Category: LIFE

Ramblings, daft and humourous, dark and sad, but hopefully mostly happy

Romantic poetry shall never die – it’s what makes our hearts beat on 💔

September 13, 2019

Ideally with ‘Arrival of The Birds’ playing …

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I did it again.

I left you with no more than,

A kiss to the cheek.

A polite hug.

Within hours I am gripped,

By a panic.

It’s a feeling of loss.

Of being too late.

And the cruel consequence,

Is having to relive the moment.

I see sands of opportunity,

Slip through my fingers.

And I watch it fall away.

Staring eyes.

Memories of you jostle,

In my conscience.

The skin on your neck,

Where the shortest hairs start.

And become the place,

Where my fingers feel at home.

Pulling you closer,

Smelling your clean clothing,

The bottled scent I gave you,

Warmed by your body.

Too late to tell you,

That I’ll be yours forever.

Even though our paths,

Shall never cross again.

There were connections before you,

But none so deeply powerful.

You change me.

You changed my world,

And I wanted you in it.

But a free spirit is one quality,

You illustrated so well.

Showed me how to become one.

🖌🖌🖌🖌🖌🖌🖌🖌

Hello my gorgeous lovelies … I’m on a train, with my earphones in and was inspired to write you a little cuddly poem. It’s been far too long that I’ve ignored you all. Forgive me…

I read a poem recently by our great blogging friend Patti at Lovenlosses and I do hope she stayed safe during the recent hurricane.

I’ve also said hi to Mike, over at ReadafterBurnout who continues to entertain daily and I’ve downloaded his book which he released 9 August this year, so many congratulations on achieving this 🎉

A dystopian world awaits the reader and what little time I’ve had to read it so far has given me no less pleasure than I expected from this very talented author. A teacher on the surface, a storyteller in ‘real life’ … I shall be review and starring it once I’ve finished 🙏🏼

Another supporter of mine is the wonderful Joseph at FlowersinBloom who appears to have had a blogging break of a similar length to mine. Totally unplanned, that, but I think of him from time to time as it was his recommendation of a Gail Tsukiyama novel which started my love affair with all things zen and bonsai trees (don’t ask to see mine 😫 I’ve yet to discover the art of keeping them alive).

I continue to chat also to my fellow writer, the beautiful Italian living in Ireland, Sabina at Ortensia72, whose posts always have me laughing out loud at family life, and nodding with recognition… her Book 1 is also on my kindle and it’s appalling I’ve not yet come to it.

But.

I do have good reason.

In the time it’s taken to ignore you for the best part of the summer, I’ve somehow managed to edit my novel. On a structural level I’m talking now. I think I finally have something I can send out!

I’ve simplified the plot in some areas, because guess what? I wasn’t actually required to write the next instalment of Luther after all!

I sent my manuscript off to be critiqued by a Reader for the New Writer’s Scheme; part of the Romantic Novelists Association, and boy, did it need it! My Reader was kind. But honest. I don’t know who it was (their identity is kept on a need-to-know basis, and we don’t need to know).

However, I’d love to hug and assure them I was not in the slightest offended by any suggested change. I utilised about 97.8% of them in fact because the new words and grammar and alterations changed not the plot, but the tone. The maturity of the prose. It’s still my story but it’s got High School clothing now, rather than the rather shabby primary wear it had been used to.

I like it. And so did two agents at the annual conference. We must not get too excited because agents love ideas – it’s their job to find new authors’ books enticing. Once they read the whole thing, as opposed to those first three chapters we all work so hard to perfect, their enthusiasm could easily wane.

I decided I needed some serious help at this point. My first book. My first time digging up the roots of my literary baby. So I employed a mentor!

For six weeks (and we are four weeks in) I have an expert at my beck and call, someone to bounce ideas off, someone to moan to, someone to share excited moments with. She is paid to respond to me, which is great.

However.

My mentor is also very honest. Calls a spade a spade and wouldn’t choose between two sentences I emailed one day when I was stuck. I had to choose myself, can you believe it 🤣

It was the best thing. My mentor asked me to dig deep and think about which of the two would have a greater emotional impact on the character at that point. Genius. I knew the answer, and went ahead and implemented the correct choice.

I’ve re-written my synopsis with her guidance and now am in the process of researching agents with a view to start submitting from the end of the month. I’m a big girl and am aware initial interest does not always lead to offers of representation, but wow, I’m having fun! I’m also going to find a spike to stick the rejection slips on – Stephen King did that. I read his writing journey in ON WRITING and fell a little bit in love with him to be honest. That book in itself is a masterpiece, let alone his novels, of which I know own six.

If we were to look back to this time last year (which we won’t bother doing) I suspect my blog posts were all about …. well, I can’t even remember. What I do remember from that time is only having 24,000 words!

I’m on my second high speed train of the day, en route to York. Attending another annual event run by the RNA means a chance to catch up with published authors and other hopeful authors-to-be 🖌🥂

Enough about me. What are you all up to?

In the meantime, excuse me while I start this book.

A slice of toast with 007 (and why farmers always moan about the weather)

June 11, 2019

Bread is made with wheat flour. This variety is called SKYFALL 🖤

This morning I needed to pop and get some washing up liquid – thought I’d treat the kitchen to a few minutes of my time. Man of the Woods offered to drive me so we could ‘check the crops’ (hadn’t gone down overnight with the rather torrential rainfall).

Most of us know that bread is made from wheat but how often do we see the crop close-up during the growing season when the ‘ear’ is developing each individual seed which in late July/August will be harvested.

Some farmers grow wheat for feed whereas we grow wheat aimed for milling. It is more expensive to nurture a milling wheat crop, right from the day it’s drilled, because the criteria for bread-making flour is complicated.

Protein in the seed needs to be 13% minimum and moisture needs to be 15% maximum. Every batch of grain taken from the farm after harvest is tested and if the criteria are not reached, your 6-months of hard work becomes obsolete. The expensive seed you bought, drilled and nurtured – because you have the type of land which can support a milling crop (rain-willing) – will be sold instead to a feed merchant for a lot lot less per tonne than it would have been to a milling merchant.

Every time Man of the Woods goes out with his sprayer with fungicide, or fertiliser early on to increase the yield, he is attempting to insure the future of his crop (and yes, I did mean to type insure, not ensure, because these sprays and fertilisers cost thousands). He does this so it will make milling quality. So it will go for flour to make bread. So that we can buy bread and enjoy a slice with blackcurrant.

But in Jan and Feb you simply cannot predict what the Gulf Stream will be doing by May and June. Farming is a gamble. Did you know there are more suicides in farming than any other way of life?

There are some interesting facts here about mental health and farming.

He did make it down to Cornwall, for the final day .. and spent it at an agricultural show 😂😂😂

We mustn’t laugh. The Royal Cornwall show is the jewell in the crown of country shows and there was lots to see. I managed to delay our return to Suffolk and secure two further nights in the holiday apartment so he could enjoy his brief holiday 🤗

I’m not entirely sure where this post is going, I simply had the idea of sharing a rather cool close-up photo of water droplets on some wheat but my words have morphed into something with more meaning.

MoW helps me when I’m low and it is the role of the farmer’s wife to be there morally when they are low and spitting feathers because their multiple working hours have been in vain.

Today he is happy. Only a few patches along the edge of one field has suffered and the green crop is lying flat against the ground and unlikely to recover, lift and continue plumping each seed out to its full potential. The crop is at its heaviest now and therefore susceptible to being knocked over by heavy rain. Once it starts to ripen and go golden (basically dry out and die) it weighs less and can withstand a summer shower.

Can we just take a moment … all washing up done and Joseph still alive on the windowsill ⛩

When all you want is a friend, but all you have is imagination

June 5, 2019

So that’s my new shout line for Book 2.

The one line eye-catching piece of prose at the top of your synopsis, before the thing starts, in the hope it catches an agent’s attention. We were taught about them on my recent CBC course. Some even make it all the way through the process and appear on the front cover of a book!

Taylor Jenkins Reid’s book, ‘After I Do’ had a great shout line, look..

It’s at the top; FALLING IN LOVE IS THE EASY PART. When I read that, I hear an enormous BUT THEN ….

I finished reading it two days ago, with tears steaming down from behind my sunnies. I was sat on a bench (dedicated to somebody who enjoyed years of holidays in this area) as the two main characters re-built their crumbling marriage. An intense, emotional and gritty read about the realism of taking your partner for granted and about what that can lead to. I actually sent Man of the Woods a text immediately I’d finished it. It’s the little thoughts that can go a long way when you’re apart…

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Yesterday we padded around Padstow and ate pasties from the famous Chough bakery and lemon meringue pies from Stein’s Patisserie.

There is no photo of the Cornish pastie as we had to eat them sharpish before the seagulls succeeded in their efforts to swoop in and win a mouthful.

By ‘we’ I mean myself, my young adult offspring and their respective partners. Gone are the days when holidays with children mean holding their hand, watching them jump and down at the sight of blue ice cream, and dealing with over tired whiny pleas of ‘when can we go in the sea, mummy?’.

Now, it’s a delicate balance of suggesting loose plans, being flexible when those fall apart, watching your daughter decide whether she wants to be a fisherman’s wife as her eternally patient BF prepared his various hooks and baits them with now-disgusting pieces of fish from the not-so-cool box he has under his landrover 🤣🤣🤣🐟🐟🐟.

Then you’ve got the clown of the family – the happy-go-lucky son who still eats babybel cheeses and pretends to cry for our entertainment when he can’t find his whatever it is he’s looking for. He’s 6’4″, and I think gained an inch since New Zealand!

On the phone yesterday, MoW told me it rained more than 9mm yesterday in East Anglia and hence he and his father are stopping irritating (that’s not a typo; it’s how farmers refer to irrigating!). So we are holding our breath today for their arrival later. In my experience, the chance that something else can happen on the farm to prevent them making the 7-hr drive is quite high. I won’t believe he’s coming until I see his dad’s car pull up. (All the other cars in the family are here already 😂).

Anyway, back to books. We like a book don’t we. And we like a book shop, especially those cute independent ones, yes? Here’s a cutie – Padstow Bookseller.

This cover caught my eye, as did Julie Cohen’s words upon the front. oooh, I thought. I know and respect this author and if she says it’s great, I might just buy this. Then I opened the dust jacket and saw Susan Elliot Wright is a fellow RNA member, so the connections got even better and I opened and read the first page.

Yup, that was hooky enough for me to get my purse out!!

🖌🖌🖌🖌🖌🖌🖌🖌🖌🖌🖌🖌🖌🖌

On our return from Padstow, being sure to leave the ‘kids’ some space, I retreated to my room with my laptop. After choosing how will spend my sessions at the conference next month, I went on to type up those penned-words I created last Friday towards a synopsis for Book 2. It’s the first draft obviously, but it’s a mini map of the whole idea. On paper/screen it now exists and is not simply only a notion inside my head. I’m excited by it. I even re-watched the Hidden History episode of Michael Portillo’s series which inspired this story!

Then we went in the sea ….

I finished the day studying the list of agents and publishers who are attending the two days of conference … just for us New Writers Scheme members! I mean, just how amazing is that? A chance for us to sit in a one to one meeting, the profressional having read the first 5000 words and a synopsis of our novels, yet knowing we are newbies and don’t really have a clue. It’s their opportunity to find a new voice, a nugget amongst the mountains of debut manuscripts!

I shall enjoy the weekend, the meeting of fellow authors, the standing in line for lunch with famous writers like Katie Ford, Jill Mansell, Julie Cohen, Rowan Coleman .. so many, too many to mention 🌸🥂

If anyone likes my work, it shall be icing on the cake ….

Game of Thrones…. I’m going in. What’s all the fuss about??

May 28, 2019

I mean, really. An author pens a story, some screenwriters adapt it, and the world goes mad!

Yesterday, after the first episode:-

Man of the Woods; “So, what’s it about?”

Me: “Well … seems there’s this sister and brother and their other brother – a dwarf – and they’re all a bit … interesting.. And in another kingdom there are five siblings; all children of the baddy from ‘Goldeneye’ but one isn’t the main mother’s actually although there’s a mystery surrounding that. There are five cute wolf cubs and some people with blue eyes in the woods. Oh … and the dragon eggs.”

MoW: “Right.”

The brother and sister with almost white hair must be important. Great contrast, obviously, with the dark (sort of Greek) people of the island across the ‘narrow sea’.

I’ve so got this.

We watched three episodes yesterday in the end and have become intrigued, I admit. I started quite liking the blonde Queen but now don’t trust her .. and as for that terrible twin of hers. He’s an arrogant ****.

The character of Tyrion Lannister is growing on me – I think he’s a sharp cookie.

We are going on a mass family holiday this Friday, to Cornwall but first I have a few horse rugs to process!

My daughter, now 21 (literally last Friday) accompanied me on my rug collection in Kermit. She hates dust and muck and the smell of horse wee, so this was a big deal for her. People have asked me in the past, when she was still a young teen, whether she would take over my rug-cleaning business and I’d laugh, “I doubt it!”.

Anyway it was nice to have her company. I barely see my son these days. He works along my father in law daily, tends to eat at their house for convenience (and they probably have better meal selection anyway because my mother in law is organised and has time to buy things like food).

He comes in to sleep and his 6’4″ self moves around the kitchen opening cupboards in a morning searching for something he’s not communicated to me that he’d like to see. As a modern farmer’s wife I was encouraged to work and bring in a contribution. Oddly enough, with a sole-trader business which somewhat took off faster than we anticipated in 2007, I can’t be in two places at once. And I struggle with the guilt that sometimes wafts around me like mist on an Arthur Conan-Doyle moor. I try and fight it, and the verbal tirade which can accompany it, leaving me feeling bereft of self worth. But I often don’t succeed.

On the plus side, we have our own ponds to play round. I even caught my first fish with the help of daughter’s boyfriend this weekend!

We plopped then back in the murky water each time and after washing my hands many times, I laid back and tried to read my book.

There were lots of distractions; the ever-changing sky, a notepad asking for more details to be added to the plot of another story idea, MoW coming to show me handfuls of maggots…. and then laughing when I legged it away from him. I don’t trust him.

He’s always been a practical joker.

This one time (at Band Camp) he grabbed a harvest spider while I was washing up and had my hands full. He pushed it down my shirt and I went nuts banging my chest in a panic. I was hyperventilating by the time I failed to undo the buttons and ripped the shirt from me instead. As the dead spider dropped to the kitchen floor and my eyes blazed up at him through the tears, he stayed still only for two seconds. Then he ran…

Meet my new bonsai .. he’s called Joseph ⛩

May 1, 2019

Isn’t he stunning? A red maple ..

Once upon a time there was a blogger who suggested a book. The book was called ‘The Samurai’s Garden’ by Gail Tsukiyama.

I fell in love with the story and it’s characters, especially Matsu and I bought a bonsai in his honour and even wrote a post about it which for those of you who have not been following me since I started here can read about that here!

The blogger is someone a long way from me but someone I consider one of a handful of loyal wordpress buddies I am fortunate enough to have shared bits of writing life with. You will find him over at Flowers in Bloom.

If I stopped blogging tomorrow (and for the record I plan to do the opposite as I’ve had approximately seven and a half people visit my site this spring due to my inactivity) this book is one I shall never forget, nor shall I forget where I first heard about it.

Birthday flowers, friendships and loose horses

April 25, 2019

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 🖊