Baghdatis, the race is on!

Sometimes we’re lucky enough to experience a day which we know we’ll remember forever. Yesterday, with my centre court ticket for Wimbledon in my hot little hand, this was that day for me.

After hitting a ball relentlessly against our tin garage door before progressing, much to the delight of the neighbourhood I’m sure, to the pitted, gravel courts near my grandparents and the instant game of doubles which was me and my three sisters, my love for tennis was cemented around my twelfth birthday. This was when I finally procured a racquet of my own. It was a white Slazenger with a purple handle and was Juvery of-the-moment compared to the wooden racquets loaned out at school. There wasn’t a speck of steel or graphite and the head was only the size of a large tea plate.

I should point out here that, although an enthusiastic amateur, I don’t recall ever winning anything more significant than a hearty handshake. Even if I’d had the skill, which I didn’t, I certainly didn’t have the head for it.  ‘Don’t throw it all away now,’ the little voices would say. ‘Just don’t do a double fault for goodness sake, don’t do a double…’ Oh dear.

It didn’t matter. Tennis for me was more about meeting my friend, Rachel, at the town club (it wasn’t as grand as it sounds) and bashing the ball back and forwards over the net as we discussed our burgeoning love lives, our fast deteriorating school and the general trials and hairspray which accompanied teenagehood in The Eighties.

Lack of skill, height and hunger for the game were major contributory factors as to why my tennis never went any further but it didn’t stop me following Wimbledon on BBC2 every year, in the days when McEnroe still had the anger and the headband and Connors wasn’t stopped from jumping over the barrier to sit with the crowd while the slightly befuddled umpire attempted to sort out whatever battle of wits he’d generally started.

Yesterday, the first two matches went pretty much as the winner would have planned.  Caroline Wozniacki, the number one seed, finished off her opponent’s Wimbledon in an hour.  And Roger Federer showed us why he has won quite so many tournaments to date. Both were incredibly impressive. But it was a little like viewing a painting from an undoubtedly talented painter which you wouldn’t hang in your home; you can appreciate the skill but you’re seeing it with your eyes and not your heart.

Then came Novak Djokovic and Marcos Baghdatis. Although a fan of Djokovic (largely, and I apologise to tennis purists, because he always signs autographs and smiles when his opponent hits an unassailable winner), I found myself cheering for another seemingly nice guy, Baghdatis. Djokovic had won the first set and I didn’t want my day at Wimbledon to end any sooner than it had to.

When Baghdatis won the second, I flung my arms in the air like it was my child out there. I’d lived that second set with him, my heart pumping harder, willing the stunning rallies to continue and for Baghdatis to finally outwit Djokovic. I found myself thinking positive thoughts on his behalf.  Ranked 30 places behind Djokovic, I willed Baghdatis to tell himself that he was his equal.

And when they sat down at the end of the third set and Baghdatis was trailing two sets to one, I thought to myself that winning tennis matches at this level is a little like the battle to publication. It’s understood that tennis players have talent, it’s also true that without the self-belief and determination to go with it, they will not succeed. Assuming a writing competence, this is the same of writers who are not yet published.

‘What’s the difference between a published and an unpublished writer?’, thriller writer and witty man, JR Ellory, asked us at a writers’ conference. ‘The unpublished author gave up,’ he said.

Djokovic crashed out of Wimbledon in 2010 and vowed he’d come back better.  He changed his diet and the way he trained and an amazing year followed. I’m not sure all writers will get published who continue to submit the same rejected material - but have a re-read, act on some new feedback and chances must surely be higher.

It is hard to receive that stinging slap to the face when your baby is rejected, without rubbing the sore patch for a while. But tennis players don’t take months off.  They take a day, perhaps, but then they’re back out training, tweaking their game.

Baghdatis’ submission for the ultimate prize in tennis was rejected yesterday. He’s never yet won a Grand Slam. Many, even some close to him, will think he never will.  But nobody can influence the outcome more than Baghdatis and come the next major tournament, I know he’ll be back out there trying again.

Will Baghdatis win a Grand Slam tennis tournament? Will I get published? Marcos, the race is on.

Baghdatis, the race is on!

I'm honoured to be guest blogging over at the wonderfully versatile Thea Atkinson's blog today. I'd love you to take a wander over there to see, 'Baghdatis, The Race is On' and while you're at it, check out Thea's blog which is a great mix of thoughtful, frothy, poignant and amusing posts. http://theaatkinson.wordpress.com.  


While I was checking a few spellings today (or rather, being distracted for hours by tales of McEnroe in his angry hey-day and having a nostalgic swoon over Pat Cash) I came across this clip. Ouch! I compared tennis to getting published in my post but I'm not sure it's quite THIS painful. What do you think? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALHObkStAt0

Larkism

I’ve never been big on sleep. Generally it’s an inconvenience to be fitted as unobtrusively as possible around work and play. Don’t misunderstand me, I relish that moment when my head hits the pillow as much as the next person, I just don’t yearn to get to that point.

Mind you, I least I sleep every day. I did know a man who claimed to need so little sleep that he only closed his eyes every other night. Worse, this was pre-24 hour TV, shopping or the internet and he only liked to read biographies, which were distinctly fewer in number in those days. I do remember he had a very extensive record collection, however, and a long-suffering girlfriend who finally swapped him for a man who fell asleep the minute his bottom touched a sofa.

I put my good fortune of being an economical sleeper down to Deep Sleep. No messing about in the REM stage for me, I’m plunged into blackness within seconds and not retrieved from it until that alarm clock chimes five and a half hours later.

I’ve been a night-owl forever. My first memory of the benefits was when I read the entire copy of James and the Giant Peach in one night. I was about nine years old and my understanding parents had given me permission to read on – no torch needed. I got to turn my light off at midnight, I was so grown up. 

I remember starting my homework at 10pm and still putting in three hours before bouncing into school next day. And of course, being an owl is fantastic for parties, unless, of course, you’re the host who's ready for you to leave. 

The downside of needing little sleep is that I always push it too far. 1am is when I should go to bed. 6.30 is when I should rise but no, I can always find another blog to read as I wind down at midnight ready to log off for the day. I can tweet uninterrupted with fellow night-owls or distracted writers on the other side of the world for another half hour, prepare myself a little snack, unload a wash, scrub a pan and make some notes for tomorrow before deciding that really, I’m absolutely wide awake and at last, I have uninterrupted time to read whatever novel I have on the go. And then it’s 3am and I know that come lunch time tomorrow, my writing will be reduced to sludge.

Being a night-owl is also quite anti-social.

I remember staying at my Auntie and Uncle’s as a child and thinking it sad that my Uncle stayed up long after his wife had gone to bed, only to fall asleep, alone, in front of the test card. I remember my Dad tapping away at the typewriter keys in the early hours long after my mother was asleep and telling myself that I would never do that when I was an adult.

Hmmm.

So, in order to attempt to better align my sleep patterns with the rest of my family’s, I’ve been conducting an experiment; I’ve been trying to turn an owl into a lark. I call it Larkism. My friend, who retires at 9pm and wakes at 4, ready to run at 4.30 (which is not what I’m proposing) didn’t think it possible. We are genetically disposed to being morning or night time creatures and there’s nothing we can do to change it. I’ve tried, she said. 

Larkism requires two things: I have to go to bed before the date changes and set my alarm for five and a half hours later. My Larkism started a month ago. The first day my alarm went off at 5 and I woke with that queasy, early flight kind of feeling. My husband slept on, I could so easily have done so too. Thank goodness for tea.

Quickly I got into a routine and realised that half way through my first cup, I was feeling surprisingly sparkly. I also noticed how alert I felt when my children got up at 7am and that I knew exactly what they needed for school without having to constantly refer to notes scrawled at 2am. Having already banked a couple of hours of writing, I found I could accept a coffee invitation guilt-free without the gremlin at the back of my mind reminding me every ten minutes that it was OK, as long as I worked late tonight.

The most unlikely result has been in my productivity. Larkism has only given me a maximum of ten extra hours every week. Being an owl, often afforded me double that, or so I thought. Not so. Because in my life, to be an owl, is to be a midnight faffer. Don’t get me wrong, those first two hours preceding the bell tolling were often massively productive. Often I’d write hundreds, if not thousands of words in this time. But then I should have gone to bed.

Larkism has made me focus.

The biggest surprise, however, has been to realise that I actually like feeling tired. I like clocking off at at the end of the school day and realising that my writing day is also done. Full stop. No need to think about how much work I might possibly be able to fit in later because I’ve done enough; I’ve made progress. And I love the fact that having been up since 5am, at 11pm I am tired, like a normal person, and it’s time to go to bed. I suppose, like babies, I’m enjoying the routine.

Nobody is more surprised than me to admit that Larkism is working. I’m told the biggest test will be when those mornings get dark and cold. I’m determined to continue. I’ll keep you posted.

So, are you a lark or an owl? Could you change and would you want  to?

The Embarrassment of Living

A few months ago I spent a happy half hour musing about the blogs I follow and deciding on the bloggers who, in my considered opinion, were most deserved recipients of my Stylish Blogger Award.

I spent the next week, however, cringing about those blogs I’d plain and simply forgotten, praying, for once, that nobody would read my blog. Alas, it had the most page views ever at the time and the post is still ranked third most popular of my 37 posts to date. Typical.

So it was with great delight that I learnt that the lovely, Shawna Railey had presented me with another Stylish Blogger Award. Delighted, partly because I love getting awards, but also because it gives me a second chance to do the job properly. I apologise in advance for any fantastic blogs I miss this time; to those authors I say, it isn’t you, it’s my ageing brain cells. 

The rules state that I have to share seven random facts about myself with you. I’d love to pretend that I did all that last time but in truth, I shied away then as well, started waxing on instead about various landmark moments in my life, generally printed large on my psyche for all the wrong reasons. I tried to follow the rules this time, I really did, but I have to admit, even my mind started wandering around point two which didn’t bode well for the rest of the list.  I started thinking instead about the plethora of embarrassing incidents in my life - self-embarrassment is the one thing I’m exceptionally good at.  It would appear that I embarrass myself on average once a week and the older I get, the bigger the incident seems to be.

OK.

I struggle with my hearing. There are certain frequencies I can’t hear and some sounds which I don’t hear clearly. So it doesn’t matter how loud somebody shouts, if I can’t make out the individual sounds, there’s nothing raised decibels can do about it.  To save mine and the interlocutor’s unease, I find myself guessing, a lot. 

Standing proudly in front of my stand at an exhibition, our patron, HRH Princess Anne approached and we all performed our practiced curtseys and remembered in which order to say, Your Highness, Ma’am etc.  Princess Anne asked me a question. To this day I don’t know what the question was. I really couldn’t hear. Once I’d asked for a second time and was none the wiser, I drew on my, often reliable, sixth sense to decide between the affirmative and negative in response.  Yes, I said. Alas the correct answer was clearly no. I say, ‘clearly’ because HRH Princess Anne screwed up her face into a look of disgust and asked incredulously, ‘Do you really think that sludge, blooo, wahhh…?’ I couldn’t hear that either.  I shook my head; of course I didn’t think that! The wonderful Chief Exec of the charity for which I then worked followed behind, grinned inanely and winked at me. I think I just about got away with it, however, I never mentioned it to him, nor him to me.

Around the same time, (the more I think about it, my twenties must have been particularly excruciating) the conductor wanted to see my train ticket. The train was packed.  I took my purse out of my bag and out with the purse came a bunch of tampons. The incident alone wouldn’t have ranked worthy of a note on this page in the face of such stiff and substantial competition, more the fact that the conductor, bless him, set about picking up the said tampons as they rolled down the carriage much to the amusement of every single passenger. I would have been quite happy simply to glance away from the scene, feigning ignorance as to the source of the tumbling tampons, however the kind conductor retrieved every one, it would appear, and placed the pile on the table in front of me. And then he checked my ticket. 

I should add that I was going through a stage of blushing for the smallest of reasons. Sometimes I’d go red and didn’t even know the source of the blush.  I do remember turning a sort of deep violet colour on this occasion, so forceful was it, it actually caused my face to sweat.

Otherwise, inconsequential incidents take on a certain gravitas when performed in front of a new boyfriend’s parents, I find.  I break glasses frequently, my family barely even notice any more and I certainly don’t remember every breakage. However, the crystal glass which disintegrated in my hands as I performed my first every washing up stint during my first ever meeting with my boyfriend, now husband’s, parents makes me wince just thinking about it. I realised quite how expensive the glass was when my mother-in-law-to-be did her absolute best to say that it really didn’t matter but no words actually came out, just a sort of painful smiling grimace.

There are other boyfriend ones. I do remember for some inexplicable reason, falling off the pavement into the road as the whole school trooped down the road to church when I was about 13, right at the feet of Chris, my new ‘love’. Our relationship didn’t last long after that, in fact, I don’t believe we ever spoke again.  Teenage embarrassment is really hard to top, isn’t it!

I’ll stop there.  Will you share any with us? Go on, please, we'll keep it to ourselves...  

Many thanks to Shawna for the award. You can see Shawna’s blog over at http://sycamoremeadows-myjourney.blogspot.com. Her award acceptance speech is great! I like the way she also studiously avoids any mention of random facts about herself. J

Here’s my list of great blogs to follow. Please take a look and for you five proud bloggers, here are the rules:

1. Thank the person who gave you the award and link back to them in your post.
2. Tell us 7 things about yourself.
3. Award 5 recently discovered great bloggers.
4. Contact these bloggers and let them know they have won!

http://www.worldper.com/the_world_according_to_webb

www.­emmashortt.­blogspot.­com

http://www.tglong.com/blog/

http://lleighproductions.blogspot.com/

http://lauraoutoftheblue.wordpress.com/

http://theaatkinson.wordpress.com

http://ibc4.wordpress.com/

Ooops, was it meant to be only five? Silly me…

Four adults and a baby.

Litopia, a fantastic site for unpublished and published writers looking for feedback and support, was seeking blog posts on the theme of holidays and I just found myself writing about this.  Would love to hear your own experiences...

Four adults. Check! Nine litres of water, eight nappies, three different factor suncreams and a ten month old. Check! Our descent down the Grand Canyon had begun.

Our baby bounced happily at my husband’s shoulders in her rucksack – not just any old rucksack, you understand, “Made in Canada,” my husband boasted. “They know how to make them there.”

We were very proud. So advanced was this baby rucksack that we could adjust it to fit vertically challenged me and vertically gifted hubbie. The straps didn’t rub and the back panel repelled the sweat. And this was when materials didn’t wick away perspiration.  This was 1999 when the only repellents we’d heard of were bad breath and hairy nostrils.

It was hot.

It was OK to take a ten month down the Grand Canyon, we’d assured ourselves, the key was simply to make sure that she was constantly hydrated. Nine litres of water should cover it; perhaps there’d even be a drop or too left over for the rest of us. My husband did question the eight nappies but I reminded him how we found out that the dypers we’d been buying in America were the same in name only to our trusted British brand of nappies - when faced with a wee- infused hired car seat a mere coo and a cuddle after a previous change.

Did I mention it was hot? Stifling, to be precise. My otherwise wonderfully laid-back husband has been known to get a little grumpy in extreme heat and he looked slightly uncomfortable.

“I can carry the rucksack,” I insisted, to which the other three chorused that I wasn’t allowed on account of being pregnant.

“Let me take her,” said Paul.

I should point out here that our friend, Paul, is now a doting father of two beautifully brought up girls and has done his fair share of changing nappies, wiping noses and feeding. At the time, however, he had a phobia: babies’ muck. It was a proper phobia; almost putting him off having children. He could do holding, cuddling and playing but he couldn’t do dirty faces or, God forbid, smelly bottoms. 

However, when our baby was rested, fed and nappy unnecessarily changed, he happily threw her and her state of the art rucksack onto his back.

We were a quarter of a way in. It was getting hotter. The sun was an elongated star right up above us, the air was dry and the orange dust of the path was hitting the back of our mouths.

We took another water break. Our first born was happily flicking her squeaky smurf on a rope back and forth, Sally and I were marvelling, hubbie was enthusing  about the experience despite it being 20 degrees hotter than his sensitive body would generally choose.

“Are you sure you’re alright?” I asked Paul.

“No problem,” he answered, agreeing that the rucksack was truly a work of engineering genius; he could hardly tell he’d got it on.

“You’re so hot though,” I persisted. “There’s sweat dripping down the back of your legs.” Paul claimed it was a mystery. He wasn’t generally a sweaty boy, even playing football, it didn’t spray off him as it did now. We concluded that the body must cope differently when you descend in heat rather than when you ascend a mountain and the air gets cooler.

We set off for the next stop where, it had been decreed, hubbie would take over responsibility for our baby again. 

We didn’t get that far.

“Mate, your shorts are absolutely drenched.  We’ll swap at the nearest opportunity,” hubbie ordered.  We found a secluded area just to the side of the path and huddled together. It wasn’t a designated stop, more a shelf in the orange dust.  

“Oh that’s gross,” Sally said, as Paul removed the rucksack to reveal a yellow edged stain covering his pale t-shirt and sand coloured shorts.

“Mate, you stink!” My husband likes to say it as it is.

“It’s not his fault.” I felt guilty.

I think that was the point when hubbie and I looked at each other and tried unsuccessfully to stifle great guffaws of laughter. Paul, with his aversion to all baby bodily fluids, hadn’t sweated at all, not even a bead. Our baby had simply excreted nine litres of baby wee all down his back, seemingly bi-passing any nappy-type protection en route.

Paul shivered a little, lifted the offending shirt away from his back and pushed out his stomach to keep the offensive material away from the concave this created. We all rushed to his assistance, wiping all visible skin with baby wipes.

“You know,” he said to hubbie, “I will let you carry her now.”

Oxygen Tank

Through the wonderful world of Twitter, I met Thea Atkinson recently who writes psychological and historical thrillers with a deep and dark exploration into the human spirit. She has no less than five novels published on Kindle available at Amazon, BN, Kobo, Diesel and Smashwords. 

We decided to ‘guest post’ on each other’s blogs and Thea’s going first. Please take a look at her thought provoking musings on ageing – you’ll be digging out your photo albums!  You can read Thea’s own blog and find out more about her books at http://theaatkinson.wordpress.com/ 

Me, I’m guest blogging over there on 13^th June but I’ll remind you before then, don’t worry…

The ever-present hum of an oxygen machine fills in conversational gaps as Stan, a retired light keeper, and I sit in the bedroom he calls home. I sit on his bed holding his photo album while he and a small black poodle occupy the Lazy Boy chair. The summer sun hasn't yet set past the one window that filters light in on both of us. Even in the limited daylight, he looks weary, aged more than his cropped, white hair should allow.

We've both lived in the same community our entire lives: one historically dependent on fishing for survival. While he experienced our hometown through whatever light his small beacon managed, I've grown up in an age where every house has at least one car, one television set, and a phone that can easily call for pizza delivery.

I know my town has a history. That's why I've come; I fancy I can capture Stan's stories before they're lost. He catches me off guard by telling me about a circus ship that caught fire here in the harbour.

As he describes the event, the noise of the animals, the licking of the flames against the wooden hull, he struggles to pull in air from the oxygen tank and I imagine the elephants, the lions, the tigers onboard doing the same. 

I wonder how something so extraordinary could pass through a few decades and become an unknown entity to a new generation. A bit of history disappearing like condensed breath. I wonder what else I don't know....what I've forgotten.

As he drags in a breath and the oxygen machine gives a metallic exhale, he strokes the poodle curled on his lap. We look at his pictures of the town’s past. Besides being faded and brown, they're unfamiliar. Almost all of them are of boats. I point to one in particular, and he fumbles to take it from between its plastic sleeves. It's of his father's vessel, from when he ran passengers from Killam's wharf down to the MarkLand Hotel.

I know Killam's wharf; I've walked it. I replace his photo with an image of my own. I walk in my mind, over its wooden slats and smell the salty air. I remember standing beside the recent gazebo addition during SeaFest celebrations. Strains of popular music filter into the image from the memory of the live band that played. It's a good memory, a recent one. But it was with the knowledge that the historic property wasn't always historic. Once it was practical.

And what of the hotel he mentions--one that had to be reached by boat. I think of the main hotel now -- Rodd's Grand. An image creeps into my head of the red brick shell, the exterior, electronic marquee, the dining room bustling with waitresses hurrying to serve coffee. I think of the bar just around the corner from the dining area and the popular music it plays. Those images flip through my thoughts like Stan's photos, faded yet present.

He shows me the CNR station from July 28, 1916, tells me how the circus sometimes came by train and that he would jump in the dorey and row up underneath the station to watch them unload the animals.

Ah, yes. The train station. I study the photo and the odd look of it because the people are dressed differently. My mind takes me to the station of my youth and it overlays the photo of a station past. I traveled to University many times by train. The station of my day offered travel by bus too, and I'd expected a terminal like in the movies--with rows of seats, luggage everywhere. It turned out to be a cubbyhole. But it still had that sense of impending change--at least, for a young girl who got homesick just standing there waiting to leave town and family.

A few years back, they tore that station down, put up a Wendy's and Tim Horton's. Of course, to honor the era before, they styled the restaurant after an old-time train terminal.

Although I try to keep up with Stan and the shots he shows me, I can't help mentally wandering through my town, through my childhood, my present, and comparing it to his.

My Yarmouth has cars in every driveway. I realize his boyhood home had no driveway. He'd lived in a tiny lighthouse on a bit of land on the edge of an island: the Bug Light, it was called, remote enough to require dorey travel because it was dependent on the tides.

I think of how I hate to get into my car in the dead of winter and wait until the engine heats up enough to blow warm air onto my frigid fingers. I don't want to think of living in a beacon so small its only well for water in the winter is the dorey that caught snow as it fell.

The photos spark something within me. As my memory travels the main street, ducking into the drugstore, the magazine shop, Stan continues to flip his pictures. He's meandering down the path of memory, pulling me along with him through sepia images.

Stan mentions ships powered by sail. There are photos of schooners from the '30s loaded with salt and coal. I'd never before imagined that town supplies would come by boat. There are delivery trucks for that. He talks of lighting the darkness with kerosene, banging on bells to warn the boats.

If I close my eyes and pretend I'm not sitting in an ever-darkening room with the noise of an oxygen machine, I can actually begin to imagine a stormy coast lit by a red light. If I let my memory slip back to my childhood, I can actually hear the foghorn. At least we have that in common: remembering the long-abandoned horn.

I suppose technology has improved things, saved lives, but I miss the horn. It occurs to me that I never realized it had stopped calling to the fog until just now.

I try to jigsaw together his pieces of history, his photos, into my present and sometimes into my recent past. Sometimes it's easy. Other times, I shake my head in disbelief

My hometown bustles with impatience; it can't wait to grow into a city's shoes. His Yarmouth is younger than mine, it's a town made possible by a pinprick of light through foggy darkness. And yet, our community is the same community. Mine exists because of his.  

The sun sets further. The brief orange light against the wall has changed to a dull gray. It matches my mood. I feel I've lost something and only just rediscovered it. Stan is oblivious. He flips page after page. Photos move like a mini movie, but disjointed and silent.

The poodle stirs. I realize I've been sitting hunched over myself far too long, trying to make out faded photographs and the cadence of his words through the rhythmic inhale and exhale of his machine. I stretch. So does the dog. It peers through pebble eyes at the man whose white hair contrasts so nicely with the darkness of the room. Stan adjusts the tubes that supply his lungs with oxygen.

Through the guise of photos, I have been given a lesson. I've learned that this, my present, will one day be my past. I want to savor it. I want to breathe in Yarmouth, as he does, and capture it.

Flowers

Still in my pyjamas, ironing school uniform and admiring the precise angle on which last night’s left over washing-up had been stacked tight in the sink, I heard the doorbell. It was 7.30am.  I suspected it would be one of my eldest’s daughter’s friends at the door, asking with a text-book politeness whether we had any porridge oats for the domestic sciences’ flapjack baking later or nail varnish remover for fear of those pink, chipped nails attracting a negative.

But it was better than that, sweethearts that my daughter’s friends are, it was a tiny woman carrying an enormous bouquet of flowers. They were mainly gerberas, happy flowers, I call them; my favourites.  I really didn’t deserve any but gosh, I’d welcome them with open arms.

‘Thank you,’ I said. “You shouldn’t have!’ Granted, it wasn’t my wittiest line but I hadn’t yet had my three cups of tea.  The lady didn’t even flinch, merely continued to search for something in the delivery note.  “Can’t believe they’re for me,” I tried again.  It was a rhetorical question really, my husband not being prone to receiving mysterious bunches of flowers and my children also yet to discover the delights.

The small lady didn’t speak, simply shook her head. ‘They’re for number ten, will you take them for her?’ she asked eventually, more than a little gruffly.

“Oh, right,” I said, “Didn’t think I’d done anything to …”

“Is that alright then?” she asked again.  “I’ve got loads of deliveries this morning,” and thrust a pen and flimsy note into my hand to be signed.

I did take the flowers.  Miranda at number ten was very happy to receive them.  She gave me a single gerbera for my troubles which now has pride of place in an especially rinsed milk bottle on my kitchen window sill.

As I walked back over the road, I thought about the delivery person who was clearly having A Bad Day.  Part of the flower giving is surely to complete the process of making the recipient feel special, rather than wondering why they bothered to get up that morning.  And I decided that, whilst I’d hate to criticise when untold disasters could have befallen the lady before she left her house, there are certain jobs where Bad Days are not allowed and delivering flowers is probably one of them.  Grumpy holiday rep? Not what you signed up to.  Presenters? There’s only one way Chris Evans is getting out of bed at 4 every morning. I’d think I’d feel short changed if the midwife had delivered my babies into my arms and spoken about how fed up she was with the awful place the world was, these days.  And then there are motivational speakers. You never see them in a bad mood, chance would be a fine thing.

Thankfully, I have a job where I can get away with being incredibly grumpy.  I can be absolutely foul to myself and nobody but the study walls and the pc needs to know.  In fact, I’m quite regularly terribly rude to my computer but that’s another story.

How about you? Can you get away with your smile slipping?  Or do you have to wait until you get home for it to droop a little?

Hustle

I’m not very good at watching TV.  Don’t get me wrong, I wish I was, my general knowledge might not be quite so woeful and I might be able to join in conversations about Peter Andre and, errrm, Oojimeflop without being three partners behind.  My problem is that my mind wanders unless a programme is totally enthralling: I am sitting down, the voices in my head point out, and yet I haven’t put the washing on; the ironing basket is exploding and that chapter won’t write itself.  Your choice, the voices shout, but every night you don’t write, is a night further away from publication. 

Before I leave you in total awe of my unfailing dedication to duty and domesticity, I should point out that there are many distractions I manage very well without a single thought for the dishes in the sink.  Just not TV. 

Unless it’s Hustle. 

Hustle is the one programme which entertains me like a book.  It requires single-minded concentration - drift away from that world for a moment and you’ve lost the plot.  The characters are so quirkily intelligent and far-fetched yet strangely down to earth and likeable, their scams are so obvious when revealed, yet so baffling before.

What I never imagined, was that I would have the starring role in an episode of Hustle.

Alas, I haven’t had any contact with the rather gorgeous, Adrian Lester but I have been scammed.  I haven’t lost any money, as I’ve had my £300 returned, but I am a little red-faced.  And my children have delighted in reminding me what I have tried to teach them about who to trust on the net.

I’ve started renting out a property in Slovakia.  I’m a rookie to the business but the hope is that it will eventually increase my current paltry addition to the household income. In short, a company persuaded me to advertise with them.  I paid my £149 for the year and four weeks later, they took another £149 from my credit card. I noticed, the bank investigated and retrieved it. I was lucky. 

Had I heard of the company? No I hadn’t. Was I taken in by the fancy headed paper of the contract, the spurious webpage they made for me, their spiel? Oh yes, yes, yes.  What was I thinking? This particular company are a private holiday letting company, run as a perk for service men, including the police, their particularly slick agent informed me. So, pleasant, reliable people, they know I’ll be thinking. Just the kind of people I’d like to stay in the house – not that I deal in stereotypes, of course. 

Did I google the company? Yes I did.  Did I research under their correct name or the name they’d invented a few days earlier? Ah!  Oh.

I didn’t even follow my gut instincts. I just wasn’t sure initially, I didn’t like being called out of the blue.  But the lack of push from the salesman, and the guarantee that I’d have a second year’s free membership if I didn’t manage a rental in the whole twelve months, persuaded me that it didn’t matter, I had nothing to lose.

I can feel my twelve year old tutting over my shoulder as I write.  Haven’t I learnt anything in my 42 years?  Little of use, would be my answer. I can’t even think who Peter Andre’s going out with. I’ve just tried to google it, but will admit to being none the wiser. 

Have you been hustled? Tell me! I won't laugh...

That Mobile Phone

It was my baby’s 11th birthday this week. No, don’t leave! I’m not going to talk about her, my pregnancy or, God forbid, her birth – not even the £247 taxi ride (paid for by my husband’s then employer) to get back to Leeds from London to be there when his second child arrived, a little unexpectedly, three weeks early.

When we were buying her birthday present together, her first phone, I couldn’t help smiling at the difference between phones now and in the year 2000. Remember the Nokia 5110? Everyone had one! The chic, slightly sparkly, sturdy silver case, the discrete aerial merely peeking over the top, those eye shaped buttons, angled for easy access and yet no camera, no downloads and certainly no wi-fi. They stayed charged for a week, probably because you never used them and they never rang because nobody wanted to call you on your mobile, goodness only knows how much it would cost.


We had a Nokia 5110, back then, and for years after. It was The Mobile. ‘Are you taking the mobile?’ we’d call to each other, hoping that the other partner’s need for it wasn’t as great. The evening before my daughter’s birth my husband had taken the mobile, making me promise that I would call him if there was an emergency. I was poorly, I had terrible gastroenteritis. The next day it was worse, I couldn’t even lift the spoon to feed my daughter. Well, I could, but I had to place it back on the tray to gather strength before lifting it again.


My friend arrived, ordered me to bed, fed, bathed and read to my eldest and came to say good bye. We had a little chat, she pointed out that the particularly bad pains seemed to be coming regularly, seemingly about every two minutes. She said that we should ring my husband. Back to the Nokia 5110. ‘I can only ring him if it’s an emergency,’ I said. My friend looked at me. ‘And of course it will be turned off during the speeches.’ £247, four hours later, he was home. We went to hospital, our baby was born.


It’s this, ‘of course’ which tickles me; a graphic picture of how our lives have changed. Of the 200 delegates, my husband’s was the only phone which rang during the speeches that evening. Only when word had filtered around the room for the reason for the call, did the looks of disdain soften.


I couldn’t imagine being at a business function today and turning off my phone. What if somebody wanted to arrange the next social occasion, my child’s temperature was raised or, let’s face it, a publisher was desperate to speak to me about my novel?


And yet we did manage didn’t we? With the mobile firmly ignored in his pocket, my husband probably had more quality conversations in that single evening than he’d have in three now, because he had people’s full attention and they had his. People still managed to communicate. The message that his wife was in labour certainly got round. All sorts of unlikely people were pooling their suggestions as to which of the trains, planes and automobiles would get him home quickest.


I’m not sure, however, that today’s phone culture is a totally retrograde step. Yes, it annoys me when people answer their phone when they are being served in a shop, picking up a prescription, being served in a bank. It’s just rude isn’t it: disrespectful? However, I pack friends, family, sport and work into most days because organisation of it is so quick and easy. I like the fact that my daughter chose to text me from school to tell me she’d had her first ‘neg’ (that's a bad thing) and that holidays with my sisters in America, Switzerland and South Wales are all being organised in snatches via email from my phone waiting for the kettle to boil.


It is, like so many things, all about moderation I say to my youngest when we discuss mobile etiquette in the Buxton household. She smiles when I say that it is not acceptable to look at your phone when other people are talking to you. ‘I know that,’ she says. My other daughter’s ears prick up when I suggest that there are times of day when the phone needs to be off, such as homework time or during meals. ‘You don’t need to tell us this, Mum,’ she points out. She looks me straight in the eye, her phone I notice, hasn’t left her bag since she got home from school. ‘Remember the questionnaire?’ she asks.


Ah yes. It was about concentration. Would your child be able to manage without her phone for the whole day, was one of the questions. I answered that she would, most definitely. Same question to me. No, I wouldn’t, I was forced to respond.

Newspaper Round

Today , I went running.  There, I’ve said it. I don’t like to admit to it too often as it perpetuates the myth that I do have some extra time when I could be cleaning.  But now I have, I’ll tell you that that there was a frost on the ground and a clear blue sky.  There wasn’t a car on the road and the birds were singing to me. It’s what I class as perfect running conditions. 

I exaggerated about the cars on the road, there was a tiny yellow van which kept passing me, pulling up ahead, then overtaking me again later.  Generally I run in another place, populated with a  great deal of fairies and abstract thinking but I did take a glance back into reality to see what significance this yellow van held to my sunny day in March.  It was a newspaper delivery van.

I thought about this van and decided that delivering newspapers in a motor vehicle was not very environmentally friendly. I suspect this may have been an electric vehicle which is highly commendable and as soon as they introduce gas pumps on street corners within 50 miles in all directions of my home and take a nought off the sale price, I’ll be first in the queue for one.  But nonetheless, nobody could claim an electric car to be as environmentally friendly as going on foot or even by bike.

I ran over the hump-backed bridge, onwards to the half-way point.  There it was again: the yellow van.  Where have all the newspaper boys and girls gone, I asked myself.  Some would say that teenagers won’t do menial jobs anymore and that all they’d do anyway is sling a bag of fliers over the hedge.  I would be inclined to think that teenagers, in this case, like every other teenage generation before them, were being given a raw deal.  

I suspect there would be the odd delivery person who would cast their sack of fliers and free newspapers over the wall and have the job ‘done’ in a fraction of the time.  I suspect this because there were people who did that when I was a teenager in the eighties.  Given half the chance, the next generation of teenagers would be doing that too. 

But not all of them.  And, if my experience of today’s teenagers is anything to go by, not many of them.  They’re desperate for work.  Some of the traditional routes to a bit of cash have been barred to them.  Babysitting jobs are being snapped up by those in their mid-twenties, back from their degree courses, earning the minimum wage if they’re lucky and living back with their parents while they look for something better.  Traffic has increased, as has an unhealthy response to health and safety and where once our offspring would have cycled to their place of pocket money, they are no longer allowed to so.  Thus, unless their parents can drive them or public transport operates in the hours they wish to work, they can’t.

I realise the newsagent has to make money and I can’t expect him/ her to single-handedly attempt to rescue our youth from pocket money poverty but is he (forgive me, it’s just simpler to stick to ‘he’) really better off?  Let’s forget the environment for a moment.  The van will have cost a few thousand pounds, as will the fuel, insurance and maintenance. Then there’s the driver to pay.  Would two or three newspaper boys and girls really cost more than that every week? And would it be really so difficult to find the ones disposing of great sacks of media and release them of their employment? Surely it needs little more than a spot check now and again.

And the paid for newspapers would look after themselves: Mrs D Mail would only miss her paper a couple of times before calling to check its whereabouts.

In my experience, people too lazy to do a proper job are generally too lazy to work out a covert defensive strategy.  When I was growing up, we knew exactly where the delivery people used to abandon their wares, it was in the same place every week, over the back wall and into the compost pile (her family were very forward thinking) of Christabel’s garden.  By the way, I lived in Northumberland, Christabel was nowhere near as proper as she sounds.

As I reached the half-way point and turned back towards home, I waved at the driver of the yellow van, we’d smiled at each other so often on route, somebody had to move the relationship on.  He was of around retirement age and I felt guilty for a moment for depriving of him of his job, albeit only in my imagination, so I switched back to being practical.  Why couldn’t the job be open to all – a set fee for delivery of all items?  The job would then be open to all individuals of all ages to carry out in the manner they saw fit.

The final time I passed the parked van, the delivery person was inside and wound down his window.  “You’re making me feel tired,” he said.

 “It’s much more fun than it looks,” I replied and laughed to myself.  While I’d been running, he’d delivered only to those houses on my route.  He’d have been just as quick to put on a pair of trainers and a ruck sack and his health and the environment would have been better for it.  He’d be even quicker on a bike. If he’d wanted to walk, he could, surely, he’d just take longer which would be his prerogative: these kind of things are always paid by the job rather than the hour. 

Staggeringly, the way fuel prices have risen lately, for the price of a single tank of fuel, his employer could furnish him with a decent pair of trainers.  I rest my case.  Go newspaper boys and girls! Stand up and be counted!

Hush Down Cobwebs

My friend has just had her fourth baby.  I wouldn’t say I was broody but my twelve year old and I did have a great time in Mamas and Papas cooing at the new-borns lying in their prams, with their serene faces and arms up in the air, as we searched for the perfect gift.  No, I’m not broody.  Did I mention their white bonnets and their tiny fingernails? No, really, I’m fine.   

Needless to say, we went in with the intention of buying some practical babygro’s and came out with an impractical, fabric pram toy sporting numerous educational hangy things including our absolute favourite, the vibrating bee. 

Writing the card I remembered the final verse of a poem I’ve been inflicting on new parents ever since I received it with great relief after the birth of my first, the aforementioned twelve year old.   I think it’s called Babies Don’t Keep but can’t find an author on the internet.  Please excuse me if I should know the poet’s name.

On sight of second babies and beyond, however, I do admit to doctoring this poem to suggest that it’s actually acceptable not to coo, rock, play and chat with your baby sometimes, such as when you have to put on your shoes to protect your feet from the un-hoovered carpet or open the fridge door in private for fear of the forgotten cheese broadcasting your slovenliness.

I’ve decided that the poem can teach writers something too as novels are not vastly dissimilar to babies.  As everyone’s who’s ever attempted to write a novel knows (or has been in the unfortunate position of supporting somebody in their attempt) it all starts as your cherished secret, bursts into your life, swamps it, grows and gains its unique personality, giving you immense pleasure whilst driving you to complete distraction.  But most of all, there’s nothing you wouldn’t do to see that baby flourish. 

So, here it is, a little changed again.  Many thanks, Anon:

I hope that my book looking back on today

Remembers a writer who had time to write.
Books get published while we are not looking

There’ll be time enough for cleaning and cooking.

So hush down cobwebs, dust to go sleep

I’m writing my baby and stories don’t keep.

Sloth Week

One week every month, my friend has Slops Week.  This is when she and her family eat up whatever’s in the cupboards. They don’t go shopping at all.  It’s like Ready Steady Cook every night.  I don’t think I’m disciplined enough to install that in our house but it did start me thinking about having a Sloth Week or rather, a more upmarket version:  a homemade Writer’s Retreat.

I should tell you what has driven me to this.

Almost a year ago I started blogging because the ever lovely and multi-talented Jane Alexander told me I should.  Well, Jane and a myriad of other people told me to.  I’d heard, too often to ignore, that a book can be brilliant but if the writer does not appear to have a platform for that book, nor be open to help in its promotion, agents and publishers will be loathe to take him/ her on.  Scary.  So I started blogging and actually, I love posting (you get to write about things that have tickled or interested you and you lovely people read it – it’s great!)  So thank you, Jane.  Then I was told about Facebook for the same reason.  And then came Twitter and suddenly the minutes I spent on social networking were turning into hours. 

It doesn’t seem like that, you understand.  I tweet by the kettle, when I’m waiting to pick up my children, while I’m running the bath.  But the trouble is, I used to do other things in that time.   

I’ve never been good at single tasking.   A boiling kettle is just enough time to get a pile of black washing into the machine.  Three minutes, that’s how long you should leave the tea bag in the mug without stirring before retrieving and adding milk, I once read, and it works for me – I can hang an entire wash on the drier in that time.  Dishwasher needs loading? Give me one baked potato in the microwave and it’s sorted.  Crumbs threatening to take over the kitchen?  I can get that swept in the time it takes me to call for a balance from the bank.  Come to think of it, the time you have to wait sometimes, I could sweep the whole house.

These things still have to be done, alas.

I’ve met some wonderful people through social networking and hardly a day goes by when I don’t see some link to a great writing site or titbit of information from my Facebook and Twitter sources.  However, it has to move down the priority list.  I have to do it outside of work hours.

This is the same for cleaning and cooking and putting away clothes and washing clothes and paying bills and changing beds and hoovering, and organising holidays and filling out forms and, OK, you get the picture.  I will do these things but outside of writing hours.

Sloth week, my homemade Writers’ Retreat, starts on Monday.  This is the plan, it’s very simple: 9.30 – 3.30 is writing time. 

No Twitter, no Facebook, no popping over to the blog to see if anyone’s dropped in, no checking website stats and no scouring my in-box for publishers desperate to sign me - which will be particularly tricky.  I don’t think I have  an addictive personality, I couldn’t  really fit it into my life, but the checking of my inbox, as I have mentioned before, is erring on the obsessive.  Even though I know that in all reality, rejections come in e-mails, signings come by phone.

Please wish me luck with Sloth Week.  Join me if you fancy, we can chat about it after 3.30!

Jackie
@jaxbees