Setting myself a lunchtime task...

Task: write a short story in the remaining 40 mins of your lunchbreak...including a tree, an owl, a sink, a yellow lego brick, an ant and a kite.

Start the story with: "Bisto isn't necessarily the best brand of gravy."

Bisto isn't necessarily the best brand of gravy. Why does it think it is superior over Tesco's own brand or Paxo or any of the other gravy granules? So self-important. It's almost like someone re-named gravy 'Bisto' with the capital B. "Any Bisto to go with the chicken?" my husband often asks over dinner.  The identity of gravy has been clouded in a commercial coat. Gravy has lost it's true identity. This is what is running through my mind as I spray the runner beans with cold water under the sink. They sit limply at the bottom of the colander. One small stringy one slips through the hole and into the sink. One man down.

I look up from the basin and out of the kitchen window. The sky is watery blue and black and the moon is hanging low over the egremont russett apple tree. It is almost a full moon, with a chunk missing from the top of it. The illusion of the dark makes distances disappear. It seems as if the moon is sitting on top of the tree like a hat. If I was to climb up to the top branch of the tree and perch there with my legs dangling down, I am almost sure I could fly Neeta's kite up to touch the moon and say hello.

Jimmy should be home soon. I chuck the beans into the saucepan on the hob. I check my watch. He always arrives between 7.30 and 8, briefcase in hand, the cold plastered against his cheek like icy clingfilm when I kiss it. The blue fire flickers to life underneath the pan as I ignite the hob. Strange how I can control fire by twisiting a metal knob. Neeta is staying at Grandma's tonight so it's just Jimmy and I for dinner. I wander whether there will be idle chatter over dinner, 'how was your day' type talk. Or will we sit in awkward silence, the cracks plastering our mouths shut. I pray that there is some kind of delay, that he has been held up at work or that someone has jumped on the train tracks delaying all of the trains. A horrible thing to pray I know, but it happens all the time anyway doesn't it?

An ant is crawling along the fridge door. He pauses as I approach like a predator, as if his black little body can seek camouflage against the bright white plastic expanse. He's got no chance. I pick him up and let him run frantically along my palm. I go over to the window and grope for the gold handle, keeping my eye on the ant's whereabouts. As I push open the window an owl coos from the wilderness beyond the glass that separates our linoleum tiled kitchen from the whispering night outside. A sharp cold creeps into my fingertips as I shake the ant into the night. I close the window behind him, barring his entrance. My eyes are adjusted to the light of the fluorescent bulbs in our kitchen, making it difficult to decipher the shapes beyond the window. I shudder, there could be anything out there.

8.13pm. This is unusual. Jimmy is always home by now. Maybe my praying paid off. I suddenly feel afraid, maybe I have ushered in some curse with my shameful prayers? What if the trains are delayed, and he is the one on the tracks? I check on the beef, it is probably drying out. A pungent smell like burning hair screams from the oven when I pull open the door. A melted pool of primary yellow sits at the bottom of the oven, putrid fumes rising into the beef on the tray above. What on earth is that? I step back and cough. My foot hits something sharp and hard. I look down to see Neeta's lego bricks scattered on the floor. Yellow, green and red. No wander Jimmy's late. Yellow lego-brick-beef, potatos and beans doesn't sound that appetising, and we're out of Bisto too.

 

Excellent book for budding writers

So...the writing is going well for me so far this year, yay one NY resolution that hasn't been kicked hastily to the curb yet! It's the 9th January so obviously a long way to go and hopefully many words to be scrawled yet.

I just wanted to share a brilliant book that is really helping me along the way. I have vowed to myself on many previous occasions to do a little writing a day. Just 5 minutes. But it's strangely difficult to pick up a pen and just write about something, anything, everyday. I never succeeded...until I found this book.

"The Write Brain Workbook: 366 Exercises to Liberate Your Writing" is so easy to use. I opened the book on 1st January 2012 so have resolved to complete one page per day for the next year (plus 11 extra for good measure).  Each page has a five minute writing task, and they are genuinely fun tasks. The point is not to write some amazing literature, but to just write whatever comes to mind and free up your pen. It unsticks you, and if some story ideas come out of that too...then great. You cannot get stuck as there are prompts of all sorts to send you on your way. Each page gives you a task or theme and then even an opening sentence to get you started. At the bottom of each page is a small text box with 'Take the Next Step' written in it. Each next step is a short additional exercise aimed particularly at honing in on, getting to know, motivating and waking up your writing self. These little boxes ask what it is you want from your writing self in different ways so that eventually you can build up a picture, a focus and a visualisation of what you would ultimately like to achieve.This was yesterday's page:

Each page is presented creatively with space to write on the given topic. Another thing helping to keep me going is that I can't wait to have a full book at the end of the year, with words in old-skool pen that I wrote every day. It will be a nice diary of sorts to look back on.

So if anyone is interested, I strongly advise you to invest in a copy...also makes a great gift.

Out with the old and in with the new

Well good day 2012. How lovely to see you. I have been expecting you, please wipe your feet on the door mat on the way in. The kettle’s on. I have biscuits too, chocolate hobnobs – only the best for you. I do like your shoes, what a beautiful shade of red. I only hope you can walk well in them.

2011 passes out from exhaustion and 2012 removes her shoes. This might be better done bare foot; it could be a tough shift.

An exciting year lies ahead. New years are strange, does anyone else agree? I find myself perched on this one precariously. I saw 2012 in not actually with hobnobs and tea, but with my good friends, good music, lots of hugs and plenty of food and drink. 2011 has been so much fun, with the exception of a hard bereavement. I went travelling to India, Borneo and South East Asia with my best friend Carla for four months at the beginning of the year. I returned to the UK in April, after getting soaked in an amazing city-wide water fight in Bangkok to celebrate Thai New Year. I returned to work, found a lovely bunch of people at a new writing class and moved into a flat with my friend and her boyfriend. A very good family friend died in June out of the blue, during Coldplay’s set at Glastonbury (I was watching it on TV, so were my friends when it happened). That was hard and it’s heartbreaking seeing them so sad. It still feels quite surreal, as it was so unexpected. The cause of death was inconclusive. I don’t think death can be any easier when you know it’s coming; it is so abrupt and final when it does that it must always be a shock. It makes you realise that you can never prepare so enjoy every moment that you get.

I was feeling excited for 2012 until I started getting itchy today. I penned some resolutions yesterday and was feeling good about them and now it’s the 2^nd January 2012. I know I’ve hardly given myself a chance, but the clock is ticking. My main resolution for this year is to apply myself. To learn the art, for I have come to think it is nothing less. I am a chronic fidgeter. Restless.

For example, I list reading and writing high up on my list of passions yet I am constantly skipping around them.

Unless I am on holiday I find that I cannot settle in to a good book anymore. I used to love curling up and absorbing a good book in a few days. Over the last year I have developed an unnerving habit. To leave books unfinished. Even if it’s the best book in the world and I have managed to stay hooked up until the last 20 pages...for some reason I drop it there and never finish it. Even if I would really like to find out what happens. Weird.

So this year, I aim to read more, and when I say read, I mean finish more articles, books, short stories.

The same goes for writing. I am a dabbler. A restless pen always rattling around in my head, but when it comes to joining the letters on paper I get stuck. I write a few sentences and then turn away.

Writing and reading sort of feel like the cure to my restlessness, and they simultaneously feel like the itch.

I feel the need to be more useful this year, to both myself and other people. Watch this space...and if it gets to April and I’m still doing a strange restless, fidgeting dance in a corner watching the clock, then there’s always Thai New Year J

                                                     Carla and I - Thai New Year, April 2011

Happy New Year to all of you, here’s to a bloody good 2012. And let’s hope that it’s not the last (some Mayan Bard said it would be, silly Bard, there’s always one who has to put a dampener on it!)