Oh, My Days!

It was a big thing for me, leaving teaching. It had been part of my life for over 20 years. Suddenly, I went from full on days of activity, always on the go, being amongst crowds of people, and earning a very decent salary, thank you very much, to days of stillness, solitude and an intense feeling of worthlessness because I felt I wasn’t doing anything ‘useful’ or earning any money. And you spend a lot of time arguing with yourself about whether you’ve made the right decision. I’ve come to think of the last six months or so as my ‘wriggling in’ time. I’ve been wriggling my way into a different way of life. It’s been like trying on a new dress, that looks good on the clothes hanger but you’re not quite sure if it’ll fit you properly. We’ve all done it, haven’t we? Made an impulse buy only to get it home and find it makes you look like a sausage in a sock. Haven’t we? Yes?? Okay, just me then. But you get the gist. So you make alterations to the dress because pride won’t let you r

Art class lesson 2 today - the wonderful world of watercolours. There is a lot of water sloshing involved in watercolour painting, I have discovered. You can definitely have too much or too little, too. Thankfully, I had purchased a book of sturdy paper on which to watercolour. The chap sitting next to me was a bit of a wild child with his water pot and made even more mess than I did last week with my pastels. Anyway, there was more of ‘Just paint what you see’ and ‘It’s easy because you’re only dealing with one colour’ from the artist-in-residence (I can’t quite bring myself to call him the teacher) and so I flung myself into the activity utilising my own in-built teaching tool called ‘winging it’ along with a goodly dose of ‘devil-may-care’ and ‘What rules? No one said anything about rules’ and generally keeping on my blinkers so I couldn’t see what everyone else was doing. Basically, I made it up as I went along. A bit like life, really. This is the end product. I don’t know what

Another Sunday, another chapter. Thank you for your continued encouraging comments about 'Clive and Min.' They are keeping me writing! The Chelwood Operatic Performance Society commandeered the arrangements for Clive's funeral. Min didn't mind. When the vicar, the Reverend Trainor Bridge, arrived the   following week to take notes for Clive's eulogy, he had to stop Min when the first five memories she came up with proved to be less than the positive sibling experiences he was hoping to hear.             'Min,' he said, 'why don't I get hold of Audley Runcorn at C.O.P.S? This is proving quite difficult for you and it is a tradition at funerals to remember the dearly departed with fond memories and not the time when he used a page from your first edition copy of Peter Rabbit to light a ciggie from the fire because his lighter had run out and in retaliation you grabbed the cigarette and stubbed it out on his arm.'             Min agreed.

Yesterday, I joined an art class! Yes, I know! Me - drawing!! I haven’t drawn anything ‘proper’ since I was at school. I didn’t even do ‘O’ level art which means my learning of that subject stopped when I was 12/13 years old. Over 40 years ago. Blimey, doesn’t time fly? Anyway, because of some seeds of ideas that are currently germinating in my mind, I grabbed an opportunity to join a class that has started at our local Festival Centre. Basically, I just wanted to see if I could wield a pencil/ pastels/watercolours/ acrylics with any sort of competence. Yesterday was ‘Still Life’. And this is what I drew... It was a bit overwhelming to begin with because the ‘tutor’ was an artist who wasn’t really born to teach. His advice stemmed mostly around the phrase ‘just draw what you see.’ And occasionally adding, ‘It’s easy!’ Well, yes, it might be for you, dear heart, with your 30+ years of experience under your apron, but I have NO idea what I am doing! However, once I had embraced th

I'm feeling a little 'Charles Dickensesque' with this weekly story telling. Thank you for all the positive feedback so far. You don't realise how important it is to me! Anyway, here we go with Part 3 - a couple of new characters and a hint of something not quite right...             Police Sergeant Keiran Phelps glanced briefly at the body on the slab. He opened his notebook and wrote, ‘5/6/19’ at the top of a fresh page             'What do you reckon?' he said, pointing his biro at the body.             'Definitely dead,' said the pathologist.             Sergeant Phelps forced a tight-lipped smile. ‘Ha ha. Cause?’             ‘Internal bleeding mostly.’             ‘Mostly?’             The pathologist nodded. ‘Interesting brain lesions, too. Big one from the impact with the car, of course…’ Sergeant Phelps spoke out loud as he noted in his book – 'Cause of death: brain lesions.'             The pathologist, on

Inexplicably grim this morning, I was. Up early, cracking on with the start of the day, I found myself hitting a flat spot just after 9 a.m. You know, (or perhaps you don’t?) when you feel a bit aimless and end up staring out of the window at the grey clouds scudding across the sky and bits of spitty rain tip tapping at the windows, and wishing you had a massive slice of fruit cake to hand but you don’t because you are trying to lose some weight, damn it, and haven’t done any baking for AGES. ‘Do some writing,’ I said to myself sternly. I tend to talk aloud to myself because sometimes mine is the only voice I hear all day, and I like to check a) that my voice still works and b) so do my ears. So I sat and wrote for an hour and a half. A couple of interesting plot points showed their faces, so that was good. Sometimes writing reveals some surprising ideas. I mean, I know it is me that thinks them, but they still surprise me sometimes. During this time, the postman delivered a new br

Yesterday afternoon was spent researching artists - painters, textile creators, lithographers, ceramicists, sculptors, embroiderers - and I spent a good chunk of time looking at the work of artists who work with glass. My goodness, but there is some amazing glass art out there! I love glass. I love how it feels (not when it’s stuck in your foot or finger, though), how it can melt and then be solid again, how it can take on colour and shape and all sorts of other lovely things. I have only one piece of glass art though, which is this... It was a gift from His Lordship Malarkey a few years ago. I would like more glass art but it would be madness because of the cats. Bambino would immediately say, ‘What’s that then?’ and squeeze himself into the gap behind the glass art (no matter the care I would take in placing it in smaller-than-cat-size situations) and send it crashing to the ground, shattering it into a million tiny glass pieces. Flora would be more subtle, giving it a sly nudge w

I present you with the second chapter of 'Clive and Min.' I forgot to mention last chapter that the writing is my copyright, of course. I shall NOT be happy if I find someone else passing it off as their own. Heaven knows what I shall do, but I am Scorpio of birth. And post-menopausal, so all my forgiving hormones have left the building. Just saying!             Min - and Clive until his unfortunate demise - lived in a substantial, detached house in a leafy avenue in the suburbs of the indistinct town of Chelwood. The house was neither compact nor rambling, historic nor modern. It was one those places that often found itself transformed into a multi-partner dental clinic, or purchased by developers and chopped up to make tiny student bedsits. The house had belonged to their parents; a family home for half a century which Clive and Min had both tried to leave but had returned to through no choice of their own. Clive, the youngest, had left to marry, but had returned wit

I’ve made a bit of a change with the blog format. You’ve probably noticed. Don’t panic! I don’t know if I’ll stick with the format so you might have to bear with me as I faff around a bit more. This is all because I am toying with the setting up a website idea AGAIN - another of my interminable circle habits. It all works so well in my head - mind you, a lot of ideas work well in my head - but it’s the putting it into practise bit that scuppers me sometimes. Not all the time. But sometimes. However, I’ve taken sage advice from a fellow blogging chum who says there are website providers out there who will provide you with a ‘test site’ to play around with so you don’t mess up the content you’ve already amassed on your ‘proper’ site, and by ‘mess up’ I mean innocently press a button and lose the whole kit and caboodle, which will rocket my blood pressure/ patience/ gentle temper (!) and send me back to quill and parchment quicker than you can say, ‘We managed perfectly well without onl

Three for the price of one this evening! A wolf, a moon AND an eclipse! Apparently, the first full moon in January is called a Wolf  Moon because it was when wolves were howling at their loudest during Anglo-Saxon times when it is thought the full moons were being given names, because why not? We don’t have many wolves in England now, well, certainly not around Damson Cottage. We’ve got a cockerel called Tootsie who sounds like a trumpet. Perhaps, in hundreds of years from now, the first full moon of the year will be called a Tootsie Trumpet Moon. I’ll start the campaign now, shall I? Not only is it a full moon tonight (around 7.20 p.m U.K time), it is also an eclipse. The moon will drift into the Earth’s shadow. That shadow will appear across the moon. Eclipse! I shall go out and try to get a photo but generally when I think along those lines, like popping out to see the meteor showers last week, clouds will suddenly appear and scupper my plans. And I shan’t see anything beyond c

I’ve been making marmalade today. I don’t know why I do these things, because they turn into a massive faff. However, at the supermarket on Tuesday a box of Seville oranges managed to wangle its way into my trolley and I knew for a fact there were a couple of bags of preserving sugar in the baking cupboard at home, so I thought, ‘Okay, let’s make some marmalade!’ And the exclamation mark of optimism was there. It’s a dangerous thing, the exclamation mark of optimism. Marmalade making, in theory, is VERY simple. And I’ve done it before. Squeeze your oranges, chop up the skins and pith into size of preference - chunky, not so chunky, even less chunky - boil with juice and water for a couple of hours, add lemon juice and sugar, boil again until setting point is reached, put into warm, sterilised jam jars - bingo’s your marmalade. Ha! What recipes never tell you is this: Your forearms and hands will seize up into painful spasms with all the orange skin chopping especially if you

What happens is this... ...the bantams descend their tree and march down to the courtyard to stand at the back door and demand breakfast. I emerge from the back door, go into the laundry and scoop one pink seaside bucket full of layers pellets from a bag. I walk up to the middle garden, bantams hot on my heels. I scatter their breakfast. There is a lot of appreciative chuckling. I continue onwards to Nancy’s house which is at the far end of the top garden, let her out, and scatter some food for her. Within a minute, Magnus Cockerel and Tootsie Pseudo-Cockerel appear. Now, when a chicken finds food they make this excitable chuckling noise which is basically them saying, ‘I’ve found food!! Aren’t I clever? Look, it’s amazing food! Come and join me!!’ And it entices other hens in their locality to join their gang for breakfast. It’s a flock thing. So what happens is Magnus will start chuckling over a few bits of food, and then Tootsie will start chuckling over a few bits of food

My first thought this morning when I woke was, bizarrely, 'I should have fought for my classroom.' Now, given I left my last permanent teaching post eight months ago you would have thought I'd have got over the circumstances of my resignation by now, wouldn't you? Clearly, my quiet psyche had other ideas. I must have been clinging on to residual resentment that, having spent over two years building up my classroom into a warm and welcoming, calm, creative and safe place in which my pupils could learn I was told, without consultation, that I would no longer be teaching my subject - English - from that classroom, but would instead be peripatetic i.e carrying a box from room to room and delivering my lessons from that. At first, I thought they were joking. I wish with all my heart I'd put up a fight. I wish I had said, on behalf of my pupils and my subject, 'No.' Gone were the displays of pupils' work on the walls, the collection of learning

Here we are then. The opening couple of pages of the novel upon which I am currently working. The novel which I am determined to finish writing this year. I'm braced for feedback, if you would be kind enough to read and comment... Oh, by the way, I haven't settled on a proper title yet. I call it, for now... Clive and Min He's clearly dead, thought Minerva Thing. Even I can see that. She wanted to tell them to stop, the paramedics who were taking turns in pounding valiantly at Clive's chest. She picked up the rhythm of their futile resuscitation, tapping it with her foot –   pump, pump, pump, pump, Nellie the Elephant packed her trunk and said goodbye to the circus – as Clive lay there, his head at an odd angle and a trickle of blood greasing its way from his ear and down the side of his face.   A small crowd had gathered on the pavement to enjoy the drama. Something thrilling to talk about over supper, no doubt. Some little excitement to colour a dreary, sub