Headless

'Could you fix these, Mum,’ said James brightly at breakfast. I was mid-way through a bowl of muesli (whilst dreaming of bacon butties) and nodded vaguely. ‘Sure...hand ‘em over.’
I was on a bit of a high, having made a half-decent job of putting a toe-guard on his new cricket bat. I don’t know quite what I was expecting – some item of clothing that had fallen apart maybe. The Stig’s remote control quad bike having crashed at speed. What I wasn’t expecting was two beheaded birds. Okay, before you barf, they were stuffed toys but still... We Need to Talk About Kevin flashed vividly in front of my eyes followed by a quick scan of Good Therapists I Know.
‘Um, oh dear. Er, what happened?’

What IS it with this household? The terrier, when we lived out on the moor, used to love nothing more than beheading pheasants. Even more bizarrely he would sometimes bury the heads, Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence style. So whenever I see a pheasant, I can’t help thinking about David Bowie.

‘Well, the chirping was getting on my nerves so I took out the mechanism.’

He had a good point there. Those RSPB birds are dead cute but some of them have cheeps as monotonous and irritating as any ring tone. So I spent breakfast reattaching the heads onto a (I think) blue tit and some variety of finch. But the image stayed in my head. My dear late friend Sarah Dening was a Jungian psychotherapist and big on metaphors. I could almost hear her voice in my head.

‘So, Jane, what does this image mean, personally, to you?’

Not difficult is it, really? ‘Headless chicken, Sarah,’ I said (sorry, do you find it odd that I talk to dead friends?). It’s really true. I have been scurrying around so much, I’m dizzy.

So this must needs be short and sweet. But I have to just say a huge heartfelt thank-you to everyone who nominated and voted for me in the Author Blog Awards run by Completely Novel. I was very very chuffed and really very over-excited about the whole affair. Being shortlisted was lovely enough but then the fabulous Linda Jones explained that my blog (yes, this very one) was actually the runner-up. Well, bless my soul.

I’ll be back soon. In the meantime, if you don’t believe I’ve been busy, you can catch my ramblings on my The Lady blog here

See something I wrote for the Telegraph on complementary health here

and, if you want something completely different, you can check out the teen novel I’m writing here

Have I missed anything? Probably. Wish someone would sew my head back on.

On Walberswick

‘Do I really have to come?’ James didn’t want to go to Suffolk. Not one little bit. I wasn’t offended. He wasn’t baulking at the thought of spending a weekend alone with his mother while Adrian went out on a Food Safari. No, it was the thought of a day stuck in the car to get there, coming hard on the heels of our marathon trip back from North Wales.

When I was his age, a car journey was a novelty (cue the violins – I’ll spare you the ‘we lived in a cardboard box’ routine). I’d happily spend any length of time gazing out of the window, lost in my imaginings. But James is very different. I was an introspective child, happy with my own company – the kind of child who built ‘dens’ in the woods, up a tree, behind the sofa and spent hours just sitting in them. Not doing anything in particular, just being.  Now I see it in black and white, I have to confess I sound a little odd actually.

But James is all action, all outgoing, only truly happy in movement, with friends. I don't think he will never ever quite forgive us for not providing a sibling.

Salvation came in the shape of my pal Jules. ‘Stay with us,’ she said in a flash, quite regardless of the fact that she was already hosting her mother, sister, niece and nephew. He fell on her like a thirsty man on a pint of beer.  So Adrian and I went alone. Back to Walberswick, back to Southwold, back to my childhood.

My father loved this place, primarily because of the beer. They say you marry your husband and this case it’s true – Adrian says the word ‘Adnams’ as if it were a prayer. And while the brewery in Southwold is the cathedral of beer, The Anchor at Walberswick is its parish church.

Adrian has gone on about this place for so long I glaze over but now, by heck, I see the light.  Sophie and Mark Dorber have turned what I remember as a dreary Tudorbethan hotel into something quite quite sublime.

‘What’ll you have?’ asked the barman, Luke.
‘Er, nothing. I’m a bit delicate from the night before,’ I confessed.
‘You need a drink,’ he said firmly. ‘Gin and tonic?’
‘Now there’s a thought.’

He proffered a bottle I’d never seen before and I took a sip. Tanqueray Ten. Bliss. Three of those and I was a happier being.  A plate of tapas and some sublime scallops and I was floating in heaven.

By happy coincidence, Adrian’s piece about pubs and beer was in the Telegraph, with this place touted as one of his favourite British pubs.

After a breakfast of jalapeno pepper omelette, fresh apple juice and THE best coffee, possibly in the entire world, I have to agree with him.  And by heck that hurts.

Middle-aged lust (a sad thing)

It’s wrong. I know it’s wrong. I really should not fall passionately in love with a 20-something. But seriously, I’d challenge you not to – because he is absolutely totally drop-dead gorgeous. Tall, lean, longish blond hair – looks like a younger version of Sawyer from Lost. Same storm-grey eyes and sardonic smile. He rides a Norton Commando and can play the fiddle better than the devil. He’s a bit moody, bit of a bad boy (never shies from a fight) and goes off in a right strop sometimes. Oh, and when he strips off to go surfing, he shows off a killer six-pack.
I tell you, my thought processes are criminal.

Okay, fear not, he’s not real. I’m not going to dump the Beer God and ride off into the sunset, wrapping my arms round his waist (did I mention the leather jacket?) and clinging tight as tight can be to his muscled thighs as we career round the bends. Phew, sorry, went into a reverie there.

Nope, he’s a character in my WIP, a YA Dark Romance. His name is Samael and he, um, happens to be a demon. Well, hey, every guy has to have a downside.

Then there’s Zeke and he’s pretty damn cute too. He’s nineteen, skin the colour of a good strong cup of tea, hair in dreads, tattoos up his arms. I am so envious of my MC, I could murder her. But seems other people have already got that in hand.

I love, love, love writing this book. I put on Seth Lakeman’s Kitty Jay (which is my muse of a soundtrack) and light up an Aromatherapy Associations Relax candle (which is my muse of a scent) and write and write and write. Actually, I’m now seriously worried – I’ve just heard that the Relax candle is discontinued and so I’m reduced to sniffing the little bit left at the end.

But this falling in lust with your characters...is it normal? Is it okay? Or is it some kind of weird adultery? Some variant of cyber-salaciousness? Or, let’s be brutally honest, more than a little sad for a woman old enough to be his mother?

If you’d like to read the first few (very rough and unedited) chapters of the book, click here

Oh, and (huge excitement) this little blog has been shortlisted for the Author Blog Awards. It’s up against the might of some HUGE name authors so I’m feeling a little David v Goliath right now. If you fancy casting a vote for the small guy (girl), I’d be well chuffed. Click here

On parental guilt and virtual strawberries

Right now I should be out fertilising. Or planting soy beans. Or harvesting strawberries. Nope, I haven’t gone all Felicity Kendall Good Lifeish, my son has hauled me onto Farmville.
There are times when I lack all parental willpower whatsoever and this was one of them. ‘Can I join Facebook, Mum?’ said James.
‘Certainly not,’ said I.
‘But Christian is on it.’
‘Well, whoopee for Christian.’

‘I’ve got 50 friends,’ added Christian with discernible pride.

‘Well, I sincerely hope you know all of them personally,’ said I, feeling very grown-up and responsible (quietly nudging aside the fact that I’ve clean forgotten where I picked up half my own friends on Facebook).

‘Well, I know some of them,’ he said.

Oh, for heaven’s sake. I spent the next hour unpeeling all manner of unsavoury looking types from his profile and giving stern warnings about Internet safety.

Once we’d done that, he showed James his farm. Let’s be quite clear here – it’s an online farm, where crops grow in a day and where the sheep line up neatly. I took a quick look and figured it might be educational – as in managing money, taking responsibility, learning cause and effect.

‘So, can I join? Just to play Farmville?’ said James. ‘It’s educational.’ He knows me too well.
I caved.

Of course the reality is that it isn’t remotely educational; it’s darned commercial.
‘What’s PayPal, Mum?’ asked James.
‘What? Why?’
Seems that, if you get impatient and can’t wait for weeks to earn your gold coins (to ‘buy’ your pigs and geese and crops and so on) you can pay REAL MONEY to bypass the boring bits. So I suppose there is an element of reality about it after all.

Of course it wasn’t enough for James to have a reasonable farm, he wanted a darn fine farm. Not content with soliciting my friends for manure and building materials, he sneaked onto my PC and joined me up.

I tell you, it’s stressful. ‘Oh dear, Mum. You didn’t harvest your crops, did you? They’re all dead.’

What? Will someone please tell me why I’m feeling guilty about virtual withered strawberries?

Probably because guilt is every working mother’s middle-name.

Competitive? No way. I just like being first.

I am beginning to realise how horribly competitive I am. It’s not a nice trait and I wouldn’t even mind if I spent my time being competitive about sensible things. But it’s as though, if I see a list, I have to be at the top of it.

Take Authonomy for example. Put up my book, Walker. Got great feedback, more than enough to fix the book. Could I leave it there? Oh no. ‘I’ll just get into the top 100,’ I thought. Then, ‘Well, maybe the top fifty.’ And so it went until I ended up making my eyes bleed by reading enough books to haul mine into the top five. Was that enough? Nope, had to get the Number One spot. And what for? So an editor at HarperCollins could tell me what a bunch of fellow authors had already said time and time again.

So, when I got a third of the way through my new work in progress, what did I do? Yup, you got it. Bunged it up again. This time I am fighting myself, I really am – I am purposely not pushing it. But the feedback is great. Samael is aimed at the top end of the Young Adult readership. It’s what is now called ‘dark romance’ (you’d better believe it, Waterstones have a whole section devoted to it). In other words, it’s classic Twilight stuff – girl falls in love with boy (except he’s not exactly human). Fear not, there are no vampires and no fallen angels. It’s an interesting genre because basically it straddles both romance and horror (so right up my street).

If you fancy taking a read – you can check it out here.

Meanwhile, Mrs Competitive has discovered there are awards for writers who are also bloggers. Once again, my paw is up there, waving frantically, ‘Pick me! Pick me! Pick me!’ Sad, isn’t it?

Do you think I didn’t get enough recognition as a child? Was I an overlooked adolescent? What makes me want to win so desperately? Even more worryingly is the fact that often I won’t even enter the race because, conversely, I’m too scared of losing.

Ergo, no way would I go in for the mother’s race at school. I won’t enter the squash league and will only play small uncoordinated children (see, this is getting really shameful now, isn’t it?).  I'm still getting over my cupcakes not being picked in English Mum's competition! 

A few days ago, someone told me that Walker was mentioned on the website of a radio station in New Hampshire. I scurried over and found that, yes, there it was – at number two in the chart. And if it got to number one? I’d have the huge honour of having it recorded to be broadcast to the brave listeners. Only thing – I’d have to pay for the privilege. Was I horrified? Did I walk away in disgust? No way. I voted for myself.

Thing is, how far do you let your children know about such unsavoury traits? James goes to a school which believes in ‘healthy’ competition – in that they play competitive sport (though give everyone a bash) and have scores and awards and merits. But I bite my lip and try to be a good liberal parent, not to push, not to urge him to barge his way to the front of the queue. I think that’s right. I hope it’s okay. But then, I figure children make up their own minds. James picks his battles – is furiously competitive in sport but can’t be arsed with academic prowess.

Ah well. Confession is good for the soul and I feel somewhat purged for owning up to my sordid secret. By the way, if you get a chance – do cast a vote for me, won’t you? (you think I’m joking??)

Coughing wars in the Bonkers House

The Bonkers House has been the House of Sick lately. James and I have been engaging in coughing wars – who can hack loudest, longest and make themselves most dizzy? Seriously, it’s been ghastly. Nobody has been able to hold a decent conversation – it’s always interrupted by a volley of coughing. I wouldn’t mind but we don’t even cough in rhythm.

Consequently we have spent inordinate amounts of time at the doctor’s. I really do lament the passing of our old doctor. He may have been a bit of a bad boy (his local nickname was ‘Dr Love’) and his timekeeping was so erratic that you’d go armed with several books, a thermos and a picnic, but he was seriously good. A qualified homeopath and acupuncturist as well as a GP, he would give whatever he thought necessary. As a mother it was hugely comforting – we avoided massive amounts of antibiotics when James was small because he’d prescribe homeopathic remedies (which worked a treat on ear infections). Yet, if he felt James needed antibiotics, he’d prescribe those. Best of both worlds, to my mind, and ‘integrated medicine’ at its best. Nowadays it seems fashionable to bash homeopathy and I suspect many doctors will cautiously steer clear.

Our new doctors are lovely but nobody offers to pop needles in our toes. My cough turned out to be pretty simple – a nasty chest infection that needed banging on the head with antibiotics. James’, however, is mysterious. The doc thinks it is probably asthma, but I don’t quite see that.

‘Could it be the house?’ I asked. Then had a sudden panic that she would think I was going to start talking about ghosts and feng shui. I quickly explained that we have pretty well knocked the whole thing down and rebuilt it. Was James merely suffering from a severe case of dust?

‘Well, you do Hoover, don’t you?’

Um, yes. Sort of. When the sun shines and it shows up.

‘Of course!’

‘Very unlikely then. Is it damp?’

Is the pope Catholic?

‘Only down in the Area of Doom and we don’t go there.’ Except in pairs to liberate alcohol from the Cellar of Despond.

‘Well, it could be mould.’

Could well be. I reckon we even have rare breeds of lichen lurking down there.

Anyhow, we came home with various potions and puffers and bits of equipment. James is to make a spreadsheet and chart his cough, his air flow, his feelings amid various combinations of drugs. He feels self-important (‘I’ve got TWO puffers – no-one else has got TWO); I feel despondent.

We barely have time to get ready in the morning as it is – add in scientific experimentation and graph-charting and we’ve had it.

I also worry about him having a solid diet of anti-histamines and steroids at age 11. Am I over-reacting? Probably.

But it does feel as though, since we’ve moved here, we have not been a happy healthy bunch. Maybe there really is something nasty in the cellar.

What's your bag?

Handbags. No, not pitching for a fight, just talking about the common or garden handbag (or pocketbook or purse for my North American readers).

Kate tagged me to divulge what is in my handbag and I agreed because I think it’s more than a random set of ‘things’ – a woman’s bag is a mirror of her personality.

A friend of mine looks askance at my bag. Hers is small – immaculate on the outside, pristine on the inside. In it she keeps a (clean, pressed) hankie, a purse, a small diary and her reading glasses. That’s it. I say ‘friend’ but if I’m honest we’ll never be ‘real’ close tell-it-all over several bottles of wine friends because we are just too different. Her life is neat, compartmentalised, ordered. Mine, on the other hand, lurches from chaos to calamity. She's not the kind of friend who would understand that you're feeling down/overwhelmed/teary/a bit bonkers. She'd look puzzled and suggest you need more sleep or a bout of gardening.

My dear late (and hugely lamented) friend Sarah Dening always said that to dream of a handbag was to dream about your identity, what defines you as a woman. If you dream of a handbag she suggests you ask yourself these questions:
• Has a change of circumstances undermined my sense of identity?
• Am I afraid of losing my worth as a woman?
• Am I trying to model myself on someone else?

Interesting questions, one and all (and, if I'm honest, it's probably a YES to all three).  Let’s see what my handbag and its contents reveals about me and my life (both outer and inner).

My bag is soft brown leather with a vivid pink lining. It was a present from my mother when she was very ill, not long before she died and so it is hugely precious. It came from a little shop just down the road and is a very non-prententious, very non-designer bag. It's always been slouchy but once it was relatively smart. Now the leather is scuffed, the lining is torn...it’s been well-used and has a few years’ use left in it yet. So it feels very much a symbol for how I feel as a middle-aged, madly juggling, generally worn out, slumped in a corner woman.

In it, you will find right now:
• A bright pink Prada purse. Real Prada. Bought for me by my dear friend Jane who knows that the only time I get the real thing is when she buys it for me. ‘Every woman needs a bit of Prada’ she said. I love it but never quite feel it’s ‘me’.
• An iPod. My son’s. Can’t use it, haven’t a clue. Makes me feel stupid every time I look at it.
• My Moleskine notebook. Goes everywhere with me. I find inspiration hits, not when I’m sitting at my desk but everywhere else. My memory is shot so I carry it round with me.
• Several pens. I live in mortal terror of not having a writing implement.
• Diary. Never look at it but hey, it’s there.
• A book, if not two. At the moment it’s a YA novel called Shiver.
• A small torch. We still can’t get into The Bonkers House by the front door (there be monsters) so we have to navigate steep and uneven and winding steps up into the garden. A torch avoids (hopefully) broken legs.
• Glasses case. Never has glasses in it.
• Sunglasses. Ray Bans (Wayfarer Dekko) I bought at Miami airport over twenty years ago. Happy memories of a wonderful press trip to Grand Bahama.
• Memory stick.
• Rescue remedy; arnica; lip salve
• Hand cream (La Compagnie de Provences, lavender)
• Fingerless mittens, in nubbly blue wool, knitted by Pipany
• Several small grey model soldiers. Used to decorate a cake for James back in November and now bivvied in my mobile phone pocket. Note: mobile phone NOT in bag. Never is. Never know where it is.
• Gum shield (spare for James)
• Tampons in metal container and loose
• Jo Malone Lime Basil and Mandarin cologne. Cheers me up.
• A scrunchie. Why? No idea.
• Several shopping lists, receipts, business cards, flyers
• A layer of dust.

That’s it. What does it say about me? I guess that I’m just another working mother: a bit disorganised, a bit haphazard; trying hard to be prepared for all eventualities (so maybe a bit anxious); phobic of phones; desperately wanting to write and be creative; too lazy to have a turnout; not particularly vain (note the lack of makeup and mirror) or is that just plain given up?

So, over to you. What is in your handbag? And (if you fancy) what do you think it says about you?

I reckon if you like this one, just go for it. But, in the spirit of tagging, I would love to know the innards of the bags of:

Frances
Crystal Jigsaw
Milla
Fire Byrd
EnglishMum
DulwichDivorcee