffy local government gets right up my nose sometimes!

I shall now look forward to my different kind of Boxing Day this year, whatever I decide to do with it, and I won't sit and feel sorry for myself because my lovely family appears to have deserted me - I shall just thank my lucky stars for good friends and the good health to enjoy it.

Have a fantastic Christmas and New Year, and thanks to all my blogmates for their friendship and support.

A new character

A throwaway comment on Sunday in the wannabe chatroom about the General Strike in 1926 and one of the sub-plots in 'Sunlight' has thrown up a new minor character for me to weave into the story. It all started when I decided to check dates for the history of what actually happened around May Day in 1926 and I discovered that the General Strike started on Monday, 3rd May. As a result I knew I had to put something about it in the story, because there is no way my family would have had a little jolly on May Day, which was on a Saturday, and not been thinking about the General Strike on the Monday.

(Fiona knows who he is)

Well, this very nice young chap has been whispering in my ear constantly. He's very proud at appearing in the book and appears to fancy Rose. He was absolutely gutted when he found out that she was spoken for. Now, I have a problem. Rose is getting married and this rather handsome young student doctor has the hots for her. What will she do? She can't run off with him because that would mess up the entire trilogy. She can't say to him 'take me and do what you will with me' because she's been there and done that with her fiance, and Rose is too much of a nice girl. This character is giggling in my ear as I write this. He's nudging me with his elbow 'go on ...' he's saying. 'Be a devil.'

Hmmm. It appears my sensible, prim and proper Rose is about to be sorely tempted.

Blog birthday and meeting friends for lunch

Yesterday was my blog birthday. Yes, it's been a whole year since Lane, Fiona et al persuaded me to set up a blog after chatting on Sunday mornings for a while.

Coincidentally we all met up for the third Wannabe Lunch on Monday, almost a year to the day after I had posted my first nervous piece on my newly created blog. I had a fantastic time, even though I (and Helen too) got soaked through in the dreadful rain, and my feet were killing me by the end of the day. I was gutted, though, because Lane, Fiona and Mercedes couldn't be there. I was so looking forward to seeing them again. It was great to meet Andrea, a new Wannabe, and I hope she takes our advice (nagging) to join us in blogland.

Kevin was the perfect gentleman, as ever, and made sure I didn't get lost on the way home. As usual one glass just wasn't enough for Jane, and we ended up ordering wine by the bottle which raised the roof and added to the general chilled-out ambience of the day. When we eventually got chucked out the bar we just went upstairs and had a nice cup of coffee, which gave me a perfect alibi for being home later than I'd thought.

So....

What have I learned in the 366 days since I started blogging, and crept out of the closet writing-wise?

I would have to say that the last year has confirmed to me that 'the whole is greater than the sum of the parts'. I'm not talking about writing, particularly - I'm talking about the power of a group, or a team. I'm definitely a much better writer for being part of a writing community and, I think, this must be true of any shared interest, not just writing.

So, here's to friendship and the power of the blogging community and the wannabe chatroom on Sunday mornings.

I'll just raise my imaginary wine glass. Cheers!!

Thank you all

Thank you all for your fantastic words of support.

Pat: You sound like such a lovely lady. Thank you for visiting my blog and taking the time out from your own writing to give me such hugely appreciated words of wisdom and sprinklings of 'lucky dust'.

Lane: I hadn't thought of that. What does a poxy couple of months matter in the grand scheme of things? The early mornings are a way of life now. Looking forward to seeing you on Monday!

Helen: So sorry about Smudge, and thanks for your kind words. I don't get the impression your novel is limping at all. See you on Monday!

Debs: It's also very scary as well as exciting. I think you are a very focused writer and your shed will end up being your very unique selling point! I wish you could come to London on Monday. It would be great to meet you.

TF: Thanks, and sorry I haven't had time to write about your pictures on your blog. I just love your pictures and you are a truly creative person. Your blog makes me smile and sometimes inspires my writing, so thank you.

L-Plate: Yep - us Council girls need to stick together on the couch - let's just hope its a 'Richard and Judy' couch eventually for us and not a great big long waiting couch, although they don't seem to be doing too well in their new slot, do they? Your comment the other day about ideas for your books: I find there is nothing better than a good old Council meeting - I get loads of little gems that way and sometimes the few minutes before the meeting, or the ten minutes or so afterwards, is a little gold mine! (Can you snaffle a day's leave to come to London with us on Monday? It would be great to meet.)

Karen: Thanks for your support. I'm a bit like you - once I get going I find it frustrating to have to stop. I'm prevaricating now! I should really be 'getting on with it' but all I've done is cut out 600 words from 'Sunlight' so I thought I'd better stop before I end up decimating it.

Captain: My brain is very strange. It stores snippets from here there and everywhere. I thought I'd heard that 'blinking' sentence on Dr Who!

Leigh: Thanks for popping by.

Mother X: Thanks for your support and see you on Monday!

Cait O'Connor: Thanks for visiting my blog and your kind words.

Publication Saga

I thought I was going to have to go to London this week, to meet with my agent to talk about Sunlight on Broken Glass, but a very long phone call sufficed, so I don't have to go now.

I'm going to have to do more work on 'Sunlight' to suit the current market. It will go out again at the beginning of January. My agent has given me some great advice and a massive injection of confidence, so I don't feel too despondent.

I can wait. I am patient. And more than anything, I'm still in there with a chance of publication - it's just that it won't be this week.

Annie
x

Prevaricating

I think I've discovered the reason why writers (well, me anyway) will do anything rather than actually write when they set aside alloted times. For me it's early mornings.

I never used to suffer from this affliction until just recently, because if I didn't feel like writing - I simply didn't write.

Now, with deadlines looming and everything being so intense, I'm having to discipline myself, and it's hard not to blog or creep onto Facebook. It takes an enormous amount of self-control.

My discovery is that writing invokes extremes of emotion and for me, at least, it's against my nature to be on a high one minute and then tearing my hair out in despair the next. The conception of an idea is intensely private, but if, like all of us, we want to be published, the outcome is about the most public thing you'll ever do in your life.

The bit in between is like being pulled in two directions, and the emotions are the same - either a tortuous lack of self-confidence, which isn't helped at all by reading someone else's brilliant display of literary talent, or soaring to that high place when you have a particularly unique idea that you just have to get down on paper, and then, when it's written, you feel euphoric and the feeling is better than anything.

It's being so absent from what is going on around you that you don't even hear when someone mentions your name. You are so deep within your own imagination that you really are in a different place mentally. Then - wham - the phone rings and it startles you so much that you actually jump. It's like blinking and finding yourself on the other side of the world.

Does anyone else have any ideas on this?

In Limbo

I'm sorry I haven't visited blogland for ages. It's because I've been spending every precious minute of my spare time writing. Now I am in Limbo - in that strange place where I'm sure many writers have found themselves before. I have an agent. I sort of have a publisher - but I'm betwixt and between, waiting to hear whether my reworked blockbuster of a family saga splits successfully into three average length books. This was at the request of the interested publisher who wanted three books instead of one.

I've finished the re-write of the first novel in the trilogy and the manuscript has been very ceremoniously posted off at our village post office. I kissed it - the post office clerk kissed it - and his wife did too (who works with him and is an old friend of mine) and for good measure the bloke behind me in the queue kissed it too, saying 'blimey - that'll put us on the map having an author living in the village.'

I wish I shared his optimism!

My kind-hearted neighbour, Dulcie - elderly, with long grey hair and a hooked nose, stone deaf and very scary to children and animals - was in the queue too, fetching her pension. She pretended, very loudly because she didn't have her hearing aid switched on - to put a good luck spell on the manuscript and a child in the shop nearly wet herself with fright, asking her mummy if the lady was a witch.

It was all rather touching, really. I gave her a lift back home in my car in appreciation of her good luck spell. Well, wouldn't you? I didn't want to tempt any bad vibes.

So this is the state of play:-

• Book One (80K words). My first manuscript is now with my agent for onward transmission to the interested publisher, but my agent has been in Frankfurt all this week (is it just wishful thinking that she might - just might - have been peddling serial or film rights?) OK OK - I know I'm just being silly!
• Book Two (78K words) is complete, but needs a serious edit to make sure it has a definite beginning, middle and end of its own. I also need another reader to make sure it can stand alone as a novel in its own right.
• Book Three (83K words) is in a mess - comprising of the end of the original novel, and the beginning of the original sequel. It needs a serious re-work to give it a beginning, a middle and an end of its own. Mind you it's a bit longer than the others, so I have a bit of lee-way to be ruthless.
• I have written three, separate synopses.
• I have written a single synopsis covering the whole saga.

My deadline for submission of Book One was the end of September, which I managed to meet - just.

I'm hoping to get Book Two to a local reader next weekend, and sent off to my agent by the first week in November.

My deadline for completion of the first draft of Book Three is the end of the year.

If all this is for nothing, then I will have to have lots of virtual TLC. I feel as if I am so close, and yet so far.

Limbo is quite a lonely place to be I can tell you. I really need that Wannabe meet-up on 10th November to give me another injection of empathy.

Happy Birthday Rob/Dad/Grandad

It's my hubby's birthday today, so I thought you might like to know a little bit about him - not the boring stuff, but the interesting things.

He can't spell

He's never written a cheque

He hates dealing with money - as long as he gets his spending money every month he doesn't give a damn about the bank balance and he's only just mastered the 'hole in the wall'

He can't do predictive texting and shouts down his mobile phone

He hangs out shirts on the line by the cuffs and tips of the collar crucifixion style

He sings and whistles all the time

He is not very diplomatic and speaks his mind - please or offend

He hates reading (I think he's intentionally dyslexic because he has no problem with Land Rover manuals or long technical building construction books)

He sleeps with a dog (ahemm! our Labrador actually)

He tucks his t-shirt into his jeans and wears shorts with black socks and white trainers if I don't stop him

He makes a very nice cup of man-tea but always puts too much sugar in it

He hates football

He's very witty and never lost for words

He loves winding people up - but his lack of diplomacy makes us all cringe

He's never jealous

He hates the phone - especially when it's his mother on the other end

He actually enjoys doing the food shopping in Tescos (so I just let him get on with it)

He invents silly challenges for family members

And before anyone asks - no, he doesn't appear anywhere in my books or short stories. However, if anyone else would like to use him - feel free!

My Town Centre - The Next Generation

One bleak Sunday morning in November 1964 Grandad and I went for our usual weekend walk.

"Why are we going up the town on a Sunday, Grandad?" I asked.

(In those days it was unheard of for the town centre shops to open on a Sunday.)

"Because we are going to watch an old building being demolished," he replied.

That morning Grandad and I stood with a crowd of locals, tutting and puffing and shaking their heads in disbelief, as we watched the sombre, but proud, Old Grammar School on Bakehouse Hill being reduced to a pile of Victorian rubble as it made way for what is now called 'Newlands Phase One'.

Being a Kettering gal, born and bred, as I was growing up I can remember the redevelopment and modernisation of the town centre that took place in the 60's and 70's, and which began on that chilly November morning. I can clearly recall, as a teenager, the fight to save the Queen Anne Beech House from the clutches of the gurus who worshipped at the altars of pre-stressed concrete and pre-fabricated steel sections and presumed they knew best when it came to the buzzwords – 'Central Area Redevelopment'.

In the early 1970s a local hack called Tony Ireson fought like a Trojan to save our heritage. He had the full backing of townsfolk as he embarked on his crusade to save Beech House. Well-known and not-so-well-known residents of the town alike made their views known in the local newspaper and the Civic Society eventually took off its velvet gloves and replaced them with iron fists in the quest to save the unique and majestic buildings at the heart of this busy market town – all to no avail.

No-one was listening, and if they were, they had their hands over their ears and their eyes tightly shut as Kettering's residents tried in vain to make themselves heard outside the closed doors of the Council Chamber.

Beech House was demolished and all that remained of this grand old mansion was the blue front door, fixed defiantly to the wall just inside the Tanner's Lane entrance to the Newlands Centre (then called the Newborough Centre).

'Ketrin' ent never gunna be the same agen,' people said, with a morose shaking of heads. There was a general feeling that Kettering had irrevocably lost its unique sparkle when the Gold Street shop frontages and the Dickensian cobbles of Richards Leys had also been sacrificed in the name of modernisation.

Tony then embarked on the fight of his life to save his quaint and quirky home, Beech Cottage, from the concrete-worshipping timelords who hid behind their gigantic mechanical monsters. This time he was successful, but sadly sacrificed his lovely garden, which was replaced by a road running right outside his front window.

My home town is now facing another comprehensive town centre redevelopment, but this time, I think, the decision-makers are listening. Mindful of the mistakes of the past, residents are being given the opportunity to let the decision-makers know how they feel, and what they think. The Council has rented out a vacant shop in the town centre to stage displays and answer questions about the new-look multi-million pound town centre. Its a far cry from the whisperings in smoke-filled chambers of the sixties and seventies when people were ignored.

Don't you think, though, there's a touch of serendipity here? The town centre shop, where people can go and have their say, is on the site of the first building demolished all those years ago -The Old Grammar School.

No Pain No Gain

I've come to the conclusion that the term 'annual leave' should be re-named 'annual-work-shift'.

I know I've been a very bad blogger recently, but going on the Writers' Holiday meant clearing everything up at work the previous week, and then catching up last week. So I technically haven't had any leave - I've just done the work I would normally carry out in the week I was in Wales at different times.

Similarly, next week I shall be doing the same again - only I'm off for two weeks this time!

I need to somehow find some 30 hr days next week (no way am I giving up my 1k words a day writing time, though) and even when Friday inevitably rolls around there'll be no let up. I'll be packing on Saturday, cleaning on Sunday and exhausted on Monday as I fall into my tiny space in the flying sardine can and take to the skies. It'll take me a few days out of my two weeks to recover, and then guess what? Back at work again to catch up!

Writers' Holiday

It was fantastic. People were so friendly and supportive and it was great to have conversations with such fabulous authors as Jane Wenham-Jones,Lesley Horton, Dee Williams and Elizabeth Hawksley.

When I'm in Ibiza I'll whittle away at some time sitting on the edge of the sea, water lapping around my legs, and write down some of the things I learned in Wales to post on my blog.

I haven't had any news about 'Sunlight' yet. My agent says not to expect to hear anything now until September, because August is notoriously slow. I've decided that even if she can't find a publisher for Sunlight, I shall press on with the sequel, finish that and then pick up on Novel No. 3 (the one with the stolen title). Ken Follett apparently wrote ten (yes 10) novels before Eye of the Needle was placed with a publisher.

Just about all of the published authors at Caerleon confirmed that disappointment and rejection is the name of the game, but getting an agent is the single most positive step towards being published. I was told that it took Carole Blake 14 months to place one of her author's novels - and then when it was eventually published it sold over a million copies!

So the point of this post is: please don't think I've abandoned the blogging cause - I'll be slogging away over a hot desk next week and then (hopefully) chilling out over a cold Martini for the following two weeks.

Back in early September folks!


Oh - by the way - I can officially spill the beans now (although I think most of you have already guessed because I'm bad at keeping secrets). I AM GOING TO BE A GRANNY AGAIN!!! YEAYYYY!! Little Miss Prim is pregnant - due in early March.

The Incredible Shrinking Ann(ie)

Now lost ten and a half pounds. (Only another two pounds to go and I shall weigh the same as I did this time last year.) I put on nearly a stone sitting on my backside writing 'Sunlight on Broken Glass'.

Kevin - please STOP me pigging out in Wales. Remind me that it's taken me five weeks of severe self-deprivation to lose the equivalent of ten and a half packets of slimy, greasy white lard.

The weight watchers leader had a dozen packets stacked up on the front table this week. It made me feel quick ill looking at them.

Mind you - my extremely tactful hubby has just reminded me that he can't tell yet.

'Still Waiting' and Agent Responses

I'm still waiting to hear. And it is HORRIBLE!

I know that I am lucky to have an agent.

I know I should be grateful that my novel has been pitched at the publishing world and no news is good news (so they say!!).

I know I am a complete pain in the a**e to anyone who knows me. I can't concentrate on anything else - this enormous warm and fluffy feeling that is my first novel occupies every space in my brain, forcing out mundane things like shopping, cleaning and working.

I'm coiled up like a cobra, periodically sticking my head up to spit venomous poison at anyone who asks if I have heard anything from my agent.

Anyway - less of the incoherent burblings of a frustrated wannabe, the reason for this post is to share some information with my fellow aspiring novelists.

I sent out a total of six submissions to agents earlier this year. I have now had a reply from all of them; the last one responding just yesterday. I thought you might like to know the statistics and how and by when they responded. I won't put the names of the agencies on my blog, but most of you know who they are anyway from chatroom ramblings, and if you e-mail me I'll tell you privately.

Agent No. 1: Submitted end February. Replied five weeks later with a request for the full manuscript. Rejected one week later with an individually written letter, mentioning the huge amount of submissions they receive, the current economic climate and suggesting that I try elsewhere. The letter was polite and friendly and I got the feeling this was a top-class agency.

Agent No. 2: Submitted 3rd May. E-mailed on 20th May to say she would like to read the whole manuscript. M/S submitted 21st May. E-mailed on 29th May to say she liked it and would like to meet me to discuss it. Meeting held on 6th June. Revisions suggested. Rewrite submitted on 16th June. E-mailed back to say she was sending it out to two big publishers on 3rd July and 'a few more' during week commencing 7th July. She says she will let me know immediately she hears back from any of the publishers. (Hence the constant checking of e-mails and jumping each time the phone rings.) I have to say that the service I have received as a new author has been second to none, and although this agent has a scary reputation I feel she will do her utmost to get me published.

Agent No 3: Submitted 3rd May. I received a lovely individual response at the end of May saying that she had enjoyed the first three chapters, but that 'on balance, she felt she would have to pass this time as it didn't quite grip her in the way that it should for her to offer to represent it'. She urged me to try other agents, who may be looking for this type of family saga. Once again, she made me feel valued as a person, even though she had rejected my manuscript.

Agent No. 4: Submitted 3rd May. Package returned with no covering letter, standard letter or anything to indicate where it had come from. I had to guess which agency it was by the postmark. Big thumbs down for this agency. I wouldn't have thought a standard rejection letter would have been too much trouble to include in the package. Mind you it does now say on their website they are not considering any unsolicited material at the present time, although it didn't mention this at the time I sent it off. Perhaps a junior assistant forgot to include the standard letter?

Agent No. 5: Submitted 3rd May. Packaged returned with standard rejection letter mid June. I have to say that the manuscript looked as if it hadn't even been read.

Agent No. 6: (Submitted 3rd May, reply received yesterday). A letter requesting the full manuscript after I have re-written it using just one narrative voice. The agent said '.... we enjoyed the writing immensely, but feel that it is best for a new author to stick to just one narrative voice.' I have written back to the agent thanking her for her time and informing her that I now have an agent.

What do you all feel about the response of Agent No. 6?

The first part of my novel is written in the first person from five points of view as each of the principal characters describes what happened on Easter Sunday in 1922. The second part takes up the story from the Autumn of 1922 and tracks the life of the family up until 1978. It is written traditionally in the third person, with occasional narrative (typed in italics) in the first person as the main character (Tom) speaks directly to the reader and makes comments on his life story, giving shocking little secrets away.

It just goes to show how agents have differing opinions doesn't it?

JM (my agent) loved the way it was written. She said it was original and made the reader feel a part of the family. When we met I did say that I was worried about the structure of the novel, but she dismissed my comment with a wave of the hand and said that 'true writers just write, and it's how it grips the reader that matters, and how quickly they want to turn the pages, not how it is technically constructed.' Mind you, she suggested changing the viewpoint in places, and I could see why when I did the revisions - the whole thing flowed much better.

I'm just hoping that publishers won't take the view of Agent No. 6 just because I'm an unpublished author; I feel that No. 6 does have a valid point about using just one narrative voice, and it's something that I've read elsewhere too.

The only thing is, I don't see how the story would work if I changed it.

Anyhow. I'm keeping everything crossed that it's just a hypothetical conundrum, and hardly daring to hope that one of the publishers will want to publish my novel. If they don't - then I suppose it's back to the drawing board, but even though the waiting is killing me, I wouldn't miss the experience for anything!

But what is really comforting is knowing that my blogmates are right beside me, and if the ultimate outcome is rejection then I know I'm in good company!

A Tribute to the Man who Serviced the Trains at Wicksteed Park - Ben Martin - An Urban Legend

Ben Martin was a joker: his loud booming voice delivering random snippets of quirky wisdom about anything and everything could be heard all across Wicksteed Park Lake.

He worked there for nearly forty years as the park's Chief Engineer.

His workshop was on the edge of the water, hidden behind some bushes - out of sight of the thousands of day trippers who descend on Wickies Park in the summer. 'The Lady of the Lake', 'King Arthur' and 'Cheyenne' were his babies. He knew every single nut and bolt and took them to bits, serviced them and put them back together again endlessly. How many people enjoyed a ride around the lake on the miniature railway, kept safe by Ben's meticulous maintenance on the trains? How many children squealed with pleasure on the roller coaster, not realising how much dedication went into keeping it in perfect working order?

When Rob was a little boy, Ben decided to take him on some mad expedition or another involving a farm, pigs and lots of mud. The only thing was, eight-year old Rob didn't have any wellies with him. Did that matter? No, course not. Don't be silly - there's always a solution somewhere! Seven pairs of socks and a pair of size 10 wellies was the answer. Rob says he could hardly drag his little legs along the track, let alone through all the mud and pig muck.

When Rob and I were sixteen we helped him push an old green Morris 1100 across a field from the farmyard to Ben's house in the heart of the Northamptonshire countryside (please don't ask why!). I laughed so much my sides ached for a week afterwards, as he kept telling me to push harder, because the herd of cows that were following us were catching us up fast.

He told me I was beautiful on my wedding day - in a very loud and embarrassing voice! When we eventually had children he sat them on his lap and pretended to steal their nose and find it behind their ear. Once my boys were big enough he helped Rob teach them how to mend their cars for themselves, and how, if they couldn't find a part that needed replacing, they should have a go at making one.

His big hands were always grubby, his fingernails caked in oil. His overalls did actually stand up themselves in the corner of his workshop. Everything about Ben was big, loud, jolly and fun.

Rob and my boys (and Ben's son, Scott) are all Land Rover mad. They've all got one - it's Landy City around here and Nicky can't wait until his insurance comes down so he can have one too.

Ben also loved Land Rovers. I couldn't help but laugh watching them all, getting in each others way. They were all like great big kids playing with giant meccano sets!

Sadly, Ben died in the early hours of Saturday morning of a massive heart attack. No warning. No nothing.

He left his legacy though. On Friday he was in the middle of mending a tractor. It's now in bits on his front drive in a glorious rendition of his last joke! Rob's Auntie doesn't know whether to laugh or cry.

So Benji, if you are up there reading this, no-one knows where all the bits go. Can you come back and give them a hand!

Ben Martin
24.7.38 to 5.7.08
RIP

Giant Leaps

My book is now with publishers. JM e-mailed me yesterday afternoon at work and confirmed that she has sent it out. She says she has her fingers crossed.

I sat staring at the unopened e-mail for a few seconds before I clicked on it to open it.

I work in an open plan office and everyone was doing their own thing. It was 4.30, quiet, with just the sound of tapping fingers, humming of overhead fans and the occasional rustling of paper. It was just another e-mail.

So why, then, did I feel as if the entire population of Kettering was looking over my shoulder?

I clicked on it to open it, just as my phone rang simultaneously. The sound of the phone made me jump. I answered it. It was reception.

DAMN! I had an appointment at 5.30 and he was here a whole hour early!

Well - the poor bloke. I just shoved him in the Council Chamber (I didn't want to take him up to the office because of the e-mail. What I really wanted to do was tell Heather and jump up and down in the privacy of the Democratic Services kitchen without the straight-jacket of an Iimportant Consultant from the IDeA in the office.)

DAMN. There was no water in the kettle in the Chamber. I shoved the spout under the nozzle of the little tap on the water cooler. Water splashed everywhere.

'Be careful,' my visitor said, alarmed. He thought it was a boiler, and then realised it wasn't, laughing at himself.

'What's up with you?' he said. 'You're a bundle of nerves.'

Now. I know this man is a Very Important Consultant with High Level Connections with Very Important Government Ministers; hell - he's even on first name terms with our 'Gordon'! I also know he is devoted to his wife and kids, has two very sloppy labradors and LOVES reading. I know all about his kids. I know where he lives. I know lots of things about Very Important Visitor. I know all these things because we've spent quite a few hours talking about such things as 'Books We Have Read' , 'Where We Are Going on Holiday' and 'The Ups and Downs of Life with Labradors' when we should have been working on boring local government stuff.

I decided I knew Very Important Visitor well enough to tell him about my book, and the just-opened e-mail on my PC upstairs.

What I wasn't expecting was the reaction.

'I knew it,' he said, a wide, silly grin plastered over his face. 'I knew there was a lot more to you than met the eye. KBC will be losing a damned good democratic services manager.' (Aaaah - he was only being nice - we do get on quite well despite his Very Important status.

'I'm not leaving,' I said. 'Authors don't earn very much. I need to keep my job.'

'Bloody hell,' he said. 'When can I read it? What's the title? What's it about? Can I come to your book launch? Oh, please ... you've just got to invite me to your book launch.'

'I haven't got a publisher yet,' I said - a tad alarmed at the public display of excitement. 'Don't go spreading it around.'

Anyway. This little conversation with Very Important Person is significant on my journey out of the writing closet.

I've finally told someone - outside close friends and family - about my book and being a secret writer. Do you know - it felt quite good? In fact, it felt bloody marvellous!

Could it be that people won't think I'm mad after all?

Now who would have thought I'd have said that a year ago!

An Early Morning (B)rainstorm

***

Melody of Raindrops

***

A possible title for the sequel has just presented itself to me as I complete my 1,000 words for today. It's four thirty am and I've just got up to write before going to work. Please tell me what you think. Does it work as a title? Would you buy a book with this title? I shall use it as a working title anyway because it's better than just 'Sequel to Sunlight'.

The Book Cover Diet (Week Two)

I have just got back from WeightWatchers. My weight loss this week is 2 and a half lb.

Tip of the week: If you are hungry in the evening, either find something to do with your hands, other than reading or watching TV (that always makes me want to eat), or have an early night.

One of the most beautiful places on this earth

I'm talking about Ibiza. Yes Ibiza!

Now - this is not the Ibiza that throbs with young people and nightlife, but the Ibiza where James Blunt has a very grand villa to carry out his songwriting; where artists, writers and film stars seem to pop up on street corners and where time stands still. It's one of the best kept secrets of the Mediterranean - and one which is shared by a relatively few people (I know, because we meet them every year in the same place!).

We always go for the same two weeks in August each year. Two years ago the entire extended family all went together and we had a fantastic time. (The kids hired out a car and went clubbing every night, totally missing the point of the beautiful location.) My mum came with us: it was only three months before she died. I'll never forget our mornings drinking coffee and trying to complete the cryptic crossword in this heavenly place. The memories are very precious and I'm so glad that she spent her last holiday on this earth in such a lovely place, and that she didn't know she had cancer then.

There is an exquisite fragrance in the air in Ibiza, which I wish I could bottle. It's the smell of fresh pine trees, mixed with lemon, and just breathing in the warm fragrance, whilst soft, warm, white sand slips between your toes is absolute heaven on earth.

My favourite place is sitting on the edge of the waterwith a good book, gentle waves lapping around my legs. I can sit there for hours, just listening to the rustle of the breeze in the pine trees behind me, and breathing in that lovely smell. Rob likes snorkelling and is also a qualified scuba diver, so I just sit on the edge of the water, drinking Sangria and reading my book with one eye and watching him with the other.

(We won't talk about the sand - but suffice it to say that each session sitting on the edge of the waves necessitates a brisk swim in deeper water!)

Last year, Rob and I went alone for the first time and had a very lazy holiday indeed. Lazier than any holiday we had ever been on before. Looking back - that holiday was a watershed in my life. It represents the transition from my old life to my new one, which is very different. It was the Saturday before we departed for our holiday that I bought Jane's 'Wannabe a Writer?' from Waterstones, and it was when I got back that I decided to come out of the writing closet after nearly thirty years of secret writing.

This year my holiday will be subtly different. I can't wait. This year I will be a writer in Ibiza and I somehow think some of my summer reading on the edge of the waves will be replaced by summer writing.

If I were to win the lottery, I'd buy a villa in Ibiza and invite all my lovely blogging friends to join me for a writerly holiday.

It really is a fantastic place and I can recommend it for a lazy holiday.

Update on 'Sunlight'

• My agent liked the re-write. I'm so relieved. I've had to send the manuscript off as an e-mail attachment ready for it to tiptoe in next to the big boys next Tuesday.

• It feels a bit like packing a four-year old off to school for the first time. I feel physically sick with nerves.

• Anyway, less about the novel. I'm on a diet. It's called the 'book cover diet' and it's the most effective diet I have ever embarked upon. Every time I even think of eating something I shouldn't the thought that maybe, just maybe, in a few months' time my picture may be taken for a book cover spurs me on. I joined Weight Watchers a week last Monday. Each week I promise (flippin' 'eck, now that's done it) to post my weight loss for the previous week on my blog. I also promise to publish a little bit of wisdom on dieting, or a tip each week to help you lose weight.

• I lost 3lb the first week

• Here's the tip for the week. Drink loads of water. Use the loos on the top floor of the building at work thus necessitating climbing two flights of stairs about twenty times a day whilst at work. This means that your employer will be paying for your daily workout. This type of activity with henceforth be known as functional inconvenience.

Rainbows

I had a lovely day yesterday.

My three-year-old grandson goes to a playgroup called 'Rainbows'. All three of my own children went there (although the staff have changed). So you can understand why I wanted to slip back in time and accompany him on his annual day out to the West Lodge Rural Centre. It wasn't quite the same, though, as my last experience of a playgroup trip seventeen years ago.

These are the differences:

1. Tyler was as excited about going on a bus as he was about going on the trip itself. I realised he has hardly ever been on a bus.

2. I had to sign a form to say that he had suncream on.

3. There is a small playground at the Centre. All the equipment is set in sand. None of the equipment is above five feet high. The playground is fully enclosed. I got some very odd looks indeed when I fished 'World Without End' out of my voluminous bag and fetched myself a cup of coffee. Shock horror at the thought I was about to take one of my eyes off my grandchild.

4. We had a picnic lunch. When my kids were little, picnics were special and you could eat your chocolate treats first if you wanted to, although they did have to sit still to eat it. I'd taken a clean tea towel and Tyler spread it out on the picnic table and then placed all the items out of his packed lunch on it exactly how he wanted them. He then proceeded to eat it in this order. Four yellow Smarties (we then placed a two rows of Smarties in 'rainbow' order using the headed paper of the playgroup to go by, and had a race to see who could eat their row first). A grape. A Mr Men Fromage Frais. The rest of the yellow Smarties. One bite of a ham roll. A packet of Quavers. Two more grapes. All the red Smarties. A mini scotch egg. (We then counted the remaining grapes and 'shared' them - one for Tyler, one for Granny - and then counted how many we each had.) About five more grapes. Ribena. A couple more bites out of the ham roll. Then he said he'd had enough and put all the blue Smarties back in the tube to eat on the bus on the way back.

I vaguely became aware of the din around us. Kids were running around with food in their hands, shouting at each other with their mouths full, showering the picnic area with litter. I noticed that all the grannies and grandads there, and some of the parents too, had done more or less the same as I had, and made their grandchildren sit at a picnic table.

The last time I went on a Rainbows outing, everyone had to sit at a picnic table to eat their packed lunches and weren't allowed to run around whilst eating. So this has changed (and I'm not sure it's for the better).

5. There seems to be an obsession about cleanliness. OK, I know it's a working farm. I'd taken wet wipes and made sure he had clean hands. There was an abundance of germ-busting new-fangled alcohol gel, though, in mums' handbags. Wet wipes don't seem to be enough nowadays.

We got home - to my house - at about 3.30. Grandad finished work for the day and we all had a cup of tea and talked about 'the farm'. I needed to keep him awake until tea-time so we got the crayons out and he drew a picture for his mum and dad at the kitchen table while I cooked tea.

Lee was picking him up on his way home from work at 6.00. I'd sneaked his jim-jams out of the house in the morning, so I made sure he'd had his tea and a bath before Lee arrived.

Emily rang at 7.00. He was tucked up in bed - absolutely shattered. She said he'd never been to bed so early.

I got the feeling yesterday that children nowadays are constrained in ways that the last generation weren't. They are watched like hawks, and no wonder given the horror stories that are in the news. I noticed that parents couldn't relax from keeping their eyes on their children - not even for a second - and panicked whenever they were out of view.

There weren't many children who were made to sit still and eat their lunches. Tyler was quite happy sitting at the picnic table with me, and so were the handful of other children who were made to do the same.

The suncream and hygiene obsessions seem a bit over the top too, compared with a few years ago. Apparently the signing of the form is now a health and safety requirement - lots of people said it was going a step too far, considering each child had to be accompanied by an adult, who, presumably should be responsible enough to make a judgement on suncream.

Lastly, bed at 7.00 pm after a hectic day out seems pretty normal to me. Today's three-year olds, though, because their parents have to work and don't get home till about 6.00, tend to stay up later.

So what do you all think? Is it just me getting older and looking at the world through granny specs, or have things really changed over the last twenty years or so.

Writing Squidge

I've been thinking a lot this week about why people find it so hard to write sex scenes. I've had to pep up one of the scenes in 'Sunlight' and I've found it incredibly difficult.

I think I know why I find it so hard. It's because all fiction inevitably has an element of experience in it - you just can't avoid it. How can you write otherwise? I don't want to upset my husband. You just can't help a bit of yourself coming out in whatever you write - whether it's squidge or not.

And I don't know whether I want to share that bit of myself with the whole world.

So I don't think writing squidge is going to be my scene. I'll do it if I have to, but to me, it's a bit like taking medicine.

Anyway, the real thing is so much better .....

Sunlight Fifth Edit

Well. It's done.

I've given it all I've got, and it's packaged up and ready to go - and it's now 3.30 am. I've finished ahead of deadline, but once I started I just couldn't stop. I had a little blip on Friday when I was under the weather, but crashed on with it over the weekend.

Thank for all your support and good wishes.

I discovered a very strange phenomenon, though, whilst editing. Although I was enjoying reacquainting myself with the characters after a couple of months away, I found them nagging at me quite a bit. Nagging me to leave them alone and just clear off and start reading 'World Without End'. I ordered it from Amazon a few weeks ago (I was fed up with waiting for the paperback version to come out and am the zillionth person on the library waiting list for it).

I started reading, and then couldn't put it down. I knew this would happen. It always does with a Ken Follett. And this one is special - it's the sequel to 'Pillars of the Earth' and if any of you haven't read that, then I can highly recommend it. It's long - very long - but fantastic.

My wise guru of a friend said it was because I was scared of my novel actually being published, so I just wanted to hide behind someone else's book and bury my head in the sand.

I think he might be right. I'm sitting looking at the packaged-up manuscript on the coffee table in front of me and think I might just have to go to bed and get some sleep before I rip it open and just do another little check ......

Wanna Meet-Up

What a lovely day we had, didn't we?

I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed it and can't wait to meet up again.

I'll not be blogging very much while I race to complete my edit. I have to make sure my m/s is with my agent by Wed. 25th June.

Stolen Titles and New Beginnings

I don't even know how to begin, other than to say that JM is one of the most perceptive people I have ever met (but also one of the scariest because she obviously knows her stuff). She was very welcoming and almost felt like an old friend. I felt very relaxed in her library, surrounded by hundreds of books and buried in a very comfortable sofa, as we went through my book and my life looking for a unique fact about me to use. I'm not so boring as I think, apparently!

The meeting with her yesterday left me exhilarated but exhausted. I finally got home at about 9.15 pm.

I'm going to do a full report back for my Cloud Line buddies, but this is a snapshot.

I have a deadline of three weeks to re-work Twisted Garlands. She seems confident that it will make it. Common-sense keeps whispering to me that her view is obviously subjective, and its success depends on others sharing that view. She says she has some publishers in mind but it is crucial that she pitches it with the right publisher for the genre.

Anyway, that is the last time I shall refer to my novel as 'Twisted Garlands' because Sunlight on Broken Glass, my second novel, has suffered from a stolen title! It's not terminal - she likes my WIPs - but, she says, we'll concentrate on them later. J says it is a brilliant title and will capture attention on the bookshop shelves (!!! omg I can't believe she actually said that !!!). She already has some ideas for the book cover.

I am scrapping my prologue, and substituting it with a half-page beginning which 'reflects' the title. We spotted what J called a 'gem' buried halfway through the novel to rework and use as the prologue. It's only half a page and I've just done that. I'll post the new beginning on Cutting It Fine for feedback.

J hasn't suggested any changes for the storyline at all - but I've got to put the novel on a diet and cut down the word count a little; she's suggested finishing the story in 1971 (thus covering about 50 years) instead of 2007 and saving the ending for a sequel!!

This means combining two of my characters (a mother and daughter) into one character and having one wedding instead of two. This will then cut down the word count and the excess can be saved to be used in the future.

Re-working the ending is going to take the most time, I think.

We went through the novel, page by page, in about four-and-a-half hours. I've got some tweaking to do with the structure of the chapters (mainly finding more natural chapter ends and running consecutive chapters into one).

Also I have to insert the main character's 'voice' at strategic places in the text to bring out the symbolism and give the reader an insight into his thoughts.

I'd say it's half-way between a rewrite and an edit.

And I have just three weeks, because, she says, when she gets back from her holiday she wants to get it out there!

(As an aside, do you know just how much the average advance is in the current economic climate? Just 3K but with enhanced royalties, apparently. It's a bloody good job we don't do it for the money, isn't it?)

Twisted Doubled Glass on Broken Sunlight Garlands ..... someone please make me another cup of strong coffee

Package sent off first class - as agent requested. I feel worse than post-count after a General Election. I've had two and a half hours sleep in the last thirty-six hours. My head is fuzzy and I'm all edited out. zzzzzzz ....

I've just realised that I stink. I badly need a bath. I hate smelly people and now I've become one. When I'm not smelly again, Hubby is taking (dragging!!) me out to Hobson's Choice for tea and then I can go to bed.

I just wanted to say thank you to all you lovely blogmates for your best wishes and support. Even if all this comes to nothing it will have been worth it for the sheer experience of working to a deadline and meeting god-like agent - erm - I mean a real live agent! The thing is it won't just be my experience - it will be for all of us because there's nothing like sharing stuff like this. I hope it will help us all.

Big hugs all round and speak on Sunday in the chatroom.

Update

This afternoon Twisted Garlands hauled itself up onto the second rung of a very high ladder. I was at MacDonalds with Tyler and when I got back Hubby said someone called J had rung me and was ringing back at 3.3o. I looked at my e-mails. J had e-mailed me.

I sat looking at the unopened e-mail for a few minutes. I really thought it would be a 'thanks, but no thanks' and wanted to hold onto the dream for just a little bit longer. I eventually opened up the e-mail.

She liked Twisted Garlands. It was one of those arcane moments when you can't quite believe your eyes and have to read-every-word-one-at-a-time-just-to-make- sure.

I'm meeting her next Friday afternoon - 6th June. The experience of speaking to a real, live agent (especially someone who is obviously held in such high regard) was scary-scary and I know I must have said some very daft things on the phone because I was so damned nervous. But she, herself, wasn't scary at all. She was really nice. She obviously knows her stuff inside out.

She said I need to work on Twisted Garlands in places for it to be publishable and we are going to talk through the revisions next Friday. She asked if I was in a position to do the revisions quickly. Of course I said 'yes'. If I have to take unpaid leave from work, I'll do it.

Horror of horrors though! She wants both WIPs sent through to her by post as soon as possible. The dark and dreary Doubled Lives and Sunlight on Broken Glass.

Please may I be excused from blogging for a few days (until Monday) to edit, re-edit and then edit some more. And can someone please tell me how I can lose five stone in a week?

Oh - and something else really important. Please vote for FARYL SMITH FROM KETTERING in tonight's Britain's got Talent. She's absolutely amazing.

Reverse Mid-life Crisis

I'm having a mid-life crisis, only it's sort of in reverse.

I'm on a week's holiday at the moment and absolutely loving it. I've got Tyler today while Little Miss Prim writes her annual reports. I'm off to see an old friend at lunchtime in his brand spanking new posh bungalow, and taking Tyler with me. (Hope he behaves!) See - I could quite easily fit into the 'lady who lunches' category! No problem there. Nice healthy lunch with salad leaves and fruit. See - I'd even lose weight!

I still love the job I do, only I don't want to do it any more. Does that seem kind of retro? I'm not enjoying going to work at the moment and just want to escape from the straight-jacket.

I really want to write all day - not boring local governmentese, but exciting fiction that people actually might want to read without being grabbed by the scruff of the neck and forced to cast a perfunctory eye over my pathetic 'passive-voice disguised as plain-English' offerings.

My ideal existence would be:

1. To look after my grandson for one or two days a week, taking him on exiting adventures to Tescos and garden centres with 'carrots' (sorry ... parrots - these three -year olds are very persistent), wabbits and fishies.

2. To become very efficient secretary in hubby's business and keep up with the invoices and book-keeping in the manner of twenty-something pin-striped PA.

3. While pretending to be PA to hubby, to sit at computer (much like I am now) and write, blog and wallow in being a published writer.

It's nice to dream, isn't it. Still I've got four more days of freedom before being thrown back to the lions, so I'm going to make the most of it!

Sunlight on Broken Glass ...

Is my latest title for 'Going Back' which is just a working title.

A few days ago I spent ages making lists of titles that just didn't fit What a waste of time. I should have learned the lesson from Twisted Garlands and just let it find its own name.

When I was writing Twisted Garlands it was known for at least the first 50K words as just 'Book'. Then it became 'A Tangled Web' - but that was a cliche and had been used loads of times before so I quickly discarded that. There followed lots of silly titles; sad titles; titles that bore no resemblance to the story; titles that when googled revealed they had been used before and titles that were as dull as Lane's washing-up water. (By the way, Lane, how's the hair now after the hair dye incident?) It was nearly as bad finding a title that fitted the story as writing the story itself.

Then the title materialised right in front of my eyes in a paragraph of dialogue spoken by the sensible and wise Rose '... life is like a twisted garland of daisies, one links onto another and there you have it ... blah blah' Good old Rose had found it for me! Thank you Rose.

Similarly in 'Going Back' I wrote just now (3.30 am in the morning when I flow at my fastest and strongest):

'Tony stared at the broken glass in his hand and remembered when, as a child, he had started a fire just by concentrating the sun's rays on a patch of dry grass. The mid-day sun on his back served only to fuel his anger and light a raging fire in his soul. The very same mid-day sun that had once filled Pippa's soft hair with warmth and made her eyes dance with twinkles and sparkles now glinted with menace on the broken glass in his hand ....'

Tony is about to do something that he won't regret for many years. For nearly thirty years his secret remains buried. He thinks he's got away with murder, but he hasn't. He smugly covers up his crime and events conspire to ensure that he escapes justice. That is, until his wife's long-lost daughter, Tammy, comes back to the village to find her roots twenty-eight years later. She wants answers and has nothing to lose ...

So there it is. 'Sunlight on Broken Glass'. I googled it and it hasn't been used before. It's quite apt, really, as it relates to the pivotal point in the story, from which the back-story and present tense odd-numbered chapters radiate. I'm sort of wondering whether or not to use it as a prologue, or leave it where it is, almost slap bang in the centre of the story. I wonder if I'll keep it or change it as the story progresses? We'll just have to see.

I seem to have abandoned 'Doubled Lives'. It's turned into the proverbial damp squib. I wasn't enjoying writing it and didn't get that little tingle at the prospect of a couple of hours uninterrupted writing time. 'Sunlight on Broken Glass' is firing me up and I just can't stop writing. I'm up to 47,846 words now. I've got a week off work and am going to aim for 2K words each day for the next six days which should bring it up to about 60K by next Sunday.

I might resurrect 'Doubled Lives', but I doubt it. I don't like the characters one little bit. I won't press 'delete' just yet, but I think it might have to disappear off the top of my blog.

Right. It's now 4.00 am and I'm going back to bed for a couple of hours. At least I don't have to go to work today ... hooray!

Synchronicity

In the last few minutes of the wannabe chatroom this morning we were talking about friendship - Lane, Denise, Fiona and myself.

You know those moments in life when you get a little shiver down your spine because you just know they are going to be so significant in the future? Well, I had one of those moments of pure synchronicity after I had logged out. I just knew without any doubt at all that we were all going to be published, and that we would always be friends.

Of course, Fiona is leading the way and shining the light ahead for all of us. I'm so excited about her book and can't wait for it to hit the shelves. We all have our strengths and weaknesses, but the whole is greater than the sum of the parts and I just know we can pull each other through the looking glass into the other world that we all crave.

Twisted Garlands

Is still alive out there. Agent has asked me for a full manuscript via e-mail. I was up half the night printing out the 4th draft after not getting home from work until 10.30 pm. I was at a Planning Committee meeting where BBC News turned up to film. If you look at 'Look East' tonight you'll probably spot me trying to hide behind a box. (I really hope they don't use that bit because, thinking about it, all that will appear on the screen is a box with a rather large bum!).

I really need to get a faster printer. I'm going to bed for a couple of hours kip now before work tomorrow. Oh for the luxury of not having to go to work!

Construction of a novel and gliding on the wind

I've been busy at work this week - I did put a post on this blog about all the excitement of Annual Council week, but removed it (Lane knows why). I've written a very 'nice' short story instead and posted it off to the 'People's Friend' because I think it will appeal to that kind of market. I've called it Albatross because I know I'm sailing close to the wind at work by blogging but I'll probably use a pseudonym on the remote chance it is accepted. Anyone who would like a sneak preview, let me know and I'll e-mail it through.

I've submitted no less than four short stories this week. Before anyone collapses in disbelief I have coaxed over forty unsubmitted stories out of the writing closet over the first months of this year. 'Magpies and Marigolds' was first written in 1984 and made me chuckle when I typed up the handwritten script. I had obviously based the central character 'Sheila' on my grandma. I'd captured her character exactly and it made me shed a tear because it felt as if she was still here. Grandma had written on the bottom of the script 'I'm not sending this off - everyone will laugh at me' (I always used her name to submit short stories.)

I also submitted 'Torchlight' and 'Full Circle' but to different magazines.

Anyhow back to the novel. I need some advice. I've started Book No. 3 and the working title is 'Going Back'. I have posted off the first three chapters and synopsis to Suzanne Ruthven to work on in the workshop 'Plotting and Coursing Your Novel' in July/August in Caerleon. The thing is, I'm getting the same sort of excitement I felt with 'Twisted Garlands' and I can't resist galloping on with it. I know I shouldn't really, but the pull of the characters and the plot is very strong. I just have to get on with it while the enthusiasm is at its peak.

Going Back is written in the first person present in the odd numbered chapters - with Tamsin telling her own story in real time as she begins her frantic quest to find her roots and a family she not only has never met, but who don't know of her existence. The pace is very urgent and emotional as Tammy discovers not only shocking facts about the past, but discovers her inner self too. The even numbered chapters are told in the third person past, as her father, Alan - after 30 years of silence - reveals the back story of his unusual marriage to Tammy's mother and the reasons why they cut themselves off from their families. The even numbered chapters are deeper and more slowly paced that Tammy's emotionally-charged first person present chapters.

My daughter has read the first three chapters and declared it better than Twisted Garlands (very undiplomatically I must say!). However, I read some on-line advice that said that telling two parallel stories in this way should be avoided by new writers because it is very difficult to balance the two, with the reader usually preferring one of the plots to the other.

Has anyone else heard this? And has anyone got any advice on how I can manage it? I really do want to try this approach in 'Going Back' because as well as mixing the past with the bang-up-to date present, I want Tammy's determined personality to break through as the novel progresses and the best way I can do this is by using the first person present and a fast pace.

All suggestions gratefully accepted before I race off into the sunset in the wrong direction!

Bliss

I'm sitting in the garden with my laptop , wirelessly connected to the internet with one labrador draped across my feet and the other sitting with his head in my lap, watching me type.

A solitary blackbird is trying to out-trill a thrush and the hum of the lawnmower in the front garden indicates that hubby has moved on from the side of the house to the front with his lawnmower. I breath in the fresh smell of cut grass.

I'll just cut out the scene about neatly trimmed borders, weed-free perfect lawns, newly planted hanging baskets and the inviting cedarwood summer-house because the reality is that the borders need seriously weeding, there is a pile of rubble in the corner of the garden waiting for a skip and the cedarwood summer-house is really a soon-to-be-cleared-of-junk greenhouse ready for the annual tomato and cucumber planting ritual.

I'm just about to plug myself into my MP3 player and write my homework piece for Cloud-line. Daughter-in-law-to-be is in the kitchen, making us all sandwiches for lunch (she needs to practise!)

The lawnmower's stopped and Rob's just appeared to put it away and fetch the strimmer.

'Are you writing another story?' he asks.

'Umm - sort of,' I reply.

'Well, if you are, then I'll leave you in peace. Do you want a cuppa?'

Smug giggle behind hand. My little short story success has worked absolute wonders in more ways than one!


Well!! We have just built an extension - what do you expect? We can't all have perfect gardens!

Busy Busy Busy

It's that time of year again. Annual Council and Mayor Making.

This will be the tenth year I have been responsible for it, and I'm as nervous as if it were the first!

Something always goes wrong. This is a list, in descending order of heartbeats per minute:-

0 (!) Being locked in the loo five minutes before the start of the meeting, when a screw fell out of the lock and jammed in the mechanism. I had to physically wrench the loo door off its hinges, with literally seconds to spare before the civic party made its way from the Mayor's Parlour to the Chamber, led by the mace-bearer.

500 At the mayor-making dinner - forgetting the menus and have to race back to the Council offices from the St George's Suite at Wicksteed Park, in the style of Lewis Hamilton, to fetch them.

300 Skateboarding kids playing noisily in the driveway outside the Chamber, jumping up periodically to stare in the windows at the Mayor giving his first speech in his ceremonial robes.

250 Planters and tubs of flowers leaking water all over the Chamber floor - and all the cleaning cupboards locked with no sign of an attendant.

200 The microphones packing up as the proposer for Mayor stood up to give his speech.

175 My naughty husband telling mucky jokes at the mayor-making dinner and showing me up.

175 My naughty husband thumping the new mayor on his shoulder saying 'Good on yer, congratulations mate!' Cringe. (You are supposed to address the Mayor as 'Your Worship'.) Mind you, the Mayor that year was my cousin's husband!

150 At the end of the Mayor-making dinner speeches, the new Mayor saying 'and finally I'd like to thank Anne Beasley for all her help'. This was my maiden name. At the time I'd been married for twenty-seven years. I could have crawled under the table in embarrassment because my naughty husband couldn't stop himself giving a very loud laugh.

Now you might notice that three of the embarrassing moments above involve my hubby. I can't avoid Mayor-making and most mayors send Rob a personal invitation so that I'm not on my own at the dinner. This year, unfortunately, is no exception.

Has anyone any ideas how I can make him behave himself next Wednesday night?

I am going to be published !!!!

I've had a short story accepted.

Believe me, I'm so excited. It is better than winning the lottery. The Yellow Balloon has been accepted by My Weekly in their 'supernatural' slot!

I heard this morning. Today is Full Council day. I have to get my head in gear for tonight.

(Posting from work so very naughty, but just had to share with my bestest blogger friends.)

Whaheeeeyyy!!

Help!

'Doubled Lives' has doubled back on itself and tied itself in knots.

The characters are flat, one-dimensional and I'm so annoyed with them. They need a swift kick up the backside and to stop being so namby-pamby and pussyfooting around with each other.

I'm still committed to the plot, but have lost the excitement I felt with Twisted Garlands.

I think I chose the right plot with the wrong characters. The characters fit into 'Going Back', which has a completely different plot, in a different location, and a very strong central character with the wherewithal to galvanise them into actually doing something about their petty little obsessions and insular lives.

I've found myself playing around with short stories and little pieces of nothingness, just because I can't bring myself to open up the file 'Doubled Lives.' To be frank - the bunch of no-hopers and pitiful weak men I have created as characters bore the living daylights out of me!

I originally created Tammy for Doubled Lives. I like Tammy - theres a lot more to her than meets the eye. She's getting into my head just like Tom did in Twisted Garlands. The trouble is, Tammy wants to catapult herself through the glass ceiling and be the central character. In 'Doubled Lives', she just can't - it would ruin the plot.

I didn't mean to start 'Going Back'. I just did it to keep Tammy quiet and stop shouting 'hello - I'm here - what are you going to do with me now that you've made me?'

But she wouldn't shut up. So now I've started Book Three without finishing Book Two.

With Tammy's drive she motivated me to write 4,300 words in one sitting. Oh my god. I'm so excited about 'Going Back' I don't think I want to go back to 'Doubled Lives'.

Today I'm going to start on my character profiles. I'm afraid those nit-picking anally-retentive dullards in Doubled Lives are going to have to shape up PDQ, because Tamsin Hargreaves has arrived!

By the way - heard nothing more about 'Twisted Garlands'.

My Me Time

I've never needed much sleep. As a child I'd snuggle myself down under the covers with the Famous Five, the Secret Seven, a torch, a pen and a writing pad and the dark hours would just fly by. I'd hug my knees in secret defiance of parental constraints about needing my sleep, listening to my dad snoring, my brother muttering randomly as he slumbered the night away and the tick of the grandfather clock in the hall.

I think my parents knew I was a night owl, but turned a blind eye to it because I never did cause any bother. (Until I got to be a teenager and get up at 4.00 am in the summer, sneak out and take my little dog around Wicksteed Park lake instead, causing them great worries when I was missing at breakfast-time!)

My average as an adult seems to be about five hours, but is linked to brain activity. Sometimes it just won't shut down, no matter what I do, and I end up only sleeping for about two or three hours. A bit like a car engine revving out of control.

So here I am taking a few minutes out of my 'Me Time' to write my blog. It's 2.40 am and I've just made myself my early morning cuppa! Mind you, I did go to bed at 9.00 pm last night, which was early even for me.

I absolutely love writing in the middle of the night. This time is mine - all mine and no-one can take it away from me.

Sitting here on my laptop in the middle of the night I chuckle to myself. I've come such a long way since reading Jane's 'Wannabe a Writer' last summer. No more do I have to scribble in secret in the middle of the night and guiltily hide away my writings as if they were a sinister, dark secret.

I can be a proper writer now. And writers are a bit scatty and eccentric aren't they? So posting a blog at three in the morning is not really all that odd, after all.

Taser Guns and Planning Meetings

At 4.00 pm yesterday afternoon I was looking forward to getting home to a takeaway, a nice relaxing evening and doing some writing before going to bed early with a book. Bliss.

We had a controversial application going to Planning last night. It wasn't my meeting, so I made sympathetic noises to a colleague and felt relieved I didn't have to cope with it. There were 75 objectors to one particular application.

Now - it's impossible to take the minutes at a meeting when you are suddenly ... well ... 'colonically challenged', and that's what happened to my colleague. She had to go home. There was absolutely no alternative. I ended up doing the meeting.

The Council Chamber was absolutely packed - standing room only. The sound system failed mid-way through the meeting. It went on and on and on. I ended up not getting home till half past nine (and I'd left for work at 8.00 am that morning,)

Then to top it all - when I did eventually get home after being directed by multiple police to Europa and back again just to be able to access my driveway, they'd eaten my takeaway and hubby said there had been an 'incident' down the bottom of our street involving the entire area being sealed off with police swarming everywhere and reports of someone being shot!!!

Now this is in sleepy little Barton Seagrave - a respectable little village on the outskirts of Kettering. Shot? Shot! I thought. NO! People dont get shot in Barton Seagrave!

These are two headlines that appeared today on BBC News and in today's papers:-

MUSLIM CENTRE IS GIVEN GO AHEAD. RESIDENTS OBJECT.

and

MAN SHOT WITH TASER GUN DETAINED

How on earth did I manage to be involved in TWO headlines in one day!!!

No wonder I couldn't get to sleep last night and was blogging at 3.45 am.

A Chinese Tale

Lane's post about her daughter's fashion manifesto plucked a random memory from deep within my brain cells.

I learned to knit at about seven, taught by my great-grandma. At nine I knitted my very first jumper. I remember it was bright orange and I was so proud of it. By the age of 16 I'd progressed to elaborate fair-isle and complicated cabling. With nowhere else to go to find new and interesting knitting challenges I decided to design my own!

A new restaurant 'The Mandarin' had opened in town. Kettering's very first, ever, Chinese restaurant. As I passed by a couple of days after it had opened, there, in front of my eyes, was a brilliant idea for my next knitting project.

I could just picture it - my very own unique fashion statement, complete with state of the art Chinese writing encircling my boobs.

The next day I went back and carefully copied some Chinese writing I'd seen on a colourful poster of a Chinese lady serving food in the window. Later, at home, I designed my jumper on graph paper, colouring in the little squares that represented the Chinese writing. I was really chuffed and couldn't wait to get started. I bought the wool the next day.

Two weeks later I wore my latest creation to college, where I was a full-time student taking my O levels. A lad I didn't know offered to buy it off me for a fiver! Everyone loved it and wanted one too. My teachers oooed and ahhhed - especially my Art teacher. How clever I was to actually design it myself! My head (and ego) expanded.

A couple of weeks later, in the corridor at college, someone tapped me on the shoulder. I turned around. It was a Chinese lad.

'Excuse me', he said, 'why have you got Chicken Chop Suey and Fried Rice on your jumper?'

For a split second I thought I'd spilled something down my front. Then it dawned on me.

My inflated ego shrivelled like a popped balloon. I never wore the jumper again.

(By the way, I still love knitting - nearly as much as writing)

A Mere Puff in the Ether

The lovely (and very helpful) comments from fellow bloggers has prompted this post. I thank them all for reading my previous post and taking their time to offer words of wisdom and their own personal thoughts and experiences.

Reading through the comments this morning really made me think. Has Denise hit the nail right on the head when she talks about women being more independent than men? I think so.This tendency can't happen by accident, though, can it? Could it be that, as mothers of girls, we instinctively and sub-consciously prepare them for the huge weight of responsibility as future mothers themselves one day?

I can remember quite clearly the different 'feeling' of being a mother to a girl as opposed to how it felt to have boys. Both my boys were more loving, more clingy, less outgoing and less confident than their sister at a similar age throughout their childhood and adolescence. But did I make them that way - and did I somehow force my daughter's more independent nature without knowing it?

Karen says that her teenage children evoke an uncomfortable sense of ageing in herself. I remember feeling exactly like this about ten years ago when my daughter was about 18, my eldest son 16 and Technoson was 10. I can remember clinging to the sense of relief that at least I still had a young child as well as fledgling adults, and that relief seemed to balance out the relentless canter towards becoming my mother.

Lane always posts such lovely comments. She thinks I'll be a good mother-in-law. My son-in-law is a gem. I love him to bits and I know he's fond of me too, despite the leg-pulling and jokes! BUT ... and it's a big 'but' .... will my daughter-in-law-to-be feel the same? Or will I come across as an interfering old bag? I think I'll have to learn a new set of rules, because my son-in-law doesn't bat an eyelid when I pick up toys, or make myself a coffee in his house, and yet I think, had Rob's mum been a 'normal' mum, I would have resented it had she done this in my house. (I know my son-in-law doesn't mind because I asked him once. He just laughed at me and told me there was a pile of ironing in the back bedroom, too!)

Tomfoolery says she's not worldy or wise, but underneath the cheery, fun-loving blog I know there lies a very clever, wise and perceptive lady. I'd love to hear her words of wisdom on this one!

Helen's gone all soppy with her 'aaahh!' I didn't feel very soppy or benevolent about five months ago when I angrily confronted Technoson and The-Girl-I-Didn't-Know dressed in his dressing gown at 11.00 am in the morning. Was my reaction just a sign of the times? Has sex really become the new snog 'n' grope? Am I just as old-fashioned as I perceived my parents to be back in the 1970s?

Debs has given me an enormous amount of comfort. Her two husbands still love their mums! My husband has never been close to his mum, and neither have I, so I've no comparisons to make to ease my fears. Thanks Debs, for that!

Mother X is one of Blogland's most devoted mums. Anyone who reads her blog will know that. All I can say is that I wish with all my heart that one day her sons will learn to live independent, fulfilling lives and perhaps find someone to fall in love with. How will she feel though, steering them along the rocky road towards independence? My fears about losing my son to another woman are mere puffs in the ether in comparison and I feel humbled.

Quillers married at 19. So did I. So did lots of my friends. It was quite usual in the 1960s and 1970s to marry young. The divorce rate is much the same as for older age groups. Another thing - I've always believed age-gaps don't matter to those involved - it's other people sticking their noses in that matters. Quillers's marriage survived, and so did mine. If our children's marriages fail, there's nothing we can do about it but be there to support them. There's an army of first wives out there who all married at 19, so I'm not so much worried about them being young.

So, all things being equal, my main worry is about their future happiness in this dysfunctional topsy-turvy world, where greed reigns and sensibility falls, defeated, to its knees.

So let's all make a concerted effort to just be the very best parents we can to our adult children, giving support when it's asked for and keeping silent when it's not. The most we can do is to all work together, locally, regionally, nationally and internationally to make a better world for them and for future generations.

Being a Mother in Law

Do some of my 'wannabe' chatroom buddies remember a few months ago when I turned into a fire-breathing dragon when our nearly-20-year old Technoson brought a girl we didn't know back to stay in his room without asking?

I was furious with him, but despite not knowing his girlfriend before I clapped eyes on her at 11.00 am the following morning, in the intervening months I've warmed to her. I can see she makes Technoson very happy, and he does let her stick her cold feet up his sweatshirt to warm them, so it must be love!

Last night Technoson and Girlfriend took us out for a meal. It was totally unexpected - I didn't know anything about it until I got home from work at about 5.30.

Afterwards, we were just finishing our drinks when they went all serious, and said, 'ummm ... errr ... we've got something to tell you.'

I feared the worst. Technoson's whole life, past present and future, flashed before my eyes in a split second!

'We're engaged,' said Techoson, doe-eyed and obviously gone very soft in the head judging by the silly grin plastered all over his face.

(They're only babies! How can my little Twinkle be engaged. We haven't even met her parents yet and now we find ourselves with a joint-family engagement party to organise.)

Their birthdays are only two days apart in the middle of May - so that's when it will be official.

Last Friday night Technoson apparently did everything properly and asked her dad if he could marry her. I had to laugh at what her dad was reported to have said to him:

'Well mate. You're the best of the bunch, so I guess I'd better say yes. She's been out with some right twerps before you.'

Apparently, according to the Girlfriend, that was a rare compliment, and Technoson should be highly honoured! I somehow think Rob will get on very well with her dad.

Now, to get to the point of this post:

Being a mother-in-law to your daughter's husband is easy. It just feels like you've adopted another son. When Little Miss Prim and son-in-law-to-be told us they were getting engaged it didn't feel like this. I didn't feel like I was losing my daughter in the slightest.

Can someone tell me why I feel like I am losing my son? Is this what is meant by the saying:

A boy is a son until he takes a wife....

... but a daughter is a daughter for the rest of her life?

They're planning on getting married in three years' time when they're 23. Part of me is screaming that they are far too young - but deep down I don't really think age comes into it. A marriage will either survive, or it won't. If they both feel it's right then it probably is.

I just want them to be happy.

Old ties and renewed friendships

I've been in contact with an old friend this week. We went our separate ways at eighteen - she went away to uni and I went and got married. She lived up north for a long time and now lives in Wales. Christmas cards, letters and the occasional e-mail have been our only form of contact since we met up briefly about twenty years ago, just before her parents moved to Wales to be near to her.

We dawdled idly through our mutual adolescence on the edge of parental boundaries - I don't suppose we were that bad, but alcohol, boys and skiving off school were big features of our teenage years from 11-18. We went to different schools, so skiving was sooooo easy! We never once got caught.

She now lives and works only a few miles from Caerleon - the home of the Writers' Holiday. I emailed her to tell her I would be in Wales in July and on Tuesday evening I rang her.

The first thing that struck me was her Welsh accent! It made me want to laugh out loud because she most definitely didn't sound Welsh twenty years ago. She said I sounded just like my mum!

After the first ten minutes or so of polite exchange of news about our respective jobs and kids we sort of slipped back in time. It felt just like we were teenagers again. I could almost feel my mum creeping up behind me, ready to yell 'get off that phone'.

Our mums were both such old meanies about the phone. They didn't seem to understand just how critical our late night phone calls were - mind you we did live next door to each other!

So - pick up the phone and renew an old friendship or acquaintance. You won't regret it. I promise.

F-word Proliferation

Has anyone noticed how the F-word is now the old B-word?

I hate my kids, or hubby, saying it - and it's even more important now young ears are flapping around.

Everywhere you go, people are f-ing this, f-ing that - or even worse - the dreaded c-word. I think that's horrible.

Whereas everyone used to say 'bloody hell', now it's 'f-ing hell'. 'Bugger it' has become 'f - it'.

Even though I hate it, I'm guilty too, as I demonstrated at work last week.

I was horrendously busy, and very stressed. A colleague sent me an e-mail.

'I wondered if you could help me write a letter sometime today. Would this afternoon about 2 be OK?'

My reply was something like this: 'Sorry, perhaps tomorrow. I'm stacked out this afternoon.'

Her response was: 'Could I pop round your house after tea, then? I really need to get this out tomorrow morning.'

I just let rip and shouted out loud without thinking: 'No you f-ing well can't.'

I looked around at my colleagues, who were speechless at my rare f-word outburst, not having had the benefit of reading my e-mails.

Do I really have M.U.G. tattooed on my forehead?

Update

The tumble dryer is mended! It lives!

It's not very elegant, but my "never-let-it-beat-me" hubby invented a solution and a made a new bracket for the door in his garage.

Now what can do with all that money I've just saved .......

The Throwaway Generations

Yes - I'm talking about us. You, me, our children (but not our parents or grandparents).

I can see a real contradiction in today's society. In the mixed messages we are giving the next generation.

We preach recycling like a religion, and yet the amount of packaging we discard every week is a disgrace. What on earth was going on with Easter egg packaging this year? It seemed more extensive than ever before. Thick cardboard boxes; preformed plastic inner shells that were at least 200% larger than required to hold the egg; accompanying sweets in separate compartments when we can all remember when they used to be encased within the egg.

Imagine a seven year old child. A new brain, just soaking up information from school, tv, books, newspapers etc. This child has, let's say, six Easter eggs similar to the one I described. All that rubbish to throw away - even if the cardboard does go in the recycling bin. It doesn't take a superbrain to realise that producing easter egg boxes uses energy! Now, this is confusing. Adults talk about global warming, climate change and preserving energy and resources. They tut, tut and say how worried they are about future generations and the world they'll grow up in. The seven year old must think - hey - this is my world you're talking about!

Then we just carry on - chucking things away when they stop working, and produce everyday items with so much packaging we need two wheelie bins and two smaller containers to fit all the family's rubbish and recycling in each week.

I can remember when I was a child we only had a single metal dustbin - and that wasn't full most weeks.

Our seven year old must be very confused. Adults are saying one thing and then doing the complete opposite and it's obvious in everything around them.

My tumble drier door broke this week. The machine is only about 3 years old. It can't be repaired and a replacement part costs 75% of the cost of the original appliance! I found myself saying "oh, let's just get another one and take it up the tip".

This is absolutely disgraceful. This is only my second ever tumble drier. The first one, bought in 1979, lasted nearly twenty-five years - it had new seals, a new control panel and only ever broke down once before the casing went rusty and it looked really skanky in my nice new utility room! It was actually still working perfectly well when we gave it to my sister-in-law's parents and they kept it in an outhouse.

What happened to mending and repairing? My dad was always trying to mend things - as was my grandad. It was unheard of to chuck things out if they could be repaired. So much nowadays can't be repaired or reused. An example is electrical plugs. An appliance now comes (heavily packaged) complete with a plug. Whatever happened to re-using old plugs? There's just no point now, so they get chucked out when the appliance fails, along with the appliance.

So our fictitious seven-year old grows up not even knowing how to change a plug.

So come on bloggers - let's come up with some ideas for saving the planet for our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

My idea for starters is to start selling appliances without plugs again.

Children and Labradors

'Granny, Zakky wants some milk!
Tyler called me from the kitchen. I hauled myself up from my armchair and went into the kitchen.
'Sit', said Tyler, copying his grandad and raising his hand in a hand signal.
Zak's bum hit the floor and he looked at Tyler expectantly.
'How do you know he wants milk?'
'Cause he told me.' Tyler jumped up and down. Zak rose from his 'sit' and did the same.
'Dogs can't talk.'
Zak looked at me with huge brown eyes and then deliberately looked at the fridge. He did this twice and then wagged his tail.
'Ooooohh. Granny. They can. They talk to little boys and girls and say Oiiiii, I want some milk.'
'But Zakky doesn't drink milk. He drinks water from his water bowl when he's thirsty.'
'I know that Granny, but he told me he really likes milk.'
'I didn't hear him go woof, woof, woof.'
'He told me in my brain.' (Tyler's still got a thing about his brain - remember the dead fish?)
Zak went over to the fridge and sniffed the door. I gave in.
Now, every time I go in the kitchen, the blasted dog asks me for milk!

Giving nature a helping hand

We sat eating breakfast on Saturday morning watching a thrush trying to build a nest in a climing rose bush in our garden. It had found a piece of blue plastic about six inches long - this piece of plastic was obviously crucial to the nest-building infrastructure.

It tried to drop this piece of plastic in just the right place for about half an hour. The plastic kept falling down behind the rose bush. The thrush just kept trying and trying, to no avail.

After breakfast, I had to giggle when standing at the sink, because Rob had grabbed a handful of grass and weed cuttings, stuffed it in the place where the thrush had started to build its nest, and then placed the piece of plastic in the centre.

After about five minutes the thrush came back with a beak full of fluffy stuff of some sort. It sat on the fence - puzzled. After a while it looked around and then descended on the nest built with a strange human hand. Twenty minutes later it was proud as punch of its work. It must have thought it was its lucky day!!

I just hope the neighbours' cats don't interfere with nature too ....

Childhood Deprivations

My kids ganged up on me the other day laughing about all the little things they weren't allowed to do/must do when they were little. Apparently I was an embarrassment when they were younger because I wouldn't trust their friends parents. But in the light of all the child abductions in the news recently, they admitted that perhaps I was right after all to ring up parents I didn't know to check that when they went round for tea they wouldn't be allowed to play in the street!! (Cringe - I don't remember doing that ....but it was only when they were little!!)

It got me thinking about my own childhood. What things were you made to do/weren't allowed to do? Here is a list of mine as a child of the 1960's:-

Forbidden things

• Bubble gum/chewing gum
• Comics like Beano, Dandy, Beezer (Bunty and Judy - OKish)
• "Modges" - might have been a made-up word - meaning sweets/crisps/biscuits that ruined your tea
• "Rubbish" - meaning flying saucers, pink shrimps, fruit salads and black jacks
• ITV after school - frowned on - BBC was more educational
• Eating chips in the street
• Playing outside on Sunday afternoons
• Playing in the street - until I was ten - yes ten!!!
• Lucky bags
• Swearing
• Talk to "strangers"

Musts

• Clean socks/vest/pants/hanky every day
• Eat greens
• Eat bread and butter with jelly
• Read all the classics (I preferred Enid Blyton)
• Brownies (hated it - refused to go in the end)
• Always say please and thank you
• Sunday school

A Writing Room of my Own

(well - almost)

My hubby has a room in the house where he's set up his drawing board and works from home since he took early retirement last year. He shifted everything out and decorated it last week. He put up more shelves and re-organised the room. I came home on Friday lunchtime to a lovely surprise.

Look at my writing corner. Isn't it just perfect? I can escape here in the evenings and get some peace and quiet when I write. Technoson has also installed wireless networking, so I can use my laptop in bed if I want to; or sitting at the kitchen table with the TV on.


I feel like a real writer now. Do you know why? It's not really that I've finally got some space I can call my own, although that's fantastic. It's because at long last Rob and our offspring have begun to take my hobby seriously.

Belly Button Goo and Gore

I'm posting this so Lane can show her daughter.

Emily had her belly button pierced, without telling me, when she was about fifteen. I found out about a week later (as mothers do). I didn't say anything to her because I wanted to teach her a lesson. She had an infection - a bad, bad infection.

Emily became ill, had a temperature and wanted to stay in bed. I made her get up and go to school (as mothers do who are not supposed to know that their daughter has a belly button infection). She went to the doctors and got antibiotics - I know because I saw them. I also smelt the antiseptic stuff in the bathroom, so I knew she was treating it.

I threw tales of septicaemia from tattoos and piercings into the conversation a couple of times. She gave me strange looks, but I just pretended to be a daft mother.

I never did tell Emily that I knew, until we were both out having a lunchtime drink two years later. Amy (who I work with) was there too. She had just had her belly button pierced.

I said to Amy, "ooooh - that's nice .... Emily show Amy yours ......"

Emily's jaw hit the table. "How did you know I'd got my belly button pierced ........?"

I confessed. Emily said I was a bad, bad mother.

So - Lane's daughter. If you are going to have it done, ... and I know nothing will stop you if you're determined ... PLEASE PLEASE DON'T DO IT BEHIND YOUR MUM'S BACK AND PLEASE, PLEASE DON'T GO TO A DODGY TATTOO SHOP TO GET IT DONE!!

Wot a Week That Was!

Whew! Glad it's Friday. Lots of blogging time next week, though.

Last night was full Council. It's the most formal of all Council meetings and tends to last a couple of hours at least - last night it was 2 and a half hours. The Committee Administrator (traditionally the Democratic Services Manager - which is what I is) sits rather grandly on the raised dias, alongside the Mayor, the Deputy Mayor, The Chief Executive MBE and the Head of Democratic and Legal Services (my boss) and the Mayor's Chaplain, who says prayers at the start of the meeting.

Picture it - the Council Chamber with sensitive sound system and shiny wooden panelled walls, 36 councillors, about 40 members of the public, three Deputy Chief Executives and around a dozen senior officers all staring expectedly at the raised dias where moi sits rather grandly (not forgetting name badge - see previous post). We had two journalists there too - because it was the meeting where the Council Tax was set.

Do you all remember when your mum used to say "have you got your hanky?" whenever you went anywhere important, or left in the morning? Well it's taken me nearly fifty years to realise it's actually quite good advice!

I went into the meeting without a sniffle or even a hint of a cold. After about half an hour my eyes started pricking and someone turned a tap on inside my head. I didn't have a tissue, or a hanky, or even a jumper with long sleeves.

I kept sniffing to keep the runny nose at bay. After two not very ladylike sniffs, picked up by sound system, I got a dirty look from the Chief Executive MBE. I then tried to pinch my nose so it didn't run and got a funny look from the Mayor's Chaplain, who was sitting beside me. After a few seconds he sniffed his armpit, pretending to wipe his brow with the back of his hand.

The pressure was building behind my pinched nose. Then, horror of horrors, they took a vote.

I let go of my nose and it dripped on my minute book. There was an ill-disguised snigger from one of the Deputy Chief Executives who is actually quite human and funny. He caught my eye and grinned as he delved in his pocket, looking for a tissue for me.

I wiped my nose on the back of my hand and counted the votes with the other hand.

My boss threw me an exasperated frown which spoke volumes. (He denied it this morning.)

I had a black jumper on with three-quarter length sleeves. I had an idea. If I pulled one sleeve down my arm far enough I could surreptitiously wipe my nose on the sleeve. I know this sounds disgusting but I was desperate. I'd pulled the sleeve down in readiness, but hadn't actually wiped my nose on it, when Cliff, the Mayor's driver caught my eye. He was standing at the door, on duty. He raised his eyebrows and pointed to his shoulder. I looked at my shoulder. Oh No! There it was in all it's glory - a bright purple bra-strap, made even more vivid by the pale skin on my shoulder. Where I'd pulled my sleeve down it had also delectably exposed my shoulder.

I decided I'd just have to sniff at a strategic place, such as when councillors laughed or raised their voices. This usually happens quite a lot at Council meetings. It didn't last night. I knew I'd just got to sniff, so I tried to do it quietly - I honestly did. The thing was there was so much runny snot in my nose it made me choke - very loudly into the microphone.

Another black look from my boss followed by a deadly one from Chief Executive MBE.

I whispered to the Chaplain. "Have you got a tissue I could borrow?" He shook his head sympathetically.

I sniffed and dripped and choked all through the meeting. I made a quick getaway at the end and shot upstairs to my office where I had a pack of tissues in my drawer.

Cliff came to find me this morning. "Your purple bra-strap gave me quite a turn," he said. And half of Kettering, I thought!

Note to self: always take tissues to meetings from now on.

(I now have a poorly cold)

Absence Note

Please may I be excused from blogging until Friday? I am suffering from toomuchworkitis this week because two of my colleagues have rung in and croaked at a dragon (me) saying they are much to ill to be at work and would only spread the lurgy anyway.

To top it all it's Council week - one of the important ones where the budget and Council Tax get set - and Big White One (MBE) barks out comments left right and centre to the humble minions and we all have to run around like headless chickens, falling at his feet with every whim and command.

Please God, don't let me forget to put my name badge on for the meeting, or horror of horrors, print out the list of questions with the wrong shade of maroon for the logo - or else I fear that poor Annie will be no more, having been hung, drawn and quartered by the Big White One in the Manor House Gardens.

(I will try to do my homework for Cloud Line, though)

Speak to you all at the weekend.

Appraisal of my Baby

Picture the scene: it's ten to five and I think I'll just have a quick peep on my home e-mail inbox from my work pc. Shock. Horror. Panic. There's an e-mail from Real Writers. It's my appraisal for Twisted Garlands, which has been the cause of me checking my home e-mail from work every half-an-hour for the last two weeks!

I shut web-mail down quickly without opening the e-mail, switch off the computer, pick up my bag and coat and fly out of the office as if I'm being chased by the devil.

It takes me twelve, long minutes to drive home: the traffic's backed up and I'm mightily impatient. It seems like at least an hour.

When I get home I'm hoping no-one's there. No such luck. Technoson and hubby sit in the lounge watching a DVD of "Only Fools and Horses" and laughing their heads off.

I switch on the computer and go into the kitchen to make a cuppa. When I come back I sit down at the computer desk.

"Haven't you had enough of bloody computers?" nearest and dearest says. "Give it a rest, for god's sake!"

I take my cuppa to an armchair and sit down like a naughty schoolboy caught looking porn, pretending to watch, and laugh at, "Only Fools and Horses". I want to look at the appraisal - and yet I don't want to look at all.

Finally, I end up alone in the lounge and creep furtively over to the computer desk. I read the first sentence, remembering what Mercedes said about critiques always lulling you into a false sense of security with a positive opening statement.

"First of all, and possibly more important than you realise, congratulations on a near-flawless command of grammar and syntax."

I hardly dare read on any further. OK, I think, turning my attention to a labrador's head on my lap, looking up at me with huge brown eyes that are saying 'scratch my ears, right now', what she's really saying is that I can string two words together text-book style but forget the creative bit.

I read on. It isn't too bad. In fact when I get to the bit "you gave me such arcane details as hyphenated compound adjectives, correctly used semi-colons, and, joy-of-joys, properly placed commas" I begin to feel quite heady! Then I hit the second paragraph.

"I suspect you're still at a fairly early stage with this work."

Huh!! No I'm not! I've sculpted and painted; shown not told; extracted adverbs and too many adjectives; injected smells, light and shade, hot and cold, and even counted the number of words in a sentence to make sure it's not more than fifty!

Oh dear. She still thinks it's in the raw.

(We'll skip the bits about the synopsis. It's only a few words - I can mend that later. It's bad, really bad.)

Then we really get into the appraisal. What Lynne is saying is so right. I can actually see that she's right - I need to work on viewpoint and balancing the narrative. She makes some really positive comments about the bits I, too, feel I've written well - so as I read on I'm pleased that I'm getting such constructive feedback. The bits I feel are weak, she feels are weak too.

This is really OK, I'm thinking to myself. I give myself a little pep-talk as I read. This is what I needed and exactly what I wanted when I forked out the £50 for the appraisal. Then Lynne wonders if I haven't already stopped reading and hurled the appraisal at the wall. No, I think. Why does she say that? After all, what she's saying is true. She's not trying to piss on my bonfire, just help me, a novice, to become a real writer.

Then I get to a lovely bit. I can see she really means it - about my inspiration and energy coming through in my writing. Then she says she was disappointed when the 10K works ended mid-scene because she wanted to know what came next. I want to give her a hug for being so nice.

The appraisal concludes with "I'm sure that, give or take the odd technical detail such as viewpoint, I've said nothing you weren't already aware of at some level. Everything I've mentioned can be resolved; it's all part of the process of becoming a writer".

Then she says that I clearly know my market and can write engagingly for it.

Lynne - if you ever read this - you're a star. Thank you for returning my baby to me as a toddler, having learned it's manners!

Spending the kids inheritance

Been splashing out this week on interesting things rather than skips, concrete and timber.

At long, long last the extension is at the decorating and furnishing stage. Thirty-three years I've waited to have a nice house like wot other people have got. We were very nearly there when we were hit by the optimism bug and decided to build a double garage in place of the single one and then put two more bedrooms and an en-suite on top. Oh, and then, just for good measure, we extended the kitchen and built a utility room and downstairs loo on the back as an afterthought. What the hell possessed us? Our family was shrinking, for goodness sake, not growing! We needed a smaller house, not a bigger one.

"A year," he said. "Or perhaps eighteen months at the most."

Huhh. Fibber. He knew it was going to take four years.

The extension gobbled up our money like a hungry lion. We ended up having to have a complete new roof - because the original roof was not quite gone, but would've been in the next few years. On a whim one boring Saturday afternoon we knocked out the downstairs cloakroom to make a bigger hall and moved the front door (yes - we had to have a new front door too!)

It disrupted the rest of the house and turned me into even more of a disinterested housewife than I was before. Why bother cleaning up, when you know it won't make any difference whatsoever?

Dust. Ohmigod. The dust and muck. Garden? what's that?

As I type, hubby is upstairs, decorating. Technoson moved into his new room yesterday. It's very smart with a large squidgy cream leather sofa for him to lounge on while he watches his new tv on the wall. He doesn't appreciate it, though. He wasn't the slightest bit interested in choosing the wallpaper or new carpet. All he was interested in was the location of his Playstation. I caught him earlier this evening with blu-tac and posters just in time. His dad would have had an absolute fit if he'd stuck posters on the brand new wallpaper!

So - here we are, hubby and I, rattling around in this huge great house with just one son whose hardly ever here anyway and one doleful-eyed labrador (the other one moved out with Garry).

Anyway, yesterday I had the afternoon off work because I had an evening meeting. I went out and bought a lovely marble fireplace and new fire - oh and a new leather sofa and chairs for the living room. I don't know whether our old sofa and chairs will last out till the middle of May, when we get the new ones.

I suspect not.

Writing Saturation Point

Had a busy writing day today. Two sets of minutes typed up and an old powerpoint presentation re-written to bring it in line with new legislation this morning. Then home for the afternoon when I re-wrote the Valentine story I posted on Cloud-line to make it into a short story. Just for fun.

Back to work at 5.00 for a 7.00 meeting, two hours of writing notes by hand for the record of decisions (which I have only 48 hours to publish - you might like to read it on the website on Monday - or there again ..... perhaps not!) and then got home at 9.10 pm to a lovely casserole I had put in the oven before I went back to work.

Heard a little gem at the meeting tonight which I shall definitely use somewhere. Hey ... get this:-

"It's like pushing an elephant in high heels up a steep hill." I haven't heard that before, but perhaps it's an oldie - enlighten me if it is!

Needless to say, that little snippet won't make the record of decisions, but it did make my scribbling pad hidden in the back of my minute book!

I do so love my job. Type, type, scribble, scribble, doodle, doodle.

But now I have reached writing saturation point today, so please excuse me my while I log off. I'll look at all your blogs tomorrow lunchtime. Going to get a nice hot bath and go to bed with the Captain's chapter of Bridge Across Forever, which I meant to do last night but fell asleep in the chair instead.

Loopy Lunchtime

I popped out to get a birthday card for a friend today. Five minutes walk into town, five minutes in the shop and five minutes back - leaving me the rest of my lunchtime to finish a short story I'd downloaded onto my dongle stick. Or so I thought!

In the card shop they had some very cheap 2008 calendars. £9.99 down to a quid. I bought two. Then, at the checkout, I bought some first class stamps.

It all came to £5.37.

"You've spent more than £5 so you can have one of those Valentine Cards free," the lady said nodding towards some huge boxed cards in the window.

I wasn't going to bother (having no-one who would appreciate a 2ft Valentine card - hubby would have doubled up laughing). Then I suddenly thought of technoson, skint and with expensive girlfriend.

I went over and chose one with "To my Girlfriend" on the front, hoping he hadn't already bought one.

I thought nothing of it, but it quite put the the elderly shop assistant about! She was all of a fluster when she gave me my change and there were some raised eyebrows to her young assistant when I left the shop.

I got back into the office, wrote the birthday card, went to put a stamp on it .... and no stamps!

I put my coat back on and trecked back into town. The shop assistant remembered me, of course. She had forgotten to put my stamps in the bag with the birthday card and calendars.

I thought I had better explain:

"That's a really good offer," I said nodding towards the free cards. "I got one for my son's girlfriend."

I'm passing this onto Kev (alias Captain Black) because he's a nice man and made sure I didn't get lost in London.

I'm also passing it on to Hesitant Scribe, because she's lovely and needs cheering up right now.

Photo tagged

Moondreamer tagged me with a photo thingy.

This is what you have to do

1) Answer the questions below

2) Take each answer and type it into Photo bucket

3) Take a picture from a page of results, copy the html code (bottom left of the photo image) and paste directly into your post.

4) You can’t copy the persons answers who posted this before you!

Your age at next birthday

A place you'd like to visit

Your favourite object

Your favourite place

Your favourite food

Your favourite animal

Your favourite colour

The town you were born in

The town you live in now

The name of your pet

The first name of the one you love

Your nickname

Your middle name

A bad habit of yours

(aaahhhh... [sigh] ... so true - especially blogging friends)

Your first job

Your grandmother's name

Your favourite book

I was supposed to be writing this afternoon. Never mind. I think everyone I know has been tagged with this already.

Place-shaping and emotional intelligence

May I just give fellow bloggers a snapshot into creating tomorrow today? It's imperative that today's "in-crowd" learn how to be creative thinkers and a creative doers by developing their self-awareness and emotional and spiritual intelligence. There are many skills involved, such as becoming an expert in body language and using improvisation and comedy to improve communication skills. The balanced scorecard for modern business uses stories and metaphors to help people understand the implications of change and plan for the future. Holistic practitioners will guide up-and coming executives to become experts in mind/body techniques to release blocked energy and thus gain focus and purpose.

Products on offer to improve team cohesion include Inside Out, Outside In Upside Down, and Make a Difference. Aspiration is a global force for people's imagination and is the spark which will light your inner fire, improving your sense of self and common purpose for outstanding performance and results.

What is this wonderful opportunity, I can hear you all asking. How can I shape my place and become more emotionally intelligent?

Well, I'll let you into a secret. Become a Local Government Officer!

Make a Book for Me

I have been sitting here blogging, with my grandson sitting next to me. (He comes for tea twice a week.)
He's loved looking at all the pictures on your blogs!
"Are you writing a book, Granny?" he said.
I showed him a printed out manuscript of Twisted Garlands.
"Read it to me," he said.
"It's a grown-up book," I said.
"Make a book for me," he asked.
"What shall I write about?" I said.
"Those little doggies," he said, pointing to the pictures of Peggy and Teabag on Lane's blog.
Well, I'll try. Lane - I might need your help!

Who is the thief?

Last May we lost our lovely Springer Spaniel, Max, to cancer. Here is his picture.

Max was very good at stealing food without leaving a trace. He was never caught in the act, though, he was too clever for that. If Max had still been here I would have known that he was the thief. He would have crept into the kitchen and very delicately stolen just one sausage roll, leaving the others untouched.

Rob and two of our offspring have Coeliac Disease, which means they can't have anything containing gluten. Although there are a wide range "Free From" foods to choose from nowadays, I still make things like fruit crumbles, sausage rolls, cakes, pies, etc. in big batches and freeze them. The picture is of my last bumper batch of sausage rolls to freeze. I was quite proud of this batch - apart from the rack containing the neat lines of almost perfect sausage rolls destined for the freezer there was another plateful cooling on top of the fridge of those that weren't so perfect. (Note the gap at the bottom right hand corner.)

The labradors were not the culprits. Not only were they nowhere near the kitchen when the sausage rolls were cooling, but if they had managed to get in there, believe me it would have been total devastation!

Hubby said it wasn't him
It wasn't me
It wasn't technoson (he says with a cheeky grin - hmmm I wonder)
It wasn't sparkyson (he says and I believe him)
Daughter does not live here.

So - who stole the sausage roll?

Old Friends and New Friends

Four times a year I meet up with old friends. We all worked together in the Council's typing pool as teenagers, apart from one, older, woman who is an infiltrator to our little group. She never worked in the typing pool with us, although she did work in the same building, but somehow wheedled her way in about twenty years ago and sort of took over. We are all aged between 50 and 55 now and B is approaching 70. As teenagers we all found her slightly scary and to be honest she was a bit of a dragon to us scatty young girls who were too scared to answer back.

Believe me, my oldest friends are all lovely women. We've been through marriage, divorce, children, bereavement and just about anything that life can throw at us together. We're not bosom buddies but we're always there for each other. Sometimes we don't see each other between our quarterly nights out.

Last night we went to the Thornhill Arms in Rushton, a delightful little village pub nestled in the heart of England. There were only six of us - a bit depleted because three others couldn't make it.

I wanted so much to share my experiences in London on Wednesday with my oldest friends. I'd made my mind up that I was going to tell them about Twisted Garlands, Jane's inspirational book and how I'd always loved writing.

B started off the evening, when H and I picked her up, by starting to talk about one of the others, who has been having a bit of a hard time lately. This I could have coped with - if it had been just two friends showing concern for another - but it wasn't. It could easily have turned into a bitching/slagging session and it made me feel uncomfortable all the way to L's house and H, who was driving, never uttered a single word all the way there. I was relieved when L got in the car.

It was a long, long night. Small talk about the weather; Florida and the Everglades; what was the difference between alligators and crocodiles; MBE's; which was the cheapest - Tescos or Morrisons; hairstyles; dogs and cats; the pros and cons of fake tans; air travel and check-in desks and America. All these conversations were cut short by B, changing the subject. C and J then started up a conversation between themselves, which I had half an ear on (it sounded fascinating and I'd have loved to have listened and joined in). L and H then started to talk to each other and I ended up talking to B, or rather B talked to me and I nodded, tutted, shook my head and made sympathetic noises now and then.

B went out to the loo. We all fell silent. J said "I've got something to tell you all, but well ......" her voice tailed off as she shrugged and raised her eyebrows.

I said "So have I but ..."

We all just looked at each other and H said, "Perhaps we ought to meet in town one lunchtime so we can have a chat."

Isn't life complicated sometimes?

Meeting New Friends

Wow!

Despite butterflies in my tummy and the heart-stopping panic I felt when waiting outside WH Smiths at Euston station for Kev and Mercedes the Wannabe Meet-up was everything I thought it would be, and more.

This morning, the experience has left me kneeling at the feet of the power of the written word more than ever before.

None of my fellow bloggers looked like their photos, and I don't suppose I did either. I now realise that photographs are two-dimensional images and no more; it takes the talent of a real artist to bring them to life. However, the multi-dimensional, multi-faceted and multi-coloured human personality can be captured precisely by the power of the written word.

Caz, Denise, Fiona, Jane, Lane, Linda, Mercedes and Mother X were every bit the lovely women I admire in blogland and in Sunday chats for their skills in showing us, through words, aspects of life we can all identify with and yet never seem to see for ourselves. Their personalities exactly mirrored those I had conjured up in my mind, even though I don't think anyone looked like their photos. This phenomenon can only be down to one thing, and that is their considerable skill in manipulating the written word.

Kev is the only man I felt I had come to know through cyberspace - as, poor bloke, he is outnumbered by us nattering women in blogland and in the chat room. I recognised him immediately from his photo, and yes, he was every bit the perfect gentleman I imagined him to be. Quiet and yet perceptive and creative, he came out with some little gems during the day.

Liz, Barry, Wayne and Mike I'd never communicated with before yesterday, either in blogland or in the chatroom. By the end of the day I felt an incredible affinity with them, because, just like all of us, they were writers.

I don't know how to say thank you to all of you for the lovely day I had yesterday. I only hope I didn't talk too much, as once I start I find it difficult to shut up! I hope our friendship endures throughout the coming years and we can celebrate together as we all, one by one, become published authors.

Cheers!

London (continued)

The Bad News: Colleague off sick today; couldn't get out to the shops at lunchtime; and then, to top it all - I have to work tonight to cover sick colleague's Planning Committee.

The Good News: At home this afternoon (because working tonight); spending some unexpected time in blogland and realising that everyone else is a bit nervous too; just had a big bag of giant chocolate buttons instead of lunch so feel very giggly and naughty.

PS Not wearing jeans tomorrow because bum looks enormous from the back in them and belly spills over the top somewhat. Now ... just off upstairs to put back all the clothes I've been trying on in an effort to find the right outfit. I don't usually give two monkeys about being fat, but today I wish there was a miracle pill you could take and lose about five stone overnight. Diet most absolutely and definitely starts on Thursday, fellow bloggers.

See you all tomorrow lunchtime!

London on Wednesday

Right. Do I wear black trousers or jeans. Do I wear my black posh coat that makes me look like a granny, my tweedy bit less-posh jacket that my daughter likes and has borrowed (so must be just a teeny bit funky), my faithful old parka or my olive green suede jacket. I could wear a skirt, though. My long black one? Oh no! Can't wear a skirt because would have to wear long black boots. Definitely not. Wore them yesterday and they absolutely KILLED my feet. Do I wear a jumper or dressy-up top? Or perhaps that new top I bought in the sales - mind you it might hang below my tweedy bit less-posh jacket. Will have to wear old faithful shoes - will have to polish them before Wednesday because they're a bit muddy - can't risk my feet hurting - might have to walk a bit. How far is it from St Pancras to Euston? Should I risk walking and getting lost or get the tube?

Oh - bloody hell. Will have to go shopping tomorrow lunchtime. Haven't got a single thing to wear!

Dare I park in the Council car park and walk to the station? Someone might see me. I might have to talk to someone who says "where are you going?" What will I say? Could park in the station car park but that will cost a fiver for the day when I could park at work for nothing. Oh no! What if I see someone I know on the train or at the station!

Ohmigod! I'm going to London. On my own, to meet people I've never met before. What if Kev and Mercedes forget me and leave me at Euston?

Lane - your daughter is right! She's a good sensible girl. I'm putting my photo back up on the blog for a day because I need people to know I'm not really a bloke called Arthur with a pierced whatsit and rude tattoos. I'll put up a nice mumsy/granny one this time so that Lane's daughter won't worry.

Must remember to charge phone. Download Christmas pics off camera. Don't forget camera. Don't forget phone. Take some tissues in case get overcome with emotion and snivel. Remember comb so don't look like Ken Dodd when meet Kev and Mercedes.

Do I just hold out my hand and say "how nice to finally meet you." Really formal. No. Perhaps not. Will I make a prat of myself? Just say "Hello?" Try not to talk with a 'Ketrin' accent.

Must remember to tell someone not to let me have more than four alcoholic drinks UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. Four is absolute limit or else will act really silly and do things like shutting my eyes so no-one can hear what I'm saying. Or like on New Year's Eve 1999 when tried to snog son-in-law for saving husband's life when a big mega firework hit the tree!

Moles, Joy-Riding and Dire Straits

Actually quite pleased to be tagged – I couldn't think of a single thing to blog about today, and it's not like me to be lost for words, Tom Foolery thanks for saving the day.

The idea of this tag is that you have to state six quirky, odd things about yourself, or little habits. Not big scary life-changing confessions or anything - just little bits of strangeness.

My husband says I'll have no trouble finding at least ten times that amount of peculiar facts about me. (Git,) Right, here we go.

1. I don't know my left from my right without looking to see where my wedding ring is (know that wedding ring goes on left hand – see?)

2. Years ago I had a troublesome moley thing on my boob, which had to be removed. It was actually a third nipple and caused much hilarity and innuendo. My best friend very sympathetically said I would have been dunked as a witch in the olden days. (Cow.)

3. I went joy riding at the age of fifteen. My mum said I was in with the wrong crowd and easily led. I agree with her excuse completely.

4. I failed my eleven-plus exam and went to a mixed-sex secondary modern school, much to the horror of my parents. Five children from my class were selected - but weren't told what the test was - to have another chance at thirteen). I passed, was congratulated by the Head Teacher and given a letter to give to my parents, saying I could transfer to the High School. I ripped it up, threw it in the hedge on the way home and kept my mouth shut because there was no way in the world I was going to go to an all-girls school. A subsequent, posted, letter came during the Easter holidays addressed to my dad. I intercepted it, typed a very eloquent reply on mum's typewriter, forged my dad's signature and voila .... no-one ever knew! That is, until the parent consultation night at the end of the summer term ... oops, forgot about that, didn't I?

5. My most favourite track ever is "Why Worry" by Dire Straits. I have it in the car, on CD in the kitchen and on my MP3 player which goes everywhere with me. I bet I've listened to it most days for the last twenty-odd years. It's better than popping a Prozac when you need 8 minutes and 31 seconds of immersing yourself in a little bubble of self-indulgence and escaping from the world and everyone in it. A close second in the "Prozac" category is 10cc "I'm not in Love" and Led Zeppelin "Stairway to Heaven".

6. I am hopelessly clumsy and have no co-ordination whatsoever. Dancing is out of the question (see No. 1). I got banned from ballet lessons at the age of five because of it and caused devastation at aerobics thirty years later.

Now, I tag the following Mercedes, Captain Black and Mother X

The small print: Link to the person that tagged you. Post the rules on your blog. Share six non-important things/habits/quirks about yourself. Tag random people at the end of your post by linking to their blogs.

Prevarication and flying the nest

Twisted Garlands second edit is complete. The synopsis is done.

So why, then, am I reluctant to send it out, even for a professional critique, which I know I ought to do?

Because I'm scared. I want to hold on to it. The comparison of writing a novel with giving birth is accurate except, for me, there was no pain. I really enjoyed writing Twisted Garlands. The first edit was like bringing up the child - a bit difficult but nothing more than I could cope with.
The worst part, for me is now. I've raised the child. I've guided the teenage novel through the difficult times when my readers gave me feedback and I did a second edit. Now the fledgling is ready to be cast out into the world; just like my eldest son who has just left home.

It feels very similar, except a mother can't really tell a 25 year old grown man that she really just wanted to keep him safe at home with her and his dad and that he needn't have gone and got a mountain of a mortgage just because other people said to him "What? You're still living at home with your mum and dad?"

I could do that with my book if I wanted to. I could hug it to me and keep it just for me. Safe and shielded from rejection and criticism. But I don't think I'd be doing it justice. Exactly the same as if I'd kept my quiet, gentle son shielded from the world in the family nest, and believe me, it would only have taken one word from us and he'd have been content to carry on living here. After all, he has had his house since the beginning of May last year. Prevarication personified was Garry. He admitted that he liked living at home and didn't really want to move out. He even talked about renting it out to cover the mortgage.

"For God's sake, Garry," we said, "most people your age would give their right arm to be in your position."

He finally moved out two days before Christmas. He doesn't have a girlfriend so he's living alone with Barney, his labrador. I could have cried buckets when he finally went because I couldn't bear the thought of him being lonely.

A month later he's happy and content. We still see him every day because he brings Barney in the morning and fetches him in the evening so he's not in the house on his own all day. He has lots of friends of both sexes and a great social life. He's a bit hard-up, as you'd expect, but I help him out by cooking his evening meal, which he sometimes takes with him to microwave at home and sometimes eats with us. Sometimes he cooks himself if he has friends coming round.

You often have to let someone, or something, go, even though your heart is screaming out to you to keep it close. If I were to squirrel Twisted Garlands away and not let it see the light of day again I wouldn't be doing the right thing.

Just like I wouldn't have been doing the right thing by my son to let my heart rule my head and let him take the easy road in life.

Meeting Jack Trelawny

On Saturday I went into Kettering Town Centre and wandered into Waterstones for a quick browse.

In a corner of the children's section was a small desk piled high with books and posters. It was a book signing and I hadn't heard about it. People were walking by and ignoring the poor bloke when I was there - hopefully it picked up a bit later on. There hadn't been much publicity locally, which I think was a shame because I'm sure lots of children would have loved to have met him.

I spent a pleasant few minutes chatting to him about his experiences when he was trying to get published. He was incredibly helpful to me, giving me some tips about writing a synopsis and presenting my work. He reckons that if you submit something that is well presented , with no spelling, punctuation or grammar mistakes and you are polite in your initial letter then you are at an advantage straight away. This advice echoes that of Jane Wenham-Jones in her book.

He did recommend self-publishing initially, but I said I wouldn't really be interested in that. He said he knows several authors who have successfully started out in this way.

He is a really nice man and I wish him well with his Kernowland books, the first of which is "The Crystal Pool". I have a signed copy to give to my grandson when he is older and, who knows, he might turn out to be the next J K Rowling!

Me Me about Writing

What's the last thing you wrote?
Apart from work stuff yesterday, a short story called A² + B² = C²

Was it any good?
I got a little tingle of something in my tummy after I had finished it. But there again – this blasted Novovirus is going around! (Kev – that reminds me, I need to e-mail it to you as you kindly offered to look at it for me.)

What's the first thing you ever wrote that you still have?
An account of how I was feeling at 6.00am on the morning I got married in 1975 (I was 19). Photo of it at the top of this blog.

Write poetry?
I like writing poetry, but I'm not very good at it, and I have to be in the right frame of mind.

Angsty poetry?
No – I'm not generally an angsty person.

Favourite genre of writing?
To write: Saga. To read: Family Sagas, Thrillers; Science Fiction if not too outrageous; Chick-lit (on holiday);

Most fun character you ever created?
Gloria – a lady who ran a Dinner Party Agency – she was scatty to the extreme.

Most annoying character you ever created?
Tom, the main character in Twisted Garlands. He got inside my head and controlled his own character. He woke me up in the night frequently with inappropriate ideas for the plot and I couldn't get him out of my mind.

Best plot you ever created?
See below – "favourite thing you've written". It got results and tugged at my Grandad's heartstrings. I don't think my mum ever really forgave me though …..

Coolest plot twist you ever created?
Four weeks of howling gale, sub-zero temperature and blizzards (Ha Ha! Geddit?)

How often do you get writer's block?
I just HAVE to write, no matter what, where or when, and I usually drop everything else when the urge comes over me. If I can't think of anything to write I read or knit instead.

Write fan fiction?
Nah.

Do you type or write by hand?
Type.

Do you save everything you write?
I started to save everything in the early 1980s, but wrote loads of stuff before then that has mainly been chucked out. Probably just as well!

Do you ever go back to an old idea long after you abandoned it?
If I get an idea and discard it, it tends to play on my mind if it's worth using.

What's your favourite thing that you've written?
When I was 12 I wrote a story for my grandad about a 12-year old girl who had asked for a dog for her birthday every year since she was two. The girl had a wicked, wicked mother who bought her birthday presents she didn't really want every year. I wrote about how unhappy she was and how all she ever wanted in the world was a dog.. She didn't want a new bike for her 13^th birthday because she wanted to walk everywhere with a dog on a lead.

It worked! He nagged my mum, made her feel like a very bad mother and I got Lucy, a little brindle cairn terrier, for my 13^th birthday!

What's everyone else's favourite story that you've written?
A story about a big fish in a little pond called Reg Barbel and how he ducked and dived out of the way of Percy Pike whilst terrorising all the little Baby Breams. I wrote it as a joke for a colleague when he retired (his name was very similar to Reg Barbel and he was a keen fisherman). I was mortified when he read it out at his presentation to about 150 people who all fell about laughing. The only thing was that Percy Pike was identifiable as the Council's Chief Executive ….. ooops!

Do you ever show people your work?
Up until September this year the answer would have been NO, NO, NO!

There are now a select few and they know who they are (mainly my new best friends who are also bloggers and wannabes). We're all in the same boat really, aren't we? We need to get our work out there to get constructive feedback, but it's like walking naked round a supermarket when people read what you've written.

Did you ever write a novel?
Just finished my first.

Ever written romance or teen angsty drama?
Having had three angsty teenagers of my own I've no wish to create any more in my head! Romance: if I write romance myself I think it's corny and too slushy. I have to be in the right frame of mind to read romance too.

What's your favourite setting for your characters?
I feel most comfortable setting my stories in places I know. I'd love to write a story set in Ibiza – it's my favourite place in the whole world. Such a rich mixture of colour and character and yet so quiet and peaceful outside the touristy areas.

How many writing projects are you working on right now?
Dunno. Several short stories. I'm currently working on the second edit of Twisted Garlands and I've started another novel.

At work, I'm in the middle of a submission for the LGC awards which I really hope doesn't get anywhere. I don't want to have to get dressed up like a trussed cockerel in drag and have to smile at stuffy local government clones and eat melon balls in red wine which I promptly drop all down my nice cream dress into my lap ….

Do you want to write for a living?
I already do I suppose. But it's not REAL writing. I want to be a real writer and have a book on the shelves in the fiction section of the library.

Have you ever won an award for your writing?
Get real! The Council got short-listed for an award based on a submission I had written last year.

Ever written something in script or play format?
No.

What are your five favourite words?
Misled (for years and years I didn't realise it was "mis-led" and thought it was pronounced "mizzled". Spiderpig. Numpty. Brainiac. Holiday.

Do you ever write based on yourself?
No. But I have written in the past based on the person I might have been had I not failed my eleven-plus!

What character have you created that most resembles yourself?
My characters wouldn't want to be like me. Too predictable and conventional. I suppose the main character in my new novel is a bit like me to start with, but then the reader starts to realise that she's not quite the person they thought she was …

Where do you get ideas for your other characters?
I sort of mackle them up and then get a picture of them in my head. I write a character profile and then they seem to just come alive.

Do you ever write based on your dreams?
Oh, yes. Lots of times I've woken up in the night and then written it down the next morning.

Do you favour happy endings, sad endings, or cliff-hangers?
I think whatever the ending is, it has to be satisfying to the reader. I hate books where you just think "is that it?"

Have you ever written based on an artwork you've seen?
Not artwork, but I have written based on an old photograph and my most recent short story was based on an Electronic Engineering textbook!

Are you concerned with spelling and grammar as you write?
I am obsessive with spelling and grammar. I HATE mistakes and I'm the type of person who gets annoyed at printed errors. Having said that you are reading the me-me of a person who put up several notices headed "Erection of a Parish Councillor" instead of "Election of a Parish Councillor", and then had to go round taking them all down again while people were hooting with laughter.

Ever write something entirely in chatspeak? (How r u?)
No. Definitely not! I use commas, full stops, apostrophes and semi-colons and my texts tend to be too long.

Entirely in L337?
Ummm … which alien spaceship did that come from?

Was that question completely appalling and un-writer like?
Un-writer is not a word! (Is it?)

Does music help you write?
Yes, but I hate loud music. I don't go anywhere without my MP3 player stuffed down my bra and plugged into my ears.

Quote something you've written. The first thing to pop into your mind.
"The misty fingers beckoned and enticed her intimately, caressing her foot with a gentle, lover's touch." (From Twisted Garlands – my character was about to commit suicide by drowning herself in a lake in the middle of the night.) Ooo-er! That sounds a bit depressing, but it was the first thing I thought of!

"There's a dead fish in my brain"

Early yesterday morning, as I did my usual morning stint of baby-sitting my nearly 3-year old grandson for an hour before taking him to the childminder, he said there was a dead fish in his fish tank. "You get it out, Granny," he said.

I told him that daddy would get it out when he came home, and said that he must remember to tell him that there was a dead fish in the tank.

"OK," he said. "Where shall I put the remember?"

That made me laugh. I tapped his head. "In here," I said. "In your brain."

When Lee picked him up from Donna's he ran up to him and said, "Daddy, there's a dead fish in my brain."

Beautiful Saturday

After yesterday's wobbles with the weather, today dawned bright and clear in sunny Northamptonshire. Back at work after my enforced sick-note sabbatical, hubby and sons are off shooting, so Zak and I have the entire day to ourselves.

The thing is, I'm torn in half today. Once the boring domestic bits are out of the way, do I spend the rest of this lovely day at Wickies with Zak or do I stay in and get stuck into some writing?

I must admit the pull of Wicksteed Park is strong today. 130 or so acres of park in undulating Northamptonshire countryside. A 30 acre lake with a nature trail. Huge swathes of lovely grass for Zak to run free (the park is closed from Sept to March so it's only really locals who go there). The cutest little rose garden where you can eat sandwiches and drink soup from a flask, huddled up in a cosy dog-walking coat, hat, mittens and scarf in the winter sunshine. The rose garden is set in lovely symmetrical concentric circles and is slightly sunken, hidden away from prying eyes; visitors often don't realise it's there as the entrance is merely a tiny ancient wrought iron gate in an overgrown hedge. Once inside, the hedge envelops you like a time-worn familiar comfort blanket. If there is no-one else there, you really could be alone in a painted landscape.

Wicksteed Park in winter is quite simply a purring contented pussy-cat, a peaceful, quiet haven where you can sit with a notepad and let your imagination gallop across the cauliflower sky. I always take bread for the ducks, geese and swans that come right up to you and take the tit-bits out of your hand in winter. Mind you, no doubt the greedy labrador will get the hump if he doesn't get some as well!

Wicksteed Park changes into a different beast in the summer though. A roaring tiger with claws outstretched waiting to capture the hoards of day-trippers and rip them off with extortionate prices. Rows of huge coaches punctuated by screaming children invade the quiet green meadows. The sound of the honking Mississippi Queen River Boat; screaming and yelling of people on the water chute; the smell of onions and chips mixing with the earthy smell of the river and lake.

In summer, the wildlife retreats to two small islands on the lake, only venturing out to a place behind some railings where they can, squawking and squabbling, take their offerings from crowds of well-meaning humans in safety.

My earliest distinct memory of Wicksteed Park was when my Auntie Mary gave birth in the ice-cream queue. (Well actually that's exaggerating a bit: her waters broke in the ice-cream queue, an incident that was followed by a scattering of adults leaving moi - at seven years old - with a whole pound note to buy lots of tubs of creamy ice-cream with little multi-coloured spatula-like spoons for my little brother and various, younger cousins. Auntie Mary actually gave birth in the Pavilion - if you google Wicksteed Park you will see a photo of the gorgeous quaint 1920's wooden building in all its splendour. I could tell you lots of tales about the Pavilion but I'll save that for another day.)

I met my very first boyfriend at Wicksteed Park. A few weeks later two love-sick fifteen year olds found a virgin patch of newly laid concrete at the back of the boat shed. "AB Loves IS" they wrote with a sharp twig, encircled by a heart. It's still there, I think, although I daren't go and look any more because it necessitates a daring manoeuvre rather too near to the bank of the lake. My daughter reliably informed me about ten years ago that it was still there, much to the consternation of her dad - who , you may have realised, is NOT the immortal IS!

I've fallen (or been thrown) in the lake four times - mostly as a scatty teenager, but once as a should-have-known-better thirty-something pretending to be a teenager.

BUT!

Despite wandering down the Wicksteed Park memory lane, I really want to write today! Being back at work has meant that writing time has become more precious. What would you do - resist the pull of the computer keyboard and set forth to Wicksteeds in Winter this afternoon, or knuckle down and get another thousand or so words written?

I'd post some pictures on the blog - but if you want to have a look just Google "Wicksteed Park"

Have a great winter weekend, bloggers

Echoes of the Past

I have set up a separate blog for those who want to read more about my terrible time in 1981 that acted as the catalyst for some great writing. Don't read it if you're squeamish! I'm quite happy to blog with anyone who finds themselves in a similar situation.

Anyhow, I analysed the writing I had completed in the period from the end of May 1981 up until August 1981. It's spurred me on with this second book and I can't wait to get home from work and get writing tonight. So next time you're experiencing extremes of emotion, pick up a pen and see what flows, put it away for a while and then read it again.

Wouldn't it be great if we could go back in time and visit ourselves at such awful times? If I could I'd tell 24 year old Annie not to give up trying to get published and waste all those years being a secret closet writer. I'd tell her to be careful about her weight (at 24 I was super-slim - now I'm ... well ... not!)

But above all I'd fling my arms around her and thank her for hiding away her writing in the loft and not chucking it in the bin.

Book No 2 - Untitled

I've started Book No. 2.

Well. That's not entirely true. I think it's really Book No. 1 because I wrote the first 20K words in 1980 - 1981 and then gave up. It hasn't seen the light of day since then. Some of it was carefully typed out, double-spaced, on an old electric typewriter I had in those days. Well, actually, I must tell the truth, the pages are rigid with Snowpake. Remember good old Snowpake?

In a deep crevice of my brain I sort of remembered that I'd not finished typing it up and there was more handwritten stuff. After rootling about in the loft I've found two foolscap sized hardback notebooks full of the next 20K or so words, together with doodles, shopping lists and telephone messages!

I wasn't going to use it. The first 20K words were dull, uninteresting and quite frankly, the most badly-written rubbish I've read for a long time. Besides, because it was so long ago, how do I know I hadn't copied anyone else's work or ideas? (Although I don't think I would have done - but I was only 24 then and it might not have occurred to me that it was wrong.) It was so bad I was almost hoping that I had copied someone else!

On the handwritten portion the younger (and slimmer) version of Annie had put the dates in the margin. So I could track her progress. She seemed to have been aiming for two sides of paper a day.

When I got to the end of May 1981 - coincidentally or not, the most horrible time in my life) I was startled by the clarity of the descriptions and the flowing descriptive prose. The subject matter was nothing to do with the personal tragedy I was suffering at the time, but it was clear to me that I had retreated into the pages of my novel whilst trying to escape the horrors in my life. The results were absolutely stunning - even if they did reflect the state of my traumatised brain at the time!

I also wrote a poem on a loose sheet, which I might put on this blog. It might just help someone else in the same situation I was in in May 1981. I'll probably post it tomorrow.

I am completely re-writing the first part of the book, using the original plot. Some of it I can't even remember writing in the first place.

I can't think of a title yet.

Can someone tell me where I can get one of those word counter thingies to put on my blog?

The Bow Street Runners

On New Year's Day my hubby referred to our grandson as a "Bow Street Runner" because he kept running to either his mum or dad and telling tales on his grandad for eating all the Quality Street (we were at our daughter's house for tea).

I hadn't a clue what, or who, the Bow Street Runners were.

Hubby jumped up and cheered.

"You mean to say that amongst all the crap and useless debris stored in your brain you never learnt about the the Bow Street Runners at school?"

"No." I shook my head looking blank.

He opened Emily's front window and shouted out to the world (admittedly he had sunk at least four cans of Carling):

"I finally know something she doesn't. Yeahhhhh."

He jumped up and down a few times, punching his fist in the air at the open window. I hope no-one saw him - he's got a bad enough reputation already!

All our grown-up kids and their partners knew - or pretended they knew - what the Bow Street Runners were. Was I REALLY the only one who didn't know or were they teasing me in my "four Martinis and a glass of Snowball" fog of cluelessness. (Is that a word?")

Now - I need to find out and no cheating. Who else will admit to not knowing - tell the truth now and promise you won't Google it before replying!

Something luxurious, something humorous and something useful

He out-did me!

These are the christmas presents I got from hubby.

1. Something useful/for a quid or less - a pair of bedsox from Poundland.

2. Something humorous/for about a tenner - a do-it-yourself voodoo kit.

3. Something home-made from stuff lying around the house/luxurious:

This is where I couldn't hope to compete! A promise of a concrete birdbath made from sand/cement left over from our extension. PLUS: A cute little birdie house to hang in the pear tree.

My presents to him.

1. Something useful/for a tenner (OK OK - I cheated - so what!) A trolley jack - it was fifty quid. (His old one expired last week under the strain of a poorly land-rover and I couldn't think of anything else at four-thirty on Christmas eve)

2. Something humorous/home-made from stuff lying around the house: A chocolate cake with a stuck-in-the-chocolate-icing-pretend-mud range-rover on top (see No. 3 below)

3. Something luxurious/for a quid or less: a new top of the range Range Rover Sport in black (OK OK I cheated again! It was £1.99 from Woolies).

From this you can see why I had to cheat with No. 1: it was imperative that I kept to my land-rover theme and anything else just wouldn't do!

Christmas Presents

Every year hubby and I don't know what to buy each other. As we both have time on our hands this year - I don't go back to work until after Christmas and he is semi-retired - we decided to inject a bit of fun into our pressies this year.

We've decided to give each other:
1 present for approx. a tenner
1 present for no more than a pound
1 hand-made present that costs nowt (ie made of stuff lying around the house)

1 of the presents should be funny
1 of the presents should be useful
1 of the presents should be luxurious

He's in the garage now: I have strict instructions not to interrupt. Now this is not fair! He has access to all sorts of boys toys in there.

This is worse than finding inspiration for writing! I have absolutely GOT to out-do him!

Any suggestions?

Christmas Greetings

Bah humbug!

Christmas cards! There I've said it. What is it about Christmas cards that brings out the worst in one-upmanship. Why is it that some people delight in buying the most expensive cards just to write "Fred and Jean" inside or worse still, have them printed so that they don't need to write in them? Are they just showing off? Is it these same people who have strings upon strings upon strings of colourful cards in their living rooms shouting out to visitors that they have so many friends they receive hundreds of cards? Or is it more likely that they save last year's to put up too! Ha ha ha. Caught them out!

I remember when my kids were young I used to rifle through their school bags this time of year to find valuable cards to hang on the wall. One year I was really angry with middle son because he left all his cards in his drawer at school at the end of term. How dare he! That was at least twenty cards that wouldn't end up on my wall! I made him cry because I told him Santa wouldn't come because he had left his cards at school. He was six years old. Oh dear - wasn't I a dreadful mother.

Today my daughter is helping my grandson to make rice crispie cakes with Smarties on top for his playgroup mates instead of buying Christmas cards. Well - three year olds can't write them themselves can they? I think it's a lovely idea. I wish I'd thought of it twenty-odd years ago.

I wonder, though, how it will go down with the other mums on Monday morning when he gives out his crispie cakes instead of Christmas cards? Will Emily give in by the end of the week and buy 20 cards and write in them herself?

Another Christmas card moan. Last year I found my mum's Christmas card list and sent a card to everyone whose name/address I didn't recognise, with a little handwritten note to tell them mum had passed away.

This year I'm getting cards from people I don't know (Fred and Jean above is an example). I can only think they are mum's acquaintances. Thing is I don't think I kept mum's old list so I can't send one back. Why did I wake up in the night last night worrying about this?

Anyway, fellow bloggers here is a seasonal thought from me. Let's all make the most of those Christmas cards and see who can write the most original greeting instead of just "Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, from blah blah and blah."

How about this for starters. "I hope this Christmas will be better than the last one when you ended up in casualty after dropping the hot turkey on your foot."

or

"Best wishes for a Happy Christmas from Beryl and the miserable old git who lives with her."

I just wish I dare!

Seasons greetings and happy writing to you all. May your books get published and your Christmas cards recycled for hanging on the wall next year!

Goats, Strange Women and Nativities

We took our grandson to a children's farm today. (Damned expensive - total of over £30 spent for just half a day.

Now - I have had three stroppy 2-year olds of my own. So you would think I'd be experienced and would be an expert in hungry goats, tantrums, sulks, nativity plays and tractor rides in barrels, wouldn't you?

Not so.

• First mistake. I forgot to tuck his jeans into his wellies (it was very muddy and wet). You'll see why later in the blog.
  
• We bought a paper bag full of animal feed. T held the bag. A hungry goat mugged him. Result? One crying child and Grandad had a tantrum because he had to fetch - and buy - another bagful. Grandad then sulked because T wouldn't let him hold the bag.
  
• It was getting cold, looking round all the animals, so we went into the play hut. There was a woman in there feeding a child of at least 2 1/2 probably 3 . T said really loudly "Granny - that lady's got her boobies out and that little boy's sucking them." At which point Grandad misbehaved in a way only grandads can and said much too loudly. "Granny'd better not get hers out - they'll think she's a cow and come and milk her!" Lady was not impressed because Granny laughed her socks off and giggled with grandson and grandad. She said I was a disgrace to my gender. Hmmm!
  
• Strange lady's son then went off to play with T. Granny and Grandad just let them get on with it, enjoying chatting, giggling and sharing big bag of wiggly worms, fried eggs, snakes, strawberry laces and sherbet thingies. Strange lady obviously thought T's granny was very, very bad granny for not watching T like a hawk. Strange lady took her shoes off and joined in, climbing plastic castles, crawling through plastic tunnels meant for three year olds and pretending to be a monkey. She was being a very, very good mummy. Granny is obviously very, very bad granny for offering Strange Lady's child a wiggly worm made of arsenic-like substance. "My children are not allowed sweets," she said looking down her nose. "Come away, Toby."
• Barrel ride next. Granny's fat bum is too big to sit in a barrel much to Grandad's glee. Granny gets stuck in barrel and unfortunately has to be helped out by extremely handsome man young enough to be her son. T said "I'm big enough to go on my own Granny. You go and look after Grandad."
  
• T didn't want to come off, so had another go. He still didn't want to come off. Tantrum. Remember those muddy wellies? Kicking feet, muddy wellies and jeans wet at the bottom and caked in mud don't go down too well with very, very good mummies who always remember to tuck Toby's jeans in. Well, how was bad, bad Granny to know that wet sloppy mud was flying everywhere!
• Nativity next with real live animals. Wow! T was Joseph. "Are you going to ask if there's room at the inn?" says nice playleader lady. "No," says T shaking his head. "No, you have to say - is there any room at the inn," she repeats.
  "No," says T down the microphone shaking his head again. "Don't want to." Meanwhile, the cow is eating someone's pushchair, much to Grandad's amusement. Grandad is very naughty, tittering at Strange Lady with the Boobs trying to drag empty pushchair from cow's mouth.
• All the mummies and daddies and grannies and grandads have to sing "While Shepherds Watched." Grandad sings wrong words and teaches them to T.
  

All in all an absolutely wonderful day. Grandad whined all the way home in the car wanting to know when we can go again!

The Forgotten Chapter

From previous blogs you will see that I have finished editing my book. I was printing off two more copies of the m/s this morning when there it was - just three little words that have brought me crashing down to earth. What were they?

"Fill in later"

There they were in all their glory at the very end of Chapter 12 and before Chapter 14. A whole bloody chapter! What the hell was I going to put in there!

Now - do I just press the "delete" button and pretend they weren't there at all. Or do I try and fill in the six year gap between Chapter 12 and Chapter 14 that represents the period 1939-1943. Can I just pretend that four years of the war didn't exist in my fictitious town?

Chapter 14 is all about 1944 so I have covered some of the war.

Do you know - it's a bit like going shopping and getting home and realising you have forgotten the thing you went out for.

Good job I'm not at work. Eh.

Another Cringeworthy Poem

But hey - the only people who read my blog are nice wannabes! Again it scores 0% on the scale of technical perfection. I pinned this on the tree at the Crematorium where we scattered mum's and dad's ashes.

SIX YEARS OF DECEMBER

My mother died a year ago today
We scattered her ashes just here.
Where five years earlier almost to the exact day
We scattered Dad’s earthly remains.

2002 – the first December we sat on the seat
Just over there - my mother and I.
“He’s not here,” she said. “I don’t feel him here.”
But we heard my dad, that year, as we sat in silent memory, one year on.
We heard him in the gentle rustle of the trees.
In the wind that sent autumn’s leaves scurrying across the path,
And the birdsong that filled the late autumn air with melody.

2003 – the second December we sat on the seat
Just over there – my mother and I.
“He’s not here,” she said. “I don’t feel him here.”
But we could smell him in the fragrance of the freesias
We set gently under the tree
And the earth we turned as we planted snowdrops, in his memory,
And the sweet smell of grass mingled with the faint aroma of pine trees.

2004 – the third December we sat on the seat
Just over there – my mother and I.
“He’s not here,” she said. “I don’t feel him here.”
But we could touch him so easily with our minds
If we closed our eyes, reached out and stroked his cheek,
Hugged him tightly and felt the warmth and sensation of his skin
On our skin. The comforting gentle caress of his hands on ours.

2005 – the fourth December we sat on the seat
Just over there – my mother and I.
“He’s not here, she said. “I don’t feel him here.”
But we could taste him in a sweet cup of tea (which he loved).
Digestive biscuits; chicken soup; fresh warm bread and best butter;
And roast beef and Yorkshire pudding – his favourite;
And apricots; and bacon and eggs on a Sunday morning
Cooked with mum’s apron tied around his waist.

2006 – the fifth December I sat on the seat
Just over there – alone.
“They’re not here, I thought. “I don’t feel them here.”
Scattered ashes, barely visible after a few days.
Earth to earth, dust to dust, ashes to ashes. Empty. Lonely. Lost.
Senses frozen in silent, cold, grief.

2007 – the sixth December I sit on the seat
Just over there – alone.
“They’re not here, I think. “I don’t feel them here.”
But I close my eyes and imagine. I can SEE them!
They come with me this year, my mum and my dad, to this place of peace. Reunited, holding hands as they sit with me on the bench
I can hear them, smell them, touch them, taste them, see them
whenever I like for they are with me always
In all my senses.

Writing

I think you write much better when you are emotional. I was emotional yesterday and wrote a poem (very bad one) that made Julie and Emily cry. We shared a bottle of wine last night in my kitchen while the men sat watching "Trainspotting" in the lounge - uggggh. Julie bought me some beautiful flowers. We cried because we missed mum so much. Poor Julie lost her own mum (Jean) only 13 weeks before losing my mum. How cruel is that?

Yesterday I wrote another short story (hence the above assumption) and I've just put it in the post. That's three in total I've sent out now. One each to Woman's Weekly, My Weekly and The People's Friend. It wasn't a morbid story though. It was based on Little Boys and Torches, one of my previous blogs, and the lovely Lynne thought it might sell as a short story after reading my blog. So I took her advice.

I finished editing my book yesterday, too. I've got three readers so I shall need lots of printer ink!

H is my first reader. She is 3o, single and an avid reader of women's fiction and a very good friend. She is so kind - the type of woman who NEVER has a bad word to say about anyone. I was worried she wouldn't want to criticise my work - but she's promised me she will - she really wants to read it - over Christmas preferably!

M is H's mum and 55, so is in my own age bracket. I don't know her very well so she won't worry about hurting my feelings if she thinks it's crap! She will be totally impartial, hopefully.

T is my oldest friend and 70 (she'd kill me for giving her age) She is also a demon with spelling, punctuation etc. She will be my fiercest critic, I think. She reads widely - fiction and non-fiction, and is the most proficient walking dictionary of useless information I have ever met. She is also painfully and brutally honest. ("If you get that book published, you'll have to go for elocution lessons and lose the Northamptonshire accent!" was a comment made the other day. Bless her.)

Auntie Barbara wants to read it too. But I've reserved Auntie Barbara for the second draft - she's too close, being my surrogate mum.

Another one of my good friends is a man. A. We've known each other for years and years and,tragically, he is horribly disabled after a car accident nearly five years ago so has lots of time to sit reading. (Yes - it is entirely possible for males and females to have a platonic relationship - we are living proof!) He wants to read it but is very brainy. Methinks he will think it complete and utter tosh, so I don't want him to read it.

I am very jelly-like and apprehensive. I didn't know what genre Twisted Garlands fell into but I think it comes into a Family Saga category aimed at 30 years plus women. Like I said before, it's a bit like planning to walk round Tescos naked. To be honest I feel a bit of a twit for even daring to think that I could write a full-length novel and hope my readers don't laugh themselves into an early grave at my "twisted" plot (hence the title "Twisted" Garlands.) I also hope people don't think I am a psychiatric case!

Ho hum! Wish me luck. I know I'll need it. I am not expecting to get published, but my first personal target is producing a readable, hopefully enjoyable, second draft for Auntie Barbara to read.

Going to start second novel now. It's one I started in the 1980's. I don't know how many words it is because it was typed on a typewriter: 103 pages of usable text in double spacing, so I suppose that's about 25K words. I was intrigued by the storyline because I haven't a clue where I was going with it all those years ago. It hasn't got a title, but it's not even remotely like Twisted Garlands. In fact, reading the m/s through so far, it feels like someone else has written it. I suppose they have! That someone else was me 25 years ago!

If I was reading it for someone else I would have to say that the storyline doesn't flow too well. Dialogue is thin on the ground in places and lots of it is in the bad old passive tense. However, it's got some vivid descriptions that really conjure up a picture in the mind and some paragraphs that I just hope that I didn't copy from anywhere!

Margaret Rose Beasley

Tomorrow it is one year to the day since I lost my lovely mum. Take it from me, she was one in a million. Here is a picture of her. This lovely smile says it all. This is how she looked when we walked in for our traditional Tuesday lunchtime dinner. Work never got in the way of Tuesday lunchtimes - it was sacrosanct. "Book me a Tuesday lunchtime meeting at your peril!" I used to say. "I go to my mum's on a Tuesday lunchtime." Of course, I used to see her nearly every day, but Tuesdays? Well that was our special time. Just for Julie and me. We were pampered - spoiled so rotten we didn't want to go back to work in the afternoon. On some occasions we didn't - when I took flexitime and Julie had a day off. Those such afternoons are the stuff that diamond and pearl memories are made of, but we didn't do anything special - just stayed round mum's and lolled about like we were teenagers and talked about nothing in particular.

Here is a poem I wrote just after she died. Fifty-two lonely Tuesdays. She wanted me to try and get my work published for over 35 years. So here you are mum. It's total crap. It's got cliches; it's poetry and I can't do poetry very well; and everyone will be cringing. It's everything that it shouldn't be and it would send a professional running for the nearest hills, but I'm publishing on my blog - for you.

Tuesday Stew and Sanctuary

A gentle lady, kind, loving and wise.
A lovely big smile, with twinkling eyes
Greeted us, as we walked through the door
To a house filled with love, and Kit-Kats galore.

"Can you stay for a little while?"
She would enquire with a beaming smile.
"I haven't seen anyone else all day"
As she served our dinner on a familiar tray.

Stew, dumplings, gravy and mushy peas
Balanced precariously on our knees.
With apple pie and custard for desert
We ate so much our stomachs hurt!

"Where's your ironing", she would reprimand.
We'd look up, feeling quite alarmed.
She loved to iron, tackling huge great mounds
In the afternoons, whilst watching Countdown.

"We've done some this morning, we would reply
Biting our lips at the little white lie.
"We'll bring you the rest, so that you can do it
But only if you're sure you're up to it!"

"Please let me help you", she would then say
"I need to be needed every day.
What is the point of my existence
If I can't help my family?" (she was very persistent).

"Don't wash up, just leave it to me,
Let's sit and talk while we drink our tea.
I love to see you: you know I do,
I love to cook you your favourite stew."

Now you are gone, mum, we feel quite bereft.
An empty, cold house is all that is left
But we smile when we reflect on your legacies -
Priceless memories, Mum, for us and our families.

We miss you so much Mum, now that you’re gone
But in us, your daughters, you will live on.
We' ll become grandmothers, just like you
And cook our daughters their Tuesday stew.

Annie Ireson
11th December 2006

The Rat

One of my lovely Labradors sometimes wants to go out in the middle of the night. It's usually me who has to get up to let him out.

2.40 am saw this morning saw me traipsing about in the dark in my dressing gown that is in dire need of a wash. I didn't put any lights on because lights-on mean playtime to this particular Lab.

I opened the back door and waited for him, shivering. It was bloody cold last night. I heard a rustle behind me in the utility room and looked round. There was a rat scurrying across the floor. I screeched, leapt outside and shut the back door, thus locking in the offending rodent. I stood there for about ten minutes wondering what to do. The landing light came on in the house next door and I saw the curtains twitch as I hid in the garden. Then I had a sudden thought. What if there are more rats lurking under the shed? Looking around I spotted a dark object about six feet away and whispered "fetch" to Zak, who thought I was mad. (When I checked this morning it turned out to be a furry pheasant soggy dog toy.)

I braced myself to go back into the utility room and shoved Zak in ahead of me. He stood there, tail thumping noisily on the washing machine. It was no good, I knew I had to put the light on. I sat on the worktop which is piled high with ironing that needs doing (needed to get my feet off the floor, see) and poked at the light switch with a feather duster. My heart was hammering as a large dead leaf sat majestically on the mat by the sink. Well - it did look a bit like a rat!

Backing up your work

Please, please everyone back up your work. I had a scare this morning when pc asked for a Windows XP password - completely out of the blue. The password hint said "red" I spent two hours with a dictionary putting in everything that began with "red". I knew it was not a password we had ever put in, because the entire family uses the same password for everything.

Close to tears I woke up technoson, who thankfully fixed it in five minutes. I was so relieved I was a bit rash and gave him twenty quid!

All I could think of was my book - I didn't care about anything else. I had backed the first draft on a memory stick, but all my precious editing over the past five weeks or so would have been lost.

Breakfast in Tescos

Thanks to glorious flexitime I have Friday off.

He-who-works-when-it-suits-him and I went to Tescos this morning and decided to have a late breakfast/early lunch before embarking on the weekly shop. The lady on the till was obviously having a bad day. There was a notice on the drinks machines:

"All Drink Machien dos no vork"

Now, when something tickles me, it tickles me and there is no shutting me up. Giggling, I whispered to my hubby with a fake foreign accent - "all drink ma-ch-i-en doss no veeerk".

The lady on the till must have had the ears of a labrador listening for the sound of his lead. She was also in dire need of customer care training. When I got to the till I was still laughing.

"It's not funny, you know. I'm supposed to leave off at half eleven and its twenty to twelve now. I have to keep boiling a kettle."

"I was laughing at the notice." I explained, biting my lip trying not to laugh too much. She came round to the other side of the counter and peered at the notice in question.

"What's so funny about that - the drinks machines are not working. It's not funny, I can tell you. I can do without that on top of everything else, what with people wanting fried eggs all the time when we're short-staffed."

By this time other people in the queue were laughing too.

She rung up our breakfasts on the till and my husband asked for two coffees. She jabbed at the till with a frustrated forefinger before hopping off her stool to make them.

"Oh bugger it!" She tutted and puffed behind the counter. "I've only got enough water in the kettle for one."

She made one mug of coffee and said to everyone else in the queue, "you'll all have to wait, I've only got one pair of hands."

She put the cup of coffee on my tray. Helpful Hubby said sympathetically "it's OK, I'll go without".

"YOU WILL NOT." Her voice raised an octave. "I'VE RUNG IT UP NOW. GO AND SIT DOWN AND I'LL BRING IT OVER."

Hubby dutifully did as he was told, tail between his legs. I was still laughing when she came over to slam his coffee down.

"What's wrong with the notice?" she demanded as she glared at me.

"Err.. I think machine is spelled wrong." I did feel just a bit sorry for her - her stress levels had obviously gone through the roof.

"How do you spell it then?"

I wrote on a piece of paper MACHINE.

My giggling fit started all over again as we left. She had crossed out 'machien' and written 'machine' above it.

The Yellow Balloon

This story is true, although unbelievable.

My mother died on Friday, 1st December last year. I am going to cut to the last few days because I think that is what she would want.

Her terrible illness side-stepped all attempts at chemotherapy and finally claimed her life only fifteen weeks after she first became ill. Thanks to the wonderful staff at Cransley Hospice she had a relatively comfortable and pain-free last few days.

My son, Garry, is an electrician and the week before she died he was in charge of putting the lights on the "tree of lights" which is sponsored by Cransley Hospice. Mum was a patient. On the Wednesday he went to see grandma at the hospice and told her he had put the lights on the tree that day, ready for the big switch on on 9th December. Grandma told him to look at the one at the top of the tree and think of her.

Later the same day, my daughter went to see her grandma. They talked about the afterlife and Emily held her grandma's hand as she asked her to let her know, somehow, that she was safe and happy with Grandad when she passed over. Mum promised Emily that if she could, she would. That day was Mum's last day of consciousness. She asked me to make sure that Tyler, her great-grandson, didn't forget her and to remind him when he grew up that she taught him to say "oh-oh".

The weather on the evening of Sunday, 9th December, the switch-on, was atrocious. It was the day before Mum's funeral. The rain pelted down in great sheets and we all felt sorry for the Salvation Army band, who played Christmas Carols to a small crowd of people who had gathered for the switch-on. There were only a few children there, which was a shame because the organisers had brought balloons, which they filled from a helium canister, for them to hold and let go as the lights were switched on. Only about twenty balloons were released by the children.

My grandson didn't go, because of the awful weather and his young age.

As the lights were switched on our family huddled under a canopy of umbrellas. The balloons drifted up into the torrential cold rain and my sister-in-law said "oh, what a shame - you can only see the yellow ones because of the awful weather."

There were only four yellow balloons amongst those released. They were very distinctive, with shiny ribbon and printed with a tree of lights logo.

The next day was mum's funeral. When she arrived home after the funeral, my daughter let her dogs out. There, in the centre of her back lawn, was a deflated yellow balloon with a Tree of Lights logo. My daughter lives about three miles from the site of the balloon release.

When she showed her husband the balloon the tears were rolling down her cheeks with happiness. Tyler seeing his mum crying, said, "Oh-oh".

This story, very special to our family, is why I know my mum is still around, looking after us all, as she did in life.

Children Reading by Six

I don't know about anyone else, but I think this is really dangerous and will put unnecessary stress on children who are much too young to have to worry about such things. Children learn at different speeds and what a child can or can't do at six has nothing to do with eventual achievement.

With the benefit of hindsight I would advise any mother of a child who is not reading well at six not to worry. Give kids the right type of secure childhood where they can be a child and not a mini adult and they will achieve their potential at their own pace and on their own terms.

The only thing I told my children was that we expected them to do their very best to get 5 GCSE's at Grade C or above, including English, Maths and Science. Anything else would be a bonus.

Daughter - who is now a teacher - got a Grade D in Maths. She had to re-take it to get in Uni, but honestly, what did it matter in the end in the grand scheme of things? Incidentally, she was about eight before she could read out loud fluently.

Short Story

Short story "Putting Things Right" now in post to WW. First one for 23 years. Thanks, fellow wannabes and bloggers for your useful feedback and comments. Keeping fingers crossed, but it might be months before I hear anything. Still struggling with editing my book, but thanks to Mercedes I've realised that its definitely better to do a chapter, or couple of chapters, at a time. I'm not happy with my account of TB in the 1920s in my book, so heading off to the library at lunchtime to do a bit more research. I could do with interviewing someone with first hand knowledge - any suggestions?

Little Boys and Torches

I bought my grandson a torch yesterday.

Little Miss Prim (daughter) and Son Outlaw went out to a charity do last night so T arrived at 6.15. Grandad and I took him to Hobson's Choice - a quite nice family pub where you get two meals for a tenner. The torch came too. T and I went to order the meals. The torch came too. In the queue he got talking to a little girl and they toddled over to acquaint themselves with a cheerful snowman in the corner. The torch went too.

Halfway through our meal T wanted a wee. The torch went too. Two hours (yes, I kid you not - two hours) later, the man came and cleared away T's chicken nuggets. He said to T - this will all have to go in the bin now because you haven't eaten it. Grandad said "yes and that blasted torch will go too."

Later, T had his bath. The torch had one too. He had his bot-bot which Granny had to hold for him because the torch was right there waiting for its share.

I said, "go and choose a book for your story." The torch went too. I read a story to the torch about penguins pulling Santa's sleigh because the reindeer had flu.

As I tucked the torch in bed, Tyler went too. Peeping round the door ten minutes later the rude torch flashed at me right in my face! Half an hour later T was fast asleep and the batteries in the torch were too.

Correction to Previous Post

Significant other swears blind it wasn't fifty quid. It was only £30. He says I am like the proverbial fisherman.

Surfing in Blogland

Had a teeny surf through Blogland last night. Lane - the opening paragraph of Past Tense is brilliant - absolutely gripping. I really want to read the whole book so Lane GET WRITING. There is a small army of blogsurfers out there just waiting with bated breath to read your book.

It's made me realise I have a long, long way to go.

I'm looking forward to the weekend because my significant other has promised he will go up into the loft and look for my two files of what he calls "my writings". It's stuff I wrote in the 1980s when I had a smidgeon of success and got a short story published in The People's Friend. I know I must have written at least twenty other short stories then, all carefully typed on an old manual typewriter with carbon copies. There are journals of the days I was a stay at home mum too so they should be interesting to say the least! When my next two stories were rejected I just walked round sulking for a few days and gave up sending any more off. If only, oh, if only I could have had the company of fellow wannabes on the internet. I just felt a monumental failure!

I remember I got the grand sum of £50 for my story. I put it towards a video recorder - a new VHS when everyone else had Betamax, so that the kids could watch videos while I made millions writing a series of brilliant books which would later be turned into films. I dreamed of the house in the country with six kids and six dogs, a Land Rover 110 County to ferry them all around in and employing a housekeeper and gardener.


Now, I find, that even if I get published I'll be lucky to make 50p an hour!

Nice to dream, though. There's always the lottery.

Shopping in Paris

Thinking of something to write on my blog each day is quite hard. The only remotely noteworthy event over the last 24 hours was this morning. I look after my almost 3-year-old grandson from 8-9 every morning and then take him to fantastically competent and patient childminder - Donna - see previous blog. Then I either go to work or go home to work from there - or, as on Tuesday, thanks to glorious flexitime, I get a whole day to myself.

On the way to Donna's this morning he tripped over and fell flat on his face. Result: one large egg on his forehead and a snotty and grazed nose. Did he cry for his mummy? No - he cried for daddy. We had to ring him on his mobile and Tyler had to tell him all about how Granny had failed to hold his hand and stop him bumping his head.

Now folks - can you see the similarity here with yesterday's post? When his Grandad blamed the wall for only being eighteen inches high? Is it genetic. or is it a man-thing? Observations welcomed.

Now for the bit about shopping in Paris. I can now get a train from my local station and go direct to Paris in just under three hours. Only downside is that it is £89 one way.

Every Dog Has His Day

Just a short post today.

My hubby reversed into a wall in the van yesterday. Boy - was he angry! It was all the wall's fault because it was only eighteen inches high and it leapt out in front of him as he reversed, jumping up and down gleefully like a naughty Gremlin.

Anyway Technoson wouldn't let him forget it. He went on about it all night - making helpful comments every few minutes something like: "Never mind, dad, Nathan'll fix it. It'll only cost the business about two hundred quid."

It was so funny - because in the summer Technoson drove to Alton Towers and blew his engine up on the way overtaking a Merc. (He has a 1000cc VW Polo - so it was a bit stupid, but he learned his lesson as it cost him a packet to fix it.) Dad was, quite frankly, a sanctimonious unhelpful old b****d all through the costly repair process, adopting a holier than thou attitude, conveniently forgetting the time he buggered up our old Moggie 1100 racing it when we were Technoteenagers in the 1970s showing off with our 8-track blasting through the open windows.

I winked at Technoson as I gently reminded him of the above. As they say - Every Dog Has His Day!

Thank you Kev!

Thank you Kev for your brilliant feedback, which I shall take on board. My daughter has bought me Steven King's "On Writing" for Christmas, so I have resisted the urge to get it out of the library so far, but I am really looking forward to reading it.

I am gradually creeping out of the writing closet like a hedgehog just emerging from hibernation - or maybe perhaps more like a tortoise - and flippantly weaving the fact that I have written a book into casual chit-chat with trusted friends. I didn't realise what a conversation-stopper it was! This morning, over coffee, I tossed the little gem into musings with Donna about potential part time work prospects while she is a stay-at-home mum to her young children. Well, you would have thought I'd tossed a bone into a pack of hungry dogs!

There were three other women in the room who, with one ear, I could hear gossiping nastily about someone I don't know but feel suddenly very sorry for.

The other conversation stopped and three heads turned towards me simultaneously.

"What?" You've written a whole book. The ringleader nasty gosspiper threw daggers at me with her eyes.

I mumbled something - can't remember what. I felt acutely embarrassed and wished I hadn't said anything until Donna grabbed my hand and shook it, jumping up and down with excitement that she was finally friends with someone famous!

All right! I know what you are all thinking. I should have put her right there and then, and I'm going to have to burst her bubble sometime - but I think I'll wait a while!

Editing my book is going well, but my extremely critical alter ego (alias Ima, my childhood imaginary friend) is finding that huge chunks is absolute and utter crap and forcing me under duress to re-write some chapters. I wish she'd just shut up and go away, or at least say something constructive for a change. Or at the very least, bring a huge bar of chocolate and bottle of wine with her!

I am going to see my lovely Auntie Barbara for yet another cup of coffee in a few minutes, as I'm not at work today. My Auntie Barbara is my surrogate mum as I am a poor orphan Annie and miss my real mum something wicked.

I am going to give her this blog address so she can keep me in line. I might even persuade her to set up a blog of her own as she is a very interesting person.

Once again, thanks guys for commenting on my blog.

These are my two babies. Zak and Barney.

Strictly speaking Barney is not mine. Someone asked me yesterday how many of my kids still lived at home and I answered quite truthfully - one and a half. You see, oldest son has his own house but is only half-way moved out. Barney is his and Barney doesn't want to go! I am new to this blogging lark and fear I will never post interesting blogs like Lane and Mercedes. Early feedback from daughter was not good. She was mortified that I admitted to only hoovering half-way up the stairs. She thinks people will think I am a slut. I think anyone who writes will understand perfectly!

Oh well - back to work!

Me on holiday in Gran Canaria in March this year
See Kev - I told you I was going to change my picture!
This is a better likeness.

I've set up this blog because I think I'm too old for facebook!

I absolutely love writing and have done all my life. Up until today my writing has always been stuff for work - or anonymous. I did get a short story published many years ago, but gave up when my next two were rejected! Boo hoo. Oh well – you live and learn.

I really have two completely different writing styles. In my working life I am a local government officer (yes – I can hear the groans!). I am the faceless, anonymous and slightly patronising "a spokesperson for the Council said …." or the "for more information please contact ………….." at the bottom of official notices in the local paper.

My work writing style is succinct, non-fiction, boring official claptrap. Anyway, enough said about that – I think you get the picture.

In my private life I am a true "wannabe". My husband calls it "my writings" and pats me on the head as if I was a ten year old doing her homework. My grown-up children think I'm slightly mad but all of them agree that I am a "proper" mum. I think that means that I am fat; don't embarrass them too much in front of their friends; make nice dinners and hide my ironing instead of doing it. I also only hoover half way up the stairs because – well what's the point?

I have written an entire book – 118K words - and I am going to try and get it published. Apparently there were 46,000 entries to the Richard and Judy competition and UK publishers receive about 1,000 manuscripts per month. Oh well – I suppose there's more chance of me getting published than winning the lottery – and I still do that every week!

There. I've said it now. I have committed it to print and emboldened it. I am going to try and get it published. (Please note, Mercedes, and thanks for all the encouragement.)

I have made some fantastic virtual friends through the wannabe a writer website chatroom. Mercedes and the lovely Henry, Lane – of pointy sticks notoriety, Kev – wannabe sci-fi writer alias Cap'n Black, Linda and Jane – apparently never enough but occasionally one too many.

If it hadn't been for Jane Wenham-Jones' marvellous tome, published this year "Wannabe a Writer?" I would have been an eternal closet scribbler, secretly trying to break free from the straight-jacket of local government monotone officialdom which disguises itself as "plain English" and gets a crystalmark.

I can't recommend Jane's book highly enough. It's a brilliant book, written as if Jane is speaking to you personally. As the book says, it will either give you a little tingle of excitement that maybe you can do it or realise that you can't. Even if, after reading it, you realise that you can't, I can assure you that you'll enjoy reading it anyway.

Below is an extract from my book. It's not the beginning, but somewhere in the middle. It is a completely random extract.

Daisy and Bill arrived breathlessly at the ambulance station door, barely five minutes after they had left the scene of Tom's accident. The persistent rain earlier in the evening had developed into something approaching a downpour, made worse by the intensifying wind. They squinted through the stinging, cold rain at the typewritten notice taped to the inside of the door.

"The Services of the St. John Ambulance can be Obtained by Contacting Mr Quentin Andrews at The Co-operative and Labour Institute Next Door during the Social. Please Ask The Doorman for Assistance"

"Bugger it," said Bill. "We'll have to go in the Social looking like drowned rats."

He grabbed Daisy's hand and ran back down the alleyway and up the first two steps to the Institute. The doorman looked suspiciously at the bedraggled youngsters standing before him as he held up a hand to bring them to an abrupt halt.

"Have you two got tickets?"

"No, my dad's fell down a drain and we need an ambulance quick."

The doorman sniffed suspiciously as he peered down the steps and weighed up whether or not the young girl was telling the truth.

"Mr Quentin Andrews?," enquired Bill. "We need to speak to him now – it's an emergency!"

"You tell your dad he nee