sorry, sorry, busy! I'll write more in a bit, honest (maybe after I finish this tasty pint of cider...)

ps

I was going to be very good and do yoga tonight, but it's already ten o'clock and I'm still in crisis mode. Wine or yoga? Wine or yoga? Oh alright, wine it is!

A whole week has passed. A week in which...we have played naked football in the back garden (well, the Twins were naked, Son and I wore dresses), the children have had their school reports, we've all had a bit of an emotional crisis, and it's been hot, hot, hot.
The nice thing about school reports were that the kids got to write their own evaluation of the school year. Twin 1's own school feedback sheet began like this: 'The best thing this year was when Holly ran into a chair leg...'
As a result of super-dooper reports they all got sweets and to have a Happy Meal for tea. I know, bad Mum, giving junk food  as a reward. But I'm a bit good-mum'd out at the moment. Which brings me to the day of crisis (yesterday). Twin 2 had a really lovely report, but, bless her, she hasn't really made any academic progress. And I know that this is because of a raft of other things (visual perception issues, problems with fine motor skills, inability to concentrate for long periods of time, etc.)  because of her cerebral palsy. However, she's in the mainstream system, and we've got to deal with that somehow. So...I realised that next year I will have to offer her more support in order to help her begin to catch up with her peers, which would be fine if it weren't the case that I have two other children, and two jobs and I'm a de facto single parent at the moment. So this is where the beginnings of the crisis started. Twin 1 gets very huffy when she considers Twin 2 is getting more attention, for starters. Hmmm. So, I had a serious  chat with Twin 1 and we made an agreement that in return for me spending more time with Twin 2, she would get to play football with her dad at weekends (an easy deal to make on his behalf, as he's still in Iceland and couldn't disagree). But then, later on, Twin 1 got all upset, because of course her dad isn't here very much and it's not fair because he's the only one who understands her and her sister gets all the attention because she's disabled etc. etc. So we had another long chat. A long chat during which I was not cleaning the bathroom, hanging out the washing, or preparing for my Monday morning ESOL class. But, you know, it's important to give these things the time they need. So, her sobs had finally subsided as I'd agreed to try harder to give her the attention she needs, and she'd just gone off to do her teeth when Son came in, also tearful, feeling neglected because I've been spending so much time with the girls that our evening games of cards/chess have slipped. We had a long and tearful chat and I agreed to try harder to be a better mother to him as well. So he went off to do his teeth and then I heard Twin 2's sobs from the bedroom because she'd been waiting all this time for me to say goodnight and now I'd spent so much time listening to the other two that I'd entirely messed up her bedtime routine, which is very important to her. Good grief.
So...I have pencilled in half an hour's one-to-one time with each of them every school night. I've done more than pencil it in, in fact. I have added it into my electronic calendar. Which means that between seven and eight thirty Monday to Friday I have to focus entirely on my children and not sneakily try to brush the odd toilet bowl or fold up bed linen or search for interesting grammar lessons online. Which is what a good mother should do, but...
Yes, now they've all had their crisis sorted out by me, I have my own crisis.
I have texted the cleaner. She is deep cleaning my kitchen on Monday and starting a regular weekly clean after the holidays. Hoo-blooming-rah.
I feel like I'm almost clawing back some control. Almost...but not really, because I realised this afternoon that Son had some leavers' thing on after school. I thought it was just a class disco, and let him wear his choice of clothes (old ripped trousers and his favourite long sleeved t-shirt). When we went to pick him up it turned out it was a Leavers Ball, and all the other kids were in shirts & ties or posh frocks. There was a red carpet and everything (bad mother, bad, bad mother). Son was the only not dressed up to the nines - luckily he didn't care. And now, I've just found out that it's the leavers' assembly on Monday morning, which clashes with my Monday ESOL class...what to do?
The crisis continues.
Roll on the hols!

chapter 1...

Just to give you a taster. If you happen to know any agents/publishers looking for a New Adult historical fiction debut by an emerging talent, then do waft them in my direction!

Chapter 1

When it happened, it felt like the end. As it turned out, it was just the beginning, but how could she have known that, on that cold November afternoon in 1941?

She was almost home when she saw a swish of blue-grey as the airman rushed towards her up Western Way. The wind whipped a strand of hair across her face. It caught on her mouth and she spat it out.

He was barrelling towards her, arms outstretched, mouth wide. He was shouting something, but the wind took his words and hurled them down the street, towards London, the Thames and away.

Then she heard him: “Get down! Get down!” The airman hurled himself at her, rugby tackling her, pinning her down.

She began to scream, but before the sound escaped her mouth, the explosion lifted them both off the ground, tangling their limbs before throwing them back down. Sudden and hard: her skull whipped back against the pavement. His knee was in her groin. The buttons on his uniform dug into her cheek, her breast. In her mouth the damp-cloth-sweat smell of his clothes. The juddering weight of him on top of her and the sound: deep, loud, painful.

And then it was over.

Colours blurred and separated. She tried to breathe, couldn’t, choked, shoved at the smoke-coloured weight on top of her. They rolled together, slow motion wrestlers in the settling dust. Then they pulled apart, limbs dragging against each other.

He sat up. She looked up at him. There were patches of grit and mud on his uniform and a cut on his cheekbone, spilling blood.

“Are you all right?” he mouthed. She couldn’t hear him properly, her ears filled with a dull ringing.

“Fine, I think,” she said, her voice sounding far away. She pushed herself into a seated position and rubbed the back of her head.

The pavement was cracked, slabs ripped apart to reveal tree roots and dry earth. The air smelled metallic, dark, burnt.

He staggered slightly, getting up, then he held out a hand for her. She took it and struggled upright, bare legs scraping the broken ground.

“You’re hurt,” she said, pointing at the cut on his face. He put a hand up to check.

“It’s nothing,” he said, feeling the wound and then, as he brushed a lock of dark Brylcreemed hair away and rubbed the grit out of his eyes, he noticed that his RAF cap was missing and turned to search for it.

She watched him, the blue-grey figure, searching for his cap by the unravelled kerb. Her eyes followed him find it, pick it up, brush it off and shift it onto the correct position on his head – the missing piece of the jigsaw puzzle found and slotted in.

There was dust up her nose and in her mouth. She wiped her lips on the sleeve of her coat, but succeeded only in pushing more grit into her mouth and leaving a smear of red on the beige wool.

As he began to walk back towards her, brushing the dust from his jacket, she looked beyond him, at the place the bomb had struck.

“Well, we were lucky, weren’t we?” said the airman, as he drew level. “I don’t hold out much hope for the poor blighters at number thirty-two, though,” he continued, following her gaze.

She looked past him to the smoking pile. It was like a giant’s game of spillikins, a mess of sticks and rubble. She could hear the sound of the belated air-raid siren starting its slow wail.

“You’re a bit shaken up, I can see that. I’m not too chipper myself, to be honest. Let’s get you home. You’ll feel better after a cup of tea,” he said. He touched her lightly on the forearm. She turned to face him. “Now, where is it you live?” he said.

There were specks of gravel on his cheeks, and the livid slash of blood. His eyes were blue and round, like a child’s.

“I live at number thirty-two,” she said.

yay!

Just finished the first draft of my novel 100K words, in time for the summer hols, too. Of course, there are bits that need monkeying around with. Especially the romance sub-plot. I'm just not good at romance - ask my husband. But, it's all there, on the Mac, on the cloud and printed out. Phew! Now I need to go to the gym and go to see Son being a splendid scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz, so no time for  laurel-resting.
Now, just the small matter of tidying it up, finding and agent and selling it to a publisher...

ps

yes, I have just apologised to the kids for being so grumpy...

Dobby

I'm contemplating renaming myself Dobby. Because I am effectively just a house elf. Ten O'levels, four  A' levels, an honours degree and a masters, and how do I spend my days? Picking hair bobbles off the floor so they don't get tangled up in the hoover and thinking about the best way to hang an item of clothing on the line so that it won't need much ironing. Being well again sucks. There's just a backlog of housework and an extra couple of inches on my waistline from 72 hours of jam-on-toast-in-bed. Anyway, I can't sit here chatting all night, have you seen the size of the ironing pile? cheerio x

pineapple upside down cake with Julian Clary

I'm nearly better. Exciting, no? Well, it is for me, anyway (although I suspect that the large bottle of cider I've just quaffed may have something to do with my sudden feelings of wellbeing). I spent most of  the day in bed, again, although I wasn't utterly unproductive, because I wrote all about one character having the final showdown with her mother and also getting killed - nooo, just when she's finally about to get everything she's ever dreamt of, oh the irony). I had a break for chicken soup and lunch with 'Gino & Mel', who were making pineapple upside down cake with Julian Clary, which was the highlight of my sickbed day (I'm contemplating putting Gino & Mel into my fantasy street. Obviously Kirsty & Phil will live on the street, as well as Hugh Fearnly-Whittingstall, and probably Katherine Tate, too, so I might find room for Gino & Mel, but they will have to be further down the far end somewhere). Anyway, I felt well enough to walk to school to pick the kids up, take them all to the sailing club this evening and even mop the kitchen floor...by golly, I feel like a veritable Boudicca! I have fought the wierd summer virus thing and triumphed! My white blood cells are strong, they are fiesty, and they are full of french cider, too...in fact, I'm feeling so good that I may even have another bottle (oh, stop it, it's Friday night). Chin chin xxx

being ill is boring

So very bored of feeling ill now. I felt rubbish all day yesterday, but battled through my cheery lessons on 'Dorset Life' (students were listening for gist, listening for specific information, listening to the teacher doing her comedy 'yokel' accent and pretending to find her funny, etc.). Next week I've decided to do a lesson on 'Neighbours', and yes, I have chosen it mainly because then I get to play the 'Neighbours' theme tune and talk about Scott and Charlene's wedding. But anyway, the point is, I taught all day and felt utterly rubbish by the end of it all, which necessitated lots of brufen and tea and toast on the sofa (yes, the fasting day went out of the window) and no housework and I thought that by giving myself a night off I'd feel better today, but no. I still feel pants. Twin 1 was feeling ill too, today, so she was off school, so I couldn't have a morning of tea and toast in front of Phil & Holly, because Twin 1's need for Scooby Doo took precedence. I just had to go back to bed. I got up for lunch (chicken soup, natch) and then went back to bed until school pick up time (and by then Twin 1 was better, and was out on the trampoline in a ball dress and wooly tights, which she assured me was a perfect way to convalesce). After school, I made the kids watch a DVD with me and banished other children from the house (I don't like other people's children when I'm ill - do you?). It was 'We bought a zoo'. I cried, Son played on his tablet most of the way through, and the Twins got bored at the emotional bits, and put on their ball dresses to go out on the trampoline. I continued to blub, alone on the sofa, wishing Hubby was there for tea and sympathy (although in reality, if he were here, he'd be calling me a malingering tart by now, because I'm not allowed to be ill for more than twenty four hours).
I know, I'm just feeling sorry for myself. I'm going to stop bleating on and make myself some tea and toast to have in front of the telly now. And you know what, the washing up can blooming well wait until tomorrow!
Maudlin-ly yours xxx

nameless

I know, I ought to be doing yoga or meditation or cleaning the bathroom or something useful. But I feel like I've been ignoring you recently, so I'm taking time to write. Although it is nearly 10.30 so I can only give you a couple of moments because I do actually want to go to bed. Today was a good day. I wasn't fasting, so I ate lots of homemade  toast and jam and sushi and putanesca sauce and chocolate milkshake and hot chocolate and...blimey, when I write it all down I realise why I need to do fasting days twice a week. I wrote another chapter of the book, took delivery of a cabin bed and had half the street round the house for a play date after school (didn't really mind, except  when the pesky girls stole all the sugar-free gum I'd been saving for my fasting day tomorrow, the minxes). Nameless-the-rat got abandoned on the sofa whilst Son went off on his bike with the new boy next door. She was staring with her red eyes and wiggling her large furry bottom as if she was about to contemplate jumping off the sofa and escaping, but she didn't fool me. She would never be bothered to actually escape; she's just not that sort of rat. If she was a woman, she'd be a baggy-football-shirt and open tub of Ben & Jerry's type of girl, if you know what I mean. Anyway, she's back in her cage now, snoring happily, after another big meal. Okay, well, bedtime now, and two two-hour ESOL lessons and a mere five hundred calories to look forward to tomorrow...

Sorry, ten days have suddenly zipped by and it's almost July. What's been going on? Well, my lovely boss had a word with the Russian student, and in the last lesson she was as charming as you fancy. Not only did she smile and engage with the class, she told me I looked like Princess Kate. In response,  I told her that she was my new best friend. Obviously, we were both lying, but hey.

What else? Twins got to sing Abba songs at a 'music festival' at a local school last weekend: lots of people desperately trying to have a good time despite the rain, wind, and overpriced beverages (much like other music festivals, I guess - apart from Glastonbury, which has suddenly become a national treasure, like a sort of festival version of Barbara Windsor).

Son has been practising hard for his role in the school play. He's going to be the scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz. He gets to sing 'If I only had a brain'  - casting perhaps a little ironic. Anyway, all three of them are watching the 1939 version, again, and I'm letting them get on with it even though it's past bedtime and it's a Sunday night...oh no, Twin 2 has just been in and berated me for not remembering to do her speech therapy session. Well, I'm not doing it now. No siree, Bob.

Hubby has gone to Iceland. Almost. He's skippering a yacht there for a couple of weeks, but we won't see him until the end of July. He was getting a bit glum about it, mainly because it'll be all cold and cloudy up there, apparently - not all that much different to here - and I can't help thinking what did he expect? It's the arctic blooming circle for goodness sakes! In any case, the trip was entirely his choice so I have no sympathy (and I shall have even less sympathy when he goes back to the Caribbean next year - unless we all get presents, in which case I may have a small change of heart).

Right, I really ought to do my motherly duty and send the kids to bed. It's a school day tomorrow, you know! xxx