Summer Suitcase of Six

If I can catch you before you go on your holidays, and if you’re having one of those trips where you read an entire year’s worth of books in two weeks (apologies to those who are guffawing at the prospect, with small children tugging at their ankles, the lasagne smelling just a little too cooked and the nit situation propelling itself to top evening’s priority because they’re starting to bounce) you might be interested in my Summer Suitcase of Six featured in the latest copy of Chase. 

You can view the full article here, pages 80/81 which features:

Do No Harm by Henry Marsh: perhaps not your typical beach read but the plight of the brain surgeon as much as that of his patients had me hooked.

Close of Play by PJ Whiteley: a roncom for men and cricket-loving women. Really? It works! Try it!

Until You’re Mine by Samantha Hayes: very creepy, great twist.

The Universe versus Alex Woods by Gavin Extence: wry, touching sentimentality – my favourite kind of read.

Us by David Nicholls: very funny, brilliant observation which made me laugh out loud but it’s a little soppy, too.

Flight by Isabel Ashdown: another brilliant concept from Ashdown with page-turning characters and dilemmas.Chase have two signed copies of Flight up for grabs. Email Chase with your answer to the simple question here, before the closing date of 30 August, and you’re in with a chance.

Meanwhile, what should I be reading on my holiday - being at the pleading with the children to sit down with me, rather than the ankle hanging stage of parenthood -? Recommendations welcome, please!

Glass Houses and Tidy Wardrobes

I write with some good news.

Finally, after two long years of good intentions I have finally sorted out my wardrobe – and the drawers. I’ve had half-hearted stabs at it before but this time I did A Proper Job. Phew. I feel the space. Charity shops in Harrogate are rejoicing. EBay has applied for more bandwidth.

But it isn’t that.

I have also cleared out the cupboard in the kitchen, cunningly disguised as a bench, filled as it was with an interactive memorial to my children’s younger years: un-sticky stickers, half-filled sticker books, solid pots of glue, dehydrated finger paint, lumps of tissue paper, defunct pens, plastic boxes with compartments in varying sizes - long since emptied, save for the odd pencil sharpening - pompons, half-made pompons, cardboard clothes with little tabs but lacking the bodies on which to hang them. And shoe polish which reluctantly had to stay.

But it isn’t really that. Although I will admit to lifting the lid every second time I walk past to admire my handy work.

I still have the small matter of the hooks to sew back on the blinds and some rejected bootleg jeans from the wardrobe cull which I can’t bear to part with, sitting in a pile waiting to be ‘skinny-jeaned’. Of course, the moment I’ve threaded the sewing machine, life will revert back to bootlegs (at last – with me not being of the six foot, legs which make a toilet roll tube look baggy - variety). The perennial, Sorting Out The Wi-Fi, is, of course, also on the list. I will not, repeat, will not use my blog to moan about my Wi-Fi. Suffice it to say, Orange say it works, I say it doesn’t.

Can you tell school’s out for the summer?

I’ve managed my fifteen minutes of fiction every day, bar one – a long story – and it’s proving both fun and productive. There's one little ditty, inspired by the silent passenger next to me on the train, which has morphed into 5,000 words and I’m starting to think it might make it into a novel. Exciting as that is, that isn’t what I came here to write about.

Glass Houses has been short-listed in the Retreat West First Chapter Competition. You can read more about it here. Although I am chuffed to little pieces about it, it isn’t really that either. Although we’re getting close.

Remember Urbane Publications, wonderful publisher of Tea and Chemo, due out in November? I blogged about my excitement here. Well, I am absolutely thrilled to announce that Urbane have also signed my novel, Glass Houses for publication in May 2016. We’re currently working on the cover and blurb. (I have to look behind me when I say that to check that it isn’t someone else speaking.) The idea of somebody beavering away to produce the cover of my novel just blows my mind. I’m impressed by the professionalism and dynamism of Urbane Publications, and also their book list. I also like to work with happy, enthusiastic people and this is how my contract came back to me. You can see why I'm thrilled. This is very good news, indeed!

I’ll be busy. We’re working on the final edits of Tea and Chemo now and Glass Houses will be edited at the end of the year. In theory it’s ready for the red pen already. But of course, I’ll have to have another peek before I send it off. I know what that means: a challenge to lose another 5,000 words. Some people constantly diet, I’m always trying to lose words. I apologise in advance if I venture back into recluse-dom for a while as I add, take-away, insert, amend and delete, stopping only briefly to marvel at my pristine wardrobe and sparse cupboard-cum-bench, and shake my head despairingly at the, ‘it’s not slow, no, really, it is,’ speed of my Wi-Fi.

But I’ll see you all at the launch :)

Fifteen Minutes

I haven’t written a word of fiction for six months. I’m not proud of it, not pleased about it, but there it is.

I’ve had the fairly pressing matter of my Tea and Chemo deadline to meet. 50,000 words of non-fiction are now with the publisher ready for its edit(s) and subsequent re-write(s) for publication in November - she says calmly, during a rare moment without checking her phone for the email from her editor together with its massacre of red pen, a hurricane of sighing and enough eyebrow raising to bring on a face-lift.

I’ve also been teaching, adding copious words of feedback to other people’s fiction and generally not sitting around waiting for the muse to strike. I’ve even read a tidy pile of novels, but no stories have left my own pen. I can’t remember any other period in the last fifteen years when I could say that I haven’t written any fiction for over a month, let alone six long ones.

This makes me sad. It also makes me feel a bit of a fraud: Try to write every day, I say to my classes. Exercise that writing muscle! Oil your writing brain with regular attention! It’s like the warm up before the event; means you’re ready to run a marathon as soon as you’ve tied your laces. Like anything, the more you write, the better you get. It’s like playing the piano, painting the skirting board, even doing the ironing – you weren’t born being able to do it.

Practise what you preach, my gremlins whisper.

As I watched my writing class put down their pens after their fifteen minute writing exercise today, something occurred to me. I already knew it, but seeing it played out so graphically in front of me was inspiring. I thought it might be useful to share this with you if you’re struggling to write, read, paint, phone a friend, apply for a job, complete course work, practise your serve or your music scales...

I noticed that when it comes to some things in life, fifteen minutes is quite a long time.

I’d explained the exercise to the six participants in the group. Pens and paper at the ready, I set the timer and off they scribbled. Meanwhile, I put on the kettle, gathered up the mugs from around the table, washed them up and set about making three coffees (one as it comes, one strong, one black), three teas (builders) and asked the abstainer once again if she was sure she wouldn’t partake in a beverage. Refusing a cuppa? Call herself a writer! I checked that my hand-outs were accessible for the next part of the session. They were. That took a good seventeen seconds. I handed out the drinks, rattled the biscuit box to remind participants of their whereabouts, answered a question or two on the exercise, returned the remaining clean mug of the abstainer to the cupboard, looked at the clock and told the frantic scribblers that they had two minutes left. Did I have time to use the facilities? Probably not.

My phone quacks very loudly when time is up which does tend to stop my scribes in their tracks, thus I can confidently say that fifteen minutes they were given to write and fifteen minutes they took.

How did they get on? Very well indeed. Even with a few moments at the beginning to gather their thoughts on how to approach the task, all had written more than a page of fiction. Some had written almost two. I have excessively large, illegible writing and even with my script, two pages means almost 500 words.

500 words!

There are only twice that amount in some short stories. There are only 40 times that amount in a short novella and only 160 times that in a short-ish novel. 160 lots of 15 minutes? That’s a novel in forty tiny hours.

It’s not true of course. Good novels, even first drafts of good novels, are certainly not written in forty hours, nor are the skills learned to paint a masterpiece or scales learned in one single working week. Chance would be a fine thing. We need to plan and think and practise and revise and totally change our mind and start again. But you see my point.

In fifteen minutes a day you could put on the kettle, wash a few cups, have a short conversation and make a few drinks. If you were a particularly succinct interlocutor, as was your opposite number, then you might slip in a brief visit to the toilet, too. But only that.

Or you could write two pages.

I’m not saying my washing up, tea making, snippets of conversation or even using the lavatory aren’t important to the very essence of being a happy, upstanding human being, but if we want it, really want it, there’s room in our life for both.

But, you cry, you fancy taking fifteen minutes out of your day to write a story like digging a hole and filling it in again? For writing read, two sessions of Seven A Day exercises, way too many press ups than are humanly possible, sketch a picture, do Sudoku, peel some veg, learn how to change a plug, how to use the sewing machine, read a couple of chapters, knit a few rows, mow the lawn, learn ten new words in a foreign language…

But here’s the deal: you have to be focused. Fifteen minutes is only productive if you devote it fully and unconditionally to the job in hand. Otherwise you won’t write two pages. Or sketch a picture. Or book your holiday. Otherwise you’ll just add your forgettable half-hearted attempts back onto your to-do list.

This was my last class for the summer. I have other work to do but teaching is my biggest commitment. I started my Fifteen Minute Fiction regime this afternoon. I wrote some of a short story which came to me when I was ironing months ago. It’s currently two pages of nonsense but hey, if I carry on tomorrow and the next day and the next, who knows what it will become?

So here’s my Fifteen Minute Regime: I have to write at least fifteen minutes of fiction every day. Even at the weekend. Even in a foreign country. That’s the only rule. My hope is that this daily fifteen minutes of fiction will be so engrained by the time the madness of the new term is here, that dropping it from my day would be as ludicrous as shunning the time it takes to make a cup of tea.

And that’s never going to happen.

So, will you join me? 

Gone Dark Brown

It's not blonde.

I’m not sure this will be my most profound post ever but I feel an explanation is due for this:

I made a promise and I didn’t keep it. But I have a reason and I think it’s a good one.

Let’s go back to a school trip. I forget where we were headed, but sitting near me on the bus was one of those sweet lads who all the girls love but who never has a girlfriend. I remember his name but will protect his identity by calling him Sam. Goodness knows how we got onto it but in the middle of a conversation between a group of us fifteen year olds, Sam referred to my hair as, ‘mousey’. I was stunned. I’m not sure I’d ever really named the colour of my hair before that but, ‘mousey’? Really? Like those little screechy, smelly runt of a rat type things? Beautiful brunette, you hear, blondes have more fun and all that - and hey! Who needs brain cells if you’re constantly having fun? -  but never ‘mesmerising mousey’ or ‘mouth-wateringly mousey’ - more like ‘matted mousey’, perhaps.

He had a point.

Thankfully I managed to keep my horror to myself but it clearly left its mark. I can’t say I lost too much sleep over it during the ensuing years but it would be fair to say that if anyone ever asked me what my best feature was, it wouldn’t have been the colour of my hair.

So, fast forward, ahem, thirty years to my second lot of baby hair, when it had grown back just enough to potentially push off my wig and cause a scene. I had no choice but to go bare-head. I decided to have my hair coloured because, well, because I could. The result was a fairly dark brown. I liked it because it made my hair which you could measure in millimetres, look a fraction longer. That was in December.

Christmas was a memory, January had slipped by and February was as short as ever. March? March was wonderful, we went skiing in Slovakia, just the family, rearranged from a year before when we couldn’t go for reasons you know too well about. April? Well, April was seeing the beginnings of a fringe at last so finally, I was starting to look less like a rabbit in headlights, or rather, Hello! Here comes Jackie’s face entering the room. And then it was May. The dye was incredible. My hair was still dark brown. Not even a whiff of mouse.

In my post, I said I was going to go blonde because life was too short. I sat down with the hairdresser and discussed this plan. Why? She asked. Because life’s too short, I said. And I want to do something different and the only different I can think of is blonde, dark or red. Red isn’t good for me because it makes my skin look like I’ve just slipped out of intensive care, dark you’ve already done and thank you, isn’t it amazing it’s lasted this long and –

- When did we dye it dark? she asked. December, I said. December? She laughed. That’s not dye. The roots would be this long, and she held out her arms as if she’d just caught a big fish. That’s your natural hair colour.

I nearly fell off the pivoting chair. Rather than wondering whether my hair would grow back straight, in much the same way that straight haired people’s hair inherited the chemo curl, I should have been asking what colour it would be. The only thought I’d given to hair colour was to brace myself for it coming back grey. That seems to happen a lot. I have no aversion to growing old gracefully (as we all know too well, old is, oh so much better than the alternative) but the drugs have already thrust a *challenging* premature menopause upon me and it would have been nice to have been spared the premature grey, thank you. And I had. Not grey. Not even mousey. But rich brown.

Thank you chemo, that was very kind.

I drifted back from hair Utopia to hear the hairdresser saying that as my hair was thus now quite dark, the roots would be difficult, I’d be back ‘having them done’ in four weeks and as a former six monthly visitor to the salon, did I really wish to commit to the time and expense of that?

She’s a great hairdresser but I’m not sure she’ll be vying for sales woman of the year any time soon.

So, what did I do? I went as dark as I could. And actually, for the first time with my ‘new’ hair, I almost quite like it.

And the other promises? I’ve been better with my zzzzs, my prosecco units have been low - apart from last Monday - and *most* evenings I switch my phone off at 9pm. Honest.

Can you forgive me for forgoing the bleach?

Did You Watch It?

I’ve just watched The C Word, the dramatisation of Lisa Lynch’s blog, Alrighttit  and subsequent book which she wrote about her fight with cancer. Sheridan Smith expertly and touchingly plays the recently married magazine editor who was diagnosed with breast cancer at the desperately young age of 28 and died of its secondary disease five years later. For two years following her original treatment Lisa hoped she was clear of cancer and her life was well and truly back on track.

Then came the line, ‘And then the music stopped,’ which has stayed with me all week.

Did you watch it?

I was glad I was sitting in the garden, huddled around the fire pit, when it was first aired as I hadn’t decided if I should watch it. I wasn’t sure how much the drama could teach me about the experience of breast cancer but knew its potential for sending me into a big dark hole. I’m very protective about what I watch and read. You may know of my aversion to stats, particularly any that touch on that P word: prognosis. It’s a word I’ve come to hate, tend to leave it out in sentences and pull a face in its place. Fear of stumbling across a rogue stat is a great incentive to keep me away from Planet Google Cancer and when I’m sent links on breakthroughs and innovative therapies, appreciated as they are, I insist my husband trawls through them for danger zones before I read.

Remember Brookside, TFI Friday, Arctic Role, those frozen mousses in plastic pots, (one of) The Eclipse(s), Millennium Eve, Wham! Blind Date, When Harry Met Sally, The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole (who is EXACTLY the same age as me, even down to the ¾), Bridget Jones Diary and Le Tour coming to Harrogate? There are certain things in our life time which we just have to see, feel, watch or listen to if we want to be fully paid up persons to our generation.

I wondered if The C Word should be added to this list.

I’ll share a secret with you. I was curious that nobody had asked me if I’d watched it. It made me suspicious. I wondered if people thought that perhaps I shouldn’t. Or perhaps I might have watched it and been so traumatised that it shouldn’t be discussed lest I be propelled down into that dark hole I mentioned. Or perhaps they’d been traumatised themselves. Alas, I am not the only one whose life has been touched by cancer. Whatever the reason, the radio silence was quite a pull towards Catch Up TV.

My husband is away and I knew he wouldn’t choose to watch it. In real life he is calm. He isn’t, ‘can be calm,’ or, ‘is quite calm,’ he just IS calm, from his toe nails to the hair on his head. When it comes to TV, he is a wimp. Holby City? Too much blood. Call The Midwife? Why would you want to watch someone scream? The C Word? Why would you want to make yourself cry?

It was Saturday night and the eldest child was doing eleventh hour replacement final pieces for her GCSE Art practical after her original sculpture had snapped only days before its deadline. While I let out a gasp which rocked the house opposite on sight of the photos of the sculpture in too many pieces to count, said daughter, who is her father just a foot smaller and less hairy, simply shrugged and asked how fast we could get hold of a hardboard mask as she’d had an idea. The other daughter was applying false tan and distracting her GCSE taking sister into making Dubsmash clips. Do you know about Dubsmash? It’s an App. No App – ever – will make me laugh more than seeing my children performing Dubsmash videos. If you’ve watched a programme which has sent you down a dark hole, I promise you Dubsmash is your best chance of clambering back out.  

So, the family absent from the living room, I thought I could sneak a peek without anyone else needing to know.

The problem is that I can’t work the television. I never need to switch it on, you see. Like wine and chocolate, TV is a social thing for me, not something I ever do on my own.  So I had to ask the Dubsmasher to load The C Word for me. And thus my cover was rather unglamorously blown but she wrinkled her nose when she saw the title and slunk back to the Dubsmashing and  false tanning on the bath room floor, which fortuitously for her requirements (and my carpet), is one of the few places in our house where you can snatch a whiff of Wi-Fi.

Now I was committed.

The C Word didn’t have the effect I thought it would. Yes I cried, only perhaps for 90% of it, though, and they weren’t particularly tears for me. The operations and treatments were all too familiar, as were the feelings and reactions so frankly and eloquently portrayed, but I wouldn’t say that The C Word brought them all back because they’re all still very front of mind. This isn’t in a wholly negative way, but in a, phew - that was the year that was and hey, this life without treatments lark is much more fun - kind of way. Although I would admit that the trials of the side effects of Tamoxifen also contrive to keep the experience fairly current.

But I did weep for Lisa when she lost her hair. I had forgotten the raw emotion of seeing your identity flushed down the toilet. I’m sure it seems a strange thing to be upset about. Surely it’s the least of your worries, right? Wrong! I have a theory. The implications for you and your loved ones of a cancer diagnosis are too big to taste whole so you have to tackle that enormous universe of uncertainty one atom at a time. Yet your hair is part of a world you do know and understand and however much you try to be grown up about it, it’s way too big a part of your pre-cancer life for you to lose without a great aching lament. It’s a deeply sub-conscious thing but I felt that I couldn’t let my self cry about cancer itself. I rarely have which is quite staggering as I’m a bit of a cry baby really. But I feared taking the crust away from the cancer universe might mean I couldn’t fit it back on again. Unleash the lava from a volcano and it may never stop flowing. Underneath the despair at holding my hair loose in my hands, I think I knew that my grief for my hair would eventually stop. I think Lisa’s writing about this - candid and brutal but also wickedly funny - and Sheridan’s portrayal of her vulnerability during this and other stages of treatment captured this brilliantly.

The rest of the tears were for the touching moments with family and friends and in particular, with Pete, Lisa’s husband. His caring manner and gentle air reminded me of my husband. Yes, I had cancer and yes, I had to undergo more than my fair share of operations and treatments but I was being looked after and showered with cards and gifts and love and help. My husband, like all those closest to someone with a serious illness or disability, was having to look after me, our children, hold down his job and keep his own sanity, as well as handle his own emotions, pretty much single handed. My husband, together with my family and friends, are the principal reason why I managed to keep smiling through cancer. People say you are ‘strong’ and ‘brave’ but if you’re lucky, it’s the people around you who really give you strength and courage. And that is what made me cry the most when watching the drama.

The dark hole? I thought The C Word might unsettle me for a few hours and then I’d get back on with living. But actually, it had the opposite effect. I found it empowering. The similarities between my and Lisa’s lives weren’t lost on me: young (-ish in my case), the writing, the blog, the book, even the dressing smart for chemo – chemo power dressing I used to call it. She was even a Virgo! (That one’s for my Mum).

Much as I ache for Lisa and her family, I’d like the similarities to stop there.

There was nothing Lisa could do when secondaries were silently forming. There’s nothing I could do either but I can give it my best shot to prevent cancer in the ‘other one’ or indeed, any other cancer forming. The C Word was a reminder of my resolve to follow a lifestyle which does its absolute best to repel any further invasion of cancer. As Lisa says, we can’t control it, but I can do my best to make my body a fortress of steel against it.

Yes, I sleep much more than I used to but it’s easy to let it slide. I mustn’t.

My work/ life balance slips into the red zone frequently. I have to address this.

I’m very conscious of how much I drink but I’m aware that summer’s coming and I can’t pretend that the image of prosecco corks popping in the dusk of a balmy British summer’s evening, a little more often than my seven units a week maximum would allow, isn’t appealing. But it isn’t worth it to me. I’d love scientists to decide that alcohol would have no ill effect on my health but they won’t so I need to get over myself.

And then there’s the phone. It’s a stress. And I’d been switching it off at 9pm. Recently, it has crept back into my evenings. I’ve resolved to turn it off again.

And it was a reminder to be bold, proud and alive! Last week I went to the hairdresser and allowed myself to be talked out of having my short hair bleached blonde because it would be too high maintenance. My hairdresser is right of course. But I’d resolved to be bold while my hair grew back into a style which was ‘more me’ and so tomorrow I’m going back to the hairdresser’s.  Hang the cost, forget the time and most of all, sod the commitment. Life, as they say, is too short.

Lisa’s story is tragic. People dying of cancer is tragic. People dying before their parents is particularly tragic. But the sad truth is that sometimes illness will win. In the meantime, we should live our lives positively, pack them with experiences we’d choose while we can, seize the bright side rather than wallowing in regrets and treat our body with respect so that we give ourselves the best chance of longevity and quality of life. You know, I’ve always striven to do this and can’t really attribute it to Lisa’s story. But The C Word was a timely top-up reminder.

RIP Lisa Lynch and all those who have died too young.

Tea and Chemo

I have no problem with the concept of ‘luck’ but I’ve always had an uneasy relationship with the word. I feel a little squeamish when people say that someone is ‘so lucky’. It smacks a little of their fortune coming through ill-gotten means, chance perhaps, cutting corners, cheating, even.

There are people in my life who really do seem to have more than their ‘fair share’ of bad luck. They’re the ones we all know, where you raise your eyes to god, the powers-that-be, fate or whatever holds the reins in your life, to just ‘give these people a break’. And difficult times do seem to have a habit of clumping together. But here’s the thing, the people who I consider to ‘deserve a break’, don’t seem to be the ones to describe themselves as unlucky. And vice versa.

And so I wonder if luck is all a matter of perception. I think that happiness lies in rejoicing when the toast falls the right side up rather than lamenting for too long when it falls sticky side down.

Granted, it’s annoying when you have to stop your day to mop up the gooeyness. And that pales into insignificance when compared to dropping a full bottle of milk onto quarry tiles in the kitchen and watching it seep faster than you can mop underneath the fridge, cooker, freezer... You’re not meant to cry over spilt milk, but when I think about it, I’ve come close.

I am always dropping milk bottles and they’re always full and they always smash. But then, I’m also always taking chunks out of plates with a slightly too speedy approach to stacking, bashing my hip on the side of the unit as I rush past the large piece of furniture which has been in the same position in our kitchen for the entire eleven years we’ve occupied the house, and have scars on my forearms to boast my devotion, if a little unfocused, to domesticity. If the toast falls sticky side down in my house, it’s probably more down to the inhabitation of fairies in my brain, and the law of averages, than luck.

When it comes to good luck in my life, I’ve had great deluges of it, for which I almost have to catch my breath. My daughter’s amazing recovery from a stroke could have been very different. I could have lost my arm in that spin drier instead of emerging with a scar and a story to bore my grandchildren and a great many others along the way. And I consider myself incredibly fortunate to be currently free of cancer. I am one of the lucky ones and very mindful of that. Even though the side effects of the drugs can contrive to make you forget it, it’s toast sticky side down to lament for too long.

And then there are the moments of fortune on a smaller scale which are nonetheless as sweet.

Such as when I saw That Tweet.

Call it luck, chance, providence, fate or fortune, I thank my lucky stars I happened to be on Twitter that day, when I happened upon a tweet from an author praising the brilliance and general loveliness of their publisher, Urbane Publications. How happy am I that I was playing around on Twitter when I should have been ironing; that I ever signed up to Twitter in the first place?

For whatever reason, I did notice the tweet, it did pique my interest and it did propel me to the Urbane Publications website. Once there, I started reading about collaboration and team working and proper editing and then I was hooked. A quick look at its list of authors and pending publications and a glance at page 17 of Google to check this too-good-to-be-true, small but perfectly formed and, in my humble opinion, going places press was kosher, and I’d dropped everything to draft my submission letter.

Roll forward a couple of months and the cover for my book is being finalised. I’m beavering away on the content for my copy deadline at the end of June ready for Urbane Publications to publish ‘Tea and Chemo’ in November.

When I was diagnosed with cancer I was swamped with factual information about the little blighter as well as the reasons for the treatments I was to have, together with their side effects. It was illuminating and helped me feel more secure. However there’s a difference between knowing what’s going to happen and knowing how it’s going to feel.

As well as the facts, I wanted an honest account of the experience of cancer. What does it mean to lose your hair? I mean, really mean, emotionally? I wanted to hear it from someone who’d been there, done that and got the hat and wig and scarf to show for it. I wanted a book which would educate me in a softly, softly way. I wanted the author to be an ordinary person who was still enjoying life, who’d got through to the other side, and, crucially, done it without any Super Powers.

My aim is for Tea and Chemo to be that book. With my blog posts as a framework and many more anecdotes added, I hope that it will inform cancer sufferers and their loved ones whilst also making readers smile. It’s useful information served with an empathetic hug, the story around the camp fire or a cup of tea with friends on a lazy afternoon.

Since taking my first steps into the cavernous universe of cancer, I have learnt a little in my non-scientific, better-if-you-give-me-an-analogy kind of way about hormones (your body doesn’t take kindly to you changing their levels), medicine induced water retention (who’d have thought to get rid of water retention, or ‘Herceptin Bum’, you should drink err, water?), Vitamin D, Parabens, free make-up, eyebrow tattoos, Prosecco over white wine, Chemo Brain (it’s for real and it sucks but it gets better), chemotherapy, radiotherapy, hormone therapy, tea therapy (ok, I made that one up) and time (that one’s for real because time really does help you get used to anything – and then you can deal with it).

Tea and Chemo is about sharing what I’ve learnt. It’s an outstretched hand if chemo gives you a mouth full of ulcers, your bones feel like they’ve been squeezed in a vice and you just want to go to bed and wake up when the whole darned cancer thing has been sorted.  I hope it will give you a hug when all your food tastes as though it’s been sprinkled with bicarbonate of soda and stirred with mud. And I hope it will help your loved ones, too.

And I know some chemo secrets. I know that white sauce (sweet, not savoury) and Rich Tea biscuits are the only things which taste as they should in the first two weeks after a dose of chemo, and quite frankly, this is a time in your life when you can eat five bowl-fulls on the trot (I did) and even mash a packet of biscuits guilt-free into the bowl. You see, treatment has its perks.

So, was I lucky to have found Urbane Publications? You bet I was. My experience so far is everything that Urbane Publications promises. I’m working as part of a team with people who know what they’re doing, and who are just as excited as I am about Tea and Chemo’s publication.

Regarding my good fortune in reading That Tweet, I am not allowed to complain about sticky toast on the floor, or even a crate of smashed milk bottles, for a good few years to come.

Chatty Monday

Monday this week was Very Chatty. After my third un-instigated conversation with strangers, I decided to close my notebook and embrace it. This was clearly not a day for productivity but for conversation.

My first memorable encounter was in the waiting room for the audiologist with a man, a good few years my senior, who clearly had better hearing than mine as we managed an entire conversation without so much as a whiff of a 'pardon' from his side, even though his hearing aids lay broken in their box. He told me one of those horror stories about call centres on the other side of the world trying to repair a phone line in his living room. While speaking to the engineer who'd finally arrived a month after the relatively well-hearing man's first request and was testing the line, he took a call from a man wishing to plan his funeral. 'I'm really excited about this one," he said to the engineer, who gave him a slightly disapproving look, unaware that he was an undertaker. I made a mental note that I'd be happy for this man to carry my coffin when the time came. He had one of those chuckles which made him bob up and down and cheeks which pulled themselves up into gobstopper balls when he laughed.

Next came a lady in her sixties who was comforted to see someone in our hearing aid party who was even younger than she was. Hearing centres have their upside. They, and the cancer ward, are the only place where I ever feel, and indeed am ever described as, young. We chatted about our first hearing aid encounters and the relief of suddenly being able to hear whole sentences instead of every first, fifth and eighth word and how it had been the rustle of a plastic carrier bag which had made her rush her hands to her ears when she first installed her hearing aids. For me it was my footsteps. It took me two days to stop tiptoe-ing.

A few words with the stand-in audiologist and I was compelled to ask where he was from. 'Morpeth,' he declared, which is twenty miles from where I was brought up in Wylam. We exchanged chat on the beauty of Northumberland and how Yorkshire was a wonderful county too. But I spent the rest of the appointment with a firm hold on my replacement Nottinghamshire accent so that he wouldn't think I was taking the mickey out of his lilting vowels. Anyone who's ever changed their accent – mine principally because the scariest girl in my new class of eleven year olds told me she'd 'nut me' if I called her 'man' one more time – will know what I mean.

It was now two hours since I'd left my study. I had my notebook with me and an empty stomach so I sought out the nearest large, oh so British department store which can be found on most high streets and settled myself down with a voucher-bought coffee and scone.

'Excuse me,' said a well-dressed lady, with roll-up curls you'd like to poke your finger through and bright pink lips to match her scarf, 'didn't you have a little boy with you when you came in?' Now, I do spend half of most days in the land of the fairies and have bashed my head so frequently on open cupboard doors that I've put a conservation order out on my brain cells, but I think that even I would remember whether I had a small son (I don't) and that one of us was missing when we sat down. This led us onto teenagers (of which I do recall I have two), the generous free hot drink voucher scheme and how this lively lady was 81 and her equally adorable young friend, a trifling 76. The friends had met on a coach tour three years ago when they were both recently bereaved and were quick to tell me that the passing of their husbands was the end of any relationship with men. 'I don't want to meet a man,' the 81 year old said, 'why would I want to do that? He'd be old!' I learnt that she was a 'bit of a spender'. Today she looking for some red knee length boots and April was a great time for bargains. Currently, she'd been unsuccessful; they were all too wide for her calves. We agreed this rendered them more like wellies and wondered for whom, exactly, knee length boots were designed to fit as her (slim) friend couldn't even get them over her ankles.

Then they told me the secret of eternal youth and happiness: get out of the house.

Back on the train, I finally started writing. I was supposed to be editing but instead penned this post as I'd come over all grateful; happy to be alive. I hadn’t done the work I’d planned but decided it's a mistake not to grab life when it’s lifting our spirits. The women of-a-certain-age- reminded me of my Gran before she died at the age of 92, weakened physically by Stroke but still sparkling with joie de vivre.

I've always believed that the spirits of those close to us watch over. It isn't a particularly religious feeling, nor indeed scientific - they never see us doing anything embarrassing or hear us saying anything odd, which is helpful because in my case they'd be rolling their eyes and shaking their heads so much they'd wobble themselves out of the sky - but I do believe in ghosts. Not the white sheet variety but the Good Samaritan kind who hold your hand sometimes.

I like to think that my Gran had a smile as she watched Chatty Monday and that she’d be relieved to see that exchanging tales and giggles with strangers was still one of life's simple pleasures – when we manage to leave technology in our bags, of course.

Books and Chocolate

The latest copy of Chase Magazine is available online here and features my reviews of Vigilante by Shelley Harris and Elizabeth is Missing by Emma Healey (pages 90/91). These are two books I absolutely adored and devoured at pace. Both tackle big issues, speckled with wry humour and smothered in wonderfully observant story-telling. 

If you fancy a book to read while you negotiate your way through your chocolate eggs this Easter, I thoroughly recommend both of these.

Oh! And I've also included a sneak preview of Seaglass, the anthology in which my short story, Fly Joe! appears... 

The Fear

Ouch.

I am not immune to The Fear, unfortunately. I had hoped I might be. Forget piano certificates, gymnastics badges and swimming awards - actually, scrap the swimming awards, I failed the level below my Bronze Survival and had to do the launch of shame from the pool after only the first discipline. I should add that I had told my teacher I couldn’t tread water but she hadn't believed me - never do I feel more proud than when hospital staff praise my apparent bravery, my 'high pain threshold'.

Ouch.

I like to test it from time to time – with the odd break of a foot or a knee or the smashing of too many bones in my forearm and wrist to count or a chance burst artery following a fairly routine operation. How's the pain? the nurse asked, as the blood spewed so fast into my chest cavity that, mercifully, the vessels carrying blood from the miscreant area couldn't cope and thus blocked, saving my life (thank you blood vessels) but oh, at a painful price.

OUCH!

Out of how many? I asked, or rather, wheezed. 10, she said. It's 10, I answered. It couldn't have got any worse than it was and I had to wait three desperately long hours until I could have any form of pain relief. The 'ten' conversation was useful however, as it meant that as the big hand struck 7.05am, the nurse was there, at my side, pouring in the first dose of morphine which she'd set up a few minutes before.

Is this a good point to mention my love for nurses everywhere?

So, with this so-called high pain threshold I'd hoped I'd have Nerves Of Steel and The Fear wouldn't consume me.

And it doesn't consume me. But it does visit often.

Provided The Fear proves unfounded, the further away from initial cancer diagnosis you can step, the more it retreats, I'm told. But for the moment, The Fear of recurrence of cancer is loud; concert pitch on occasion. And although I stuff my fists into my ears, shake my head to disperse the debilitating thoughts, fill my life with family, friends, chocolate and busyness, The Fear is sometimes just too powerful.

My hearing has always been my bug bear. I wear hearing aids. They are wonderful. My tiny friends discretely do their job and I can go about my daily life barely affected, save for the odd mishear, just to keep my interlocutors amused. My hearing is going through a bad phase. I'm constantly reaching for the remote control to turn up the volume of my aids only to realise it's already on maximum. BC – before cancer – I'd have said that my ears must be blocked (I have tiny ear canals, they're easily blocked). BC, my hearing would have sorted itself. Post cancer, when I can't hear well, I fear I have a brain tumour. The most likely cause is actually a side effect of Tamoxifen, the hateful drug we truly love because it may be keeping us alive.

Last week I felt sick and wondered if the cancer had gone to my stomach. In reality, it was simply that-type-of-cold. I could go on.

It's The Fear of those evil little cancer cells dodging the medication, laughing in the face of the operations and lodging themselves into a new area of the body, one not being routinely checked. We tell ourselves that the medication is advanced, clever and designed exactly to deal with the evil little blighters but The Fear reminds us that they are clever, too.

It can be paralysing when The Fear muscles its way into our lives, lodging itself into our psyche and, as we try to ignore it, tell it to be quiet, to leave us alone, on the battle axe goes, beating us pitilessly with its rolling pin.

But I will not be beaten.

I will not let The Fear win. I ring my doctor. I apologise for my post cancer paranoid hypochondria and she understands. They all understand. That's the lovely truth of the Cancer World. They expect it. They expect those of us who are lucky enough to have survived and feel guilty that we let The Fear strike when we should be shouting hallelujah for our fortune, to be sitting in their surgeries. And they don't mind; they really don't mind and that does make us feel better.

And each time The Fear comes knocking and the door is answered with a reassurance that all is well, each time that The Fear proves unfounded, then another chip is shaved from the lump lodged in my consciousness, another stone ricochets off the side of Goliath's head, The Fear gets pushed a little closer to the back of my mind and normality is dragged a little closer to the front.

I do not feel the same as I did BC. I do feel a little on my own fighting what sometimes feels like inevitable recurrence now that the heavies of operations, chemo and radiotherapy have done their bit and the only remaining super power, Herceptin, is drawing to a close. I have two more due before I finish my year of three weekly dosages. I shan't miss the time out of my Tuesday or the water retention (otherwise known in my house as Herceptin Bum) and general grogginess which follows for a few days, but I shall miss the reassurance and friendliness of the nurses and the partial piece of mind this powerful drug gives, when it's just me and Tamoxifen fighting the good fight.

The Fear will keep attacking me but I will win eventually because I will not let it affect my here and now. It's madness, isn't it, to waste the glorious present worrying about the unknown future.

Madness, yes, human, also, but helpful, no.

Number One Career

The big news on Twitter last week was that being a writer was voted the most desirable profession. I was reminded of my youngest daughter years ago, not averse to the odd scribble herself, when she was asked whether she'd like to be a writer like her Mum.

No way, she said, you have to sit in the study all day, even at weekends.

Forget the home-cooked seven-a-day delicacies, the 3am home-baked birthday cakes, hugging my children before and after school, taking them - and half the team - to sports matches, stirring the vat of hot chocolate to the delight of parents stuck at work knowing I'd be on hand to take in their equally delighted freezing toe-d children when snow closed the school early.

No, 21^st century Rapunzel, that's what I was.

Writing is about hours and hours spent alone, no or little pay (for a while or forever) and rejection.

And I love it.

I love it for the flexibility writing gives me with my family life, even if my children may need to become parents themselves before they really appreciate it.

I love starting with a blank page and even before the bottom of my first cup of tea, seeing words on the screen which didn’t exist before I put them there. I decided on the plot and created the fictitious people required to bring that plot to life and that, well that blows my mind.

And I love it for weeks like this.

I love it because my stories are the only workplace where I am totally absorbed and my mind doesn't wander, the to–do list is forgotten and worries shunted to the back of my mind. I love it because it allows me to teach and nothing is more rewarding than watching light bulbs igniting in fellow happy scribblers.

And I really love it for weeks like this.

But I can't tell you exactly why. I will. Just as soon as we've agreed on a title, something on the lines of making lemonade when life gives you lemons, or it not being all bad, or silver linings.

Clearly there's still some work to do on that ...

Fly Joe!

Enough of this dull January nonsense, I have two publications to tell you about and they're making me feel very sparkly indeed.

The first is Seaglass, the anthology of short stories published by Black Pear Press in which my short story, Fly Joe! features. Seaglass is the name of the wonderfully evocative winning entry in the Black Pear Press short story competition from where the twenty short stories hailed.

And mine, well, it's about- Oh! You didn't think I was going to make it that easy for you, did you? Here's the beginning:

Hesta placed the food on the table in front of him, took the napkin and shook it to reveal a worn square.

"I've brought you lamb with redcurrant sauce and dumplings," she said, tucking the napkin into his collar. "Well, strictly it's not lamb but a couple of pieces of rubber from the bottom of me boots. I gave them a quick spruce up with the hose before of course, although being in the chicken pen, some of the poo does get a bit squashed in the grooves. We didn't have as many redcurrants as I'd have liked - been too hot, surprisingly - so I had to take the ones from near the ground; the ones you tell me not to touch because the fox might have pee'd on 'em. And the dumplings? Well, they're just dumplings, like me Mum used to make, the very finest with snips of bacon. But you were never too keen on dumplings, were you? Anyway, there we are, shall I feed you now?" she asked, finally sitting down on the edge of the bed and picking up the spoon.

Joe would have smiled if he could. Instead, he raised an eyebrow.

I hope you're intrigued and would like to see Joe fly. The rest can be bought here and to learn more about Black Pear Press, click here.

The second publication, the latest edition of Chase Magazine where I recommend three books which must be read this year, isn't new, I've been writing for Chase for years. However, it's just had a revamp and, personally, I'm delighted with what I see. Clever editor, Joe Cawthorn, has kept its Yorkshire identity but also afforded it much more of a professional glow, in my humble opinion. To access the on-line copy for free, click here.

I hope you enjoy my musings. Comments, good, bad and indifferent, always welcome :)

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!