Trying Not to Quit

Monkeys Waiting for Ears

September was crazy, October is turning out to be (tries to think of a PG word) challenging. Despite having a lovely birthday, with lots of new wool to tempt me, so far the reasons to smile are becoming harder to find. The kicker is I can’t even blog about most of it.

The bit I can talk about is probably more a symptom than a cause. I want to quit. Again. It’s not the first time I’ve found myself all done with trying to be an author, but it’s the first time I’ve found something else (temporary I’m sure) to fill the creative void. Knitting.

Not that I don’t get frustrated with that as well. If I have to make another monkey (especially for the children) I might weep. Again! There were tears of frustration when I sewed a leg on back to front. But I am loving the creativity of inventing patterns as I go, seeing what I can create with my extremely basic skills and having something to hug at the end of it.

Critical as my children are (“Mummy, why doesn’t the bottom on my monkey squish like my brother’s does?” “Because Mummy used the wrong material to enclose the beads and, no, I’m not unpicking it to change it.”) it’s much easier to ignore. I can see the end product and decide if the critics are right. Same with my paintings.

But you can’t ‘see’ a novel. You can’t swiftly and dispassionately judge it against the criticism or the praise and decide if the comments are fair. I’m struggling as much with the five star reviews for Baby Blues as the two-star ones for Class Act. With the former, I feel I can’t write with that freedom and passion any more. It was a story close to my heart and one I rewrote many times.

Knitty Cats

Many of the good reviews talk about the emotional roller-coaster, and I know Class Act and now Finding Lucy lack that. Partly because I’m drained and medically subdued and partly because I’m writing much more self-consciously. It happened with my paintings. I started to try too hard to paint ‘right’ or ‘professionally’ and lost the spark that made them special.

I know I won’t quit. Writing is in my blood. Life will (hopefully, eventually) settle down, and I’ll find a way through. Find a story that needs me to tell it, so I can ignite the passion again. Maybe I’ll be brave and join a writing group, get more feedback to help me find that objectivity. But not right now. I need a layer of armour before I subject myself to that.

In the meantime I’ll go back to my Knitty Cats, and carpel tunnel pins and needles. Christmas is coming. If I can’t sell books, maybe I can sell cats (and definitely not monkeys!)

Life, Love, and Looking for the Positive (with Bon Jovi)

The view from my ‘office’ this morning

Reading the latest post from The Belle Jar yesterday, and from Miss Fanny P this morning, about how hard it is reconciling being a Mum with being a person, I couldn’t help but pour out a long heartfelt reply of agreement.

I spent the entire summer holiday sleeping in defence against being in a situation I couldn’t change, even though it was a situation of my choosing.

This was my comment on Miss Fanny P’s blog:

“Ah, I can so relate. I spent most of the school holidays ‘napping’ and I thought it was a virus. Only when it went on for two months did I realise it was my body’s way of escaping an unwanted but unavoidable situation.

There was a great post on The Belle Jar yesterday about losing self when you become ‘Mummy’. It’s so true. We make our choices but from a really limited set of options. Hubbie was telling me this weekend that he read some of my old work notes and realised how very good I used to be at my job and it made me so sad, because even though I didn’t quit to become a mum (rather to be an artist, which didn’t work out) I lost all ability to go back as soon as the children got used to having me at home.

If you’re a working mum from the beginning, fine, because that’s the child’s normal. But to take kids at 4 and 5 and say, ‘Mummy’s going to leave you with a childminder at 8am and pick you up at 6pm’, that doesn’t feel fair. So when hubbie says I could go back, start at the bottom rung because of my seven years out (yay!) and the kids will adapt, that doesn’t really feel like a choice.

But I know in my head how lucky I am, and that most working mums wish they could drop their kids at school and go write novels in the coffee shop (because they tell me all the time, like working 30 hours a week to make £20 a month is so great). I yearn to be Amanda Martin, instead of Mummy. Of course I’d feel different if my books actually sold, but still I feel I’m making the best of the crappy options rather than steering my own craft in the river of life. And so, when despair takes hold, I sleep. And sleep. And sleep.”

“There’s no going back on the highway of life” Bon Jovi

I meant every word, at 9am this morning, having survived the weekend with chunks of time hiding in bed. But as I left the coffee shop in the sunshine, and walked through shadow-patterned pavements and a summer scented churchyard, stopping to order a balloon for my son’s birthday, I realised the feelings were fading. I smiled, with sun on my face and a blue sky behind the trees above.

Even driving to my Gyn appointment (because that’s what every woman wants on her first day of term-time freedom) listening to Bon Jovi, I realised I’m not unhappy with my lot. Frustrated, yes. Struggling, definitely. But not unhappy. I did make my choices, possibly for the first time. For the first time life didn’t dictate my path, I did.

I’ve been going through my first ever novel this week, with a view to editing it for my next release. Oh my. It’s not a novel it’s a bad biography. My ‘character’ is just me. All her opinions are mine, and boy is she miserable. I wrote the novel between the birth of my first child and my second (and lord I hope it gets better, or it’ll need more than a complete rewrite, it’ll need a miracle!)

I read this section this morning (it’s all this bad, but it just shows how far I’ve come as a writer, that’s what I tell myself).

“That sense of belonging she had assumed she’d find at university continued to elude her. So she had thrown herself into her studies, determined at least to graduate with a high grade and get the perfect job, whatever that was. She had never been clear about that point – still wasn’t really. An accidental career, that’s what her CV should say. She admired friends who had a passion, “I want to be a …” fill in blank. It didn’t matter, Doctor, Dentist, Film Producer, Bin Man. It didn’t matter what someone’s passion was, just that they had one. Hers had been to have a family, to belong somewhere: she had paid a steep price for that knowledge.”

Oh yes, that’s me. It goes on to describe my final year at uni, when my boyfriend snogged someone else on NYE and how I wandered in a fog of despair for months until I suddenly realised I had six weeks to write my dissertation and save my degree. The despair hadn’t been losing the bloke (although I thought so at the time. In hindsight it was a lucky escape), it was losing a vision for the future.

Up until then I’d followed the system. GCSEs, A Levels, University. But I didn’t know what to do once I had to make my own choices. I ended up taking the first job I got, survived four years of mega-stress, broke down and ran away to New Zealand.

I could go on, but really my life summarises into trying to find love, a place to belong and a job where I felt useful and appreciated.

“One man’s ceiling’s another man’s sky” Bon Jovi

Fast forward a decade or two and I have a gorgeous husband who I love, who loves me and treats me well. I have a place I belong and a job where I am (mostly) useful and appreciated. I am Mummy. I fit. I belong. I have an identity. And, much as I hate to admit it, because I feel it’s only using a tenth of my brain, I’m actually quite good at it.

And I chose it. I wanted babies. They weren’t an accident, they were a choice. Okay I didn’t have a scooby what being a parent meant or how ill-equipped I was to be one, but I’m doing okay.

I’m doing everything I wanted to do. I’m dropping my kids off at school, I’m writing novels and using my creativity. Three days out of seven I have hours of freedom. Right now (having had my gyn appointment and tried to sell a book to the nurse who has known me since I was nine) my ‘office’ is a parked car on a hillside (because the neighbours have builders in!), with a chill autumn wind blowing through the open windows, a clear blue sky overhead and Bon Jovi on the stereo singing a bunch of optimistic songs full of messages of hope and fight (better still, it’s a CD I somehow never listened to and only found this weekend, so it’s full of new stuff!)

Some Bon Jovi wisdom 😉 –

“We weren’t born to follow”

“Back when we were beautiful, before the world got small, before we knew it all. Back when we were innocent, I wonder where it went, let’s go back and find it”.

“Can I be happy now? Can I let my breath out? Let me believe, I’m building a dream, don’t try to drag me down.” Bon Jovi

A decade ago I would have stared at the blue sky out the tinted office windows, before going to some stupid meeting where actually I was mostly unappreciated. In the evening I would have hooked up for a beer with an ex who definitely didn’t appreciate me.

Then I signed up to UDate, met hubbie, and the rest, as they say, is history.

When I’m struggling with my lack of choices, I have to pause and remember how fortunate I am and that it’s all about context. I jokingly said to Miss Fanny P that my life will start when the children leave home and I can set up my Writer’s Retreat in the Welsh hills. But my life is now, I just have to look for it.

“Home is where you are and where I am” (Bon Jovi)

Lately Facebook has become my therapy, strange as that sounds. Between the positivity posts and the Humans of New York UN world tour (seriously, subscribe, it will change your life) I am strangely optimistic. I just need silence and time away from the children’s tantrums and histrionics to remember! 😉

As Bon Jovi says, “You’ve got to learn to love the world you’re living in”

(All lyrics from The Circle album)

Oh, The Places You’ll Go!

Thank You cards

Eleven months ago, my little girl put on her red gingham summer dress, shiny shoes and a huge smile, and went to school for the first time. Today, wearing a bigger red gingham dress, and her second pair of shiny shoes, she held my hand and skipped with me to her last day of Reception.

I am a proud Mummy today. She has had an amazing year. Helped by brilliant, caring teachers, and some how surviving my rages and tears and inability to tie a plait or remember to always order her school lunches, she has flourished. From barely knowing her alphabet she can now read and write and loves nothing more than to spend her free time doing both, when she isn’t doing sums or making robots out of cardboard boxes.

She started the year clinging to one friend and now she has a dozen or more. Although she spent her last morning, like her first, standing by the teaching assistant, there were no tears and I walked out with a happy smile.

It’s hard for a parent to relinquish their child to school. There is difference of opinion, there is letting go. There is dealing with, “but Mummy you’re not a teacher, so you don’t know anything” and “teacher says we have to do this…” There are constant rules, about uniform and behaviour, hair clips and pack lunches, but, frustrating as they are sometimes, the rules are what make it work. It’s about becoming part of a community, working towards a common goal. No wonder it feels new.

First Day at School

I have also started my school journey this year, and I found it as hard. Many times I wanted to relinquish my responsibility and let go, to enrol in breakfast club, after school club, to go back to the world of suits and coffee breaks and feeling like I know stuff, (instead of, “no, Mummy, you’re wrong!”) But I signed up to be a school run mum. It is important to me.

That isn’t a judgement. If I had an office job that I loved, even if that didn’t let me do the school run, that would be amazing too. My daughter has asked to go to breakfast club, and next year possibly she will. But there are few ‘achievements’ for a stay-at-home-writer-mummy. Dropping a happy child in her classroom this morning, skipping the last 100 yards (to applause from a random stranger, which made the knee pain worthwhile), even though I forgot the beautiful handmade cards for the other teachers my daughter wants to thank, made me feel like I’d earned my own gold star.

The summer will fly by, and before long we’ll be getting more shiny shoes and trying on new gingham dresses. But this time I’ll be excited, for her and for me. I think about the Dr Seuss story, ‘Oh the places you’ll go,’ and I know that school is giving her, and me, the ability to move mountains.

A Public Apology and a Heap of Perspective

My lovely mum

I upset my mum with my last post on parenting. I didn’t even think. The post was written as a rant against a British Nanny’s take on the ills of modern parenting. But I confess I was possibly also influenced by having spent a few hours at my mum’s house, feeling like she was criticising me because my kids backchat a lot.

I can’t blame her, they do.

But I shouldn’t get cross and I certainly wouldn’t want to upset her just because we have different views on parenting. Just because we don’t see eye to eye on one little thing doesn’t mean I don’t love her and would certainly never say something to hurt her. I owe her too much for that.

Yes there were elements of my childhood that weren’t great. My dad had about as much patience for parenting as I have, but without my self-awareness and support network. He raged, he occasionally hit, he hated mess and lateness and noise, and I grew up terrified of him. But I still loved him. And I wish he’d lived long enough for me to tell him that I yell just as loud at my kids.

Holidays in Dorset

And yes my parents went down the pub and my sister and I sat with our coke and crisps, but I can’t recall ever minding. In fact I am certain we got up to all sorts of high jinx while our parents were otherwise occupied. We were very good at entertaining ourselves writing notes to strangers through the window on long car journeys or finding things to climb on.

In many ways I had a great childhood, full of freedom and adventure. I spent my formative years in a housing estate in Sussex, with a garden that backed onto fields. I ran in a pack of kids, climbed trees and played in the tree houses Dad built behind our back fence. I practiced gymnastics on the beam he built and played on the stilts he made.

Fabulous fancy dress

I went to fancy dress competitions in the incredible costumes my mother made with hours of endless patience and much tissue paper. I remember my mum was always baking – mostly raisin fairy cakes with icing on top. We got to lick out the food processor, even the super sharp blade, and we never cut our tongue. I remember putting on endless shows in the back garden for our parents and the German students who came to stay in the summer.

I remember going to the sweet shop and buying halfpenny sweets, and going for cycle rides all together at the weekends. I remember ‘spotting’ for dad when he was welding, watching for flames with a washing up liquid bottle full of water, ready to put out the fire. I remember helping him bleed brakes and accompanying him when he went to visit houses to collect cars.

I remember buying cream soda in a shop in a nearby village and my parents playing darts and whist and winning loads of prizes at the Christmas whist drives. I remember picnics on the beach and learning to swim in the icy cold sea. I remember the amusement arcades and holidays to Weymouth.

The camper vans (ours is the white one)

I remember going to France in our Comma camper van and learning to say, “un litre du lait, s’il vous plais” to the woman in the campsite shop, when offering an empty bottle, without having any idea what it meant.

Mum made the most amazing birthday cakes: pink princess castles and gymnastic medals. We had birthday parties at home, with sandwiches and cheese and pineapple on sticks. We went to fetes at the school and the summer fair at Wisborough Green and Mum would run in the Mummies race.

My memories of my parents fighting and my Dad’s rages are what motivate me to be a gentle, patient parent (even though, genetically, I’m fighting a losing battle.) My fears of speaking out to Dad are why I let my children talk back to me (up to a point) because I never want them to be afraid to speak. But my childhood wasn’t ‘inadequate’ and, on the whole, it wasn’t unhappy. I remember the stuff I don’t want to emulate, without focussing on the bits that were great.

So this is to set the record straight. And to say sorry.

Me, Sis, Mum, Grandma and Great Grandma

Wonderful Teachers and Winding Down For Summer

Gorgeous thank you

Today my daughter has her ‘Moving Up Day’ at school, when she will spend the day with her new teacher for next year. I can’t believe it came so quickly. Any regular followers of the blog will know that I didn’t take to school very well (slight understatement, as I ended up on medication to handle the extra stress of the school routine) so it might come as a surprise that I am sad the year is over and I will miss Reception and the teachers.

We took leaving gifts in today, even though there is still more than a week left, because there are so many other things going on between now and next Wednesday. I nearly cried when my daughter’s teacher hugged me and said thank you for choosing to send my daughter to their school (she knew it wasn’t an easy choice).

It shows you get out what you put in. It’s important to me to build strong relationships with the people who are in loco parentis for my children. I felt like I was being a pain, constantly talking to the teachers, double-checking everything, basically being that controlling parent. Clearly I haven’t been that annoying! And, for me, it has been returned ten fold.

Thank you card

My daughter’s teacher often goes out of her way to reassure me that my daughter is happy, well rounded, well liked. The teaching assistant listens to my rambles every day, and makes sure my daughter is happy and settled.

And, on Friday, when my daughter sobbed because she didn’t get the year one teacher she wanted, her Reception teacher took us through to meet the teacher she’s been allocated and they both spent ten minutes reassuring my timid daughter that she’ll have loads of fun next year.

To do such a thing at 3.45pm on a Friday, when suffering from laryngitis, shows care above and beyond expectations. As a result my fearful daughter, who has been crying about going into year one since Christmas, said “I’m so excited about Moving Up Day.” What more could a mother want?

This morning the teaching assistant, who has held my daughter’s hand at drop off every day this year, and talked me down off the edge more than once, said, “I’ve been worried about your daughter all weekend.”

Bless them all.

And so we wind down for summer. Not the best start, with Daddy having tonsillitis, but we’re muddling through. Loom bands have been ordered to keep little hands busy, craft has been stocked up and the paddling pool purchased.

For the lovely teaching assistant

All writing projects are on hold, although I’ve spent the last few days enthralled by the K’Barthan series by M T McGuire (you are personally responsible for the filthy state of my house, I’ll have you know!) does that count as working?

The blog will be sporadic in the coming weeks (nothing new there!) especially as I can’t seem to work on the iPad since I foolishly gave in and upgraded to ios7. I’m hoping to get in a few posts about days out and book reviews, but I’m going to give myself a holiday too.

It’s been a long and stressful year, with lots of achievements and a few battles. I feel like July might become my new Year End, when I take stock and down tools. It’s only six weeks, and I’m going to try and enjoy it with the children.

Of course, I’ll be on here moaning how they’re driving me mad in a couple of weeks, but for now I’m looking forward to a change of pace.

Happy holidays!

In Defence of Modern-Day Parenting

The rules we live by

I read an article on Huffington Post yesterday, via iGameMom, who I follow on Facebook. The article is written by a British Nanny, Emma Jenner, and discusses “5 Reasons Modern-Day Parenting Is in Crisis”.

According to Emma, these are the things we’re doing wrong:
1. A fear of our children
Giving in to their demands for a pink sippy cup when you’ve already put the milk in a blue one, to head off the inevitable tantrum
2. A lowered bar
Children are capable of better behaviour than we expect
3. We’ve lost the village
Other people – bus drivers, shop keepers – used to feel able to discipline our children, but no longer do, and we’re worried about being judged by other parents if we let our kids kick off in public
4. A reliance on shortcuts
Using technology to soothe your child – like an iPad in the restaurant
5. Parents put their children’s needs ahead of their own
There’s nothing wrong with not giving in to every whim, to say no occasionally

Emma Jenner goes on to say, “I fear that if we don’t start to correct these five grave parenting mistakes, and soon, the children we are raising will grow up to be entitled, selfish, impatient and rude adults. It won’t be their fault — it will be ours.”

For some reason this article really struck a chord with me, leaving me with knots of rage in my stomach. I can’t put my finger on exactly why. I think, as I said in my comment to iGameMom, it’s because “I agree with the points but not the tone.”

There are so many reasons why I disagree with Ms Jenner’s article, many of which I rambled on about in my original comment. Mostly the line above is what jars, because I already know plenty of entitled, selfish, impatient, and rude adults and I don’t think it was because they were mollycoddled as children.

I think instead of hurling round more blame and doom, we have to ask WHY parents act like this. I know my parents think I’m not hard enough on my kids; that they’re too quick to backchat and I’m too quick to respond to their needs. But I was brought up to fetch and carry and do as I was told without question, so it’s not hard to see why I wait on my children hand and foot. My parents often say my upbringing ‘did me no harm’ but why then do I lack in confidence, and feel I am not worthy of love? Why do I instinctively and automatically run around like a servant anytime I’m in the family home?

I was raised not to challenge authority, to do as I was told without answering back; is it any wonder that I listen to my health visitor when she tells me it’s not possible to spoil a child? Besides, I don’t believe that raising a child to do as they’re told without question is wise or healthy. You only have to look at the prevalence of stories of child abuse from famous and influential people that litter the news right now; those children had no voice and were not listened to. I read one harrowing account of a ten-year-old boy with a broken leg being abused while on a hospital trolley by Jimmy Saville and when he tried to share his trauma, his mother told him to, “shut up, it’s Jimmy Saville!”

Also, which authority do we believe in? In a time of social media and blogs and programmes all telling us how to be good parents and all offering conflicting advice is it any wonder that we live in fear of getting it wrong? My children will be surrounded by people telling them what to do, some of them their ‘betters’ – older kids, teachers, doctors. But what if those people are saying, ‘take drugs’ or ‘you’re useless’ or ‘you’re bi-polar’ and they accept that without thought, because they’ve been taught to blindly ‘respect their betters’?

I’ve had plenty of therapy in my time, and have been told my own inadequate childhood is to blame for my failings as an adult; that I see things too much in black and white because I was never taught to recognise and regulate my emotions; that I take responsibility for more than I should because I was told things were my fault as a child and never challenged it; that my difficult relations with men are because I was never allowed to challenge my relationship with my father. Therefore is it any wonder I hesitate to make the same mistakes? During that therapy it was shown to me that everything a parent does affects (screws up) a child – so no wonder I’m a nervous, hesitant, worried parent.

Our parenting ethos

As for the other points, losing the village, taking shortcuts: we don’t live in the same world we used to. There is no village. No one helps me raise my kids but my husband and the nursery/school – and they’re as quick to step in with discipline when required. There are no next-door-neighbours, aunts and grandparents sharing the load, so they don’t know my children well enough to comment on their discipline. And maybe the iPad is my second parent, but I’d rather my kids played a maths app or Guess Who than annoyed other people in a restaurant or at a school play. I don’t have access to babysitters. Besides, I’m always on my phone or iPad – who isn’t? So better to teach them to do something productive on the device.

Articles like this only add to the focus on parents getting it wrong; we become the reason why society is in crisis. But maybe we might be getting some things right, too? Who is praising us for that? My children are the most intuitive, thoughtful, caring, empathetic people I know.

Maybe we’re teaching our children to challenge and fight for what they want and not blindly do what they are told? Maybe we’re teaching them that people who care about others care about their desires and seek to make them happy? Maybe we’re teaching them love and empathy? Maybe we accept that children are people, with wants and needs that shouldn’t be belittled and ignored? I have a favourite cup and type of cutlery; why shouldn’t my children be allowed the same? And why shouldn’t they come first, as long as there is balance? Better than sitting in a hot car with a packet of crisps and a bottle of coke while Mummy and Daddy drink beer with their friends.

Every generation will assume it knew best about parenting, but in reality there is no one right way to do it. The most important thing is to love our children and trust our instinct and know we’re doing the best we can. Whether we’re getting it right or wrong, it doesn’t seem fair to make all parents personally responsible for all the ills in the world.

Emma Jenner’s final rallying cry says, “So please, parents and caregivers from London to Los Angeles, and all over the world, ask more. Expect more. Share your struggles. Give less. And let’s straighten these children out, together, and prepare them for what they need to be successful in the real world and not the sheltered one we’ve made for them.”

I say, “So please, parents and caregivers, love your children, give them your time and support, teach them to challenge naysayers, teach them empathy and understanding and how to be resilient against attacks, and for goodness sake let them choose what colour sippy cup they want!” 😉

Gardening

Tidy front garden

I did some gardening today, for the first time in about two years. I realised it was open gardens in our village this weekend and I didn’t want to have the scruffiest house in the entire village, so I decided to tackle and tame the front garden.

Pre-kids I did a fair amount outside, although I’m not a massive fan of gardening (plus I have black rather than green fingers). Since becoming a parent? Not so much. I used to mow and weed the day before our annual family barbecue, followed by a trip to the garden centre to buy bedding plants that might live for several weeks after the family had left. The garden looked amazing for a month, tops.

We didn’t have a party last year, so it’s been a long time since the trowel and strimmer have crossed my path. Turns out there’s a good reason for that.

Things I’d forgotten about gardening:

Blisters are painful
Just how evil-prickly our hedge is (we don’t own a hedge trimmer)
How hot and cross gardening makes me (especially when it’s 22C and sunny)
Children are not good assistants and may try patience beyond endurance (see point 3)
Making the garden tidy is addictive but impossible
Plants are expensive and generally come to our house to die
Discovering muscles I forgot I had and knowing it will hurt more tomorrow and the day after
Maximum effort only achieves minimum visible results
Only retired or unemployed people have time to garden how they want to
I’d rather be writing

Stepping Back From The Brink

Not quitting yet, although putting this MS to one side

My psychotherapist once told me I see everything in black and white. The world is either coming to an end or it’s fantastic – there’s nothing in between. Unfortunately, true as it is, she didn’t give me a way to tackle it.

I have become better at keeping perspective, finding the positive, crawling away from the pit of despair (with a little medicinal assistance). But when I’m sleep-deprived and premenstrual all bets are off, drugs or no drugs. Then, a day or so later, I look back and roll my eyes. Get a grip.

And so it is this morning. When I think about my point of nadir yesterday – triggered by thinking I can’t write – I realise what went wrong. I took someone’s judgement of my first ever children’s book – and an early draft at that – as an indictment against ALL my writing.

Who did I think I was? Did I really think I could work on a novel for a couple of months – in a new genre – and it be anything other than pants? Particularly a novel written for a reason, rather than because the story demanded to be captured. My other novels took months, often with a big gap between first and second draft. The characters lived with me and demanded a voice.

So, I’ve eaten a snickers and stopped being a Diva. I got my first short but charming comment on Class Act today (“A very engaging romance”) after offering it free for a few weeks to get reviews. Phew! And I’ve come up with a new plan to fill my time until the end of term. It’s a crazy plan, but it’ll keep me busy.

I just wish I hadn’t involved the editor in my should I/shouldn’t I dramatics. I doubt she’ll ever work with me again, and she was really very good. I’m trying to remind myself of the phrase What someone else thinks of you is none of your business.

Hmmm. That one might need some work.

Writing Research and Pre-Holiday Blues

Birthday boy (a week early)

I’m supposed to be packing for holiday this morning but I am beyond exhausted. In the last two weeks I’ve written 30,000 words, done four hours of live art, spent a whole day arranging a fundraising site for a friend with much more on her plate than I have. I’ve had children home poorly from school, sourced an editor for my children’s book, had the edits back for Class Act and lost a day’s childcare to a ‘bonus trip to the zoo’ to which I had to escort my own child and pay to get in. (Don’t get me started…)

And to top it all off I spent Friday chasing prescriptions and getting lost when I was meant to be finalising my Montegrappa Scholastic competition entry and doing ten loads of laundry and ironing for the holiday. Saturday was out because we celebrated hubbie’s birthday a week early so the house had to be found under the weeks of accumulated dirt, and lunch for six needed cooking.

The only upside of the chaos was that getting lost was great research for my children’s novel. A large part of the action is set in an over-grown bramble-buried forest, and that’s not far off where I ended up for an hour on Friday. I only stopped to let the dog have a run. She’d had to sit in the car for an hour after I ‘popped in’ on the way back from the vets to get hubbie’s prescription and discovered it hadn’t been ordered.

Ready for editing…

I decided to try a new walk I’d seen before, that looked like a straight forward walk across fields into a wood. When I got there it was beautiful – all meandering tracks shaded from the hot sun, with bracken and woodland flowers. So off we went. But I have NO sense of direction and before long I was starting to panic. I headed in the direction I thought would take me to my car, but ended up at what looked like a disused quarry. Unlike Claire, in Two-Hundred Steps Home, I don’t have a smart phone with GPS. So I rang hubbie and he tried to work out where I was and to give me directions. Unfortunately he couldn’t work out my location (turns out he was looking at the wrong quarry.)

In a panic I hung up and decided to follow the dog in case, you know, she turned out to be Lassie or something. She led me towards the flooded quarry so I climbed a barbed wire fence and headed in. Of course I forgot she loves puddles and hates trees and her only motivation was to get out in the open. When we got in she jumped in a puddle and looked at me as if to say, ‘now what?’

The disused quarry looked remarkably like an off-road course and after I’d scrambled up and down a few sheer muddy tracks (in a skirt and sandals) I realised where I was. And it was a long way from the car.

Panic was escalating: being lost terrifies me, especially when I have a zillion things to do and the kids to pick up in three hours. So I ran back across the land-rover off-road course, having realised it was a dead end. I climbed through a bramble bush, catching my long skirt and nearly falling down the bank, and badly stinging my arm. I raced across a sheep field, realised I couldn’t get out, and walked the full length to the gate.

Being a field for livestock there was no way the dog was scrambling under the wire. So I picked her up – all 28kg of her (the vet told me off for her being overweight) – and I threw her over a four-foot barbed-wire topped gate. She landed on her back and for a moment I thought we’d be going back to the vets. Thankfully she was fine. We were about a mile from the car in 25 degree heat and inappropriate clothing. But we made it. My ‘quick walk’ took over an hour.

No wonder I find myself too tired to get out of bed and deal with the hyped-up mega whining children this morning.

I need a holiday.

Live Art, Loud Preaching and Lovely People

That’s me!

This Saturday I picked up my brushes for the first time in a couple of years and did a live art session for a gallery in Peterborough. I tried hard not to think about it beforehand, because it’s been so long since I did any painting. I needn’t have worried. Turns out it’s a bit like riding a bike. Actually, much of my nerves was about putting myself ‘out there’ to be criticised. When I’ve had pieces in exhibitions in the past there’s always been someone ready to say that abstract isn’t real art or their five year old could do better. It’s one thing coping with one-star book reviews, or even sarky comments in a guest book, and another to have it said to your face.

It didn’t start well, as I misunderstood a joke made by one of the gallery volunteers when he said “It doesn’t matter if you’re rusty – you paint abstracts, no one will notice that you can’t paint.”

I was later assured by the manager that it was a joke, but it did leaving me a bit sensitive. Once I started painting, however, it was fine. I love my painting style and I’m not precious: it isn’t fine art but it is fun. A bit like literary fiction versus genre fiction; there’s lots of snobbery nonsense said about both but in the end people like what they like and we’re all on the same side trying to make a living out of something we love.

Working hard

The other challenges were the heat (acrylic dries very quickly in direct sunlight) and the evangelicals preaching via loud-hailer a few metres away. So much for a relaxing few hours away from the children: there wasn’t much restful about an afternoon listening to the denouncement of sinners and fornicators. Each to their own, of course, and I’m all for the freedom of speech, but if it had been me I’d rather have sat down the pub with a cool drink.

The best part was talking to all the people who stopped by to watch. I met a lovely couple of singers and encouraged the man to go right now and buy paint, because he kept saying he’d love to try painting abstracts ‘one day’. I met an old lady who loves Lowry and a young girl of seven or eight who will definitely be a children’s book illustrator one day. I wish I’d taken her name. Her mother showed me drawings of giraffes she had done and they were brilliant. I like to think I suggested a career path in illustration that she hadn’t thought of before.

I met a pregnant artist hoping to find time to paint when the baby is born, and a man who apparently comes to the gallery every day, who thought my red painting looked like a volcano erupting.

It was a rewarding day, despite the headache, and I look forward to doing it again. Next time I’ll take ear plugs!