Well it has certainly been a long time since I posted anything on here, but I am happy to write that it is purely because I have been so busy with other writing projects/family projects/art projects. Of all the pies I have my fingers in at the moment, blogging is the least important, and so I will return when time permits. I would like to add that I have had two articles accepted for publication in a parenting magazine (unpaid as it is a free magazine, but my first success since I started the writing course in March!). I still enjoy reading all the other blogs I am following though so keep up the good work!!

Road Trip to Inspiration

I have escaped to Bognor Regis with the kids to stay with my parents for half term and avoid living in the building site that is my home. It's a two hour drive to get here, and I usually listen to the radio for company, but this time my husband suggested I plug my iPhone into the iTrip (a gadget for listening to MP3 players through your car radio), and put my iPod on shuffle (no this is not an advert for Apple).

I have quite an extensive music library on my iPhone, but I never listen to it. I can't even remember what's on it; I set it up when I was still living in London and needed entertainment on the journey to and from work. Since I stopped work to look after our children, I have had little chance to listen to my iPod.

Before I could object my husband leaned into the car and plugged my phone into the iTrip. "There you go, all set, call me when you get there!" he grinned as he stood back and waved us off (he is staying behind to "project manage" the work being done on our house).

I was a bit miffed that I would be missing out on my usual fix of radio 2, but it didn't take long for me to get sucked into the music coming out of the car stereo. As each song played I thought, oh great, I love this song! and they just kept coming. The Beatles, Jimmi Hendrix, Daft Punk, Foo Fighters, Span, The Big Bang, Ravi Shanka, Manu Chou, and many more of my favourites, all lifting my mood and clearing my head.

I felt elated as I arrived at my parents. The journey I had just taken was an inspirational trip down memory lane, each song triggering a new thought. I remembered how music can feed your soul and inspire your dreams.

I have always found it easier to write in silence, because it is my time away from the trials of motherhood and silence is most welcome after a busy day. However, I have decided to experiment with listening to different styles of music while writing. After a few years of abstinence I am once again inspired by all my old favourite musicians, and I hope I can use this inspiration to create something wonderful!

Bottoms Up for the Royal Wedding

The following is my account of watching the Royal Wedding last month. I wrote it for my local Town Crier magazine, but they decided not to use it, so I thought I'd stick it on here instead. Enjoy...

Where were you when the lovely Catherine Middleton married her Prince William? Will you look back on the occasion with fondness and admiration? It is certainly a day that I will never forget. As much as I tried to engage in the events of the royal wedding, I will always remember Friday 29^th April 2011 as the day I failed (miserably) to potty train my son.

            There is nothing better than a royal wedding to bring the nation together for one momentous day, and I fully intended to revel in the excitement that has been sweeping the country. However, two days before the wedding, I decided to potty train my two year old son, Eden. He has been showing all the right signs, but one in particular spurred me into action. Not long ago he became aware of something solid in his nappy, and decided to explore it thoroughly with his hands. It’s not a pleasant feeling walking into a room to find your child smeared from head to toe in his own poop!

For two full days I followed Eden around the house, tempting him to sit on the potty with treats. But by the evening of the second day I still hadn’t caught a single drop, and after soiling every pair of his own pants, I had no choice but to put him in a pair of his sister’s pretty pink knickers.

After going out to water the garden and give myself time-out from the many little accidents, I came back in to find that Eden had left a large pile on the kitchen floor. Not only had he removed his pretty pink knickers to do so, he had then walked through it, leaving little brown footprints leading into the living room and all over our cream carpet. Stay calm, breathe, count to ten…

*          *          *

The wedding day arrives, and even after my lack of success so far (and the unmentionable incident the previous evening), I push on with the potty training. As well as coaxing Eden onto the potty and trying to catch glimpses of the wedding coverage on the telly, my daughter Sienna is chattering away to me persistently about princesses and weddings.

Sienna is so excited about watching a modern-day fairy-tale wedding that she has even dressed for the occasion in a flowery maxi-dress and matching sun-hat! I am trying to pay her the attention she is craving as she bombards me with question after question.

Eden is not at all interested in the wedding, and is now starting to lose his patience with the potty. I sense there is something larger pending as his mood becomes frantic and over-excited. It dawns on me that we may be in for a repeat of yesterday’s kitchen floor incident, and I regret bribing him onto the potty earlier with a large bunch of grapes.

It’s now 10.45am and the Queen has just arrived at Westminster Abbey, greeted by Prince Charles and Camilla. Sienna is asking me repeatedly, “Mummy which one is the Queen?”, “Mummy where is the princess?”, “Mummy can I marry a prince?”

Eden, becoming increasingly frantic, is refusing point blank to come anywhere near the potty. As I turn my attention from one child to the other, all the while trying to watch one of the biggest events of the year, I sense an impending explosion.  Calm, 1,2,3…

It’s 11am and the ceremony is imminent. I turn away just for a second to check on Eden, who is running up and down the sofa…and there it is. The cause of Eden’s anxiety has at last shown itself all over my sofa. I lose it. All the disappointment I have suppressed over the last three days comes flooding out as I grab his arms and plonk him onto the potty, “That’s where it goes you silly boy!” I shout.

If only I could have noticed the look on his face before I berated him. He is obviously distraught at the sight of his own mess as he sits on the potty shrieking “OH NO, OH NO!” I quickly calm down, turn back into super-multi-tasking mum, and take control of the situation.

*          *          *

The wedding is over. I have missed it all. My children are both sitting happily watching Peppa Pig. Eden is wearing a nappy for the first time in three days. As I reminisce about my rather eventful day, all I can say is, thank goodness for leather sofas and Sky Plus.

My head aches, I am tired, I am sitting in a room full of stacked furniture and half-constructed kitchen units, and everything is covered in a layer of thick, chalky dust. It's nearly the end of the first week and I am feeling the strain of having my house turned upside down by builders, plumbers, electricians and kitchen fitters. But it's not the work itself that is taking its toll on my mental state, it's the madenning behaviour of my two troublesome children.

Since Monday I have worked hard to keep my kids out of the house and occupied (one of them is in school which makes my job a little easier). Generally their behaviour ranges from hyper-active to hyper-over-active, like most kids, but being turfed out of their home and dragged around town pining for hot dinners seems to have pushed their behaviour into the realm of over-hyper-active out-of-control; screaming, whining, moaning, arguing, fighting etc. etc.

Yesterday evening was the icing on the cake for me. As an end of week treat, and yet another option for dinner, we decided to take the kids to a well known pizza establishment. Fully aware that my two year old son had not had his usual daily nap, and that my four year old daughter was at the end of a draining week of school, we went ahead with our plans. My son was an over-tired argumentative mess. After noisily demanding a balloon before we had even sat down at our table, his behaviour deteriorated to something not unlike that of a caged tasmanian devil. I decided he was past the point of no return and tried to walk him to sleep around the car park in his push-chair. This failed, so my husband resorted to driving him around the car park in the car while the rest of us (my in-laws also experienced this joyous outing) finished our meal in silence. Well, not in comlete silence. My daughter's mood was not quite tasmanian devil status, but was definitely verging on the style of a stuck record on fast speed as she whined repeatedly about...well, everything.

I was slowly coming apart at the seams as we rushed through dinner, boxed up the two uneaten pizza's for my son and husband, and dashed out of the door (remembering to pay of course). It didn't lift my mood to find that when we returned to the car my son was still wide awake...and grinning mischieviously.

 

A Time to Write

As I write I am sitting in a cold, bare room that until today has been our dining room. All pictures, ornaments, book shelves and crates of toys have been evacuated in preparation for the demolishing of a wall, and the construction of a new “open-plan kitchen-diner”. We have waited weeks for the plans to be finalised and a date to be set, and all I can think as I ponder the imminent chaos is, when will I get time to write?

Yesterday I spent all day emptying our kitchen cupboards and re-organising a make-shift kitchen in the conservatory. Today my husband and I have ripped out most of the old kitchen, and pulled up the old floor. We are now ready for weeks of dust, excessive noise, problems, and stress. My time will mostly be spent ferrying the kids between various families’ houses for days at a time and keeping well out of the way. I am obviously very excited about having a new “open-plan kitchen-diner”, however I can’t help but feel anxious that I will not have enough time to focus on my various writing projects and assignments.

Being a mum for nearly five years has taught me many lessons, one important one being that in order to cope with the day ahead you must go to bed early the night before! So I can usually be found tucked up with a good book by ten o clock (sad I know).  Since I have become passionate about writing again I have learnt a new lesson (or re-learnt an old one); the best time to write (for me) is when it is quiet and there are no distractions. In my house I struggle to find quiet time to write, and with a building project looming, and my choice to add yet another writing project to my list with blogging, I feel compelled to break a restful habit, and start burning the midnight oil.

I think I’ll do it tomorrow though, I’m exhausted! Well it is half past ten…goodnight!

New Kid on the Blog...

Well, here I am, my first ever blog, which I’m sure I’ll look back on in years to come and cringe at how awful it is! But I’ve got to get through the first few clumsy attempts before I get into the swing of it I suppose…?

I am here because I love to write. I recently started a home study creative writing course with The Writer’s Bureau and so far I am enjoying it very much. I have entered the course with an open mind and I am surprised how much I have learnt in the first two months. I have never contemplated writing non-fiction before, I have only tried my hand at fiction and poetry. However, I have just completed two non-fiction assignments which have given me a new perspective on my writing. I always thought to write non-fiction articles you either had to be an "expert" in your chosen field, or had to have studied journalism for at least ten years. But no, although a great deal of hard work and research is required, people from all walks of life can write creative factual articles, and possibly even get them published. 

I am looking forward to learning a great deal about the craft of writing as I progress through the course, and I plan to share many of my highs and lows right here.

To begin, I would like to share one of the hardest things I have had to learn so far on the course...

Since I was a teenager at school, learning (eagerly) the do's and don'ts of our lovely English language, I have always inserted two spaces after a full stop when typing. It has become second nature to me, like a close and familiar friend, and I have been typing for many years now. When I submitted my first assignment for assessment a few weeks ago, one piece of advice my tutor gave to me was to only insert one space after a full stop as two is no longer the norm. This is fair comment, but do you think I could change this one little habit? If you look closely you will notice that I have actually mastered it, but not without a fight. The frustration and distraction I have suffered to permanently lose just one little space has quite possibly loosened a small thread of my sanity. I even developed a slight nervous twitch when contemplating the use of the space bar, my usual fluid touch on the keys suddenly disturbed. I reached a definite point of despair, convinced that this silly, insignificant space would be the ruin of my literary dreams.

I had no choice but to calm my anxiety and conquer this battle, so I sent myself back to school and meticulously typed lines: One space after a full stop. One space after a full stop. One space after a full stop. One space after a full stop...you get the picture. After completing enough lines to give myself serious repetitive strain injury, I finally triumphed, and the poor un-loved second space is no more (sniff).

If anyone is actually reading this, please be assured that my future posts will hopefully have more clout! Just bear with me as I find my feet...

Thanks for listening!