Death by Shopping

I shouldn't be here. I should be unpacking nine bags of shopping.

'How many bags you got?'
I'd considered this for long enough to make the woman behind me tut.
'Fifteen.'
The boy scout behind the till stopped chewing gum to give me a look. A 'you're lying,' look. I mean how much do you get off your shopping for using your own bag? A penny? I had nine big bags. I could have had thirty tiny bags. Very mean of me but even meaner of Costalot.

I felt mean because not only do supermarkets filter out every sunbeam that threatens to disrupt the carefully engineered enviroment of grey conformity, they filter out your soul too. I think they do it at the sliding doors. They leach it out of you along with your personality. They don't want oddly shaped customers any more than they want pimpled pears. And it's all our own fault. We've deserted our village shops to save time and money. And have we saved time and money? Not me but then I lose shopping lists and impulse buy.

Tomorrow I'm going to see my butcher,Jim, who may or may not have his teeth in. At nearly eighty he's about twenty years too old to work in Costalot and he'll insist on telling you the kill number of the bit of beef you've just bought - with cash cos he don't like the visa machine. Yay.

Read something Very Funny for money

TwitterTitters is a collection of funny short stories written in aid of Comic Relief.
Two of our Novel Racers, Cally and Lane had their submissions judged worthy of inclusion along with ten other writers. Out of nearly a hundred entries, this was no mean feat.

Bookersatz features my review of TwitterTitters and payment details on their site.
http://bookersatz.blogspot.com

By buying the book you will be helping those who have been dealt a much worse hand than most of us can imagine. Then you can join me in a Value Price beer and a few good belly laughes.

Asta Luego Lisa

We are not our bodies
We're not even our breath
We are the sum of our words
And yours were mighty fine.

Asta Luego Lisa

A215 Draft of Poem

I'm realising something sad - for me but perhaps a relief for agents on my hit list - is that my novel is not good enough. It has to be a practise novel. I am going to use one of the protagonists, the soldier's wife, and write a book about her. I'll take bits and pieces from the discarded novel and a lot of the story line too.



The thing is this; when you start writing a story and nearly four years later, you're still with it, you've changed, your writing's changed - I'd like to say matured but who knows. So I've been trying to edit words that at best, leave me cold and, at worst, make me cringe.



Here's a draft of the first poem I've written since I was fifteen. A few summers ago. It's part of the OU Creative Writing course. Not good enough for a TMA so I'm putting it here so I can find it again.



Oh, please tell me if you've chucked an entire novel and started again? And do also tell if you know any good books on character creation because that should have been where I started - with very detailed characters. Story and plot come next, in my humble opinion.

A Cornish Village

On Cawsand Bay in spring

We’d run to meet a topaz sea

Skate barnacled rocks that bled our feet

And saffron sand as hot as larva

With diamonds glinting in the waves

We’d taste the brine on childish lips

And thought that life – just like the sky

Stretched on and on forever

In Cawsand village in summer

We’d sing a siren song

To trawl the sailors in from Plymouth

And hold them in our girlish arms

How they loved our wild brown eyes

And flapped like fish in nets of hair

They spoke of loves in English towns

But spilled their seed in Celtic coves.

In Cawsand quay in Autumn

My baby son and I

Threw bread to angry gulls

And watched grey water writhe and rise

Then with small fat hands my child

Skimmed spitting surf with pebbles

Worn down to shallow flint

And I kiss the softness of his neck

And pray that times stands time.

In Cawsand square in winter

I pass the tourists spying

On my home, my life, my loves.

I am a ghost. They pass right through me

A faded women by a silent sea.

I will shed this skin of ages

And dive among the jewelled fishes

To find the mermaid in my soul

***********************************

My Girl Jessie

Recently, the RSPCA appear to have declared war on owners who dress their pets up or anthropomorphise them in any way. I do agree that the sight of Paris Hilton wearing her dog as an accessory is tasteless and worrying. All animals should be allowed to exhibit their natural behaviour which is difficult if you're kept in a shoulder bag. Dogs are dogs. They need a hunt every a day and an owner who understands them. But there are far worse things than dressing your dog up as Peter Pan or Beyoncé. In China dogs are killed in the most painful and protracted way for their fur and meat. Tesco would have us eat petit foie gras and the treatment of battery chickens is heart breaking. So I think the RSPCA could be shooting themselves in the foot by seemingly targeting a large section of pet owners who love and treat their dogs well - but put them in pink coats with clips in their hair.

So, this is my girl Jessie in her pink woolly leggings. Despite being only four she has arthritis in her joints - the result of neglect by her previous owners. My vet suggested leggings and rather than boring black I found these which suit her dippy tart nature.

The Factory Cat

Just submitted a short story to Your Cat. Not getting excited at all because they seem to publish most excellent work by known writers. Very enjoyable to write though. I'll post a few lines when I get my rejection letter. By the way, does anybody know - if your story is 1784 words do you state this or do you round it off to 1700? And - don't go just yet - have you read Nicci French's Losing You? The best thing I've read for ages. So exciting and chilling. And,and...how do I lose the green eyes? They were red, corrected them with red eye remover but now they're green and Jessie has the most lovely amber eyes.

On loss and Gain

I lost a dear friend a few days ago in the most tragic way. We are just a blink of an eye in time. I thought I couldn't write but now I find it's all I can do. I've written a poem, a short story about a cat and a new beginning to my novel. I've stayed away from writing how I feel - too self indulgent - maybe later.



I've written a new first page to my novel, Sitting Pretty and will carry on editing for content for probably the next six to nine months and then line edit. That sounds very organised and organised is what I'd like to be. Washing out before I go to work, lunch boxes made, ironing every night, both socks matching,no driving kids to school in my pjs. No more trying to write like I think I should, I'll just write from the heart.



New first page:



Chapter One. Sian.

If I told you that my husband travelled the world and, occasionally killed people, you probably wouldn’t invite me in for coffee. But if I said that he served his queen and country in the British army then maybe you would.

The truth, I guess, is somewhere in between which means it’s easier for me to stay here, behind the wire, safely in the camp with the other soldiers’ wives.

Ten years ago at seventeen, I was just a bolshie girl from the valleys, newly married to my Private Evans and carrying my father’s chip on my shoulder. A miner’s daughter who wanted to change the world. Now I know my place and my place is here; Aborfield Garrison where I clean the NAAFI and support my husband.

I’m Sergeant Evans, ‘Wife of’. That’s right, I got a promotion but you can call me Sian. And now we want another stripe and that’s why we’re dressed up like Ken and Barbie, with a freezing January wind whipping round our legs. We’re waiting with another Ken and Barbie - our mates, Mo and Alan, for the army transport to take us to the Warrant Officers Mess Ball. We get a tick in the box for socialising you see.

‘Fucking transport’s always late.’ Steve flicks a cigarette butt which lights up the black sky like a scud missile before landing, burning red, a few feet from the defunct tank, the symbolic watchdog of the base.

Not drowning but waving

Every morning the radio alarm shouts at me in Polish or Punjabi - I'm too uncultured to know the difference. Every morning I think I'll remember to set the bloody thing to Classic FM or anywhere the DJs aren't angry with me.

It's not that I hate mornings, I love mornings, I just can't wake up in them. I think I drown every night and lie like a wreck stuck in the grey sludge of the ocean floor. And that's where I want to stay, thank you. A worn out vessel with silver fish stretch marks across my broad side. Leave me be to grow barnacles on my bottom. But no, the morning tug boats dredge me up to ferry the grunting teenagers and growling husband to work. Bugger.

I didn't reply to any of my fellow bloggees comments last week. Because, I'm ashamed to admit, I put the edited bit back and not only that, I added more. So I have a 133k m/s to edit down to 100k and I've edited up to 137k. Ha.