Like Pulling Teeth...

To my absolute surprise, it appears I'm a morning person.

Me as a youth

This was not the case when I was a youth. Whether it was childhood, Uni, or my early working years, when that alarm sounded, I'd be pissed off. I'd lie there for as long as humanely possibly before eventually dragging myself/getting dragged out of bed and embracing the day.

I'm not sure when, but at some point, that changed. Look, I love a lie in. Come the weekend, that's exactly what I'll be doing. But when it comes to the week, I've discovered something interesting. I have zero appetite for working after lunch. I'm over being productive once the afternoon hits. If I'm at my desk for nine, I can be driven and organised. But once the initial spurt of mental energy is spent, and lunch is a-calling, I'm done. 

Yep, this is where I'm at right now

So why am I telling you this now? Well, today's usual 9-11am sesh set aside for blog-writing purposes, got missed. A bunch of urgent admin needed doing first thing, and then I had a mani booked around lunch. By the time I sat down to write these words, it was 3pm! That's home time in schools! I am SO over being bothered for the day. I can't be faffed one bit. With that in mind, I can only apologise if these sentences seem a little off . I'm literally dragging them out of my head and forcing them onto the screen. The afternoon struggle is real, folks. Send all good wishes for my plight.

I get it, Sly!

Writing News

After two lovely empty-headed weeks, I'm editing once again. This time, with guidance. Hurrah! The woman who edits my books has got back to me. It's SO good to have someone else read the whole thing. Until this point, it can feel unreal. My head might be filled with characters and plots, but if no one else knows about them, they're just weird figments of my imagination. Now, however, they belong to someone else. It's a strange situation to share your imaginary friends with people, but I love it.*

Culture

A couple of cinema releases for you this week. I Swear is utterly brilliant. Telling the true story of John Davidson, it shows the challenges and realities of living with Tourette's Syndrome. Whilst I wouldn't describe it as an out and out comedy - although some scenes are undoubtedly played for laughs - it's a thoroughly engaging, sometimes heartbreaking, but ultimately hopeful tale of another person's life. Watching how several adults in young John's life couldn't see beyond the tics and bad words, did more to educate me about the need for empathy than any SEND training course could have done. It's an essential watch. The fact it's entertaining is just a bonus.

Jeremy Allen White
as Bruce Springsteen

In more true story action, I watched Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere on Friday night. The film focuses on a short period of time in the eighties, and delves into Springsteen's state of mind as he was on the cusp of mega-stardom. It was engrossing, thoughtful, and happily not full of big hit performance set pieces that could distract from the narrative. Also, Jeremy Allen White NAILS it. Properly good.

Gravy season is
well underway

Food and Drink

There's a line in Midnight Chicken by Ella Rusbridger, that I think is the truest thing ever written. She writes, 'Someone I knew once told me that you always cook for the number of people in the family you grew up in.' 

I don't know about you, but I've found this to be true, time and time again. My final years living at home were in a family of nine. That's why I over-cater (but never under-deliver!) with almost every meal I make. Indeed, it can be the ONLY explanation for the Sunday roast I knocked up last week. Cooking for two is such a challenge. The photo shows my plate - half of the quantity I cooked - which is ridiculous. Also, the green beans had gone off so there was supposed to be more. It won't surprise you to know I didn't finish, saved the leftovers, and spent the afternoon dozing in a food-coma. It was fit though.

Zoom in to see
my triumph

Out and About

More insights I've learnt this week. Turns out, I'm NOT shit at darts. Who knew? For a family 50th birthday, I spent a couple of hours throwing some arrows (ALL the lingo!) and hitting the board more times than not. I've no clue about strategy, and the numbers around the board mean nothing to me, but by the end I was at the top of the leader board. Can you believe!?! Whilst it's definitely a fluke, I'm just glad to have reached a new sporting high. It's been a long time since the 1989 Rainhill Inter-Schools Netball Comeptiton winners' medal. 

How marvellous! I've finally got the end of the post. It's taken longer than usual, I've lost concentration every few minutes, and I need to lie down after a gargantuan effort. But it's done! Woohoooo! 

Have a lovely week, folks.

*Full disclosure: My writing friends that I meet with, also know my characters. But they hear 1500 words every two weeks in a drip drip drip effect. That means I'm willing the weeks away so I can get to the end of the book with them. At this rate, it'll be well after publication.

Attempting Serene Ambiance...

It's that time of year when we attempt to create  a cosy autumnal ambience using plastic tat and a selection of mini supermarket pumpkins. Just me?

I say 'attempt' but there's not much to it. After stringing up the fake-leafed garland, I've placed the pumpkins at either side of the fire place. It's fine. Does it scream AMBIANCE to you? You don't need to answer. In fact, what with the quickly-rotting peel on the little pale pumpkin to the right of the picture, the ambience is nearer rotting veg than New England fall. It is what it is.

Forcing the serenity.

Writing News

I finally did it. I edited myself into a big enough frenzy that I had to mentally shout, ENOUGH! TIME FOR REINFORCEMENTS! In less hyperbolic speak, that means I approached the lovely editor I use at this stage, and asked if she was game for another adventure. Happily she was, so she's currently working her magic on the manuscript. This is excellent news for me. For a short time, my brain can forget the goings on in Applemere Bridge. It can stop whirring all night as it attempts to concoct the perfect Christmas ending without it being similar to the previous two Christmas endings. It can stop reading anything - social media, other novels, news reports - with a critical eye, spotting which commas are extraneous and choosing better words than the ones selected by the author. My brain can finally CHILL. For as long as the editor has hold of the thing, I'm living a life of serenity.

Film Club

Culture

Film Club on BBCiPlayer is wonderful. Sweet, poignant, vulnerable, and funny. Two friends, obsessed with film, with one currently recovering from a breakdown and debilitating agoraphobia. I hoovered it up and felt all the better for doing so. Congrats to Aimee Lou Wood and Ralph Davis for creating something so lovely.

Riot Women

The iPlayer also contains the second series I saw off this week - Sally Wainwright's Riot Women. It's fantastic. Obviously it is. Everything Wainwright writes is... right. Managing to combine humour, drama, authentic characters, and stunning northern locations, this is spot on. The short synopsis is that a group of middle-aged women start a punk band. The longer synopsis is more complex, involving divorce, grief, caring for elderly relatives, caring for grown up children, sexual assault, mental heath, and work place misogyny. To be able to write a witty, cathartic screenplay embracing all that, is impressive. Maybe it particularly hits the spot for middle aged women? Good. Write more for us please. It's brilliant, I loved it, and I felt seen.

My crap photo does
NOT do this justice

Food and Drink

My Wednesday brunch place has had a menu rejig. The upshot is, they've added shakshuka. This has filled my heart with joy. I bloody love shakshuka! Their version is thick, warming, and utterly tasty. Not as spicy as I make my own, but all the better for it. Of COURSE I'm happy to see my friends, but the fact that in these chillier months, I get to shovel a bowl of shakshuka into my mouth while I do so, is marvellous. 

Boozy Sunday, innit.

Out and About

I had a boozy Sunday in town. WHY, I hear you ask. WHY NOT, I reply. It was all based around Sunday dinner, but the pre-meal beers, during-meal wine, and post-meal more beers added to the fun. A few days later I was back in town, on the mission for some new clothes. Despite visiting several shops, it was a failed trip. I struggle when the only clothing options are chunky knits or blingtastic party wear. Where are the regular tops, people? Tops that I can wear with jeans in the pub and not look deranged? Answers on a postcard please. Meanwhile, I'll stick to Vinted. 

Whatever you're doing, hope it's bringing you joy. And if it's not, probably best stop doing it then, right? Or you do you. Whatever you want. It's literally none of my business. 

Have a lovely week, folks.

A Tale of Two Authors...

Like many other writers, I didn't win the Nobel Prize for Literature last week. Congratulations to Làszló Krasznahorkai on his much-deserved accolade. 

I say 'much deserved' but the truth is, I haven't read any Làszló Krasznahorkai books to my knowledge. I'm sure they're marvellous. In fact, when I scroll his Wikipedia, it's clear he knows what he's doing. He's won a bunch of stuff, including the 2025 Man Booker International Prize and the 2013 Best Translated Book Award. He's obviously brilliant and I applaud his success.

Announcements like this remind me of my lack of interest in 'Good Books'. 'Good Books' are different from good books. Good books are books you enjoy. They're stories you race to read, reread, and lose yourself in. They're like old friends that take you away from all this, providing succour and amusement amidst the busyness of life. 

'Good Books', are an entirely different matter. They weighty and worthy. They can be bleak and unforgiving. Whilst the skills of their author are undoubtedly top notch, they're never books I want to reread. When I get to the end of one, I feel smug pride that I did it. Like climbing Everest or cleaning the house. 'Good Books' can be found on my bookshelves but they've been read once, if at all. Meanwhile, there're next to other books that are falling apart from having been read so often. They're the books that win the awards of my heart.

Me at uni.
 Barely taking it in.

I've said it before but it bears repeating. I felt very differently back in the day. When I was studying English Lit as part of my combined degree. I was so busy cramming my head with Shakespeare, Marlowe, and Webster, that over three years, I failed to read for fun. Can you imagine? Having been an avid reader my entire life, I spent the uni years reading prescribed content that mostly bored me. I could bang out a thousand words on a collection of poems or a particular play, but the reading material held no enjoyment. I finished uni with a brand new mindset - how wonderful that I don't have to read ANYTHING ever again.

That viewpoint lasted all of five minutes. After everyone packed up and left my house share, I had a spare weekend until I was leaving myself. A flatmate left me a Jane Green book and I idly had a look. That book filled my final weekend, and I was back - ready to love books once again. This time, however, I'D be in charge of my reading material.

Me, after uni,
reading for pleasure.

So why bring this up now? Well the world lost a literary giant last week. Not someone that troubled the Nobel Literature panel, but a beloved author nonetheless. Jilly Cooper, creator of the Rutshire Chronicles, died at the age of eighty eight. Her stories are really something. Long before I'd read one, I'd dismissed her work as trashy. I still had that English Lit snobbishness about me. When a colleague foisted Rivals on me at work, I took it to be polite. I remember planning to read the first couple of chapters, then hand it back pretending I'd finished. I'm sure you can work out what happened next. I DEVOURED it. 

Rivals was thrilling. Rutshire - a county filled with local TV 'celebrities', an ex-Olympian turned politician, and social engagement after social engagement - was Little England deliciously satirised. Then there was the sex. So much sex! Funny, camp, and almost always consensual. (The one non-consensual scene in Rivals is depicted as clearly not OK.) The sex is often gloriously concerned with women's pleasure, which for a novel written in the1980s, feels revolutionary. Because of the frequency and sometimes casual nature of the story's hook-ups, it's easy to think that's all there is. Wrong! Jilly Cooper's genius is in her gossipy description of place. What, on first glance can SEEM like a rambling saga, is really a masterclass in world-building. I want to live in Rutshire. I want to be Rupert Cambell Black's neighbour, I want to be best friends with Taggie, and I want to EXIST in this world. How lucky was I that there was a whole bunch of Rutshire-based stories in which to immerse myself.

Taggie and Rupert: working beautifully
in fiction but whose very existence 
would be insufferable in real life.

That's the genius of Jilly Cooper. Because at no point in REAL LIFE, would I want to exist in that world. In reality, I'd find Taggie insipid, I'd hate the constant obligation of socialising with the neighbours, and I'd find Rupert Campbell Black an absolute PERV. But on the page? I want it all! That's the power of storytelling. That's the power of Jilly Cooper's literary legacy. 

I reread Rivals last Autumn, after the TV series aired on Disney. I love that Jilly Cooper got to see her characters find a whole new audience. I love that she was exec-producing the series right to the end. I love the unwavering affection people have for her stories. When the news of her death broke, the outpouring online was lovely to read. 

Good books stay with you. They make you see the world in a different way. They provide comfort and escapism, whilst exploring truisms and tenets. Warm congratulations to Làszló Krasznahorkai on his deserved accolade. I'm happy that his work has been given this recognition and honour. Likewise, congratulations to Jilly Cooper for creating a world so beloved by millions, for being an author that gets repeatedly reread, and for providing pleasure and joy to generations. It would be a boring world if all the books on the shelf were the same.

Have a lovely week, folks.

Glass Ceilings and Wake-Up Juice...

When it comes to the Archbishop of Canterbury, I have zero skin in the game. I'm not religious, wasn't bought up in the Church of England, and I find it increasingly dodge that representatives of a faith have seats in the House of Lords. And yet... the new Archbishop of Canterbury was announced on Friday and she's a woman! Hurrah! Congratulations to Sarah Mullalley on her new gig.

Fake-smiling through nonsense

When events like this happen, I'm torn. It shouldn't be a big deal that a woman has earned a top job. It shouldn't be newsworthy that the sex and gender of the new appointee are different from previous incumbents. It shouldn't matter on any level, who the head honcho is, aside from their skill at spiritual guidance. Sadly, that's not the world we live in. The fact that this particular glass ceiling has been shattered is more than a big deal.

I'm old enough to remember the furore of women being ordained in the first place. A quick Google tells me it was 1994. That's about right because I was a teenager and I remember the news stories. The out and out misogyny was writ large. So lovely for sixteen year old me to be aware of that as I navigated my place in the world. I remember people leaving the church in a huff. Because how TERRIBLE to have to listen to a woman on a Sunday. How AWFUL for churchgoers having to put up with THAT. Despite four hundred vicars leaving the Church over the issue, sanity prevailed and life carried on. 

FAO the huffy vicars of 1994

Now, thirty one years later, the first woman has been appointed head of it all. I'm delighted for her. I've no idea what her vibes are - there's every chance we'll disagree on EVERYTHING - but congratulations to Sarah Mullalley, regardless. Like I said, I've zero skin in the game. It's just nice to see the slow march of equality rear its head every now and then.

Writing News

We're at the 'checking each chapter's word count in an attempt to bring them in line' stage. Got that? Not every chapter needs to be the same length but when each month of the year is represented by a chapter, it makes sense that they're similar sizes. The picture shows the word counts before the last couple of read throughs. December is a whopper. All the fun of Christmas, plus the conclusion of the story. But July? Well that's when Leeza experiences her first school holiday. Of COURSE there's loads to say about that. As for the rest of the chapters, they need to be less than five thousand words. October and November, I'm coming for you.

The brothers

Culture

I've been watching the teen drama, The Summer I Turned Pretty. It's the classic story. Girl meets boy, boy has a brother, girl fancies both siblings and can't choose between them... yadda yadda yadda. Tale as old as time. I'm really enjoying it but there's one problem. I've reached the age where the male protagonists are young enough to be my kids and therefore as sexy as toenails. When did that happen? I demand a recast. In hornier news, I finished ITV's The Hack. There's nothing hotter than good yet flawed people standing up to bullies in search of the truth. The dramatisation of the hacking scandal is less potent than the retelling of the post office scandal, but the immorality is just as stark. Worth a watch.

Food and Drink

More juicing news, if you can even stand it. Ginger shots! Have you heard of them? Of course you have! Like Del Amitri, I'm always the last to know. My latest batch-juice shenanigans are fab. Lots of ginger, a few apples, black pepper, and turmeric. Mix together and you've got yourself some pretty potent wake-up juice. Like the liquid equivalent of doing a bungee jump, slathered in Vics vapour rub, whilst stuffing Tangfastics into your mouth. If you want to uncontrollably shout WOWSERS at the start of your day, I can heartily recommend. 

Out and About

Ah Warwick, you beautiful beast. Thank you for a lovely Saturday night. Between my niece's birthday bash and the chaos of a Bond family get together, it was a fun weekend. The week ahead is less exciting but we can't be having plans every second now, can we?

Have a lovely week, folks.