Heavy Petting

Posted on April 24, 2012 by

In the spirit of general jollification, I decided against blogging about the recent death of my dog.  He had a good life, the poor rickety old thing.  But now, just as we’re recovering from the woe, the Ginger Ninja has gone missing.  Disappeared overnight on Saturday and hasn’t been seen since.  And yes, I know that cats frequently go gallivanting for days, sometimes weeks, at a time.  Especially at this time of year.

Admittedly, I did tell the cat to bugger off on the day he, well, buggered off.  And I did refer to him as a murdering bastard when he dragged in, on Easter Sunday, what we believe to be the Easter bunny, leaving him for dead under the dining table.  The week before, he’d savaged a pigeon, the house resembling a pillow factory with the billion or so feathers floating phantom-like as I opened the front door.  We were dreading Christmas, expecting him to leave Santa dismembered under the table.  But he’s gone.  Vanished.  And what with the dead dog and my accidental running-over of a chicken yesterday – it actually was crossing the road – The Teens have started giving me funny looks.  Looks that suggest they now see me as some sort of fiendish Fred West of the animal world.

We’ve considered putting a poster up…

LOST

Fat ginger cat with mean face.  Horrid yowl.  Likes to bite people. 

Answers to ‘Mr Podgy-Whiskers’.

And then we understood why the hardcore farmcat we’d come to loathe love has left home.  But we’d like him back now. Please?

Image

MISERY UPDATE : Poor old Mr Podgy-Whiskers has now been found.  Burial performed by Teen 1, heaving with sobs as he dug.  Bloody, sodding hell.  Will do our best to remember the short time he was cute… ‘At least he’ll be with the dog again now…’ Teen 2 has optimistically ventured.  (If you’re wondering about his turquoise nose, he used to like sniffing up my words as I scrawled early words in bed with a fountain pen…)

Posted in Journal | 10 Comments

When one’s future’s a blast from the past…

Posted on March 9, 2012 by

Five months after finishing my degree and I’m still – STILL – unemployed.  In fact, it’s  worse than that,  I cannot lie:  *looks around shiftily to ensure no one’s listening*  I have become a kept woman.  Oh, my days.  I do feel quite the fifties housewife.  Except that I can’t enjoy the whole not-going-work thing because, actually, I want to go to work.  I want to earn money.  My own money.  Besides, while being a fifties housewife, I have to keep cooking things and smiling at the bastard Aga. This is not good.

The Man, being a modern kind of chap at heart, is most encouraging about me breaking into the work-place, so long as I don’t get any newfangled ideas about wearing trousers or suchlike.

He suggests we set up a business together.  I swoon, contemplating the idea for a niche shop I’ve had forever, embracing all things French and dinner party.  The Man, alas, has other ideas.

‘There’s a lot of money to be made in recycling, darling…’

I look at his eager face, realising he has cunningly called me ‘darling’ to bamboozle my homemaking brain.

‘I am not becoming a bin man,’ I tell him.  ‘I want to do something glamorous.  I want to have fun.’

‘But fun doesn’t make money,’ he tells me.  I notice he is using his Extra-Reasonable Voice.  ‘We could think about anaerobic digestion.  Things like that?’

I am a sensible sort of gal at heart. I know the difference between ‘ludicrous’ and ‘lucrative’. And I do want to make money.  ‘Not bloody likely,’ I reply.

The Man sighs.  Hours later, after much wine (although just a drop for the little lady, lest she become giggly) it transpires that he has hit upon a brilliant idea.  He plans to put me, along with all my other “hormonal cronies” in a huge pot of water, hooked up to some sort of barbaric gadgetry.  Our crossness and hormonal hot flushes will then heat up said water and generate enough electricity to sustain the whole of Suffolk with enough left over to feed the National Grid.

‘Well,’ I sniff, clearly overwhelmed by a drop too much wine and a rather stubborn stain on my pinny, ‘when you die, I shall have you composted.’

We decide not to mention the whole work thing again.

Posted in Being a Country Gal | 16 Comments

A Valentine’s Day Post

Posted on February 14, 2012 by

I wake The Man up in the middle of the night.

‘In my dream, it’s so windy that the weather men have just blown away,’ I tell him.

‘Oh,’ he replies, forlornly.  ‘In mine, my computer’s got a virus.’

We both go back to sleep.

Who said romance was dead?

Posted in Journal | 12 Comments

Tally ho (ho ho)

Posted on January 4, 2012 by

So that was Christmas.  All done and back in its box, ready to be shoved back into the attic for another year.

Christmas Eve started with the handing out of foodstuffs at a hunt meet – after getting up at the crack of dawn to make hoisin & sesame sausages and sausage rolls for 100, I tried to cut corners by giving the toffs half a cocktail sausage each and explaining that there’s a recession on but did they listen? No.  I think you will find they did not.  Instead, they simply requested more sausages and top-ups of Port as they galloped about on their diamond-studded horses.  Teen 1 also squeezed in his 18th birthday halfway between Crimbly & New Year – hurrah!  More eating!  More booze!  I’m enjoying admiring the European lard mountain currently spilling out of my waistband.

But anyway.  It’s 2012.  And years with even numbers are much better for making your dreams come true.  That’s a fact, that is.  Sort of.

I haven’t bothered with resolutions – instead, I have goals.  This year, it’s back to the writing.  Breakfast Under the Bodhi Tree now has words on the page, with many more to be conjured up before the May deadline of the Good Housekeeping Novel Competition.   I have an interview on Friday for a promising job where they will pay me money and EVERYTHING.  And next week finds me starting a month’s voluntary work in a local primary school.  Ooh ‘eck.

I passed my degree with a 2:1 and am now the proud owner of a BA (Hons) in Humanities with Literature.  Thank goodness all that studying is over.  I certainly haven’t done anything daft like signing up for another 9 months of Advanced French to complete the French Diploma.  Oh, ok, I have then.  Yes, I know.  I am a spaz.  But it’ll be fine.  Oh, man…

I wonder what mad plans other people have made for the year?  Each one whizzes by so fast yet so much changes in that time.  How will our lives have changed before we haul that knackered old box of tinsel out again?  Tell me, what’s the daftest thing you hope to achieve during these next 12 months?

Posted in Journal, OU, Writing | 18 Comments

Calmer Chameleon

Posted on November 30, 2011 by

Gah.  With the grim business of my degree over with, now begins the jolly ordeal of trying to discover what I might be when I grow up.  It’s tricky, being a late developer.  The idea, really, was to do teacher training.  Not secondary school, or anything scary like that.  The kids would all be a foot taller than me and know way better swear words.  But.  Teaching.  Yikes.  I’m not sure it’s quite the vocation for someone who can’t stand kids.  So I’ve been applying for other stuff instead.  Yay.

‘Thank you for applying for the position of [insert ever-decreasing level of lolly & responsibility].  If you do not hear from us with 7 days, please assume that your application has been unsuccessful as you sound like a total loser.’

I did have an interview last week.  It sounded very promising: bilingual legal PA specialising in French property law.  Cool.  I’d be able to flounce about town, buying ready-made overpriced sarnies in my lunch hour, swishing my flossy hair and matching my heels to that day’s power suit.  The interview wasn’t bad.  Not at all.  It was dire.  The interviewer/head honcho had not read my CV.    He didn’t even know my name and sweetly referred to me as ‘er… her’ in conversations with his secretary.  The offices weren’t offices at all but a corner of his house, albeit with the gentle, homely ambience of an executioner’s waiting room.  I left halfway through, telling him kindly that I really didn’t think it was for me and smiling politely as Legal Chap said, his shoulders slumping in his mismatched suit, that he sympathised entirely.  *Sigh*

I like a little hustle.  Or bustle.  Preferably both.  All the hustle and bustle there is, in fact.  I decided, with the help of some rather super Shiraz, that perhaps my days in Retail Hell hadn’t been that bad.  It was fun; always something going on.  So I applied to Marks and Spencer for their graduate management scheme.  And I was invited to do a couple of online verbal reasoning and aptitude tests.  I was then invited to undertake an online maths test.  This wasn’t just any test.  This was an M&S  timed test, slow roasted with ratios and peppered with percentage performance margin type trickery.  Oh dear.  The less said about that the better.  Except for swear words.  Not just any old swear words.  Handpicked ones, fresh as they come.  Obviously.

So.  What next?  I need to earn money.  The Man is keeping me in books and wine.  He is putting me to work in a caring capacity at the mo – Nurse Jenny to the rescue as he has been in hospital having various superfluous bits of internal organs removed.

“I don’t know what you’re making such a fuss about,” I tell him sympathetically.  “It’s just a bit of surgery.  It’s not as if you’re having a head transplant.”

He has recommended I do not pursue a career  with the Samaritans or any other of the caring professions for that matter.

Instead, he started making noises about me helping out at his New Year shoot lunch.  To be honest I’m surprised at this, given my performance at the last one.  I’ve also been hoodwinked into providing food and booze for some sort of hunt meet.  I do not care for hunting.  Or horses.  Or that sort of thing.  I am not Zara Phillips.  It goes against everything that I am, even when I do not currently know *quite* what I am.  I considered my wine and book requirements and agreed, sighing as I penciled it into my empty, job-free diary.

The Man, checking over my shoulder that I got the right date, sighed even more.

Apparently, it’s not technically known as Hooray Henry Sausage Day.

Hey ho.  I have plentiful time and patience to ponder what’s to become of me.  I can be all things to all people.  So long as it doesn’t involve percentages or poshness.

(Cartoon pinched from aperfectworld.org)

Posted in Being a Country Gal, Journal | 10 Comments

All I Want for Christmas…

Posted on November 10, 2011 by

Usually, at this time of year, I embark on a frenzied bout of self-loathing as I realise that not one of my New Year resolutions has come to fruition.  This is all the more pissing-off as, for the past ten years, they have been exactly the same.  Seriously, the same three things.  Every.  Bloody.  Year.

1. Stop being lardy lump

2. Sort out degree (which I started 12 years ago)

3. Do something about writing instead of just talking about it

But I have done the Three Things.  I’ve lost two stone since the beginning of August.  I’ve finished my degree, with the only the grim wait for results to torture me.  I’m back on the writing track, grabbing at it greedily.  There will be no angst this Christmas.  Instead the only thing I’m lusting after is a proper family Christmas, the sort of which I haven’t had for many years.  My family are a bit rubbish at that sort of thing, not to mention being sprinkled far & wide.  Luckily, I now have The Man’s family on whom to foist my festive roasties. And, truly, family and happiness (and post-diet roast potatoes) are all I crave this year.  Well, apart from a really jolly white table runner I saw in John Lewis yesterday.  It’s got tiny, silver Christmas trees on and everything.  Oh, and maybe the squirty stuff required to turn me into a Jo Malone kinda girl.  Ahem.

And, as if by magic, just when I’m all in the mood for thinking Christmassy thoughts and chilling my beans (as the cool folk say) the most wonderful thing appears: the second novel by seriously lovely (not to mention Hollywood beautiful, clever and successful – God, I really should hate her but can’t due to her aforementioned blimmin loveliness) Cally Taylor.

Beth Prince has always loved fairytales and now, aged twenty-four, she feels like she’s finally on the verge of her own happily ever after. She lives by the seaside, works in the Picturebox – a charming but rundown independent cinema – and has a boyfriend who’s so debonair and charming she can’t believe her luck! There’s just one problem – none of her boyfriends have ever told her they love her and it doesn’t look like Aiden’s going to say it any time soon. Desperate to hear ‘I love you’ for the first time Beth takes matters into her own hands – and instantly wishes she hadn’t. Just when it seems like her luck can’t get any worse, bad news arrives in the devilishly handsome shape of Matt Jones. Matt is the regional director of a multiplex cinema and he’s determined to get his hands on the Picturebox by Christmas. Can Beth keep her job, her man and her home or is her romantic-comedy life about to turn into a disaster movie?

With its pretty, glittery cover and Christmassy theme, it really is the perfect book to take into the bath with a glass of champagne after day’s hard prezzie-hunting. Well, you’ve got to treat yourself too, right?  You can buy your copy here.

There is one problem with Cally’s latest novel though: having read the first chapter, I can’t put it down.  But that’s ok.  I’m sure I had ‘read more’ on that list of resolutions.

So, come on, what do you want for Christmas?  World peace and whatnot is all very well but hey, we’re not Miss World contestants.  Tell me what you really want.  It’ll be our little secret… go on.  Spill.  You know you want to…

Posted in Lovely Things you Need To Buy, Writing | 15 Comments

Tears and Laughter and Happy Ever After

Posted on November 9, 2011 by

You great big softies.  Seriously.  The emails I’ve had, asking if I’m getting married.  I am not getting married.  One does not need to buy oneself a ‘het’. Not this week, anyway.  Besides, I’ve just eaten The Man’s emergency bar of Marzipan Chocolate so really, that’s probably that.  Thet.  Whatever.  Historic wars have started over less.  Lass.  Oh, bugger.

Anyway.  No no no no no.  It’s all a bit more groovy than that: I have words – nay, whole stories! – included in *rather* a fabulous anthology.  Can you guess what it’s called yet?  I am, I confess, rather thrilled.  Ok, you beat it out of me.  I’m BLOODY thrilled.  Some of my favourite writer ladies are also there: the most lustrous Leigh Forbes, for example.  And Helen, and Cally, and, well, loads of others.  It’s all terribly exciting.  There’s a website.  You can even *like* us on Facebook.  Oh, go on.  You know you want to.  It’ll make you feel nice.  I promise.  And then you will know how to buy the words of which I speak.

I won’t go on about it.  Much.  Ok, I will go on about it loads.  But it’s only in your interests.  You wouldn’t want to miss out, would you? Nope, thought not.  You look far too clever to miss out. *Nods wisely, and in quite a writerly fashion*

UPDATE: You can now buy it here on Amazon for your clever Kindle gadgetry! Della Galton – Queen Supreme of Short Stories – has read it with her eyes and says “This anthology has something for everyone. It’s a delight. I only wish I was in it!”  YAY!

Posted in Writing | 4 Comments

Shhhhhh…

Posted on October 12, 2011 by

I’m not really here.  I’m busy revising… Music course all done with, French oral exam done with and now just the final whopper of the French written exam next Tuesday.  I’m so. nearly. there…

In the hazy background of ‘real life’, however, there’s something exciting happening…  But I can’t tell you yet.  I am too busy with the Frenching.  I can tell you that it involves tears… and laughter… and happy ever after… ooooooooh…

Posted in Journal | 7 Comments

Six Weeks

Posted on September 4, 2011 by

Six weeks ago, I crumpled on the wet grass, despairing.  I cried.  And cried.  And then I cried a bit more.  I debated, long and hard, whether I should give up the OU Words & Music course – cut my losses, get a part time job and study part-time for another year.  The Man, in between pouring remedial glasses/bottles of wine, was sympathetic.  And, as  per irritatingly  usual, very sensible.  I agreed not to decide until the worst of the woe was over but did do a bit more crying and angsting.  I do angsting well.  I debated and debated the pros and cons.  Out loud, with my mouth, until The Man’s ears began to bleed with the sheer repetitive misery of it all.

‘So what have you decided?’ he asked.  ‘Are you going to give it up as the bad job it clearly is?’

(The course is actually so grim that it has been cancelled after this, its third presentation.  It’s not just me.  But, my woeful  TMA marks had obliterated my potential First, were dragging my French marks down.  After twelve years of on/off slog, I’d be lucky to scrape a 2:2.  I have not toiled for 12 years to get a 2:2.  No Sirree.)

With a sigh of resignation, I gave him my answer.  ‘WHAT??  OF COURSE I’M NOT BLOODY GIVING UP!’

Six weeks on, I have now completed all the essays for both my courses.  I have survived a week-long residential school in Caen with random strangers; the most eclectic group of 10 people one could ever imagine being flung together.  We won’t mention the resulting gangrenous leg after falling off a French pavement which was, I hasten to add, nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that the vino was only €1.50 a glass in the student bar.

Six weeks on, I have changed.  Literally.  Whilst cooped up with my head defiantly in my books, away from real life, I’ve been on a diet.  I’ve lost a stone and dropped a dress size. I’ve dug out fave clothes that I’ve not worn for years.  I’ve even bought a different perfume as a change from that which I’ve worn for the past 12 years.  I have discovered a little – just a glimmer – of who I might be when I grow up.

In another six weeks’ time, I will have lost another 12 pounds.  I will have written and sent my Music mini-dissertation.  The two French exams will pretty much be over.  There’s no time to muck about; I need seriously good marks for all three things.  But it will be done.  And then?  Who knows.  I need a job – the coffers are running on empty.  But that’s a whole new adventure.  Life can change very quickly, if you let it.  Perhaps, just maybe, something wondrous will appear on the horizon.  I fully expect something to be lying in wait, hiding in the bushes or lurking round a corner.

And even if life just stays the same, that will be fine too.  At least I’ll smell a bit different and take up less room while I’m waiting for The Something Exciting, eh?  And yes.  I will be writing again.  Writing has been ignored for almost a year.  But one thing I can rely on is that Writing won’t hide in a hedge.  The persistent bugger will leap out and grapple me into writing submission.  I am SO ready for it. ROOOOOAAAAAAARRR, said Jen, roaring like a roaring tiger…

Posted in Journal, OU | 9 Comments

Of Stony Silence

Posted on July 4, 2011 by

Blimey.  I’ve been a rubbish blogger.  But, to give balance, I’ve been rubbish at everything lately.  I even failed my last OU assignment; the degree I’ve been toiling on & off for 12 years being dragged screaming from the First in its grasp to a gasping hope of scraping a 2:2.  Admittedly, sending only 758 words of a 2,000 word essay together with an extra paragraph explaining to the tutor that “I surrender” is never going to pound the pinnacle of academic excellence.

Emails, once more, go unanswered.  Nights out are cancelled.  Hair remains more matted than my thoughts.

At least I’m still having thoughts, I s’pose.  Even though they’re frequently The Wrong Thoughts.  Luckily, I can pretend I’m having them for a reason:  The River of Stones project runs through July, tickling my subconscious into some semblance of creativity.  The stray snippets of synapse activity can be found here…  I will, for the foreseeable future, be chasing said thoughts round with a butterfly night and popping them in an airtight pot to keep them fresh.

Farewell sanity : : hello misery.  Still, only another 4 months to go.  Oh.  God.

Posted in Journal, OU | 7 Comments