jump to navigation

Of Wednesday Wishfulness December 9, 2009

Posted by Jen in : Bits and Pieces , 19 comments

Dear Santa/God

(are you the same person? I have doubts that there could be two tubby dudes with the whole beard and robes thing going on? Your secret’s safe with me)

Hello whiskery one, how are you?  All set for your busy night?  Have you figured out an alternative to reindeer power for the sleigh yet?  Reindeer have rights you know.  There are rules now, written down by very important people who make rules for a living.  Have you thought about solar power?  Perhaps not so good since your jolly jaunts are generally made at night.  Powered by starlight, how about that?  They’d love it on Dragon’s Den though they’d probably say the idea was patented by Neil Gaiman or something and then they’d heckle you until you cried.  It’s a tough gig.

Anyhow, just thought I’d drop you a quick line with this year’s wishlist.  And yes, I’ve been a good girl.  Quite good, anyway.  Good enough.  Hmm.

I would like:

If you have trouble with that stuff, some Hotel Chocolat rum truffles would be nice.  I’ve been good enough to deserve those, surely?

Cheers mate.

Lots of love

Jen X

Santa

Of Insidious Ingredients (or Beware the Bends) September 3, 2009

Posted by Jen in : Bits and Pieces , 20 comments

I am, like most people in the world, many things to many people.  I’m a mum, cook, taxi driver, typing-about-bits-of-grass lady, all sorts of stuff.  But one thing I am not usually is a scientiffical genius.  But.  I have seen things and Made Connections.

Let me explain.  Next door to my office is a health food shop.  I hate the health food shop.  Well, not so much the shop although it does smell a bit funny, but the people who shop there.  They are all very old and very, very nimble.  Honestly, you should see them leaping on and off their mountain bikes in their irritatingly springy fashion.  ‘Ha! No need to tie the bike up,’ you can hear them think, ‘I’ll chase any thieving buggers in my bare feet.’  You see?  They even have lively thoughts.

Last week, we had some biscuits from the health food shop, mainly because Tweed Clad Colleague was – in his words, not mine – “too fat and lazy to walk to the lardy biscuit shop”.  The biscuits were, by anyone’s definition, rather bendy.  I posed the important question on Twitter as to why health food shop biscuits were always squashy and was told within minutes that it’s the lack of gluten which generally binds biccies together.  So perhaps the spritely seniors are largely loose-limbed due to their lack of gluten.

I mentioned this to a friend who suggested that it might not be a bad thing: that if the oldies were scoffing hard biscuits, they might suddenly start wearing hoodies, spitting in the street and saying swear words all over the place.  This would clearly not do at all.

As I typed this commentary of social and scientiffical awareness, I remembered that my mother’s craving when pregnant with me was fried onions.  Pan after pan of the things.  And, being quite a clever genius today, I have deduced that this is probably why I cry so much.

Reader, the crux of my discovery is this: we are what we eat.  What d’you mean, it’s already been done?  Really?  Oh.  That’s the end of my biscuit research then I suppose?

gingerbread-man

Of Bird-Brained Burblings June 23, 2009

Posted by Jen in : Bits and Pieces, Novel , 30 comments

I woke up at 5am this morning.  Through the outside sounds of crowing cockerels and bickering chickens, a thought came to me.  I must confess my sins.  Well, actually, there’s only one.  I have not *gulps and looks around shiftily* written any words since I moved.  Not one.  But there is a reason for this.  A reason that has pervaded my very being.  I… um.. fell in love.  Only a little bit.  But it distracted me.  The recipient of this had been around for a while, waiting, it would seem, for the right time to sneak into my life and change me.  *Sigh*… It wasn’t even a bloke.  It was Rose Tremain’s The Road Home.  It was such so stylish, so irresistible.  As I read, I turned down the bottom of pages I wanted to come back to, seeking out delicious phrases and caressing them as you would a lover’s cheek.  And then I realised. 

I want to move people, make them cry.  And I’m not going to do that by prattling on about hippies, bongos and Paul McKenna.  Sorry Paul.  You can hunt me down and get me with your googly eyes and velvet voice if you like.  But I can take the concept of my idea.  It just needs a different vibe, voice, whatever.  I have fallen out of love with Novel 2.  And, to be honest, I’ve fallen out of love with the idea of writing another novel. 

My writerly bits are ready for change.  I need to fill my creative well.  To let my pens potter and find a new direction.  Create snippets and scribblings.  Let these technicolour seeds germinate and see where the rainbows form.  The novel-writing will be back.  It’ll just be wearing a grubby mac and dark shades rather than a Jordan-esque bikini under a transparent top. 

I didn’t think my teeny tiny cottage would change me.  Not really.  But I am changing.  And as we change, our axis changes and the world whizzes about at a different angle.  Oh dear, I’m talking tosh.  I blame the chickens.  But there’s something bubbling away, something thrilling and undefined.  Festering, perhaps.  Who can say?

Crumbs.  Don’t I sound grown-up?

re-invention

 

Six Quick Quirks January 31, 2008

Posted by Jen in : Bits and Pieces , 20 comments

I’ve been tagged. Not by the police, of course; always one step ahead of the law, me. Tagged, in actual fact, by Liz and Sarah and Angie. I know, too many ‘ands’ but it makes me feel more popular than a shorter list with commas.

So. Share six non-important things/habits/quirks about yourself.

  1. I had some cold Shepherds Pie for breakfast today. I didn’t have wine with it though.

  2. I am too scared to go to coffee shops on my own. I have never done it, ever, even though I really want to. I panic: do I wait for the coffee or do they bring it over? What if I wait and get the coffee and then there’s nowhere to sit? There just seem to be too many things that could go terribly wrong.

  3. I am rather rubbish at supermarket shopping. I can only buy what I fancy eating that very day which means the pantry’s always empty except for dog food and out-of-date muesli that I clearly do not fancy very much at all.

  4. I never fancy film stars/pop stars/celebrities. This, I believe, is due to two traumatic incidents in my childhood: a) My heartless mother ripping down my beloved David Soul poster when she was in a rage about something or other (but which David Soul was probably not responsible for). b) Discovering that the super-duper Nick Beggs from KajaGooGoo was a Christian and therefore unlikely to want to marry a 13-year-old schoolgirl.

  5. Erm I am never, ever on time for anything. If I actually leave home before I’m supposed to arrive wherever I’m going, I think I’m doing quite well. I’m not. Obviously.

  6. At primary school, I came last in every sporting event on every single occasion. The only exception to this rule was a running race on Sports Day when I was 10. I was nearly crying with joy to be only second-last until I saw that Sarah Skittrall had fallen down a molehole. I was really glad she was in the hole. I’m still glad.

I’m sure everyone has already done this. I’m, um, a little late with it

YouTube Preview Image

Of Staggering Statistics January 6, 2008

Posted by Jen in : Bits and Pieces , 23 comments

According to The Week, ‘of the 86,000 new books published last year, as many as 58,000 sold just 18 copies on average.’

That can’t be right, can it?

Sigh. Maybe I’ll take up juggling instead. Or sausage-growing. Creative sheep shearing, perhaps?


Of Hardy Histories November 26, 2007

Posted by Jen in : Bits and Pieces, Journal , 8 comments

You know, I never used to be interested in history. It was just stuff, old fashioned nonsense that didn’t matter anymore. But I’m beginning to be intrigued by change, now that I’m becoming something of a relic myself.

Yesterday, I stood shivering in the porch of a village church, waiting to go and play some Bach. Yes, I know, some would say I’m Bach-ing every day. Anyway. In this church porch was a man we’ll call ‘Lance’, for that is indeed his name. Now Lance is proper old, with snowy hair, stooped shoulders and a Sunday-best suit. As a boy, he used to attend the service in that chilly church every week.

He smiled and whispered to us:

‘My mother entertained us during sermons by making rabbits out of her handkerchief. And my grandmother’s hat, bearing in mind this was Edwardian times, was too big to fit through the doors but she always refused to take it off.’

I wonder how it must feel to go back to a place that I’d visited in Edwardian times, a place that looks and smells and feels the same. It has made me feel sort of insignificant, an inconsequential speck in the story of time. Perhaps I’ll start carrying a handkerchief and being a little more dignified. Or perhaps not. Times have, sadly, changed.

I seem to have spent the first half of my life not really understanding what’s important but quite glad that I’ve discovered the bits that are. Just need to figure out how to put the missing bits into action now before my history is all wrong.


 


Name-driven Nonsense November 17, 2007

Posted by Jen in : Bits and Pieces , 16 comments

Hurrah. Just as my brain had drained, Kate tagged me. Thank the Lord for that.

“List one fact, word or tidbit that is somehow relevant to your life for each letter of your first or middle name. You can theme it to your blog or make it general. Then tag one person for each letter of your name.”

J – Jollification. You can’t beat a good laugh. One of the things I like most about lovely bf is that we really are very similarly spazzy in our sense of humour. One of the best things ever is when you meet someone randomly who is on the same chortling wavelength. And I’m going to see Sean Lock tomorrow. I mean, I’m not just going to turn up at his house or anything. He’s doing a gig. In Tunbridge Wells. Ahem. That’s Royal Tunbridge Wells to you.

E – Eggs. I really like eggs. They’re very nice. I wouldn’t want to be one though.

N – Nervousness. Despite being outwardly gregarious, I am terribly scared of meeting people. I always like the idea of ‘other people’ but have been known to take to my bed in the manner of a fainting Victorian at the thought of socialising with strangers. What if I wear the wrong clothes, or I’m too noisy, or I drink too much and am sick, or if everyone is a zillion times cleverer than me and they think I’m gormless? Luckily, despite all those things having happened, the strangers are always politer than me too and kind enough not to mention my shortcomings before pudding.

N – Nitwittery. This is clearly my speciality. At a drunken dinner party, the menfolk were discussing, for some reason, whether they would sleep with any of the others’ women. (Needless to say, the women were in the kitchen at this point. Or doing tapestry. Something like that.) I came out bottom of the list. “She’s just not really all there, is she?” said Anonymous Bloke. “I mean, you’d want to look after her, not shag her.” Sigh. Didn’t fancy him anyway.

Y – Yakking. I do love a good natter. Being of the butterfly-brained variety, there’s no end of nonsense I can either spout or tolerate. I miss being able to bump into old school friends and catch up on spurts of gossip. This is something that has been bothering me lately. But. I happened upon a friend I haven’t seen for over a year in the corner shop yesterday. And she’s coming for coffee in a minute. I hope I’m wearing the right clothes and that she doesn’t think I’ve become short or spazzy. Sigh.

So, I’m supposed to tag five peoples but that smacks of favouritism. I think you should all do it. Go on, I dare you.


Literal Confession September 30, 2007

Posted by Jen in : Bits and Pieces , 15 comments

I usually quite like being tagged for memes so I thought some jolly thoughts when JJ tagged me for a booky one. And then I looked at my bookshelves and flushed with shame. Oh, bugger – why aren’t I highbrow and clever and learned? My shelves overflow with books on cookery, meditation, Reiki, poetry, writing, grammar where are my weighty tomes of classics? Oh dear confession time

Total number of books

Um a few hundred, I guess. I really am a book junkie but I can’t bear to leave fab books on the shelf. When I’ve particularly loved a book, I tend to pass it on to someone I hope will enjoy it as much as I did. ‘In Search of Adam’ has just winged (wung?) its way to my sis in Holland. At least that always means there’s room on the bookshelves for more. I really should join the library but then there’s always the worry that I’ll dunk their books in the bath or, even worse, someone else has read the book in the bath, equally naked. The ‘old lady’ smell of library books is also off-putting too. Ugh.


Last book read

Oh God, I’m awful. Once I’ve finished a book, that’s it gone from memory! Kate Harrison’s The Self-Preservation Society was a recent one that I enjoyed (and remember!). I’m currently alternating between Paulo Coelho’s Like the Flowing River and Lisa Jewell’s Vince and Joy. I’m looking forward to reading Toast by Nigel Slater next. I like biographies and, until I started writing myself, read very little in the way of fiction for years.


Last book bought

Gordon Ramsey’s ‘Sunday Lunch’, yesterday in WHSmith. I didn’t mean to visit WHSmiths or buy books. It was an accident.


5 meaningful books

Enid Blyton’s Famous Five series was a biggie for me. I desperately wanted to be George. Best of all, Number 1 son enjoyed the Famous Five and I managed to find the entire series in the same 70s paperback covers that I’d read, complete with curling, brown, fusty pages (that smelt of old ladies).

‘Heidi’ by Johanna Spyrie. And ‘What Katy Did’ by Susan Coolridge. I liked stories about girls in strange places. I suppose that, as a very shy child living on the small rock of Jersey, everything seemed exciting. I was rarely naughty as a child which would explain my adoration of the ‘Just William’ books (Richmal Crompton) too.

 

One book that I’ve read and re-read many times since I was a teenager is ‘Roots‘ by Alex Haley. I guess it was one of the first adult books I tackled. It just struck me as really powerful and honest. Must read it again one day soon.

‘The Five People You Meet in Heaven‘ Mitch Albom. Kind of conveyed lots of things that I believed but had never seen put into story form before. Everyone should read this book, I think.

Ok, you can have a good laugh now but, well, I am something of a closet hippy. And on that note, I’m going to round off this bizarre list with The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield). Yes. I really do believe in all that stuff. Yes. I am a total flake.

So now you know.

I’m going to tag Betamum, La Que Sabe and Rebecca.