Of Pesky Pasts and Dithery Dipsticks February 27, 2009
Posted by Jen in : Writing Bits , 27 commentsOh dear. Oh my goodness. The last working day of February? Surely not.
Let’s see then, shall we, how I’m getting on with the old resolutions? Oh, hang on a minute. Let’s not.
I declined a naughty cake at work last week, on the basis that I was to become svelte by my 40th birthday.
‘And when is that?’ asked tweed-clad colleague, looking me up and down.
‘May,’ I declared, holding in my tummy a little bit.
He nodded slowly and wisely before pronouncing his judgment. ‘You should’ve started earlier.’
Hmmm.
Life, being serendipitous thing it is, has flung History back at me. A huge seam of life that I’d thought gone forever suddenly is washing over me. Good old Facebook. With one tentative link, I’ve been swept away by what-ifs and couldda-beens and, oddly, I can remember almost every single person, despite not having seen many of them since I was 14. Jersey has a weird education system: there’s one sort of grammar school and, just before ‘O’ levels (as they were in my day), the top whatever % is creamed from all the schools in the whole island and dispatched to this boffin-bin. I was sent there, but I wasn’t a boffin. Being a bit of a div, it was all a little beyond me really. But it did mean that the other, bigger % left behind hated, HATED, us. And so we didn’t mix. Ever. Until now. There’s to be a reunion. The word sends fear to my very core.
August. I will be 40 and facing my past. And halfway through writing a novel about identity and how life changes us. Or not, as the case may be. And you know the worst thing? I’ll really have to diet now… especially as the girl who used to call me Poison Dwarf is still pretty and slim, the bloody cow. Oh, woe is me.
Of Rudimentary Realisation February 22, 2009
Posted by Jen in : Journal , 25 commentsIt’s been a funny old week. Quiet. My gruesome twosome have been away, skiing. I, on the other hand, have not been on the piste at all. In fact, inspired by Qwerty Queen, I have been most abstemious. I’d like to report that I feel a zillion times better for it: zingy, springy and super-fab. Sadly, I don’t feel like that at all. A little while ago, I purchased some alcohol-free wine – just as expensive as the real thing but without the liver-clenching element. After all, I only drink because I like the taste. Oh, that and my love of glassware obviously. The alcohol-free wine was a great success – filled up an empty corner of the garage nicely and continues to do so. Hmmmmm.
I have, however, during this week of brief experimentation, realised that it is not the old vino that does me in. After all, I’m a Jersey girl. That’s what we do, it’s our heritage. Boozing is in our veins, as it were. The definition of Jersey? 90,000 alcoholics clinging to a rock. Excuses excuses.
Sleep. That’s what I’ve had this week. For the first time since before Christmas, I’ve discovered the joy of sleep. Proper sleep – the sort where you go to bed and stay asleep until it’s time to wake up again. Not the wrong sort where you go to bed shattered then wake up at 3 in the morning to think rubbish thoughts which mangle up the senses before eventually catapulting you into a cruel chasm of calamity, subsiding only minutes before the bloody alarm clock goes off. I have no idea why sleep has seductively snaked its way back into my life while the boys were away. They’re not babies, they don’t wake me up… in fact, more often than not, they’re chortling indulgently as they scrape me from the sofa towards bed. But there has been extra time. Time. Again. It all comes down to time. Tick. Tick. Tick. Life is such a balancing act, isn’t it?
I had a thought in the week, as I danced amongst the tree spirits at dawn. I could give up writing. I could just go to work, come home, cook dinner, watch telly, help the offspring with homework, go to bed and and be mellow. Unstressed. Normal. I stopped in my muddy tracks, gazing at the candy floss clouds above and considered that giving up writing would mean more time for everything else. And then the thoughts went sliding off on their own, gathering momentum as they whirled around the woods and came back to me shimmering with imagery and counted syllables. They flounced and goaded me with tone and metaphor. I laughed at the futility of my rationing: I can’t give up writing now. Not a chance. Even if I wanted to. It’s in there, in my very essence… along with my love of, erm, glassware .
I’m doomed and you know what? I’ll drink to that.
Of Raaaaaaaah and Writingness February 16, 2009
Posted by Jen in : Journal, Novel , 25 commentsAt the end of December, in this post, I said Things. I said that this year, I would Achieve Stuff. Well, I have news for you: it hasn’t quite happened yet. Oi! That’s my life you’re laughing at. Cease your sniggering forthwith! It does, actually, take quite a lot of time and effort Not Achieving Stuff. But. I have been busy. I have been learning my craft, like an apprentice. Not an Alan Sugar apprentice, obviously, since I fall over in high heels and power dressing makes me look wider than I am high. But I have thrown myself into learning about this writing malarkey in earnest. I have learnt that, the more I learn, the more I realise I don’t know. But it excites me. I am devouring the information until I have have so much, it will seep from my very pores. Eurgh, that sounds revolting. But you know what I mean. Don’t you? I have outlined and submitted the bare bones of my next novel-to-be: characters, setting, theme, tone – all of it. And I’m excited about that too. And I have been gobbling up Della Galton’s rather spiffing How to Write and Sell Short Stories. I made a start yesterday, sitting around reading magazines researching the market. I submitted a piece to new magazine First Edition. I sat down on Saturday evening for half an hour and entered this online writing competition.
So. I’m doing it. Oh yes I am. Inspired by Cal and Karen, who both had stories in a recent edition of TaB’s Fiction Feast, I am going for it big time. Jealousy, despite what you may have been told, is a wonderful, wonderful thing. So there. No. More. Excuses.
Wasting Away in Many Ways February 4, 2009
Posted by Jen in : A363 Open University, Domestic Doings , 24 commentsThey say, don’t they, that you have to use your creativity muscles. Use it or lose it. That sort of thing. I think I’ve lost it. Hmmmm. The trouble is that, while doing this OU course, I’m so busy and behind with the learning, I don’t have time to actually write anything. While I lay in the dark at 4am this morning I considered that, if I were training to be a chef, it would be like having all the ingredients and know-how but never actually cooking anything. I could have a bit of a lick at other people’s spoons and that would be that. Tantalisingly tasty but not all that satisfying. And I still wouldn’t know if I could cook. By 5am, once I was on the twilight train of lucid streams of consciousness, I also considered that all those thoughts of spoon-snorfling had made me rather hungry.
The cupboards are bare. I did go shopping but we have had The Weather, you see, which means everyone had to engage in Serious Panic Shopping. “PANIC! PANIC!! It will snow for years; we need to buy all the food in the world! Imagine being snowed in without mushrooms! And cucumber. And other perishable foodstuffs.” Honestly, the greedy buggers had bought everything. EVERYTHING! Except squashy stuff in tins. But I’m not really a squashy-stuff-in-tins kind of girl. Today, hopefully, the world will finish melting. This is a relief as I am currently nibbling the last Dairylea triangle within a 50-mile radius. And, also, I cannot drive in the slidey-white. Nor stand up. I am so clumsy that I can fall over an ant’s eyelash, without the shame of tottering about on an ice-rink in my slippers.
But The Weather has been a pleasantly dramatic distraction from the dreariness of domestic life. I just wish I had time to write about it…
