Birthday flowers, friendships and loose horses

That’s really uncouth, to advertise your birthday btw…

Maybe, but then again it’s a great way to share the day with my WordPress friends 🎉

My son said to me: “you’re half way to a hundred now!” and grinned as it is a given I’ll make it there. Bless.

So I’m a 1969 baby. Lots happened that year, so my arrival onto this planet shares some fascinating company:-

Neil Armstrong landed on the moon

March saw Concorde’s maiden flight

President Nixon declared the start of the end of The Vietnam War

Have a coffee .. this is fun! When did you last pause to see what happened around the world in the year of your birth?!

The flowers, by the way, were from a friend and her mother – sent in a clever box in the post by a florist company. They are my favourite colour combination of petals, so pretty and feminine 🌸 I met the friend when she was four and I was eight while our fathers served in the Royal Air Force together. Our mothers were good friends in their twenties and thirties but then geography appeared to be what kept them apart thereafter.

Now our mothers are in their seventies, they have absolutely nothing in common and rarely see each other. My friend’s father sadly passed away about ten years ago from lung cancer whereas mine is hanging in there with lung breathing difficulties, ironically. I totally see now that our mothers were friends purely because of their husbands’ career choice.

They live only two hours apart and both drive but have only seen each other twice in the last five years. One is smiley, friendly, laughs a lot and socialises with many local friends and is totally at ease when mixing with her daughter. The other is tetchy, judgmental, cold, has no friends and finds it almost impossible to do something for another.

Here’s a crop of oilseed rape in the evening sun in front of one of the biggest oak trees on the farm. I took it last night during an hour’s drive searching the farm for a runaway horse.

A flustered neighbour appeared at my kitchen window in a panic as her friend’s horse had ‘pushed past the gate and has been seen running towards your farm’

This happens sporadically throughout the year. We are surrounded by horse owners and sometimes a lapse of concentration can happen, or an electric fence can fail. Horses can be home birds or flight animals and if the latter they can travel miles.

Turned out this little chap had galloped about six miles to the edge of town! Luckily a dog walker who knows about horses was able to catch it and various police cars were by now involved, the owner sensibly having warned them. This is the photo I sent the owner (who stayed home in case he went back) and I know the vision would have brought huge relief to her evening of anxiety. I’ve mislaid a horse once or twice in my past and there is no worse feeling in the pit of your stomach. Actually there would be. Losing a child.

I am over half way through the CBC course EDIT & PITCH YOUR NOVEL

See this link for their next start date in June. I can thoroughly recommend it for anyone who has finished writing a first draft and then is stuck as to how to start editing, how to approach the process while not wasting your valuable time. It’s £200 and worth every penny. The video tutorials each week cover all the worries we have and how to break up the editing process into manageable chunks.

I’ve really enjoyed starting to incorporate the detail scene analysis we did through week 2. Each and every scene is only allowed to stay if it moves the plot forward and/or heightens tension. I shall no longer keep a scene simply because I like it or I think that one was well written and it was one of my originals!

When we’ve got back to Suffolk from a drive to Manchester area where we are collecting our son’s new truck, I’ll get back to the book. Hopefully there’ll be no errant horses!

Man of the Woods is driving, my son is to my left and I’m in the middle of the bench seat .. we look like a rabble of builders!

I’ll give you a wave if you like anywhere near the A14, A1 to Leeds then across the M62 towards Manchester across something called Saddleworth Moor.

Ok, well it’s lovely to chat and to have exercised my wordel-mind for half an hour but I’ll leave you alone now to get on with your day. I’ve got some reading material 🖊