How Do You Travel?

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We are four weeks into one of our extended trips away. There have been a few mishaps. Inevitably, long periods of travel include some mishaps-unless, of course you are undertaking a series of back-to-back cruises, in which case you will have been floated overnight to a tourist destination, hand-held on to a bus, ferried to the place, told what it is, ferried back, fed [a lot], cabaret’d to, floated to the next place, had your nose blown, been wrapped in cotton wool…you get the idea.
This trip, a slow van meander to SW France and then to the south, guided by the weather forecast [there have been severe storms in central Europe], has been dogged by a few irritations. Take the fridge, for example. It has selected now, in the heights of full blown summer and 30⁰ to shed its door, resulting in a Heath Robinson bodge of Gaffer tape and paper wedge to conserve chilling. Gaining entry is not to be taken lightly and should only be attempted in dire need, such as access to beer or wine.
The music player has come out in sympathy and has opted to remain resolutely silent under any circumstances. This means meal preparation has to be undertaken in a welter of silence; not a bad thing in itself, except I do miss the joy of jigging around to The Stones whilst waving a wooden spoon in the doorway of the van.
Worse by far-during a weekend at Parentis, which happened to be hosting a ‘Feria’-a huge humdinger of a festival involving bullfighting, drinking, eating, music, getting plastered and wearing red/white clothing, an attempt to appropriate my bicycle was made, outside the Bureau de Tourism.
Here in cycle-mad France my bike is much admired. It was acquired by default as a result of a burglary at home, and addresses my failings as a cyclist with more than adequacy. You could be forgiven, if you were to ride it, for thinking you were astride a motorised bike. It is by far the easiest bicycle known to woman. It is called a ‘29er’ owing to its enormous wheels. The French like it-and of course, many would like to acquire it! This is not the first time passers-by have attempted to free it from its locks. This time a combination lock was wrenched until two serrated teeth were exposed-almost, but not quite freeing the bike.
A few days later we were cycling yet another part of the Canal du Midi and stopped at a convenient cycle rack, securing with the aforementioned lock and returning to discover that-heureusement!!!-the combination number did not release the bikes. The cycles were locked stuck on to the rack, and we, the hapless riders, miles from home without our transport; a result of the wrenching of the previous weekend.
We walked along to where a sign directed us to sustenance-a rustic farmhouse advertising ‘crepes, boissons’ and much more. We tackled the patron. ‘Monsieur’ we faltered, ‘nous avons un problem avec les velos’…
He went to look. ‘J’ai le solution!’ he assured us, disappearing and returning with an enormous pair of bolt cutters.
Relief can sometimes seem like a holiday in itself…

The Generations-it’s complicated

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If you have children you know what a tricky, arduous, expensive, time consuming and rewarding time you have bringing them up. You know all about the sleepless nights, nail-biting anxiety, frustration and overwhelming pride you gain from their foibles and achievements. When they are small you are always looking forward to the next stage, the next milestone and ultimately their leap into independence. It is easy to imagine that your responsibility will have been despatched. You will be able to loll back and rejoice in the job well done [or gnash your teeth and regret the mistakes and neglect]. In any case it will be over and done with-or so you think.
Your relationships with your adult children are complex. Myself, I tend to draw from my own relationships with my parents in order to try not to replicate some of their behaviours.
Take gratitude, for instance. I don’t believe one’s children should be endlessly grateful for our having looked after them. After all, they didn’t choose to be born! They should certainly be polite, should thank us for a meal provided or a gift given-as they would to anyone, and will if you’ve done your raising task well; but they don’t actually owe us for their upbringing, for feeding, clothing and getting them educated, do they? Neither should they feel under any obligation to us in our old age. And this is where it can get problematic.
The fact is they know more, as adults than we can ever know. It is pointless to fantasise about ‘experience’. My father was a conservative eater, unable to contemplate anything as foreign and outlandish as pasta, even, and shuddering at the idea of a curry, claiming he’d been given it when in the army, during the Second World War. He’d learned everything about life there was to know. He did know quite a lot; but a great deal of it was redundant knowledge, irrelevant to the following generations.
I bow to my children’s superior knowledge. They know far more about the modern world than I can ever hope to. When they are together they like to reminisce about their childhood. This invariably involves some wry jesting about my parenting techniques. Apparently I used to insist they had some fruit [pear is often cited] before they were allowed ice cream. Neither of them now is especially fond of fruit, and neither of them will touch pear. I realise I must be responsible for this gaping void in their diets.
The best you can hope for as a parent of an adult is a cordial friendship with some affection thrown in; to help if requested, to refrain from advice, to be very admiring and not to expect anything in return. They may disown you, or they may treat you as an amiable buffoon. I seem to have achieved the latter. Which are you?

Blogathon Part 2-Meet the Author

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For Blogathon Part 2 I’d like to introduce writer, Janet Gogerty. Living in the South of England, Janet writes about quintessentially English characters and places. Her short stories are often stamped with her own particular brand of wry humour.
Janet has published three novels and two anthologies on Amazon Kindle. She has also won prizes for short stories and had them published on paper, on line and the lates in Audio Arcadia Volume One. She has a blog ‘Sandscript’ on Goodreads.

This is Janet in her own words

This is Janet in her own words

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Janet’s novel, ‘Quarter Acre Block’ [available on Amazon UK] concerns the lives of a family of ‘ten quid poms’ as they pack up their UK life and set off to make a new one in Australia. Janet has drawn on her own experiences for this story, which evokes a strong atmosphere of the sixties and is compelling reading for anyone who was a child of that time.

Available from Amazon

Available from Amazon

Welcome to Writers’ World

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I am pleased to have been invited to take part in a ‘blogathon’ by my fellow writer and blogger, Carol Balawyder of Canada. Carol has written two novels to date and is working on a third. Follow this link to find her tale of dating: http://www.amazon.ca/Missis-Dating-Adventures-ebook/dp/B00G8KD6IY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1383080383&sr=8-1
In her fiction writing she covers a range of genres from crime to women’s fiction. Her blog follows different themes and currently explains the work of a range of fiction novelists. She also writes short stories and submits to competitions. You can follow a link to her blog here: http://carolbalawyder.com/

Carol has sent me four questions to answer on the how, the why and the what I write.

1) What am I working on?
I am writing my second novel; set in the near distant future it concerns the effects of climate change on family, relationships and society in general. It is also a thriller involving terrorism and murder. It has involved a great deal of research so far and is not a speedy write!
I continue to blog as Grace: gracelessageing.wordpress.com, twittering on about life, society, families, travel and just about anything that catches my eye.
I am also penning short stories when the opportunity arises and currently have one in for the prestigious Bridport Prize which has set many writers on the road to success so far.
My writing group, The Spokes continues apace, achieving highly in both publication and competition.
2) How does my work differ from others of its genre?
I am not so sure that it does differ. My first novel [The Year of Familiar Strangers] was a safe, footstep-following story of betrayal, infidelity and the frustrations of feminism and drew on some of my own experiences in setting up home independently after marriage separation. It tells the story of a friendship forged through need and destroyed by deceit. The character of Marion is based on a woman I met at a particularly vulnerable time in my life.
My second novel, still in its infancy, is a much greater leap into the unknown but I believe novels concerning climate change are still few and far between, with one or two exceptions [from Barbara Kingsolver and Margaret Atwood for example].
My short stories are almost all character based and cover a wide range of themes from bereavement and loneliness, to crime and science fiction.

3) Why do I write what I do?

Writing is a curious mix of escapism and enslavement. On a long walk, or a bike ride I find I have ridden or walked vast distances without realising I have moved due to having lived elsewhere with the characters who have invaded my brain. They inhabit my sleep, often waking me and interfere horribly in my interactions with Husband, who continues to be long-suffering and indulgent.
All my life I have been a voracious reader of fiction; the lure of the story drawing me in. Writing is only a small step on from this; I, the writer am as curious as anyone to know what happens next!

4) How does my writing process work?

It is well intentioned but capricious. If a project is well underway I am unable to stop and will write constantly to everyone’s annoyance. If I am uninspired I make huge efforts to produce a piece but am rarely pleased with the result.
The idea for a novel has to roll around in my head for a long time before my fingers touch a keyboard and I could never be a ‘bang ‘em out type of writer.
Novel two [as yet untitled] has only now begun to gather momentum after months of hovering as an unformed cloud of ideas.
I find that the discipline of writing a shortish weekly blog helps to ground me. If I have done little creatively at least I have achieved something written each week!

Losing One’s Grip-a Tragic Tale of Geriatric Technological Failing

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This is the fifth time I have begun this post. The first time I managed a paragraph. The second time I completed more than half. I wrote another version and managed roughly a third. I began to be frustrated; enough to get out my fabled notebook and scribble a page in longhand. Maybe, I thought, I can tear out the page, roll it up and insert it into an empty beer bottle before casting it into the waves. It would be just as likely to be broadcast to the waiting world [or at least-the two or three loyal followers in Outer Mongolia].
There is always a certain element of tension involved in travelling and blogging, or there is for me. There is uncertainty over the availability of WiFi as well as the opportunity to actually write.
This time the tension has upped several notches, owing to the last minute purchase of brand new, shiny, all-singing, technologically wizarded laptop, together with an all-dancing, sophisticated, smug new version of Office.
The new laptop is a lovely thing. It is compact, light, slim, colourful. It has apps. It has a wizzo detachable screen and touch-screen facility. It can be swiped. On the screen are coloured squares bearing promising new applications that I could use. They have names like ‘Smite’ or Throwbox’. My imagination has failed to enlighten me as to what these applications might do. I do know what they CANNOT do. They cannot help me to use the laptop. I have failed miserably to get to grips with it, hence I am typing on the old, laborious, tired laptop with a battery that lasts about 10 minutes.
I typed my first version of a blog post on to the new, shiny little computer. After many attempts I had managed to save some gobbledegook the previous evening. I saved the draft of the post. I named it. I looked into the documents. Phew! It was there. I opened it. The page, reader was a pristine, blank rectangle. It stared back at me. ‘I’ll teach you to write on me’ it seemed to say. It was still called by the name I gave it, this blank page, but every word had vanished, whisked away in some mysterious piece of alchemy wrought by the new, tiny, shiny little laptop. After the fourth time I wanted to pick up the little thing and swing it round and round by its keyboard before smashing it into minute particles against the nearest tree. Of course, this is not an option, owing to the fact that this exotic piece of kit is actually a birthday gift from Husband…
I became dogged then. I will teach it, I thought. I am the master, not this smug little machine. I typed the post again, this time inserting a memory stick into the USB port and saving the post onto the stick. ‘Huh!’ I said. ‘Take that!’
Next day I placed the stick into the weary old computer, mindful of the tricks the little one could play. I located the removable disc, found the document. Hooray! I opened it. The page was blank…
It is war! For now, I am regrouping with the old, worn-out laptop. I have retired to tend to wounds. When I have recovered I may just have another go. Until then the lovely little laptop resides in its bag, no doubt scheming more mischief to drive me mad!

Out Damn Sugar! Out I Say!

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Sugar is the new evil. What a revelation! Every day there is a press article revealing some new disease, some new side-effect or some new and sinister ill that sugar has wrought. Yet who in the world could not, by now, know that sugar is not good for you, makes you fat, rots your teeth, gives you diabetes etc?

Just as everyone is aware that burgers, chips and pizza should be consumed in moderation, so we know it is the same for sugary products. Strangely, though, knowing these things is not enough. You have to care that sugar and fat are unhealthy to do anything about them, too.

Eradicating sugary and fatty foods from your life is tedious beyond belief. You have to watch others consuming slabs of cake, portions of chips, ice creams or creamy desserts whilst sipping black coffees or nibbling on a lettuce leaf. You have to sustain this regime for what seems years. You may not ever slip from a religious observance of ‘no sugar, no fat’.

It is never enough to undertake vast amounts of exercise; to run miles each day, leap around aerobically, swim, dance and lift weights. Sugar will still be bad. It will, at best, rot your teeth.

As a child I was not denied sugar, neither was I obese, although during my teens I did have so many teeth filled [with lethal amalgam consisting of, amongst other substances, mercury] I was like a walking barometer and you could almost tell when a storm was coming by staring into my open mouth. The fillings were not a result of decay. No, they were the outcome of a rush of enthusiasm by my national health dentist who was, at that time, paid handsomely for each filling he could complete, regardless of need. That this is now needing to be expensively addressed has been described in a previous post.

My mother’s problem with her very young children was not how to keep them on the straight and narrow of dietary goodness. It was how to feed us enough of anything. We were like a small clutch of baby birds reaching our beaks to the sky and squawking, ‘feed us!’

My father grew a lot of vegetables in our sprawling garden. There were hens at the end of it, obligingly providing eggs; [unlucky ones, on occasions would also provide the Sunday roast]. The odds and ends of discarded fruit from my uncle’s market greengrocer stall provided us with treats, although we were never allowed to consume a banana without an accompanying slice of bread and butter. We were always given a ‘pudding’-usually something carb-laden such as rice pudding [we fought over the toffee-like skin that clung to the sides of the dish], suet apple pudding or jam roly-poly. These starch fests were to fill us up. We were not chubby children.

So what went wrong? I can only guess at the answer, but I’d say affluence is the culprit, along with too many options, but you can’t turn the clock back, nor would you want to; so it’s back to coffee and lettuce leaves…

Que Sera Sera [and era era]

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This time last year I posted a rambling, meandering piece about regret. Once you get into what I shall call somewhat older age the achievements you have not made may have begun to assemble into a substantial and growing heap. They may even have become a mountain. Ambition and regret are linked together like health and sickness.
As children we might begin with some outlandish and bizarre ideas about what we would like to do as adults. I still remember the cruel taunts and guffaws of laughter from my family that met my announcement at the supper table that I would become a missionary. I would have been about six years old at this point. There followed a series of ambitious plans for my adult occupation: ballet dancer, show jumping champion, vet, model, make-up artist, graphic designer. These aspirations followed my childhood devotions, each being thwarted by the arrival of the next love-of-my-life. It seemed as if I went from worshipping Margot Fonteyn one week to reading every book penned by Josephine Pullein-Thompson the next. ‘Wish for a Pony’ was one of my favourites.
After we’d moved to the flat, bleak, backward countryside of the fens my mother was fond of saying I could have had a pony if we’d stayed within the environs of the New Forest, from whence we’d come. This was small comfort to my pining, desperate, pony-mad self. Four years later, once we’d moved again [to the horse-friendly environment of Kent], I was able to indulge my passion by saving up two weeks of pocket money to buy one hour of horse riding every fortnight. My mother advised that my ballet dancing legs would be ‘ruined’. During one thrilling ride involving leaping ditches and straddling an unreliable steed I was thrown, resulting in a broken arm and three months of being encased in plaster of Paris from finger to shoulder. During this enforced separation from the realms of horsedom I underwent a metamorphosis and became interested in the mysterious creatures that were boys.
In a simultaneous bid to influence my career choice, my father, frustrated musician that he was, foisted a clarinet upon me [plus an abusive teacher-but that is another story] in hopes that I, the last of his three children might become a maestro. Sometimes it is possible to influence or shape your child’s destiny. More often it is not. Tennis players often come from a fanatically tennis-mad background, but to me it seems a selfish and egocentric policy to expect your child to achieve what you could not; better to support them in whatever pursuit they show aptitude or interest in. For me, this was not the clarinet, or any other instrument.
Ultimately I did what the vast majority of people do and drifted into a career that would do. In fact teaching did serve very well. I was able to do it adequately, but to ‘job’ rather than career level. It allowed me to spend the holiday periods with my own children and eventually paid out a reasonable pension; therefore no complaints. Career options shrink with age. I shall not, now be winning Wimbledon, dancing the lead in Swan Lake or painting any masterpieces. Still-if dementia can hold off for a bit there is an outside chance I may get a novel published. Just published will do; it doesn’t have to top the Waterstone’s chart-don’t want to be too ambitious at my age!

Those that can, write, Those that can’t, write too.

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                I attend a book club at my local library. It consists of about eight gentile old ladies-[I am including myself in this description although the gentile part is the most inaccurate]. On the whole I love my fellow old ladies. They are smiley, mild mannered, self-deprecating. We talk about a wide variety of subjects-most recently hearing aids, the sights of Rome and foot ailments. Occasionally we come around to discussing the novel we have been allocated by Tracey, the enigmatic librarian. Given that we have all had a month to read said novel we should, by rights have plenty to throw into a discussion about it, however we are almost always as earnest as schoolgirls in our lame excuses.

                ‘I’ve read it but so long ago I can’t remember it’

                ‘I read some of it’

                ‘I couldn’t find it until this morning’-

The Book Club equivalent of ‘the dog ate my homework’.

                The problem lies, I believe with the kind of books Tracey chooses for us [or rather, the set of books that has become available for us]. They are rarely riveting, or if they are, I’ve generally read them already. Hence several recent issues have been, for me unreadable.  

                One of the ladies has literary tastes which are in direct opposition to mine. If there is an odd book that I enjoy I know she is going to declare it ‘rubbish’. One such book was The Great Gatsby, which I had read many years ago and enjoyed rereading. Other tales, such as the very popular ‘One Day’ by David Nichols did nothing for me but gave her much pleasure. You would think, would you not, that such discrepancies in reactions to books would lead to interesting and lively discussion, yet this has still to happen.

                I’m sorry to say I blame Tracey for this lack of debate. Were she to arrive at our table armed with provocative questions the conversation would be sustained and would not veer off on to subjects such as bunions or where to buy fruit teas. We could discuss characters, plot lines, whys and wherefores. We could say why we did or did not get something from the read [or lack of read]. Really there is no excuse, since many novels come ready pressed with the book club questions and stimulants all there at the end of the narrative.

                Just for once though, last week the opinions were unanimous. Everyone was agreed that the novel was one of the very worst we’d ever been given. The book? It was Richard Madely’s ‘Some Day I’ll Find You’.

                Richard Madely is a lightweight journalist and TV presenter who made a name co-presenting a daytime TV chat show with his wife and subsequently as a TV Book Club host. Now I understand completely what makes someone who is interested-even passionate about literature become motivated enough to take up the pen themself. This has happened to me. But the difference between myself and Richard is not associated with writing ability. It is that he, with all his lack of talent has simply thrown into his novel every cliché, formula and hackneyed device he has encountered and produced a tired story which he has not had to send to every literary agent known to man in order to get published. He can sell his boring book on the strength of his name.

It goes to show that reading, whilst useful to aspiring writers does not a writer make. Do I sound jaded? Indeed I am!

World Cup Football-the Agony, the Ecstasy and the Indifference

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                There are people who are obsessed by sport. Some spend every moment either playing it or watching it. Then there are those who only want to watch, and many of these are in the champions’ league for slobbing on the couch with takeaway pizza, tubes of Pringles and cans of beer. Myself, I fall into a sort of twilight category, a section of society that flirts with both participating [in a very minor, non-competitive way] and keeping half an eye on international games whilst peeling the potatoes.

                At school I loathed team sports.  I was always frozen on the hockey pitch in winter [I was tiny] or frozen out on the netball court in summer [again, I was tiny]. I liked gymnastics, inside in the warmth of the cavernous gym, and was happy shinning up the ropes or somersaulting around a bar, although never brilliantly enough to catch anyone’s eye or warrant coaching.

                As a teenager I pretended a mild interest in supporting the local football team as a ruse to bump into a boy I’d earmarked for attention. Against all odds this strategy actually worked, which was exhilarating until I found I had to attend the local games on a regular, weekly basis in all kinds of weather clement or not.

                Later there came a period in my life when I and my children’s lives were dominated by football and cricket schedules to the point where outings, celebrations and holidays had to be planned around the fixtures-football in winter and cricket in summer.

                Nowadays I can get behind our national team to some extent, although not to knowing all the players’ names or who they are to play next. At the time of writing this has all become academic as England have just descended down the plughole with a resounding gurgle and the team members might well be packing their suitcases as I type were it not for one last, sad, compensatory game. Then the contest will rumble on without them.

                I suppose winning an international sporting contest does inject a ‘feelgood’ quality into the victorious nation, yet I am one of those who do not experience any strong emotions over my mother country or its sporting triumphs and cannot identify with those who weep openly when their team fails. Whether this is down to my lack of competitive spirit or nationalistic verve I don’t know.

                In my previous life as a proper working person [teacher], my team partner and I once organised a sports day based entirely on non-competitive activities and were roundly criticised for it; the doting parents preferring their little ones to be kicking one another’s shins than achieving their personal bests. The day was memorable in that one of the mums saw fit to grab me round the throat in frustration when I requested that her offspring wait her turn. It all goes to prove that you can’t win ‘em all…and England seem to win less than most…

Worldly Troubles? I blame God…

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                When my brothers and I were small children we were sent to Sunday school. We would begin on Sunday mornings by undertaking a thorough cleaning of our shoes [in my case it was most likely Clarks sandals with the cut out flower in the toe] then have to walk down through the village to the church and into a small section of the vestry where we would listen to Bible stories and sing along to a hymn:

                ‘Jesus bids us shine with a steadfast light

                Like a little candle burning in the night

                In this world of darkness we can shine

                You in your small corner

                And I in mine’

was a favourite.

                The best part of Sunday school was the stamp, gravely distributed and stuck on to a card as proof of attendance.

                My parents did not accompany us to these privileged gatherings, preferring to stay at home and enjoy the Sunday morning free of us-and who can blame them? My father was, in those days an occasional Church goer. But my mother was an unabashed, self-confessed atheist- brought up a Catholic, schooled in convents where [allegedly] she was beaten with a rubber slipper, until all vestige of religious belief was truly eradicated.

                Having learned at Sunday school that life after death was a trip to heavenly paradise I would sit on my mother’s lap and seek reassurance from her that this was assuredly the case, only to be told that death was ‘like a candle being snuffed out’. There was that candle theme again.

                The hypocrisy of sending us to Sunday school whilst admitting died-in-the-wool atheism appeared to present no qualms for my mother. Presumably the opportunity to off load us for a morning was compelling enough to overcome them. In any case my father put in a sporadic appearance at church at that time.

                Some years later, long after I’d begun to acquire my own lack of belief an aunt wrote to tell me it was time for me to become ‘confirmed’-an undertaking I took very little time to decide upon. I wrote back [extraordinarily politely for a mardy teenager] explaining that I didn’t know if I wanted to be a member of the Church of England-or indeed any church, come to that.

                Later still, when my own children came into being there was pressure from family members to have them christened, as I had been. I held out. They might want to be Buddhists, Hindus or atheists. Who was I to choose a religion for them?- And if I did, what was to stop them from rebelling, as all self respecting teenagers should?

                Because that is what I find baffling about indoctrination. Yes, small children are little sponges who soak up knowledge, skills or gobbledegook indiscriminately, only to rage against everything they’ve been taught as soon as a hormone raises its head above the window sill. So how come fervent devotion to religion is still rampant in the world, causing mayhem, war and suffering? And what ‘God’ would allow it all to happen?