Category: LIFE

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

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…

📚📚📚📚📚📚📚📚📚📚📚📚📚

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 🖊

A moment to read …

March 25, 2019

Flames dance a rapid rhythm, greedily consuming oxygen.

Sacrificial cylinders of ash and elm, no longer grappling with earthy roots.

Soft pages between my fingers whisper their secrets through portholes of ink.

Wandering thoughts, new characters to discover. A premise of love story – a warm slipper. Perfection.