My Mother, Marilyn Monroe

Hard to believe that this is the same woman who gave birth to me, but here she is in her full fifteen years old glory, on Scratby beach or somewhere else equally exotic in 1952. 

Talk about glamorous. 

I remember my heart always picked up speed when I saw this photograph.  It was like looking at somebody else - which I guess we all are before we become mothers ourselves.

Happy Mothers Day, Mum.  And thanks for... you know, lots of stuff I never realised I had to be thankful for.

Miss you x

My Feature about how Dad predicted the date he'd die and then popped back from the dead...

... is NOT now going to be published. I know, I know... talk about pride before a fall, blowing my own trumpet so loud I make my lips fall off, or something dumb like that...BUT the upshot of it is, the magazine rewrote the thousand words I sent them, even though they'd told me it was a "lovely account" AND they cut the piece by half. Half! I'd had a hard job getting it down to 1,000 words so this will tell you how 'brief' they'd made it. And it made me sad that they'd taken what was left of the real emotion out of my dad's story, so I pulled it.
Anyway, I thought I'd post it here, in case you wanted a read. It's all true, by the way. Nothing sensationalised or anything... hope you enjoy:

DAD PREDICTED THE DATE HE’D DIE

THEN CAME BACK TO GIVE ME A SIGN

My dad turned the next playing card over. The Queen of Clubs.

‘There’s a journey. Not far, but it shows travel.’

He turned another one. The King of Spades. He looked up ‘An older man. He’s not well. He might not have long….?’ I frowned and shook my head. I didn’t know any older men who were sick, although… ‘Oh, wait – I know.’ I thought of a friend’s father who had Alzheimer’s and was in a Nursing Home.

Dad returned to the cards. The next ones were the Nine of diamonds and the Ten of spades. ‘In 9 or 10 weeks…’ he tapped the cards, ‘9 or 10 months maybe… that’s what it’s saying… oh and there’s money,’ he smiled as he turned over the last card. ‘Don’t look at me young lady – you know you won’t be getting anything from me.’

That’s when we both laughed. It wasn’t that my dad was tight, but he’d always had a firm rule never to lend or borrow money – friends or family. He didn’t even like to talk about it.

I loved it when Dad came to stay with us. And although we lived 200 miles apart, I’d felt closer to him since mum died 5 years before. I think he enjoyed the break from having to look after himself a couple of times a year.

Dad always said that his own father, my Grandad, could tell fortunes and that afternoon we thought we’d kill some time before my daughter came home from school.

A few weeks later, during one of our Sunday evening telephone calls, he told me he had to have a heart operation. I was a bit shocked because he’d told me he had Angina, which I thought was to do with his breathing. He said not to worry, but that it wouldn’t be a good idea for my daughter and I to go and stay with him in the summer holidays. He’d been feeling tired, and didn’t want to worry about looking after his guests. I understood, of course, but I was also concerned.

The night before the operation he joked on the phone about how the nurse’s skirts weren’t as short as he’d have liked and I said I hoped he understood that because I wasn’t there didn’t mean I didn’t love him. This was the first time I’d ever said the word ‘love’ to my dad – that just wasn’t the way we were. He said he knew; that he loved me too and I knew then that he was scared. He hated hospitals and the last time he’d been in one was the night he held my mum’s hand as she died from a brain tumour.

When I went to visit him in hospital he looked like Homer Simpson, with his chest all yellow from the chemicals they’d painted on. His legs were all stitched up from where they’d taken veins to replace the faulty ones in his heart. He looked tired but cheerful and joking with the nurses still. I left feeling optimistic but wishing we lived closer.

When he left hospital, I was worried about making him get up to answer the phone and I guessed he’d be sleeping more during his recovery. But I knew there was something wrong when I could hardly hear his words. He sounded breathless and said he hadn’t been able to keep food down for over a week. Typically, though, he’d been telling the visiting Nurse that he was fine, making a joke of it as usual.

Quickly, I phoned my cousins who lived down the road and told them I was worried. They went straight round. Soon after he was airlifted in a helicopter to Harefield Hospital in London for an emergency heart operation. I could hardly believe it.

At 2.am a Surgeon called to say that Dad had decided he didn’t want another operation. He just wanted to die in peace. Then he put Dad on the line. He told me that he was proud of the way I was bringing up my daughter on my own, that although he’d never said it, he’d loved me from the minute I was born, and that he was sorry but he wanted to be with my Mum now. And even though we didn’t believe in Life after Death, he promised he’d give me a Sign once he got there.

Dad died the following morning, on the 9th of October. 9.10. The cards had been right. About everything.

As my daughter and I left Dad’s body at the Chapel of Rest, she looked up at me and said “I think that’s the first time we’ve been with Grandad when he hasn’t moaned” and we both laughed. She tried to cheer me up again when we were on the beach a little while later, saying “Don’t be sad, Mummy, Grandad’s watching over us; he’s here somewhere.” And although I knew she was just trying to say the right thing, I hugged her tight.

Then, just as we were about to drive away from the beach front car park, I suddenly froze. In a white van, parked just ahead of us, was…..

“Mummy, there’s Grandad in that van!”.

I went cold. My brother, sitting in the back of the car gasped and said: “Jesus, it’s Dad!”

The man in the van leant over the steering wheel, watching the stretch of beach where we’d been minutes earlier, and then scratched his beard the way Dad always did. He was even wearing his favourite shirt.

“It can’t be. He hated white vans. Just drive,” my brother said, shocked.

As the cards had predicted, there was a journey. With the money from the sale of Dad’s bungalow, my daughter and I moved house 6 months later, not far from where we were. And the day the carpenter turned up in his white van to repair the kitchen at our new home, I had no idea that he would turn out to be my future husband.

But I think Dad knew.

My Girl.  My Dad.

The Post of Christmas Past...

The Good Old Days!

This is me aged 2 on Christmas Day. I can't tell you the year as it will do something terrible to the space-time continuum and we could all be sucked into the ether for such knowledge. Or I could die of supreme mortification - whichever is the sooner.

I actually remember this photograph being taken. It was probably something unearthly like 6.00 in the morning as I was one of those precious children who just couldn't sleep for desperation of wanting to hear Santa's sleigh bells. I actually DID hear them one year and was convinced I saw a flash of Rudolph's nose fly over the houses across the street.

As you can see, I have a hand well and truly stuffed into my sack clamouring for the next present. And you can also see a rather unusual looking teddy bear moulded from white plastic lying on the pillow behind me (VERY trendy in the sixties, I'll have you know) which I could never quite warm too. He just wasn't the best bed-buddy if you know what I mean. I remember trying very hard to get him to lay nicely beside me like other children's bears did, but his ear always ending up gouging a ravine in my cheek. Still, I did get a lovely, softer other bear, which I was bought the following year as consolation for having a baby brother.

The picture below was taken at my Great Aunt Ivy's on Boxing Day the same year. If you squint, or embiggen the pic, you can see me looking a bit bewildered, sitting on my mum's knee at the back next to the telly box (probably still b/w). As I was the only child (until the following October) I always felt a bit overwhelmed but loved all the attention (which dwindled the following year... can we see a pattern emerging?) that Christmas brought. I used to be so thrilled that grown ups could have fun, considering that for the rest of the year all they seemed to do was shout, scowl, argue and moan about everything. Of course I never understood the part that Sherry had to play in this scenario until much later on in life!

These were the best Christmasses. Ever. When the dinner cooked itself and appeared from nowhere smelling heavenly and tasting so magical; Maltesers came in boxes and selection packs came stocking-shaped with a netting around them. The heavenly smell of Pretty Peach Avon perfume and the horrible American Tan tights from Aunties with no imagination.

I loved being allowed to light sparklers after dinner over the fireplace; sitting on Dad's knee and being so awed that he could crack two Almond nuts together with his bare hands. I loved the way my Mum and my Nan's cheeks got pinker and pinker as the day wore on, especially during the card games that went on way past my bedtime. I loved being allowed to just lift a chocolate from a bowl and eat it without needing permission and I loved that everybody I loved was all together in the same place, having fun and laughing. The only thing I didn't like was that it was over way, way too soon and I'd feel a little tug of sadness that the excitement was passing for another year.

But, here it is (again) MERRY CHRISTMAS!

And a Merry, Massive MASSIVE THANKS to everybody who's visited my blog this year, read, commented and come back for more - here's to more of the same next year! *chinks glasses*.

Anybody Miss Me?

Ginestra

So I've been here... and "Here" is Ginestra degli Shiavoni in the beautiful Italian mountains.   And I can honestly say with hand on slowed-down-heart that it is probably the most beautiful place I've ever been to, seen or even wanted to go to.  It's beauty cannot be described, and I'm generally quite handy with a description or two - but this was breathtaking.  And I thought Dorset was pretty amazing - ha! Just goes to show how untravelled I am!

You HAVE to click to embiggen that picture because it REALLY is that gorgeous.  And yet the only visitors it gets are the children/grandchildren of the folk who live there.  Population 300, btw.  300!  I know!  This is one seriously chilled out place.
And it's not just the scenery that's beautiful.  The people who live there have to be the nicest, kindest, friendliest people I've ever met.  Old guys will sit and play cards with the kids and teenagers actively seek out the 80 year olds and buy them a drink at the (non alcoholic) street bar halfway down the main road.

I even met people there I want to know for the rest of my life - and yet I don't speak the language. Yet.  I'm working on that part.

Us

So, the place is gorgeous, the people are special - and what can I tell you about the food...? O.M.G... the food.  My taste buds lost their virginity on the first forkful the very first day we stepped into Mama's kitchen.  Homemade spinach and ricotta ravioli and meatballs with bread picked up fresh that morning from the bakery down the road. Huge beef tomatoes picked from the garden and Rum Ba-Ba's from the Patisserie that I shall be salivating after until our return.

How's this for an itinerary:
Get up (slowly)
Fruit and fresh croissant for breakfast
Maybe go for a walk, visit relatives, friends, have a laugh
Lunch
Sleep
Get up (slowly)
Go out, meet friends, family, have even bigger laughs
Repeat

It  feels like I've been away for a month because of the 2 sleeps per day.
And I  feel like a new woman ( just hope The Hubs doesn't).

I could go on and on about this place, it's just incredible. If you want to be chilled, spoilt, return to good old fashioned values and have your faith in human nature restored, then you have to visit Ginestra.  It's off the map; a different world.

This Year's Holiday

This is where we  holidayed last year.
Il Borro in the beautiful Tuscan countryside.  And it was pure five star plus luxury, right from the majestic villa (entrance top pic) to the fabulous family wedding we were a part of.
And although regulars will know of my 'realistic' outlook on most things, I actually had allowed myself a certain frisson of excitement leading up to this escape.
Which rhymes with 'mistake'.
In fact, when I twisted off a top of one of the bottles of body lotion I brought back as a 'souvenir' the other day, immediately images of  car hire hell, tiny mirror-less bedrooms, flooded toilets, unhealthy amounts of time in gyms, waterless taps, £30 bottles of wine and very shouty voices filled my whole being.  I don't know why I've kept them.  They're a nightmare in a bottle, is what they are.  And the sense of smell is so evocative, isn't it?

But  this year nothing like that is going to happen**.
And that's not because I've turned all optimistic overnight - oh no - have you SEEN how much personality transplants cost these days?! It's purely because this year we are spending our time with my husband's parents.  The Italian In-laws.  In a little place they like to call Ginestra degli schiavoni in the heart of the Italian countryside (there on the right ), 2.8 hours away from Naples airport and miles away from beaches, tourists, bars, restaurants, night life and... well... all major forms of holiday entertainment. Oh, and there's no access to any kind of internet communication, as far as I'm aware.

But that's precisely how I want it.

I'm EXPECTING the loos not to flush - hell, we might even be offloading our excess into holes in the floor for all I know - and wiping our arses on yesterday's tabloids.  Of course there WON'T be electricity -  that's why there's NO internet access.
And when our hire car runs out of petrol, we'll just have to use the friendly neighbourhood donkey (time-shared) to get to the local village bakery.
There'll be trees.  There'll be a bed to sleep in.  There'll be my incredibly lovely mama-in-law who cooks amazing food, and there'll be my gorgeous husband who is SO excited about showing me where he spent his formative years, and I'll be meeting the extended Riccio family; there's the 'Festa' which is being held for the week that we're there and I am taking no less than FIVE books with me.  That might just be the only English language available to me.  Apart from the Hubs, of course.

**we're hoping that the only Bad Thing to happen this year has already happened.  When we were looking through our travel documents the other day we noticed we'd booked our car into the mid-term park at Luton Airport.

We fly from Stansted.**

How to prepare for the Annual Holidays

The Old Days

1. Make up enough sandwiches (ham/tomato, cheese/tomato) to feed a small continent.
2. Fill at least three thermos flasks with ready-made up coffee (so that in 4 hours it will taste of nothing but warm plasticky-metal), tea and very weak cheap squash of indeterminate flavour.
3. Strap Gerbils (in their cages I mean) to table leg in caravan to ensure stability – also empty their water bottles, remember how they didn’t enjoy last year’s 6 hour shower up the A303?
4. Leave notes on every available surface for grandparent who only has to water plants by all accounts. Maybe they’re in code to make her trips more interesting?
5. Turn off the water.
6. Turn off the electric.
7. Close all curtain half-mast to confuse potential burglars into spending so long outside rubbing their chins thinking ‘are they/aren’t they’? that they get so irritated they hand themselves in before committing anything more serious than peeing in the privet due to protracted wonderings.
8. Notify the local constabulary that they’ll need to walk more slowly past No.4 for the next fortnight during their rounds. Yeah, right.
9. Strip the beds.
10. Why?
11. Defrost the fridge.
12. Again…why?
13. Alert every neighbour to be extra vigilant; thereby ensuring that any hardened criminal worth his/her salt knows precisely where Mrs Cooper stores her valuables (does a fox-fur shrug count?)
14. Leave more notes
15. Pull up ten square kitchen carpet tiles where the fridge defrosted and hang them on the washing line.
16. Leave a note for the milkman. In an empty bottle on the doorstep. Thereby announcing yet again that the property is vacant.
17. Fill at least five boxes with variety packs of cereals, dried milk, Sunny D (dried orange juice) baked beans, plum tomatoes, dried rice, vinegar, salt and enough muesli to coat a stretch of the A34 in the event of a sudden snowstorm.
18. Take Sea Legs
19. Pack blankets, sleeping bags and pillows ‘just in case’ (see No.17?) even though we’re staying with Grandma and she has beds and cupboards full of food.
20. Make a note to buy yoghurts closer to destination - just in case. Yoghurts probably haven’t made it to the corner shop in Dorset yet – they ARE a new-fangled food, after all.
21. Much like sprouts at Christmas, prepare everything 2 days beforehand and go to bed 12 hours earlier. After all, it will take over 6 hours, maybe 7 if the wheel comes off the caravan again after dad drives over one of those invisible roundabouts like he did last year and we had to stop, unhitch, drive to the nearest garage and then wait for a part to come in from Devizes to Middle Wallop.
22. An hour into the journey, remember you forgot to bring the dog, which is still tethered to it’s outside kennel looking slightly bewildered. Return, Repeat.

Year, after year, after year……until you’re old enough to realise this was some kind of sick joke on behalf of the Seventies!

Happy Ever After

Once upon a time there was a young girl with flowing locks of chestnut hair, a sprinkling of (okay then, she was covered in them) freckles, slender (alright, spindly) legs and dreamy eyes of cornflower blue (or “dishwater grey” as some kind person once conveyed). She lived in a town, not far away and whilst her wishes were simple, she was quite convinced that one day they (come on, at least ONE, yeah?) would come true.
Wish one: To make her family proud by becoming popular and successful in her chosen ‘field’ (note: this ‘field’ changed with the seasons, or even quicker, depending on what TV programme she watched or book she was reading at the time. One day she’d want to be on the back of “White Horses” and the next she wanted to train to become a “Tomorrow Person”. Oh, and Julie Andrews had A LOT to answer for when it came to walking about wearing any white tablecloth handy after watching The Sound of Music one Christmas). And it took her parents a long time to convince her that applying to Mallory Towers really wasn’t an option.
Wish Two: To meet and marry the Prince of her dreams. And NOT have to go through a succession of ill-fated relationships that should have stayed in whichever nightclub they’d started at and not limped on dejectedly for weeks, sometimes months (one time 7 years) until she was ceremoniously dumped because she didn’t want to hurt the boy’s feelings. Esp. after losing her virginity. Somehow she felt she had to remain in the immediate vicinity of the boy who’d taken this from her. After all, he might have wanted to give her it back at any time. She could always use it again, no?
Wish Three: To have a gaggle of happy offspring, not dissimilar to the Waltons, the Partridge Family, or that family off Happy Days. Always laughing, always getting into scrapes and getting out of them before the programme ended, and always having somebody who jumps in and saves the day in the nick of time. But it didn’t seem to matter how hard, how loud, how long she cried for, nobody EVER seemed to leap to her rescue and come along to make her feel better and the only thing that stopped her sobbing was her mother’s threat that if she cried too much, the tears would make her eyelashes dissolve and then nobody would ever want her.
Wish Four: to be Doris Day (I might have mentioned this before). This was, of course, before Rock Hudson was Gay… being a whole PART of the wish.
Wish Five: to be “discovered” for a talent that probably not even SHE knew she had. These ranged, variously from 1.being an artist. 2.being a poet. 3. being a writer 4. being a designer. 5.being a chat show host 6. being a singer. 7. being an actress.
(shamefully, No.6 was tried and tested on a daily basis whilst under the shower with the bathroom windows well and truly open, whatever the weather, in the hope that some nice Music Producer would happen to be walking past and hear melodic strains wending their way down the street - the fact that she lived halfway round a Crescent would’ve meant he’d have to be either a local or lost Music Producer - and instantly recognise her ‘raw’ talent. The closest she got to this was when her music teacher put her in for singing lessons which tragically got cut short when her wicked parents stopped her from performing at the Royal Albert Hall one Christmas (although she was a bit grateful she didn’t have to sing about ‘virgin births’ to a room full of people) because she had studying to do.
The girl grew up … well, she got taller; but no wiser and her wishes became no less than they always had, although they turned more into hopes. And hoping doesn’t mean you have to stand naked, dangerously close to an open window singing the Happy Wanderer at the top of your lungs to get spotted. Well…. Does it?

Two Good Things...

An ex boyfriend of mine was hugely irritating in many and varied ways but there was one irritation that really stood out for me and that was his daily - yes, DAILY query of:
"So tell me your Good Thing"  and, even though it made me feel like a child of five, I always battled to find just ONE thing to shut him up.  For, he would not desist until the Good Thing was revealed ...  even if it had been that the sun had simply shone... I caught on quick, mind,  and made things up most of the time just to be rid of his incessant repetition but sometimes I surprised myself by revealing an actual wonderment of the first buds of life poking through the soil in the Spring.  I know...I know... give me a Daff and I'll wax lyrical 'til the cows come home - so long as it's the right time of the month, you understand.

Anyway - these are the Two things that stood out for me today.  And even at the time I thought 'Wow' and 'Crikey' (in that order):-

1. My lovely shiny new bedfellow (Mr Blackberry - now there's NOTHING irritating about this young chap) alerted me at 7 o'clock - the time I have told him he is allowed to start speaking - that I had an e-mail.  And so for the next few minutes I sat up in bed at 7 o'clock in the morning reading an e-mail from my lovely cousin in Australia who make me smile, cheered me and kept me up to date on his two ageing parents - my Aunt and Uncle (also my Godparents) who aren't do so good right now.  But I marvelled at how technology is so bloody clever, for me to be able to sit up in bed reading mail sent from the other side of the world and being made to smile first thing in the morning by a cousin I last saw when I was about 7.  Amazing.

2. Just now, whilst I was bringing in the washing from the line in the garden, I happened to look up and there, in the (still blue even at 9pm) sky was a very close red, white and yellow hot air balloon, floating right over our house.  It looked beautiful.  And it was so close I could hear the gas (is it?) hissing and when I waved, the flames were released three times.  And even though I hadn't got my seeing specs on, I took this as a sign that they'd seen me.  A flamey wave, if you like.  And the cutest thing was that Ant (the Christmas Tree cat for anyone who wants to flip back to the December posts and see just how majestic he truly is) was watching in.. well, wonderment wouldn't be really the right word.  Stunned surprise I think it might have been.  he's never seen a bird that fat and that slow before and I think he was a bit bemused at its relaxed attitude about soaring over the garden as if it wasn't the least bit frightened of his feline ways.

So there.  I shall be looking out for Two Good Things tomorrow now... How 'bout you?

When Life was Simpler...

That's me on the left.  And that's my best friend holding the bananas. The hunky guy in the furry suit is the Cinema Manager - also my brother - on one of his good hair days. Taken at the opening of the new local Multiplex, I'd like to think that 'King Kong' might have been showing that evening, but I do have a vague recollection that my poor brother was given the only outfit large enough to take his stature - which I'm sure he'd have been delighted with because it maintains the air of mystery (or socio-phobic tendencies) which run in our family. We were all in our  twenties and, really, life couldn't have been simpler.   We shared the same house, shared responsibilities (i.e. I cooked, BF cleaned and sibling paid us both to do his share) and we all got on famously. There was a fourth lodger but we didn't really talk to  him much - he kept himself to himself, worked in something geeky like HR or IT, wore embarrassingly loud shirts and was forever jogging (in said shirts, oddly).  He also lived in the Harry Potter equivalent of a bedroom because we'd all bagged the best rooms by the time he'd got back from a run round the block the night we moved in. He merely served to make up the final quarter of the monthly rental.  Harsh but true.
And the only thing we all (apart from shirt-guy) had to worry about was whether there was stuff  we could make toasties with, if there was wine in the fridge and if, between us we had enough smokes to last until one of could be arsed to go to the corner shop and return with fresh supplies of all the above.
Work was an irritation which got in the way of being back home and having the best laughs I've ever had in my life.  Every weekend we had loud, drunken, hysterical dinner parties and our Sunday lunches became legendary.  Any day with a 'Y' in in it was a good enough reason to throw a party and before long we didn't even want to spend Christmasses away from each other.
And we knew those days were good, even at the time - we squeezed every last bit of fun out of them.
It's seeing a picture like this that makes me realise how easy everything was back then, no real responsibilities, no mortgages, no massive debts, the occasional blip with boyfriends/girlfriends but nothing that ever really got in the way of the life we all shared.  And of course I had no idea that one day, maybe 20 years hence, it would only take a phone call from the 'BF back then' to make me laugh during a time when laughs have been very thin on the ground. And after also not having seen each other for about 7 years, that's a pretty tall order. But then we've always been pretty tall girls.
And she said she'd missed seeing something funny come up on my blog recently, so I think this remedies that.

Fridge Friday

Those Twitterers amongst us (of whom I am still not sure I can say hand on heart that I *am* one), will know of the thing called #FollowFriday# or #FF# in Tweet-speak. Basically it means that you have the chance to highlight names of some of your favourite Twits and pass their goodness (at least their @name) onto others on your list.
I, however, am still lost on the mechanics of such an exercise and decided to take a photo of my fridge instead. Because last time I checked Fridge starts with the letter F and today is Friday. Another F.
So...

You can click to embiggen it - most of the stuff stuck to it hasn't changed much from when the Girl was about 7 or 8 - as you can see from some of the photos and drawings she's done of Ant, Dec and Mummy!
And of course there's the obligatory Juicing machine still on top of the fridge - from the day after the first time we used it and spent longer cleaning it than drinking whatever cocktail it produced!
So what's on YOUR fridge?!

Happy Birthday Nan!

  

I wasn't sure which picture I liked the most so I've put all my top three favourites up for your delight.  Top left is my lovely, happy, funny, kind, loving Nan in her later years, probably only a few before she died.  She was on a very rare holiday with my Grumpy old Grandfather who always looked happy to be sociable and hid his inherent Grumpiness brilliantly.  Bottom is of Nan with me on my Christening day.  My current husband has just "roffled" at this, saying my hair hasn't changed at all - it's still a bit wayward.  But my wonderful Nan loved me no matter which way my hair stuck up.  The one on the right just shows how typical joyful she always was.  She had a kind word for everyone, went out of her way to help anyone who needed it, always smiled in the face of any kind of sadness and always, always had time for me, however ridiculous I was being.  I loved every minute I spent with my dear Nan and whenever I smell Devon Violets, Lily of the Valley or Ponds Cold Cream I'm always transported back the happy times I spent with her.
Violet Lillian Ball, the world is a less shiny place without you in it.
(she'd have been 106 today and she'd have laughed her head off at that!)

My Hero(ine)

When I was younger I always dreamed of becoming Doris Day when I grew up.  I think it was the effortless cheer and sparkling-optimism-in-the-face-of-adversity ... oh and those lovely tight-waisted, wide-swingy skirts of course.
She just shone, didn't she?
I'm not sure how I'd have coped with the endless dancing and singing,  though.  I'd have to have had equally endless preparation I guess - but then in 'real life', you can prepare as much as you like and still meet with the slap of a wet haddock across the face when you least expect it.
Or Ma Walton.
If the Doris Day position had been filled,  then being the Matriarch of Walton's mountain would have been my fall-back career of choice.  All that good-humour.  All those family values.  All that small-town camaraderie and support in the face of... well, more adversity I guess.  And the only set-back would've been having to give birth to a thousand and one offspring.  Which I didn't really give much consideration to when I was younger.  After all, babies were still found in cabbage patches back then and delivered by Stork - the bird, I mean, not the margarine manufacturer.
But since The Girl's been in my life, my original choice of Hero has been pretty much entirely overshadowed.  And sometimes I can't believe my good fortune.
Not only is she beautiful, funny, intelligent, kind and sensitive, but she has endured so much in her tender 16 years that I'm sure I'd have had small emotional breakdowns over, had any of these happened to me whilst I was growing up.
Her paternal grandfather died when she was 18 months old.  And even though I'm sure she understood that he wasn't around anymore, I'm equally certain it wasn't a case of incredible make-believe when she used to 'hold his hand' as we walked to the shops some afternoons (after he'd died).  Seriously - she would have her left hand raised a little like she was holding a(nother) hand on the other side of us and even look up from time to time and smile at... well, nobody that I could see anyway.  The most disconcerting part of this walk was when she stopped, turned around and waved, telling  me "Nonno's gone now" and then we'd continue our walk - just the two of us.
*shiver*
My Mum died when the Girl was nearly five.She remembers her well.  She even remembers how she offered Gramma some chocolate the night she died and how Gramma tried to refuse it, claiming she had to watch her weight.  Such a young age to learn the art of Irony.
And  in the following year, she left the home she grew up in when her father and I separated.  Even though our Divorce wasn't a pleasant affair and she had to learn to accept Daddy's new wife and all the restrictions and crap that entailed (along with finding she also had a step-sister) she never flipped the once.  There was sadness, of course.  And questions - and I always managed to make them honest but not recriminatory -  I didn't want her to grow up with a twisted, embittered, wronged woman.  In hindsight, my mantra could've been "What would Doris do?".  Smile prettily, twirl about a bit and believe that Tomorrow would be better.
And it always was. With her, it couldn't have been anything else.
She doesn't have my Arachnophobic tendencies.  When a (mahoosive) spider crawled up the curtains in our new home one evening, she pointed delightedly, informed me of the creeping thing behind my shoulder and watched as I somehow overcame my usual petrifying fear of the things, pretending I thought nothing of picking it up (with a tissue, obviously) and calmly put it outside.  I remember crying and shaking with fear, alone later, after the adrenalin had worn off.
Six years later, aged 11, she held my hand tightly, standing beside me in the church as I gave the Eulogy at my Dad's funeral.  Without her presence I'd have buckled and broken.  My dad and I had become more like best friends since my mum died and the shock of him dying and the gap he left behind was - is - gaping.  She knew this.  She still does. 
For the 9 years we spent, just us two living together in united womanhood, she kept me going. Whenever I felt that life was getting just that little bit too much to bear, all I had to do was steal a glance at her and that's all I needed.
She's never thrown tantrums.  She's never demanded anything.  She's never cried to get her own way.  She's never threatened, abused, lied, stolen, broken any laws and she always tells me if she's worried or upset about anything.
Of course there was no question that she'd be beside me when I married the man of my Dreams.  And I'm so proud that she's been with her boyfriend now for nearly 2 years now and they're such an incredibly 'together' couple that it makes the pathetic attempts I had at 'boyfriends' at 16... well, pathetic, frankly. I couldn't even apply my mascara properly.
So today when she was lying underneath the glare of a theatre spotlight and having her scalp sliced into with a surgical knife, I felt I could be forgiven for wanting to break down and weep that she shouldn't have to endure this.  Because she's had to get through so much stuff in her short life already, that if I could have, I'd have had the surgery that she was having to undergo, instead of her.
 I'm sorry to have to break this to you, Doris, but your services have sadly not been required for pretty much the last 16 years. You see,  I found me a Real Hero.  And she doesn't expect me to drop everything and start twirling about in a springy yellow frock to the tune of 'Que Sera Sera'... even though the sentiments aren't entirely lost on us, you'll understand.

Saturday Write Fever

After the madness of making about a million enquiries (I'm a writer - I'm allowed to exaggerate, what can I say?)  this week for my last Teen book, 'Double History' - still coming to a shop near you - I am convinced of this - I resolved not to write much this weekend.  I was so exhausted last night, after three solid nights of writing and e-mailing enquiries and printing off synposes and addressing envelopes and stuff, that I couldn't even focus straight to watch telly come ten thirty.
But it's like an addiction, this writing malarkay.  No sooner do I tell myself I shan't - than I do.  With the pretext that I had to just check my e-mails - then Google Post Office weightage tables for the posting off of requested sample chapters (YES, requested sample chapters already!  Did I also mention a request for the Full too?  Oh, I didn't?)  anyway - by the time I've navigated away from E-mail, Royal Mail, local weather and then watched five or six cats doing absurdly stupid things on camera - along with one dog whose front legs are in fact wheels - bless him.... I thought I'd just see where I got to on my latest Teen thing.
And three thousand words later - I'm still here.  Why can't I just leave it alone?  Maybe it's because it's in my blood.  It's definitely in my head from the minute I wake up to the minute I fall asleep - and all the hours in between too.  No wonder the Girl is always scowling at me and saying "Did you hear what I just said?" and the Hubby frowns at his plate of culinary sustenance of an evening with an "I thought we were having Spag Bol, not Sarnies" type expression.  I can't concentrate on the 'normal world' everyone else lives in.  I have my own.
And I'm afraid I'm ex-directory.  No one's getting through.
Bliss.

It *was*n't me!

One of the mildly annoying things about having a Blog and maintaining the damn thing and trying to come up with interesting things to say two or three times a week (and they're a few mildly annoying things too, come to think of it) is the fact that you're never quite sure Who's Reading In on it.
There's the very handy visitor counter/site meter thingy at the bottom which tells me what part of the world/country each visitor hails from (mostly via Facebook and a particularly Elite Writing Group I belong to, which is nice to know) and occasionally I'll get a hint at what words were searched for resulting in the visitor... um, visiting... but unless I get a proper 'follower' person joining my happy band of readers, or somebody making a comment (in English please) then I'm really none the wiser.
The oddest search words I've had were lick my boots. And before you go trying that one at home, I've deleted that post anyway because when I changed my background colour it made the whole post go a funny shade of puce.  As Paddy McGuinness (don't you just love him-but-don't-know-why?) would say... "no likey"  not at all.
Because generally  the things that make me laugh and make me seethe and make me squirm and make me want to blog about the most are people -   people I work with, people I live with, people I meet in the street - okay then, Sainsburys.  And people I'm family with.
I know I can safely get away with having a sly dig at the Hubby because he wouldn't do anything so remotely out of character as wanting to read, voluntarily and with mounting excitement in his bones, anything that I've written.  Oh dear me, no.  He's a proper Husband and proper husbands don't read stuff their wives laughingly call 'books.'
Not until they're signing the six figure advance, I'm guessing.
And if I DID mention an incident or a conversation or something that made me white with rage/hilarity/disgust, then it might be pursued by the inevitable query (and let's face it, nobody wants to be persued by a query - inevitable or otherwise) "Was that me?  Was it?  Go on - you can tell me...was that me you were blogging about?"

I've just realised that maybe I should just blog and be done with it because once I'm published *and I will be* I will still be persued by the inevitable queries then, won't I?

Anyway, my point was that I don't want to upset anybody (apart from the Hubby and he should have read the small print on the Marriage certificate if he's got a problem with that, shouldn't he?).   So I do as my Nan used to tell me and if I "can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all".
Mind you I've done that in the past, and it's still risen up and bitten me squarely on the arse.
Sometimes you just can't win.
I'm saying nowt.

*This is a visualisation technique brought to you via several self-help manuals, some lovely writer friends and a lot of Notes from the Universe*

What The Attenborough's Did For Me

My cousin in Australia (John Child – check him out – he’s written books that have been published – okay they’re non fiction and pretty much concentrate on photography and lighting techniques and stuff, but he’s published! That’s gotta mean it’s in the blood, right?) has just shattered one of my most compelling family tree Factoids.
Ask anyone’s who’s had the pleasure of being in the same room as me when, say, Life on Earth has been on, or Our Living Planet – or anything David Attenborough-fronted and they will tell you that I will either leap from my seat and jump about ecstatically squealing “OMG – he’s one of my cousins! He is, he is, he is!” or else (depending on the assembled audience obviously) just point regally like it’s-just-such-old-news-now “David Attenborough is related to my Uncle Pete, y’know”. And invariably I’m met with the obvious ‘How?’ to which I always fan my hand and reply vaguely, “Oh, he’s the second cousin of my Uncle’s third cousin twice removed” (nobody ever hears the “probably” suffixed to the end of this explanation – because, alright then, so I DON’T know the precise familial attachments but give me a break – the man's a Legend – and I’m related to him!)
You don’t even want to be anywhere NEAR me if ‘The Great Escape’ is on at Christmas! (that’s where I get my acting talents from apparently).
My surprised co-viewers will then go on to remark about the very vague facial resemblances, especially around the eye/nose/chin areas. Ah, the fame, the glory… AND...the complete an utter fabrication of the whole thing – apparently!
Which has been in our family for like decades – at least 4 of them to my own knowledge!
Who started this rumour?
Whose strangely warped idea was it, within our family, that this myth should be perpetuated so brilliantly and passed down from generation to generation to entertain our friends during those dull TV viewing moments? Or perhaps this was JUST the reason.
I’m very wary about even opening up the whole Frank Lampard business. Hmm? Oh - he’s a distant cousin of mine, don’t y’know?

Dieting Days Are Here Again!

It's the same thing every year. The sun starts flaunting it's rays hither and thither in gay abandon and my wardrobe responds accordingly. The dull greys and browns are pushed up the end of the rail and all the oranges, limes, whites and pinks are fluffed up for another summer season. So far, so great!

Trouble is my body is still sporting:
a. its Christmas excess (1980 on)
b. its remaining baby blubber (from 1993)
c. saddle-bag writers arse
d. indications of early onset middle age spread
e. sedentary flab from having the hideous Trochanteric Burtsitis for 4 years (Google it - you'll wish you hadn't!)
f. Lazyitis without even a lapsed Gym membership as an excuse.

Nothing else for it but to go back on the Grapefruit Diet! Which actually works if you've got the appetitie of an ant and the intelligence of a gnat to see it through. Hubbs and I did it for the fortnight leading up to our nuptials and lost a stone between us although it did absolutely nothing to help our pre-wedding jitters and actually made me feel a trillion times worse what with hunger headaches and my stomach lining eating itself.

I don't know how he's doing it, but Hubbs is still on the GD 12 hours later. And after a day of physically exhausting tasks at work, too. Whereas I merely had the arduous idea of popping into town to pick up my newly lensed glasses, have a bit of a browse then back home to write totally unhindered (as it's half term and MiniMe is off doing work experience - v.keen of her to give up her break, don't you think?). But no sooner had I grabbed my specs off the nice assistant lady, I'd hared back to the car and driven at warp speed back home, fried an egg, sandwiched it between a slice of cheese and ham, stuck it on a slice of toast and devoured it with all the delicacy of Hannibal Lecter after Lent.
I'm sorry but there has to come a time in your life when you just have to say Dieting's Off. No more. Bored now.
I don't like being hungry.
There's also millions of people in the world who are starving through no choice of their own and would give anything to have the luxury of being able to say 'no thanks' to a plate of food.
We should be grateful.
So, if anyone catches me moaning about my spare tyres again, they have permission to slap me round my stupid ungrateful face.