Thrilling Footy, Three Pairs of Shoes, and Not Overthinking...

Yesterday, England won the European championships for the second time in a row, and it was GLORIOUS. 

The celebrations last time.

It reminded me... I recently saw Dear England - the play that depicts the men's national team's journey from over-confident losers to humble almost-winners under Gareth Southgate's leadership. At one point, after the angst and agony of penalty misses, psychology, and a lot of introspection, the character of Sarina Wiegman enters the stage. It's a tiny part. Sarina is one of several female characters that this particular actor plays throughout the show. The gist of her comments to Gareth is, 'It's easy! You just have to win! Don't overthink it!'*

It's not easy to win the Euros. The line in the play is there largely for comic effect. But last night, at the end of an absolute rollercoaster of a tournament, England did it. Again. What a thrilling competition this has been! Sarina Wiegman deserves SO much more than a scene in a play about the men's team, with the directorial note of ramping up her Dutch accent for comedy. This woman is phenomenal and the team she led to Euros glory yesterday, is equally inspirational.

I'm currently obsessing over Michelle Agyemang's goals, Lucy Bronze's stoicism**, and Chloe Kelly's game-changing skills. Once again, the essential skill of resilience in the face of defeat has been demonstrated for the world at large. The mental strength it takes to keep calm and carry on, when you're one or two goals down, and routinely playing a hundred and twenty minutes against quality sides, is immense. What a lesson for us all. I'd be using it as a basis for assemblies and PSHE sessions if I still had to care about that sort of thing. Instead, I'll continue to bask in the afterglow of a truly excellent tournament. Bring on the World Cup! I CANNOT wait.

Me in front of my laptop.

Writing News

It's been a sluggish week. I've been juggling tech issues, work for other projects, and I'm still in the mental fog of 'everything I've written is shit.' But on we go! Lolz. The corner will be turned eventually. Right now, an Internet speed that'll actually upload stuff and not freeze after hours of trying, would be more than helpful. Instead of dwelling on the negative, I'll have to channel my inner Sarina characature from Dear England. 'Writing a book is easy! You just have to write it! Don't overthink it!' Grrrrr.

Lovely Mark Gatiss

Culture

Ah, lovely Mark Gatiss. His screenplay for Halloween Party means it's my favourite David Suchet Poirot episode of all time. His writing just slaps. Now, Gatiss has written Bookish - a whodunnit set in 1946. He plays Gabriel Book, a closeted bookseller, who helps to solve mysteries in post-war London. The plots and characters are great, but oooh the setting is everything. 1940s England is so familiar. There's no end of war films and telly in which to immerse. But 1946? When everything's up in the air? Not so much. Society's being rethought and reformed. The previous five years have been filled with the constant threat of death; now everyone's free to live. Mostly free. Did I mention Gabriel Book was closeted? It adds another historical layer to a fascinating period in history. I hoovered up all six episodes last week, and I'm hungry for more. 

Food and Drink

It's a tale of two fishes. Or, to put it another way, this week, there's good fish news and bad fish. What do you want first? The bad news? Fair enough. Let's get it out of the way quickly. All I've say is, don't leave out a piece of salmon to defrost at 10am, only remembering it at 6pm, on a hot day, in a warm kitchen. When I came to make my spicy salmon noodles, it reeked. Fish turns quickly, it seems. 

Anchovy dust, aka
magic powder!

Now, the good news. I'm afraid it's anchovy based, but you know what I'm like. If you drain a tin of anchovies, lay them out on a baking tray, and bake them for about twenty-five minutes, you'll have a set of perfectly crumbly teeny weeny fishes that you can pestle and mortar into dust. Then, anytime you need a salty zing to your meals - poached eggs, avocado on toast, labneh, whatever - you've got a jar of magic power that'll do the trick. In Asda a tin of anchovies is 75p. Absolute bargain.

Out and About

I'm about to go on a jaunt. Get me. I've away two days this week and I'm very excited. Two days holiday is a strange one, though. One overnight jolly, and I barely need anything. I can throw on the same clothes twice, only needing to pack a spare pair of knickers and my toothbrush. Easy! With a two day break, so much more kicks in. For some reason, I'm taking three pairs of shoes and four pairs of knickers. Madness. Come back here next week and I'll let you know whether I wore them all. (Reader, I won't have done.)

Have a lovely week, folks.

*Those specific words are incorrect. I'm quoting from a memory and I don't have James Graham's script to hand. Just understand that the vibe is correct. Sarina says her piece, walks off, and Gareth is left to overthink his management style some more.

**In a post-match interview, it was revealed Lucy Bronze had played with a fractured tibia all tournament. The woman is NAILS.

Crazy Coincidences...

Earlier this month, I had to watch the film, Jaws. (I'll explain why another day. It's for a thing.) 

Jaws

My weeks are busy these days, but I had a spare  Friday afternoon, so I settled in and watched the film. The following day, I saw some Jaws chat on Facebook. 'Strange,' I thought. 'Is my laptop spying on my TV viewing?' Then I saw why. Turns out, the day I'd chosen to watch Jaws , happened to be the 50th anniversary of the story being set. The 4th of July, 2025. Weird!

A few weeks earlier, something else happened. My cousin and I visited our shared Grandad's grave. He died decades before I was born, so while she was in the country, we went to the cemetery and tracked it down. It's faded now, and the grass was covering some of the letters. As I pushed it away and read the inscription, I looked up. 'What's today's date?' I asked my cousin. It was 22nd June. The same date that was written on the gravestone. Spooky!

One last thing to ponder. I've been getting into my family tree thanks to Ancestry.com. It's been quite the surprise that a branch of my paternal, maternal, mother's family, lived ten minutes down the road. In fact, my great, great Grandmother - Catherine - is buried in the cemetery next to my local station. The internet showed me a photo of her gravestone. It's the shape of a cross. I decided to go to the graveyard and have a wander, just to get the lay of the land. It's an enormous space. There are over 13,000 graves and it stretches as far as the eye can see. Obviously this was a needle in a haystack sitch, but I thought I'd get some exercise and see if there was anyone in an office I could ask.

I walked through the gates and saw how big the space was. I pondered whether I could work through one section of graves, now, and move onto another area next time. I chose the section to my immediate left, and headed over to begin my walk. About ten metres into the area, was a cross-shaped gravestone. I walked over. Yep, you guessed it. Out of 13,000 gravestones in a massive cemetery, Great Great Grandmother Catherine was the first one I spotted. Bizarre!

Three strange coincidences, and three mini-stories to share. But what does it all mean? Anything? Nothing? Not sure really. Regardless, I wanted to officially record the oddness, somehow. Just cos. And it doesn't mean anything's changed. I still don't believe in fate, God's will, kismet, or destiny. It's not where my mind goes. But even me, in my logical, reasoned way, thinks the last few weeks have been mad. Just thought I'd share.

Writing News

I'm powering through the doubts and continuing to edit the third Leeza McAuliffe story. Leeza is also researching her family tree. Not in the same way as I am. She's not about the graves. That's only Morbid Me. No, she's interested in the life of her great aunt, whose death is the inciting incident at the start of the book. When I planned this out, last Summer, I had no plans to start researching my own ancestry. The thought hadn't entered my mind. But somewhere along the way, that's what's happened. Either I've manifested my own future plans by writing them for my characters, or more weirdly, my fictional characters have begun to guide my life from the page. I need to stop thinking about it this now. I sound deranged.

Nicholas Hoult as Lex Luthor
was CHILLING.

Culture

I saw the new Superman film. I'm not a fan of CGI. It often takes me out of the story, as my mind wanders, imagining the green screen backgrounds and the actors having to react to nothing. That being said, I enjoyed it a lot. I'm glad to see it's doing well financially, too. Not that I'd usually care about that side of things. But when the far-right media lambast it as 'woke' it's good to see their nonsense has zero effect. It's not all film news, though. This week I've been reading Deborah Frances White's new book, Six Conversations We're Scared to Have. It feels important and urgent right now. Whilst never once giving space for othering and bigotry, she leads the reader by the hand as she encourages us to consider where people's  abhorrent views may come from, and why they're prevalent right now. It's academic but in the least stuffy sense. A genuinely thought provoking read.

FIT

Food and Drink

Sometimes you need a pistachio cookie to make the world make sense again. For £2, Marksies will furnish you with exactly that. I found this chunky beauty on their bakery aisle. 

Out and About

Oh London. You are knackering, especially when I tackle you in a day. On Saturday I visited my Auntie, in Ladbroke Grove. I had a lovely day, a decent train journey to read my book, and a family catch up with parents and assorted siblings. Not bad, all in all. 

There's a postscript to the day. My dad, who regularly chats with his neighbour in North Wales, happened to share that he'd been in London at the weekend. Turns out the neighbour in Wales had lived a stone's throw from my auntie's, for years prior to moving. Another coincidence. ISN'T THE WORLD MAD?!

It's all eyes on the Lionesses tomorrow night. If you survived the stress of Thursday's Sweden match, you might still be listening to dolphin sounds in a darkened room . It was quite the panic-making  shebang. Here's hoping tomorrow is calmer all round. It'd be quite nice to have the coincidence we win the Euros again. Come on England!

Have a lovely week, folks.

For the Love of Air Con...

We're currently in the 'three-weeks-out-of-fifty-two' period of the year, where I consider spending gazillions to kit out the house with air-con. 

Live scenes from my living room

Those thoughts will pass. Soon, a whisper of a breeze will remind me that, over the course of the year, my heating bill is where the money goes. Annoyingly, these brief, stifling weeks simply need to be endured. 

It's useful, in these sweaty, red-faced times, to consider how much worse I could have it. I could live in London. (Thoughts and prayers to the capital) where it's even hotter than in my close-to Liverpool home. Or, I could still be expected to facilitate the learning of a class full of equally hot and bothered Y4 children. (More thoughts and prayers to school staff.) Basically, I could be expected to do all sorts of things, beyond wearing my thin cotton PJs and banging the keys of a laptop. When you look at it like that, life really is peachy. 

Writing News

The editing is going apace. I'm whipping through my to-do list, and smoothing out the wrinkles in all sorts of plots. The fact that it's going so well, though? That makes me worry. Maybe I'm still surface-editing. Maybe I'm still only ironing out the obvious stuff - the typos and the cumbersome sentences that could be simplified. Maybe I'm skirting over it, never once delving deeper into the real nuts and bolts of the thing. 

I gotta go deeper

Bang2Write - a marvellous resource for writers -  recently shared an Instagram post. One of the suggestions for better writing, was, 'Be braver, go darker, weirder, funnier, messier.'  And this is where my problem is. My desire for Leeza to be a calm, reliable narrator, means her own actions tend towards the sensible. She's hitting the teenage years in this book so I know I need her to be more... angry at the world? Or angry at someone or something. I need her to be messier and less glued together. So far, she's decidedly non-messy. Whilst I carry on editing the surface stuff, I can see that's what I've got to be working towards. 

Hapless Sven - my favourite 
character in Kleo.

Culture

Oh Netflix. You churn out so much nonsense, but now and again, there's a real gem. Kleo is a two-series drama about a Stasi-assassin, who - after the fall of the Berlin Wall - wreaks vengeance on the people who betrayed her. It's a thriller, I guess, but with real moments of comedy and light relief. I've been enjoying it tremendously. Other than that, the Women's Euros is currently taking place in Switzerland. I've been happily cheering for the Lionesses from my sofa. After a wobbly start, they're back, and it's glorious.

Food and Drink

It's too hot for cooking. Yeah, I said it. The Asda tapas aisle is getting hammered right now. It's so much easier to open a few packets of stuffed peppers, olives, and hummus, than to create kitchen magic every night. Mashed potato - the definition of kitchen magic, and I won't hear a word against it - will be back soon enough, but for now, it's small, cold, plates of Mediterranean bits, ad nauseam. Ah, summer!

Garden party fun

Out and About

My friend had a garden party on Friday. It was lovely. I sipped my Aperol spritz and felt all was right with the world - and as we know it's not, then that was quite the feat. On Saturday morning, our new car arrived. This meant air-conned road trips to practice how it drives. (It's another leccy one, but with different sticks coming out of the wheel. A whole new world.) 

Hopefully you're coping. And if you're not, you will be soon. That's how these things works, you know. See you next week? Yeah? Excellent.

Have a lovely week, folks.

Choose Live Aid...

Forget grey hair. Forget aching when you wake up. Forget HRT. The real marker that highlights age is remembering stuff from years ago. Forty years ago, for example. And not just vague memories. Not brief flashbacks, mental snap shots, or the fuzzy recognition that other people's stories create in your head. I'm talking honest to God memories. Of things you experienced in the flesh. Where you were present and mindful, even though it'd be decades before you understood what being present and mindful actually meant. 

I'm about seven here.

Forty years ago, I was seven. Some people don't remember being seven. I live with an adult man, who has only a bare recollection of his childhood. I remember everything. More or less. In July 1985, I had a three-year old sister, a two-year old sister, and a three-month old brother. It's fair to say, this state of affairs nudged me towards independence and self-sufficiency. Both in terms of getting my school shoes on without help, as well as finding pastimes that were my own. Pop music was my own. All mine. Top of the Pops was broadcast on a Thursday night after ballet. (And then Treasure Hunt. RIP Wincey Willis.) My younger siblings didn't care about that. Not then, anyway. I'd dance to Wham, Culture Club, and Bananarama in my leotard, whilst family life happened around me. I imagine an onlooker wouldn't think twice. They'd see a seven year old girl, jig around the front room in front of the telly, whilst toddlers ambled past and a baby had his nappy changed. But for me? I was channelling Bananarama and living my best life. 

Forty years ago, I watched the news. Well, I watched the headlines before I got bored. I knew about the miners strike, although I regularly mixed up Neil Kinnock and Arthur Scargill. I remember the Brighton bomb from the year before, and how I'd had to look away from the screen when they pulled people from the rubble. I'm still squeamish like that. I also remember the Ethiopian famine. It was all over the TV. The previous December, Band Aid, under the direction of Bob Geldof and Midge Ure, had reached number one with Do They Know It's Christmas? - a festive jingle of a song that brought UK pop stars together to raise money. Forty years later, we hear criticism of the project as being a bit 'white saviour'. Maybe it's a valid point. Back then, the campaign to send money felt important and urgent. Either way, when I was seven, I was simply full of the joys of seeing my favourite singers on telly. The wider political issues went over my head.

Band Aid led into Live Aid. I knew it was coming. I was all over it. I don't remember how I knew so much. Top of the Pops, probably, and the odd issue of Smash Hits. (I'd be bought a copy whenever Wham were on the front cover.) My mum remembers me explaining Live Aid to her. I knew all about Phil Collins jetting off to do the US version, Noel Edmonds' helicoptering, and the line up of artists going to be featured. I was borderline obsessed.

ALL the Live Aid gifs are
of Queen. Fair play. It's a 
performance I've come
to love over time.

On the day itself - 13th July 1985 - I had the TV booked. I don't remember making that demand, but I was mostly in the front room on my own. I had the running order from the paper and I was giddy. A whole day of bands, with the promise of George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley turning up later on.  It wasn't like I loved every single act. I could take or leave Status Quo who opened the thing. I wasn't fussed on Adam Ant either - he got famous a bit before I'd started watching TOTP. None of that mattered. I loved it as a whole. Song after song, band after band. I let them all wash over me, wallowing in being given space, and my choice of TV, for such a large chunk of time. It was unprecedented.

It's easy to be more critical now. For example, it's striking how few women were featured artists on stage. Alison Moyet and Sade had to represent. Likewise, people of colour? Not so many. There's criticism that this was a concert for Africa, without featuring any African voices. Well, yeah. Hashtag the eighties, I guess. Again, I was oblivious to this at the time. I just loved the spectacle. What's more, in my classic seven-year old way, I was completely indifferent to Queen's set. People talk about Freddie's performance as iconic. Obviously I can see that now. But then? Nah, soz. They went on too long and they just weren't Wham.

Backstage. Can you even imagine?

Ah, Wham. There was the tiny disappointment that George Michael shared the stage with Elton John. Apologies to Elton, but I didn't want to hear George do one of his songs. I didn't know who he was. But waiting for them to appear as the hours passed by, was the definition of delayed gratification. When they turned up, late on, waving to the crowd, with Andrew wearing a cracking tartan jacket, I was chuffed to bits. After ten hours, a few technical hitches, and a shed load of music, the UK broadcast culminated in a ramshackle version of Do They Know It's Christmas?  I was so happy. It was the best of days. 

If anyone asks me what my favourite year is, I always say 1985. It's because of this memory. Of Live Aid, of loving music, and watching a massive world wide event. I'm sure I've had loads better times since. In fact, I know I have. Life shouldn't peak at seven, but this memory is locked. Apologies to my brother, whose birth three months earlier has been completely overshadowed in my mind.

So how will you be celebrating the 40th anniversary of this epic event? It's on Sunday, if you didn't know. You've got almost a week to make plans. On the radio, Simon Mayo is broadcasting the whole thing from start to finish. I imagine I'll have that on. Last night, the BBC showed a documentary about the event. It's on iPlayer if you want to catch up. 

Seven year me in my
forty-seven year old body

For me, my main commemoration has already happened. On Saturday I went to a Live Aid party. It was hosted by my friend's sister and brother in law, who've only met me a couple of times. To be honest, I was touched to be invited. Touched and ecstatic. A Live Aid party? As an adult? YES PLEASE! I donned my Frankie Says Relax t-shirt, double-denimed up to frig, and lived my best life once again. 

Getting to relive something you loved first time round, is fab, isn't it? Is that why people enjoy their wedding anniversary? My own romantic calendar dates are blown out of the water by seven-year old Me's ten hours of pop. It's more than that, though. Live Aid united the world in a cause. Nothing unites everyone now. We're fractured and disparate. Every cause has screaming voices for and against. Maybe my love of that day is really the longing for a shared collective experience. For a cause that brings everyone together without being drowned out by opposing views. Of trying to find community and validation in a society that feasts on division and pushes us towards the perceived safety of isolation. Or maybe it's because I want to jig about in the front room, channel Bananarama, and live my best life. All explantions are valid.

Have a lovely week, folks.