Homecoming!

I've just come back from a wonderfully hot, family-soaked holiday in Spain. Not many people know that because I am so very internet paranoid.

I'm not quite sure what I think is going to happen: the local villain will turn to cyber research, picking a name out of a hat which happens to be Jackie Buxton, travel through the 33 'Jackie Buxton's on Facebook – there are this many, I checked – to find the one who lives somewhere around here (obviously I'm far too scared of my cyber shadow to divulge exactly where in the north of England that might be) and, after cracking the 'friends only' block, will smile gleefully at noticing that I happen to be out of the country (and indeed, that my tightly packed neighbours have also chosen this time for an excursion) exactly when he/she has a bit of time on their hands. Next, we hope that this local, cyber researching burglar with time on his/her hands isn't good at busting down doors and foiling alarm codes.

Of course, this could happen. And you can guarantee – because this is exactly how my mind works – that this will happen the day I let down my guard to post on Facebook and Twitter that I am beyond excitement about my pending holiday and if I spend another moment in front of my desk I will fossilise. Thus, I tie myself up in knots not mentioning it. Talk about, Don't mention the war! Every second word is suitcase and Sangria.

But, like my Dad who couldn't close the door on our bedrooms at night without first checking that switching off the light hadn't caused a spark behind the switch and a fire in the wall behind, and my friend whose family sit in the car and count how many times she returns to the door to check it's locked - We all do that, I say. Not seventeen times, the husband replies – pre-holiday internet muteness is how it is for me.

Meanwhile, I'm happy to report that the holiday was all I hoped for - and some - and although I love where I live and am very happy in my village somewhere in the north of England, no I wasn't ready to come home from the sun, pool, beach, Sangria, reading, cycling, family paella nights, synchronised swimming (sorry, 'synchronised' swimming) family cards, Exploding Kittens, more reading, lack of washing, and did I mention the reading…? and generally being just a whole lot more manana-ish.

Still, at least my return meant I could use my loyalty card at my local hospital to get my broken toe sorted. Yep, a different one this time. And a story for another day. Suffice it to say, please pray this sun continues because the flip flops will be hanging around for another three weeks.

Weekly Timetables? You thought I was joking!

Now that I'm back, I've thrown myself into my usual pre-September de-clutter. I've talked before about September being my New Year here and this year is no different: the idea of filing and rejecting mounds of paperwork and teaching resources, sourcing and recycling new storage solutions so that I can lay my hands on the surviving papers more quickly, finely tuning my weekly timetables because this year I will make tea before 8pm and I will find time for more coffees with friends and filling out my new Passion Planner (thanks for the tip, Erica!) with an achievable list of to-do's… are almost as exciting to me as the first sip of a Spanish lager outside a sun-licked taverna. 

Almost as exciting.

But I also have LOTS of newness to look forward to. Glass Houses and I are going on tour and I am ridiculously excited about it. Please, please do come and say hello if you possibly can when I'm at a place near you. I promise we will have cakes or chocolate or even both. And books, lots of books:  both Glass Houses and Tea & Chemo.

The tour so far – all welcome!

September
Monday 5 September from 8pm @ The Bakewell Book & Gift Shop, Matlock Street, Bakewell, Derbyshire DE45 1EE. View their website here
- for a brief talk, Q&A, book signing and a bit of a chat – with coffee and cake (of course).

Saturday 17 September from 2pm @ Blackwell's Bookshop, 21 Blenheim Terrace, Woodhouse Lane, Leeds LS2 9HJ.
- pop in any time between 2 and 5.30pm for book signing and chat. You'll find me in the Costa café (they insisted) on the first floor. We also plan to host a Q & A session during the afternoon. More on this to follow.

October
Saturday 15 October from 11am @ Octavo's Book Café and Wine Bar, West Bute Street, Cardiff CF10 5LJ
- Writer in Residence for the day. More details to follow but meanwhile, checkout these cakes!

Also
Date TBC for a Saturday book signing in the gorgeous, The Little Ripon Bookshop

Date TBC for a Saturday book signing @ Harrogate Waterstones, very recently refurbished and now with its own café over-looking the high street. I'm hoping I might be based in there…

Do let me know if you're interested in attending any of the events so I can get excited! 

Meanwhile, a very happy new year to you all :) 

De-junking

I don’t do New Year's Resolutions. I've spoken before about how September generally feels more like a fresh start to me; the time to make changes for the better. In January I'm Resolutely Not Making Resolutions, I'm usually exhausted and too full of Christmas cake to do little more than tidy up.

I start teaching creative writing again tomorrow after a year away. I admit, I'm nervous. I was a big sufferer of chemo brain. It's a recognised but misleading medical term as it makes the condition sound quite cuddly and appealing. It isn't. This lack of cognitive function made my pregnancy brain look like Einstein's and the inability to remember the next word in my sentence, or even the theme of the conversation, lost its novelty very quickly. Sadly, I've yet to completely banish chemo brain to the past. Of course, writers tend to be good with words and ask erudite questions. Will I stand in front of my students and wonder what the question was? It would be good to remember what I was doing there, standing in front of a group of adults in the library of a secondary school, otherwise the two hour class is going to seem a very long time for all of us.

My usual solution in this type of situation is to over-prepare. However, this is harder to do these days as I don't have as many hours to play with. My Larkism was a wonderful experiment which turned into a very manageable reality, providing ten extra hours a week. Alas, the cancer fighting world took a dim view of my elected insomnia which knocked that little idea on the head.

So, the only hours I now have are the pre-midnight, post sunrise ones and I could fill each of those twice over. Couldn't everybody?

I can't decide whether I'm not very good at time management or whether it's just tricky juggling lots of jobs, any one of which can mushroom at any time and edge the others out of the question. It's a bit of both, I imagine. Whatever the reason, I decided that to free up some time I had to de-junk. And that meant clearing my mind as well as the rooms in the house.

* I threw out everything to do with cancer. If I need it again, that will be the least of my worries. There were shopping bags full of it – leaflets, redundant letters I was supposed to drop off at the GP (Sssh!) and tips and tricks for dealing with treatments - much of it duplicated information. It was helpful at the time, comforting also, but an obstacle later.

* I had this great idea back in the new-born days of emailing that I would have separate email addresses so that when I was working on one job, I wouldn’t be distracted by an email pertaining to another. This evolved into a separate email address for editing, writing and submitting, teaching, my little business, PA work for my husband, public paranoia (for the likes of Facebook, Google+ and Twitter, an address which wasn't allowed to come within a mile of my bank account details) and life (shopping and friends). My phone, infuriatingly, even after several calls to helplines across the world, as well as visits to that fruit shop in various cities, wouldn't send emails from all those addresses and thus I'd be forced to send some emails from the wrong account. It was carnage. Understandably, not everybody could remember which email address was assigned to them and thus would send me a message in sevenlicate. Every day I would spend several trips to my phone and pc to delete the excess and I'm sure the amount of time spent in this futile pursuit added up to hours every week.

So, I moved all my work and personal emailing to one address. The shopping and paranoia ones remain but have been removed from my phone so I have to visit them specifically.

* I unsubscribed to every junk email provider. It took a little adjustment at first, not receiving ten emails every few minutes. But I reminded myself that the lovely people at Wiggle, although with the potential to add warmth and happiness, were not really my friends (or colleagues) and would still be there if I needed them.

* I splashed out. I bought myself a large desk calculator. It's purple, you'd love it. Now I don’t have to do the accounts on my phone. It saves time and an inordinate amount of stress not having to re-key in a multi-layered addition because my pointer finger was too large for the button and typed the ninth entry incorrectly. It's a small thing, not the calculator, that's large, but I do think that removing the little bug bears in life goes a great way to sorting out the grizzlies.

* This next item is a work in progress. I threw out all the plastic pots which had lost their lids. Now when I need a box with a lid, I can find it. I shredded three box files of tax returns and all the paperwork which goes with them from the early millennium. I decided that if the tax man visited and was disappointed not to find them, I'd probably get away with a slapped wrist rather than a prison sentence. And it means that the information which I do need more regularly than in a blue moon, is now much more accessible. I removed the half eaten bags of nuts and dried fruit from the kitchen cupboard and transferred them into neatly labelled, recycled jam jars. The order pleases me (I do like to be grown up sometimes) and now I don't waste time clearing up spilt food or arrive home from the supermarket to realise that the three bags of pine nuts were an unnecessary purchase. Once I'd sorted the dried food, I felt compelled to move on to the baking accessories and food colouring. I have learnt that opened packets of fondant icing do not survive from one birthday cake to the next, even when wrapped in foil and popped in a plastic bag. OK, I probably knew this before but pre the de-cluttering, I was ever hopeful. The bench seat in the kitchen filled with felt tipped pens, paints and tissue paper from a pre-Instagram age, is next.

Honestly? Forget the New Year diet, I've lost two stone.

I feel better about starting teaching again. I still worry that I'll stand up in front of the class and forget what I went there for. But now that my brain is less of a dustbin, I remember that when I have time off from any job, even for a mere two week holiday, I feel I've forgotten what I do until, oh at least two minutes back in the role.  It's interesting how over-loading on the preparation wasn't the key to feeling calmer, but de-cluttering my life – and my head – was.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Meanwhile, I'd love to hear your time-saving and de-cluttering tips – please share!