tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15815997311536910872024-02-19T02:57:21.702-08:00The Book Bub UnpluggedKate Jay-Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00949531996279399373noreply@blogger.comBlogger56125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1581599731153691087.post-90364915359236864552023-10-11T08:42:00.001-07:002023-10-16T02:15:50.552-07:00Miriam Hastings Guest Author discusses her latest book<p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span> </span><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-weight: bold; text-align: justify;"><span><span> </span><span><br /></span></span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span><span class="s1" style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Today I would like to welcome Miriam Hastings to my blog. I have just finished reading her powerful novel 'The Dowager’s Dream'.</span></span></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="s2"><b>Welcome Miriam. I noticed that your book is dedicated to your great great grandmother Margaret McKenzie. Do you have any information about her life and if so did any of her experiences inform the book?</b></span><b><o:p></o:p></b></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span class="s2"><b><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></b></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: inherit;">Were any of your ancestors directly or indirectly affected by the clearances do you know?</span></b></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></b></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyPg8LLUI-WmYBwaXSEe3BZD86LESfzGw84Xahr8sZXGAaNW4zgPa_81PCWcbj5M4hnT_45Cm_X6tvN64UjbGwCKoLLvQCnXFS6ZE6Y_LHWCgob0I3wxncaOswm__9AtkGWI2LOKAOstncpWBI8ecqz0L0AoRGwCQGU5uniwMWyR8y1olBWNkibZ_e/s479/IMG_2638.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="479" data-original-width="466" height="289" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyPg8LLUI-WmYBwaXSEe3BZD86LESfzGw84Xahr8sZXGAaNW4zgPa_81PCWcbj5M4hnT_45Cm_X6tvN64UjbGwCKoLLvQCnXFS6ZE6Y_LHWCgob0I3wxncaOswm__9AtkGWI2LOKAOstncpWBI8ecqz0L0AoRGwCQGU5uniwMWyR8y1olBWNkibZ_e/w281-h289/IMG_2638.jpeg" width="281" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Author Miriam Hastings</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">started researching the highland clearances a long while ago when I spent a lot of time up on the north coast. I visited the clearance museum at Farr several times and they helped me look into my own MacKenzie ancestors. I can’t be sure how accurate it is, but they think the family were evicted from their croft in the early 19th century. It seems that Margaret, my great, great grandmother, came to London in search of work, probably with her parents. Sadly, she died young of tuberculosis in 1872, leaving her husband James Killick and three children. Charlotte was 7, my great-grandfather Albert was 5, and his sister Florence was 4. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">James </span><span style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: 27pt;"> (like all the Killicks) had been a costermonger in Clerkenwell, but he went to pieces after her death and ended up in prison for child neglect while the three children were put in the workhouse. Then Charlotte went to live with James’ widowed mother (also Charlotte), while Albert and Florence were admitted to the London School for Destitute Children - which probably saved their lives since their sister died when she was about 11 (either with her grandmother or back in the workhouse) and their father died of tuberculosis in the workhouse. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: 27pt;">It was all very sad and Dickensian!</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: 27pt;">Most of my ancestors were Welsh but I did have other Scottish ancestors, the Pattersons, but they were from the lowlands, probably from Glasgow - I don’t know much about </span><span style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: 27pt;">them yet.</span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="s2"><b><span>Thank you. Yes, it’s often surprising and frequently very tragic what genealogy can turn up. I'm also intrigued by your other dedication to Elizabeth MacKay who saw the the mermaid. Is this a well-known story told in the Highlands? Did you do a lot of research for this and is this why you chose Mackay to be the surname of Kirsty? </span></b></span><span class="s2" style="font-size: large;"><b><span><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span class="s2" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span>I became interested in the highland clearances after I discovered a strange and fascinating letter written by the daughter of the Minister at Reay, Elizabeth MacKay, describing a mermaid she saw in Sandside Bay in January 1809. She wrote the letter to the Dowager at Sandside who sent it on to her friend Sir James at Thurso, he in turn sent it to a journalist who published it in a newspaper. I discovered it in an old, 19th century encyclopaedia of animals for children. It had a section on fabulous beasts at the end, including mermaids, and it published Elizabeth MacKay’s letter. I wanted to know why a minister’s daughter might have seen a mermaid then - what was going on in the country around her at that time? </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: 27pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: 27pt;">It was then I first began to read about the clearances.</span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="s2"><b><span><span>Thank you, and readers will see the influences in the novel. Was there also documentary evidence of the Mackays seeing faeries or was this something you added to the story of the MacKay clan with your delicious imagination?</span></span></b></span><b style="font-size: large;"><span><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span>The MacKay clan have always had a reputation in the highlands for second sight and for being friends with the fairies. Kirsty’s mother and grandmother are MacKays but her father is a MacDonald.</span><span face="-webkit-standard, serif" style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="s2"><b><span>The characters all seem very vivid, did you base any of them on real people?</span></b></span><span class="s2" style="font-size: large;"><b><span><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span> I didn’t consciously base any of the characters on real people except the Patty-cat who was closely based on a cat, Petya, I rescued when I was an anxious and unhappy teenager. Most of the time she was far more gentle than Patty-cat in the novel, but she hated raised voices just as much and behaved just like the Patty-cat, patting people on the arm or the lips if they got angry. When I was 16, she once chased my mother out of the room because she thought she was making me cry!</span><span face="-webkit-standard, serif" style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLqQhNYq744N0An8S-OxT46wYpLf0qTKduz_nBnwjw6tJJbs7lt_wJxz-BrshH9TPaCJNzs4bJAof-VG0-ksdzP27wRZbfzE_J_CsRVVK7h26YDgI15HGpGSLPj4YH-XJw751DRYxuaAKabHiTJm4fEZy9GmqFFdLBVTo0LHZ6UAwnnSF0sEItngVT/s1394/IMG_2626.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1376" data-original-width="1394" height="316" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLqQhNYq744N0An8S-OxT46wYpLf0qTKduz_nBnwjw6tJJbs7lt_wJxz-BrshH9TPaCJNzs4bJAof-VG0-ksdzP27wRZbfzE_J_CsRVVK7h26YDgI15HGpGSLPj4YH-XJw751DRYxuaAKabHiTJm4fEZy9GmqFFdLBVTo0LHZ6UAwnnSF0sEItngVT/s320/IMG_2626.jpeg" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Petya - the original 'Patty-cat'</span></td></tr></tbody></table><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"></p><p></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="s2"><b><span>I thought she had to be based on a real feline! The setting is all so vivid too - it sounds as if you know these places intimately. Did you know them personally from ever having lived there or from regular visits or holidays? How long did it take you to research it?</span></b></span><span class="s2" style="font-size: large;"><b><span><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt; text-align: justify;"><span class="s2"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 18pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span>Originally I wanted to write a non-fiction book about the lives of women in Sutherland during the clearances but it was really difficult to find out about them - even their names! So in the end I decided to write a novel about them instead. This means that altogether I spent many years researching the clearances in different parts of the highlands and islands, but especially in Sutherland.</span><span face="-webkit-standard, serif"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span><br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span>While I was doing the research we spent a lot of time up on the north coast. Usually we would rent a cottage in Reay although once we stayed in Strathnaver (the valley I based Strath Kerrow upon). I love it up there, it’s very special to me, but I’m too disabled to go so far now<span style="font-size: medium;">.</span></span><span face="-webkit-standard, serif" style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span><span class="s2"><b>I remember you having a short story published about a mermaid in an ice house. Did you have an idea then that you'd like to incorporate her into a longer</b></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><b> </b></span><span class="s2"><b>story?</b></span></span><span class="s2" style="font-size: large;"><b><span><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span>The first version of a novel I wrote about the clearances was a lot longer and great deal bleaker (it is a very bleak story, of course), it also covered a much longer period of time in real terms, with a harsher end so I think it was a more difficult and challenging novel to read. For a couple of years I had a literary agent who was very enthusiastic about it but he couldn’t find a publisher, then he left the company he had been working for to set up one of his own. At that point he only wanted authors who were selling really well so he ditched me! Not an unusual story, I know. So I gave up at that point. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: 18pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: 18pt;">After a while I wrote the short story, Mermaid on Ice, which was published by Fairlight, and when I first showed it to my friend, the writer Wendy Brandmark, she commented that it read like the beginning of a novel which encouraged me to start again. </span><i style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: 18pt;">The Dowager’s Dream</i><span style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: 18pt;"> is totally different to the first novel I wrote and far more imaginative and fictional but it is still based upon the true history of the highland clearances. I allowed myself more licence to create and more freedom than I had in the first novel and I think it has benefited from that. I took out the real names of characters, e.g. William Patterson, who was originally based upon the ruthless land agent and factor who really existed. I also took out the real names of places and replaced them with names that were similar but not identical. I thoroughly enjoyed writing the book so I hope people will enjoy reading it.</span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoListParagraph" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt; text-align: justify;"><span class="s2"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> </span></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="s2"><b><span>Are you working on anything else and if so would you like to tell us more?</span></b></span><span class="s2" style="font-size: large;"><b><span><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span class="s2" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><b> </b></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> </span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I have just finished a novella (my first, just 31,000 words long) about a poverty-stricken and neglected area in Spain, based upon the two areas that I know well and where we have spent a lot of time.<span style="font-size: medium;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><b><span><span style="font-family: inherit;">We shall all look forward to that very much, Miriam. I know I shall. Many thanks for being a guest on my blog. <span style="font-size: medium;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> </span></b></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKehyphenhyphenRM-TeXYugXWsBmywjG47EjNOa0ujBerekL-F9FFSfLkAUFU_ppnux4HN-7tyHRFnHr9PdsXPsbU6KVQC-f6pgnAxB-5c53L4tFSJCBgRt1Z2aUmBTJB-ECxAXlTDXIYF7r5gYoUh1nKkMOT7SzL2ALNt0W27g4UNdpWVLykYFaESLPNlaaPyL/s220/IMG_2385.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><img border="0" data-original-height="220" data-original-width="136" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKehyphenhyphenRM-TeXYugXWsBmywjG47EjNOa0ujBerekL-F9FFSfLkAUFU_ppnux4HN-7tyHRFnHr9PdsXPsbU6KVQC-f6pgnAxB-5c53L4tFSJCBgRt1Z2aUmBTJB-ECxAXlTDXIYF7r5gYoUh1nKkMOT7SzL2ALNt0W27g4UNdpWVLykYFaESLPNlaaPyL/w198-h320/IMG_2385.jpeg" width="198" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">The Dowager's Dream</span></td></tr></tbody></table><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: inherit;">To find out more about <i>The Dowager’s Dream</i> and where it can be purchased, please follow the links below. You can also find out more about Miriam’s books at her website and social media links (below).</span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 27pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="text-align: left;"> Links where </span><i style="text-align: left;">The Dowager’s Dream</i><span style="text-align: left;"> can be purchased: </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 27pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span>https://www.feedaread.com/books/The-Dowagers-Dream-9781803027999.aspx (paperback)</span><span face="-webkit-standard, serif"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 27pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span>https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0C43QJCHG/ref=sr_1_1 (both paperback and on kindle)</span><span face="-webkit-standard, serif"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 27pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span>https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-dowagers-dream-miriam-hastings/1143479149 (paperback)</span><span face="-webkit-standard, serif"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 27pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span>Links to website:</span><span face="-webkit-standard, serif"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 27pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span>www.miriamhastings.com</span><span face="-webkit-standard, serif"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 27pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span>Social media links:</span><span face="-webkit-standard, serif"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 27pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span>facebook author page: </span><a href="https://www.facebook.com/MiriamHastings.author/"><span style="color: black;">www.facebook.com/MiriamHastings.author/</span></a><span face="-webkit-standard, serif"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 27pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span>twitter: @MimHastings</span><span face="-webkit-standard, serif"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 27pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span>instagram: @miriam.hastings3</span><span face="-webkit-standard, serif"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span face="-webkit-standard, serif"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>Kate Jay-Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00949531996279399373noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1581599731153691087.post-60339547652760089272023-09-06T04:48:00.006-07:002023-09-06T04:50:12.935-07:00My review of The Dowagers Dream by Miriam Hastings<p style="text-align: justify;">This excellent and compelling novel about the Highland Clearances is narrated through the viewpoints of both Mary and Kirsty. Kirsty is housekeeper at the 'manse' and servant to Mary's father, the brusque minister.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">The novel opens with the sighting of a mermaid in the remote community near Thurso in the Highlands of Scotland. Mary sees it too and the Highlanders view the vision of a mermaid as portentous.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">The largely absent Laird at the Bighouse— also in a longstanding feud with his mother, the Dowager—has arranged for new plans for the estate and no longer wants the crofters to grow crops as they have for generations but instead wants to turn the land over to sheep farming with 'cheviots' and English shepherds to oversee it. He 'wants to bring a more modern and profitable way of life up here...to encourage a more educated and civilised culture among the residents.’. The villagers are worried about their homes and livelihoods.The prophecy of the Great White Sheep soon becomes a reality and the mermaid sighting haunts the Dowager at the Bighouse.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">The Dowager, the Minister and the threatened Highlanders pull together and we see a surprise feistiness of the Dowager when her folk are threatened with eviction, in spite of their different lot in life. She aligns with them more than the outsiders who want to take over. What follows is a growing threat of violence between the English 'southerners' and the Highlanders, building to a harrowing climax.</p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwzXKGH8soS0xqKvmNsaVRfftKiOrUW-kHSOqpQp48nP28NC8AUz_7ntAfw_aLfFTsb7LOtcTNCVoYy5Jg3nfpcek_cMtpX3IGPbwMKXEsumwBDYYJcnCdS8Pq13HR75vkwlnTe0eGGV5gRCxQ3DOxYBCtYRGLqZVC0bJOWGBiw0zgNm8BociozzZ0/s220/IMG_2385.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="220" data-original-width="136" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwzXKGH8soS0xqKvmNsaVRfftKiOrUW-kHSOqpQp48nP28NC8AUz_7ntAfw_aLfFTsb7LOtcTNCVoYy5Jg3nfpcek_cMtpX3IGPbwMKXEsumwBDYYJcnCdS8Pq13HR75vkwlnTe0eGGV5gRCxQ3DOxYBCtYRGLqZVC0bJOWGBiw0zgNm8BociozzZ0/w198-h320/IMG_2385.jpeg" width="198" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;">The story is threaded through with ancient mythology of the Mermaid and the faery folk as they interact with the vivid and complex characters that sparkle off the page in what is probably Hastings' finest novel (and she's already set a high bar with the others).</span></div><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">You can't help but root for Kirsty's feistiness, torn as she between the loyalty to her extended family and the people she serves: Mary and her father, and the Dowager. The Dowager herself is a strident and complex character, in spite of her lineage. The shabbiness of the Bighouse brings to mind the common adage about the aristocracy having more in common with the workers than the middle classes. The Minister too is an intriguing character and best placed to be respected by all: he has a powerful position in the community but still bound by the Laird and doing what he believes to be right. He is also interested in the new scientific findings of the time which sit comfortably with his religious beliefs. He often comes across as gruff and harsh but underneath we get glimpses of a gentler side and a tolerance for the understandably mutinous Kirsty, and the manse cats. Even William Patterson, the English land agent employed by the Laird, has one or two saving graces. Other major and minor players who make a lasting impression are Kirsty's cousin Ruth Gunn as well as the more unworldly ones like Meena and, of course, the Mermaid. A special mention too has to go the manse cats, especially Patience Griselda or Patty-cat who puts a paw over the minister's mouth or pats an arm with her paw when she's disturbed by shouting or raised voices!</p><p><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">As well as evocative descriptions of the setting, the narration has enough phrases and colloquialisms to remind us where we are. Phrases like 'starnels' for starlings and 'glaikit limmer' for 'a foolish loose woman or scoundrel' (I had to look these words up) demonstrate Hastings has researched this thoroughly or has family knowledge. (I noticed the dedications at the beginning of book includes the surnames of both main characters ).</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">Like Hilary Mantel and other acclaimed writers, Hastings brings her historical characters and environment vividly to the present as if they're right there in the room with you. This is done seemlessly and artfully and is a unique skill that few people can pull off. No rose-tinted glasses here. Just real people with timeless wishes, hopes, fears, dreams and passions. Just enough dialect to 'hear' their voices. I learned so much about this overlooked and important period of history. The story and the characters will stay with me.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">I can't recommend this book enough and hope to be interviewing the author more about The Dowagers Dream soon.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">You can buy a paperback copy here: <a href="https://www.feedaread.com/books/The-Dowagers-Dream-9781803027999.aspx">Feed A Reed</a></p><p style="text-align: justify;">Or an eCopy here: <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dowagers-Dream-Miriam-Hastings/dp/1803027991/">Amazon.uk</a></p><p style="text-align: justify;">More about the author and her work can be found here: <a href="https://miriamhastings.com/">Miriam Hastings website</a></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p>Kate Jay-Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00949531996279399373noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1581599731153691087.post-20817377670661853072022-12-16T15:19:00.003-08:002022-12-16T15:20:58.260-08:00Last blog of the year - review of 2022<p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Welcome to my last blog of the year in which I look at my goals fulfilled <span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">and new year goals or aims for next year outlined!</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Last year I hoped to make more progress with my memoirs, finish my Pet Peeves blog series and improve my poetry. I have progressed quite a bit with my memoirs but still a long way to go. I tentatively entered it into a memoirs competition but was disappointed not to get anywhere. I'm very used to getting rejections and I got another one in the same week regarding a novel that was much more polished (in fact it's self-published). But I'm new to memoirs and it felt a bit like returning to the old days when I first started sending out my first novel (or a new one). </span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">On the positive side, I did invest in a new cover for Savage To Savvy designed by Jessica Bell waiting to be revealed. I look forward to seeing if having a professionally designed cover will make a difference. </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">I also finished my Pet Peeves series of blogs. I've not honed my poetry skills to any noticeable degree but I did complete a series of 'month poems' and since July have been putting them onto a backdrop and posting on Instagram. </span></span></div><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span>This year I’ve also had a couple of flash fiction pieces and one Image-Word piece in the online publication 'Ink Sweat & Tears'. Flash fiction suits me as it has much in common with poetry and also as it's short I can complete a piece relatively quickly! </span><span> </span><span>It also breaks up the very long memoirs at the other end of the writing spectrum. More of both, I hope, in the coming year.</span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 24px; text-align: justify;"><span class="s1" style="font-family: inherit;"></span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFBUC3N0oBbAYMk96LSauJlbRa-J8wVjJuwPLkKTxnf4fZnDPJ_6ni6-_jXLzIoaNImZQkBd1OrMA9rMsJgsgXbxqzyozQf1ZGnMZniT3vfEPXrrqgd6ueO73kBy8NL2EKvG6LCNTHlOCD6bo2aL6swUYcVZZKgn7g7SrvBVWgjFfGBftOekwYkA/s1973/482F77C3-BC91-436F-9E4B-99D409115017.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1973" data-original-width="1175" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFBUC3N0oBbAYMk96LSauJlbRa-J8wVjJuwPLkKTxnf4fZnDPJ_6ni6-_jXLzIoaNImZQkBd1OrMA9rMsJgsgXbxqzyozQf1ZGnMZniT3vfEPXrrqgd6ueO73kBy8NL2EKvG6LCNTHlOCD6bo2aL6swUYcVZZKgn7g7SrvBVWgjFfGBftOekwYkA/w239-h400/482F77C3-BC91-436F-9E4B-99D409115017.jpeg" width="239" /></span></a></div></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 24px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 24px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://inksweatandtears.co.uk/kate-rigby/" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">https://inksweatandtears.co.uk/kate-rigby/</span></a></p></blockquote><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="text-align: justify;">Talking of spectrum, one of the most momentous things this year was being diagnosed with autism and ADHD. I did mention about pursuing it in last year's end of the year blog, little thinking that I'd get a diagnosis. In fact, my sister and I were diagnosed at the same time - both in our sixties - and it's made complete sense of our lives! As a result I have begun a new blog called 'authistic' </span><span style="text-align: justify;"> </span><span style="text-align: justify;">I hope to do many more next year.</span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://authisticwords.blogspot.com/2022/11/on-autism-and-being-author.html">https://authisticwords.blogspot.com/2022/11/on-autism-and-being-author.html</a></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 24px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span class="s1" style="font-family: inherit;">I mentioned ME/CFS in my end of year blog last year and am proud to have partaken in one of the largest studies of its kind in the UK called decodeME which got underway in September. It feels good to have this debilitating condition being taken seriously at last and to contribute to research in this way. Even more uncanny was the discovery - through my pursuit of the autism assessment - <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>just how similar ME sensory overload and autism burnout are. Many people have both conditions as well as Fibromyalgia which I also have. I'd never heard of autism burnout until this year. </span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 24px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-family: inherit;">The hyperhidrosis carries on much as before but there may even turn out to be a neurological link between this and the above conditions. </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">I'd love for this to improve substantially next year. It's such a blight on my life.</span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 24px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span class="s1" style="font-family: inherit;">I resolved to continue with singing this year and am so pleased that Gathering Hearts continues most Wednesdays on Zoom with the wonderful Tembre who moved from Ireland to Portugal in the summer. The wonder of Zoom is you can host it from anywhere. The We May Sing community also continues which is another Zoom monthly session where Tembre invites other singers who share and teach their lovely songs alongside her. I hope that continues to nurture and sustain me next year.</span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqjJj7MMFuO8YnnU5zagfHfnuYL2AdOq1T_ayX34yxSzR04QZPre2yCaCIEDCAImI1dPLigMnPMiZBZQMO9LEPTr65bfPKYkTXGi9gGDlyCpZnC-IlIA9gkC21ZHvSWVmc1NnT58_qs7unD5dpuMAK8XxiI0ZHm_SDDP5onFN4RjVHSE0sMkpaaw/s2148/97DADA84-7528-4F51-873A-9BE4FBA7BAA8.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2148" data-original-width="1375" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqjJj7MMFuO8YnnU5zagfHfnuYL2AdOq1T_ayX34yxSzR04QZPre2yCaCIEDCAImI1dPLigMnPMiZBZQMO9LEPTr65bfPKYkTXGi9gGDlyCpZnC-IlIA9gkC21ZHvSWVmc1NnT58_qs7unD5dpuMAK8XxiI0ZHm_SDDP5onFN4RjVHSE0sMkpaaw/w256-h400/97DADA84-7528-4F51-873A-9BE4FBA7BAA8.jpeg" width="256" /></span></a></div><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 24px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span class="s1" style="font-family: inherit;">I did want to progress with more of the genealogy on the Jewish side but it’s taken a bit of a backburner this year. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Hopefully I'll do some more next year.</span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 24px; text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span class="s1" style="font-family: inherit;">Well, that's it for now except to wish everyone happy festivities and a happy, healthy and fulfilling new year. I think it's needed after the tough year so many people have had. </span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span class="s1" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span class="s1" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span class="s1" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span class="s1" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span class="s1" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p>Kate Jay-Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00949531996279399373noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1581599731153691087.post-7374309057450225322022-05-26T03:38:00.002-07:002022-05-26T03:38:11.981-07:00Author Interview - Chantelle Atkins & Sim Alec Sansford and their latest book!<p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Today I'm really thrilled to have Chantelle Atkins back on my blog who has just co-authored a book with fellow author, Sim Alec Sansford. I had the pleasure of interviewing them about their latest book: Fortune's Well, Part One, which has just been released.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Book blurb:</span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #050505; font-family: times; font-size: medium;">In the town of Fortune’s Well a dangerous storm is brewing, and two unsuspecting teenagers are standing right at the heart of it.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #050505; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #050505; font-family: times; font-size: medium;">For JJ Carson, life has not been easy. His father is dead, his mother arrested for the murder, and he has been forced to live on the farm with his alcoholic uncle, Henry. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #050505; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #050505; font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Just when things could not get any worse, JJ discovers his living situation is not the only thing that makes him different from the other kids. A dark, swirling mist has made itself at home inside him and it is slowly changing him from the inside out. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #050505; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #050505; font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Enter Darcie Duffield. Beautiful, popular, and incredibly misunderstood.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #050505; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #050505; font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Darcie is sick of the status quo and wants to make a difference. After a chance meeting with a strange boy at the river she becomes tangled in a web of lies and deceit stretching back generations, as she tries to help save him from the darkness lurking within. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #050505; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #050505; font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Why is this happening?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #050505; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #050505; font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Where has it come from?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #050505; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #050505; font-family: times; font-size: medium;">And why is Darcie the only one who can see it?</span></p><div><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL1vDutMVbAcHxzIusstfxKw_ym9PmVaJ5iPGb6Gj9p3sJMVc2zXFdCPvYGawSzTq0jcjziBxdMR_-klpBWBfc1K0rG0EvTgzSJkBw1tstfWrRH9d_aN1cPMXB7XxySNB_kpjIulST_t0F6Rdp0Ualu8Y2dKK2bUO77z6xuV0t4Pio166uOoK_vg/s2775/eBook%20Cover.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2775" data-original-width="1856" height="495" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL1vDutMVbAcHxzIusstfxKw_ym9PmVaJ5iPGb6Gj9p3sJMVc2zXFdCPvYGawSzTq0jcjziBxdMR_-klpBWBfc1K0rG0EvTgzSJkBw1tstfWrRH9d_aN1cPMXB7XxySNB_kpjIulST_t0F6Rdp0Ualu8Y2dKK2bUO77z6xuV0t4Pio166uOoK_vg/w331-h495/eBook%20Cover.jpg" width="331" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br />Cover design by Luke Fielding</span></td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="color: #353535; font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Tell readers about your new book. I hear it's part of a trilogy.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #353535; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><b><span style="color: #353535;">Chantelle: </span></b><span style="color: #353535;">It is the first in the trilogy, yes. It’s a story about two lonely, misunderstood teens who discover they have special abilities, and that the town they live in (Fortune’s Well) is not all it seems either!<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #353535; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><b><span style="color: #353535;">Sim: </span></b><span style="color: #353535;">The book, and in fact, the entire trilogy has been so much fun to write. The story honestly took on a life of its own. I can’t say we planned for three books from the start, but it just grew and grew, and I’m still not sure we’ve seen the end of it yet in terms of the universe we’ve created.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #353535; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="color: #353535; font-family: times; font-size: medium;">I understand the two of you wrote the book together, each doing different chapters. How did that come about?<o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #353535; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><b><span style="color: #353535;">Chantelle: </span></b><span style="color: #353535;">It was Sim’s idea to write together, and he already had the concept in place before we started. It just seemed natural to devise a character each and tell the story in first person narrative, from alternating points of view.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #353535; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><b><span style="color: #353535;">Sim: </span></b><span style="color: #353535;">As Chantelle says, it seemed right for each of us to have our own characters to reflect our own perspectives of this world. The process was so organic.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #353535; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="color: #353535; font-family: times; font-size: medium;">What inspired the idea for the book? <o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="color: #353535; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><b><span style="color: #353535;">Chantelle: </span></b><span style="color: #353535;">I’ll let Sim answer that as it was all his idea!<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #353535; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><b><span style="color: #353535;">Sim: </span></b><span style="color: #353535;">At the time I came up with the idea, there was a lot floating around on social media about mental health. I had this sudden thought about creating a story where something negative (anxiety, depression, bullying, addiction etc.) could lead to something beautiful (magic, friendship, adventure). From there the idea grew, I imagined a young boy covered by a thick, dark mist, only he could use it for good. There were various other ideas too. I shared them with Chantelle and asked if she was willing to co-write. I was delighted when she said “yes!”<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #353535; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="color: #353535; font-family: times; font-size: medium;">What did you learn about yourselves from writing jointly? <o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="color: #353535; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><b><span style="color: #353535;">Chantelle: </span></b><span style="color: #353535;">Mostly just that it is possible! I’ve never written with another author before and didn’t think I would ever want to. I knew of a few authors who did write this way and I just couldn’t understand how it worked! Now that I know, I will definitely be working with Sim again.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #353535; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><b><span style="color: #353535;">Sim: </span></b><span style="color: #353535;">I learned the importance of patience and taking the time to create something. It is so easy to get excited about an idea and just go for it. I’m very much a “pantser” when it comes to writing whereas Chantelle is more of a planner. I feel like her influence helped me a lot with my own solo projects. Having someone else work with you causes you to stay disciplined.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #353535; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="color: #353535; font-family: times; font-size: medium;">What was the most difficult part of the book or the joint writing process?<o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="color: #353535; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><b><span style="color: #353535;">Chantelle: </span></b><span style="color: #353535;">Probably for me it was the way we wrote it in Facebook messenger – as in we swapped ideas back and forth that way. Normally, I plan a book to a certain extent first, get the characters right, start writing and then have a notebook/planner running alongside the novel to refer to and add to. We kept meaning to organize it like that but it just didn’t happen. Instead, we swapped chapters back and forth and discussed ideas and plotlines in messages. This worked though! The tricky bit was having to scroll or search back through messages to find plot ideas we’d had and forgotten!<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #353535; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><b><span style="color: #353535;">Sim: </span></b><span style="color: #353535;">I think I agree with Chantelle on that. It seemed to work really well to just let the ideas flow via messenger, but at the same time the story grew so big and there is so much history and lore that by the time we got to writing book three and had to backtrack or find a certain piece of information, it was difficult.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #353535; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="color: #353535; font-family: times; font-size: medium;">What was the most enjoyable part?<o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="color: #353535; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><b><span style="color: #353535;">Chantelle:</span></b><span style="color: #353535;">I think the energy of it. It was really addictive. We wrote three books in 11 months! They just flew back and forth and we really kept the momentum going. It was a lot of fun. I really looked forward to every chapter I wrote and got so excited every time one of Sim’s arrived in my email!<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #353535; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><b><span style="color: #353535;">Sim: </span></b><span style="color: #353535;">The best part of this experience was getting to be a writer AND a reader. Although we’d share ideas back and forth, sometimes the story and characters did take control and I never knew what to expect from Chantelle. It was so much fun! That excitement helped inspire me to respond with my own chapter to see where Chantelle would take the story next.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #353535; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="color: #353535; font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Did the characters come first or the idea for the story? Who came up with the idea?<o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="color: #353535; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><b><span style="color: #353535;">Chantelle: </span></b><span style="color: #353535;">It was Sim’s idea, and we build the characters after that. I got a strong idea quite early on for my character and I think Sim did too. They just grew from there until we were quite in love with both of them!<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #353535; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><b><span style="color: #353535;">Sim: </span></b><span style="color: #353535;">I completely agree. The idea came first but the characters didn’t hang about at all. One thing I did want for my character, Darcie, was for her to be the polar opposite of JJ in terms of background. Unlike him, she still has both parents in her life. She is also rich and popular. But, despite their differences they still have this fantastic connection. While JJ is alone and bullied (by Darcie’s friend group), she too feels awkward and out of place having moved from America and always having to be perceived as the “perfect” daughter.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #353535; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="color: #353535; font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Who came up with the title for your book?<o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="color: #353535; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><b><span style="color: #353535;">Chantelle: </span></b><span style="color: #353535;">I can’t actually remember! We changed our minds quite a few times, I remember that. There were other ideas too. In the end, the town it's set in became a bigger part of the story than we had originally anticipated so it made sense to name the series after that, and then come up with sub-titles relevant to each individual book.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #353535; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><b><span style="color: #353535;">Sim: </span></b><span style="color: #353535;">The original title idea was “A Jar Full of Empty” which was this bizarre paradox that came to me along with the idea of including mental health in the story. The jar full of emptiness being a metaphor for how the kids were feeling. I pitched the name of the town as Fortune’s Well, after a place I used to travel through years ago. Every time I saw the name of the stop on the bus I used to think about how mysterious and magical it sounded.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #353535; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="color: #353535; font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Did you each stick with your own characters or were they interchangeable between you both?<o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="color: #353535; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><b><span style="color: #353535;">Chantelle:</span></b><span style="color: #353535;">We stuck with them but obviously we had to get to grips with writing the other characters in our chapters too. That was nerve wracking to start with, but I think because they took on such a life of their own, we were soon easily able to write scenes with the other person’s character in.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #353535; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><b><span style="color: #353535;">Sim: </span></b><span style="color: #353535;">The other interesting thing about characters, is all the minor characters we introduced and how they grew into key players. For example, Chantelle first introduced the character of Jared Wheeler in chapter one as a school bully. I’m not sure if she planned for him to be anything more than part of that one scene, but I took him in my chapter and expanded his story—He’s then became one of the main antagonists in the book.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #353535; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="color: #353535; font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Have you plans to write any books together in future?<o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="color: #353535; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><b><span style="color: #353535;">Chantelle: </span></b><span style="color: #353535;">Yes! I had an idea for a short story recently and it appears in my recent collection, The Old Friend – A Collection of Tales and Poems, as The Black Van. Before I knew it, I had a novel idea, possibly a series idea, for a YA dystopian/post-apocalyptic story and I asked Sim if when the time was right, he would consider writing it alongside me in the same way and he said yes!<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #353535; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><b><span style="color: #353535;">Sim: </span></b><span style="color: #353535;">How could I say no? This series has been so much fun to write, I can’t wait to see what else we can create. Alongside Chantelle’s idea we have also discussed various sequels and prequels for Fortune’s Well. I can’t wait to see what happens next!<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #353535; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="color: #353535; font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Which of the characters do you relate to the most and why?<o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="color: #353535; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><b><span style="color: #353535;">Chantelle: </span></b><span style="color: #353535;">For me, I absolutely love JJ who I created but I relate to Darcie more to be honest, probably because she is a girl who has body image issues at the start of the series and that’s something that has followed me around in my life. But I do relate to how much of an anti-social loner JJ can be!<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #353535; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><b><span style="color: #353535;">Sim: </span></b><span style="color: #353535;">I agree with Chantelle here. I find both protagonists to be relatable for various reasons. I find JJ to be relatable because of his solitary nature, but Darcie has this strong desire to be herself and to be accepted for that honest version of herself which really resonates with me, and I’m sure many readers.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #353535; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="color: #353535; font-family: times; font-size: medium;">How much research did you need to do for your book? <o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="color: #353535; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><b><span style="color: #353535;">Chantelle: </span></b><span style="color: #353535;">Not a lot to be honest as its paranormal/supernatural/superpowers </span></span><span style="color: #353535; font-family: times; font-size: large;">we are writing about, so we could really just let our imaginations fly. We based the town on Dorchester where Sim grew up, so he was always sending me photos and maps of areas we were fictionalizing for the books.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #353535; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><b><span style="color: #353535;">Sim: </span></b><span style="color: #353535;">Like Chantelle says, we were able to completely let our imaginations go. However, there was some research in terms of locations and some supernatural lore. The town is based on my hometown of Dorchester in Dorset, so some of the history is accurate to a certain extent, the rest of the details are dramatised for the story.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #353535; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="color: #353535; font-family: times; font-size: medium;">How long did it take you to write this book?<o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="color: #353535; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><b><span style="color: #353535;">Chantelle: </span></b><span style="color: #353535;">I think about three months for each one, roughly? I know it took 11 months to write all three.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #353535; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><b><span style="color: #353535;">Sim: </span></b><span style="color: #353535;">That’s right! I think this book started around Christmas and was finished by March… Madness!<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #353535; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="color: #353535; font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Is this a new genre for you?<o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="color: #353535; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><b><span style="color: #353535;">Chantelle: </span></b><span style="color: #353535;">For me, yes! I have never written anything about superpowers or ghosts before now! It’s actually made me want to write more in this genre and one of the WIP’s I am working on right now has some similar vibes, with magic, folklore, a weird little town and shapeshifters!<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #353535; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><b><span style="color: #353535;">Sim: </span></b><span style="color: #353535;">I absolutely love Young Adult Paranormal/Supernatural stories. Ghosts, Vampires, Angels, Demons. My current solo series, The Denver Falls Saga, is paranormal mystery. There’s just so much you can play with, and I enjoy the world building. I’m currently working on a regular Young Adult Mystery series though (void of magic!) and it’s been really interesting. I actually think it’s much more horrifying not being able to explain away evil acts with magic and instead having to get into the psyche of a regular person and why they would do these things.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #353535; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="color: #353535; font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Would you like to tell readers who may not be familiar with you work a bit about your books and which is your favourite?<o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="color: #353535; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><b><span style="color: #353535;">Chantelle: </span></b><span style="color: #353535;">Out of mine, my favourite is and will probably always be The Boy With The Thorn In His Side series. It was with me for so long, as I started writing it at aged 12, and I rewrote it again and again over the years. It got so big and complex and became a 5 book series, and I am currently working on a spin-off book for it!<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #353535; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><b><span style="color: #353535;">Sim: </span></b><span style="color: #353535;">For me, I have plenty of books to finish off and get to the publication stage, but short of a couple short stories/novellas, I only have one novel published currently. That being, Welcome to Denver Falls, the first book in the Denver Falls Saga. I think it will always be my favourite because it’s my first published novel. There’s plenty or mystery and paranormal elements, and even a bit of romance. It’s been described as “Twilight without the vampires” which I think is a great description. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #353535; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #353535; font-family: times; font-size: medium;">When it comes to Chantelle’s book, I love them all! But I highly recommend her Holds End trilogy, starting with A Song For Bill Robinson, I think it’s my favourite series ever! I’ll never stop recommending it.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #353535; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #353535; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="color: #353535; font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Do you have a timetable for the publication of Parts 2 and 3 of the trilogy?<o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="color: #353535; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><b><span style="color: #353535;">Chantelle: </span></b><span style="color: #353535;">Not exactly, but I would imagine they will all come out in 2022.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #353535; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><b><span style="color: #353535;">Sim: </span></b><span style="color: #353535;">Agreed. We have a rough schedule for when they’ll be released (possibly 2 month between each release), however, we are still making some last minute changes to book three… So, we’ll see!<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #353535; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #353535;">Many </span><span style="caret-color: rgb(53, 53, 53); color: #353535;">thanks</span><span style="color: #353535;"> to Chantelle and Sim for this fascinating interview and insight into their writing partnership, and for daring to do it! They have challenged all my own ideas that it can't really be done in fiction - they've proved it absolutely can. The book sounds an intriguing read and I know Dorchester a bit, having lived in Bournemouth for many a year. I will leave you with an </span><span style="caret-color: rgb(53, 53, 53); color: #353535;">excerpt from Fortune's Well and links to Chantelle and Sim's social media links and of course, where you can buy the e-book. I believe that a paperback will be following.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(53, 53, 53); color: #353535;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(53, 53, 53); color: #353535;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Extract:</span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 28.7pt;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><i><span lang="EN-GB">This can’t be happening…</span></i><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 28.7pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">It’s like a dream and it all happened so fast that I know I will be lying awake in bed all night trying to piece it back together again. Trying to relive it… I’m shaking hard. My eyes feel too wide and my skin too hot and when I look down at my fists, I swear I can still see the black swirls drifting around them.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 28.7pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Darcie is resting her head on my shoulder and suddenly that helps - suddenly her doing that gives me exactly what I need to think clearly. Jared was hurting her. He was going to attack her.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 28.7pt;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><i><span lang="EN-GB">So, it’s not just me…</span></i><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 28.7pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">She’s shaking too. She must be in shock. I lift my arm slowly and stiffly and wrap it around her shoulder. The torchlight bounces around outside for a few more moments and then starts to drift away. The groundskeeper might be heading off, but Jared and his friends are all still out there.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 28.7pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">‘I think we need to get out of here,’ I whisper. She lifts her head and stares at me, biting her lip, trying not to cry and I nod at her. ‘Darcie, right?’<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 28.7pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">She nods again. ‘And you’re-’<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 28.7pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">‘JJ.’<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 28.7pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">She smiles and wipes a stray hair from her face. ‘I think you just saved my life, JJ.’<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 28.7pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">‘Nah.’ I glance away before straightening up to check the window. ‘We gotta go.’<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 28.7pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">She gets to her feet nodding and I open the door slowly and glance out before committing to movement. I start to move when she stops me, grabbing my arm.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 28.7pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">‘What was that stuff?’ she hisses, and in the darkness, I can see the whites of her eyes, the fear in them. I stare back at her and I want to tell her I don’t know, I didn’t see any stuff, but I can tell that she is not kidding.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 28.7pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">‘I don’t know what you mean,’ I reply softly.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 28.7pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">She nods as if this is enough for her and she follows me out of the building. For a moment, I’m lost. I don’t know what to do. I just beat Jared up. The other kids are still around. The black mist…it did something to me. It was like it was there when I needed it, but that can’t be possible, can it? Does all this mean Uncle Henry was right? I’m as crazy as my mother? I want Darcie to ask me again, to tell me what she saw so that I know I’m not losing my mind but not yet. We have to get out of here first.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Chantelle’s links:<o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN-GB"><a href="http://www.chantelleatkins.com/" style="color: #954f72;"><span>www.chantelleatkins.com</span></a></span><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">facebook.com/chantelleatkinswriter</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">twitter.com/chanatkins<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Instagram.com/chantelleatkinswriter<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Sim’s links:<o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN-GB"><a href="http://www.simalecsansford.com/" style="color: #954f72;"><span>www.simalecsansford.com</span></a></span><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">facebook.com/simalecsansford<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">twitter.com/simsansford<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Instagram.com/simeon_alec<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Book link:<o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN-GB">Amazon: <o:p></o:p></span><span style="text-align: center;">https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B09Z189QDC</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">mybook.to/HangmansRevenge<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Other links:<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"><a href="https://books2read.com/u/bx1a7J" style="color: #954f72;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">https://books2read.com/u/bx1a7J</span></a></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Garamond;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>Kate Jay-Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00949531996279399373noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1581599731153691087.post-54661595270233083512022-04-15T04:30:00.004-07:002023-02-24T13:57:37.975-08:00Little Guide to Pet Peeves (Pt 9 - The Final Ragbag)<p><span face="-webkit-standard" style="text-align: justify;"><span><span style="text-align: left;"><span><span style="font-family: times; text-align: justify;">Well, I've now come to the final episode of something that was years in the planning. I began this 'little guide' for fun regarding some of my personal bête-noires and so with no further ado here it is!</span></span></span></span></span></p><div><b><span face="-webkit-standard" style="font-weight: normal; text-align: justify;"><span><b style="text-align: left;"><span><span style="font-family: times; font-weight: normal; text-align: justify;"><br /></span></span></b></span></span></b></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Trousers that get wet at the bottom<o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I suppose another way of saying trousers that are too long or heels too flat. These are trousers you didn’t realise were scraping the pavements until, following a spell of damp weather, you discover you’ve got sodden hems flapping around your ankles. The wet patches can extend to the knees in some cases. Furthermore, on removal of said wet-bottomed trousers, you find the hems are also coming apart where a compound of recent rainfall and mucky gritty debris have found the weakest link and caused frayed holes.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Tetrabank<o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I’ve handed this job over to my sister now who is assiduous about cutting open cartons of used juice or milk and turning them upside down on the draining rack until they’ve dripped dry. But when I did this thankless chore I didn’t have the patience to do all that. Instead, I would attempt to rinse them out through the snipped off pouring slot and then simply chuck them in a carrier bag hanging on a door handle. Soon the bag would be bulging and the dreaded journey had to be made to the Tetrabank. Admittedly it was only a few hundred yards up the road, situated in the car park along with the other recyclable banks, but the worst bit about it was having to feed each individual carton into the (usually) overflowing maw of the Tetrabank. Thus half flattened cartons still dripping with watery juice would be boomeranged out at you. Like the other city of cartons were saying ‘no room at the bin’ (one of my sister's expressions).<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Thankfully, our recycling crew now pick them up from our premises.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Child-proof lids</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7M9slqr4wcBKSGYNxI-Uz4Uy6nCMhoXdTn6SWHJ_Lkvj5C9vVyGv3t4pwtRkLC0Dkvix6W0c-0bEu4RCUl5Sz79GBsd3mJdwdXKbgNEdENlKF0cT4QdJX8fpqfxq3auEwapE1qht6LGxAOvVz3uNsd0g9pYE6VlIPFBCyneXd1T8Zriu_9sSmjg/s1280/medicine-g0561e06cc_1280.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1049" data-original-width="1280" height="163" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7M9slqr4wcBKSGYNxI-Uz4Uy6nCMhoXdTn6SWHJ_Lkvj5C9vVyGv3t4pwtRkLC0Dkvix6W0c-0bEu4RCUl5Sz79GBsd3mJdwdXKbgNEdENlKF0cT4QdJX8fpqfxq3auEwapE1qht6LGxAOvVz3uNsd0g9pYE6VlIPFBCyneXd1T8Zriu_9sSmjg/w200-h163/medicine-g0561e06cc_1280.png" width="200" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;">Image courtesy of Pixabay</span></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I get that they’re supposed to be child-proof. Nobody wants to be running their child to A & E because they swallowed some lethal poison, but making them adult-proof too? You’re supposed to somehow squeeze these two parts on the lid, press down on the lid <i>and </i>turn at the same time. This is guaranteed to cause a sore red hand at the very least, and blisters and cuts if you’re unlucky. That is, if you still have any mobility left in your wrist. This action is guaranteed to disturb your mental equilibrium so that you wished you’d never begun the operation. Sometimes the anger and frustration gives you the strength you need through sheer fury that you end up with spilt bleach all down your trousers, the smell of which will remain for the next twenty-four washes at least. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">While on the subject of awkward containers, those squeezy plastic toothpaste or tomato puree tubes come a close second. I'm sure you'll be familiar with the kind of battles you have to do - squeezing all you might - while whatever mush it is remains stubbornly inside. You know it's in there too. But all you succeed in doing is relocating it to another section of the tube. Anything than the little exit nozzle! (Added February 2023).</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Katie</span></b><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">...or any ‘ie’ suffix which infantilises a name. I appreciate that this may be peculiar to me and that if someone is christened Katy then that is their name. I also have no problem with shortenings of name that end in ‘ie’ or ‘y’ such as Jackie or Debbie or their male equivalents. But Katie isn’t a shortening. It’s adding an extra little appendage that doesn’t need to be there. At best it’s an attempt to sound chummy, but when anybody calls me Katie I get the heebie-jeebies. Katy sounds fine on anyone else but it’s just not me. It doesn’t sound fun, or chummy, but annoying and belittling.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Waiting<o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-fyYndtWesfaU3LNW9XXt_XAEaDxcHz_7LBg_iJK83x4AWatLfxYnFYIhXrYBHc9uQc9PuBdHrsX7GGwoGifRhGke8H9Ft6st6CMyYUGjqULZ80lQmxPWwPS7ZKGwyy7wPrIs19yyoLyZEXaSyh12C9xxROaU-lVCxRymdg7o9qWTVIGEPmA9ew/s4000/alberto-barbarisi-sO3WT9XJOhE-unsplash.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="3000" height="293" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-fyYndtWesfaU3LNW9XXt_XAEaDxcHz_7LBg_iJK83x4AWatLfxYnFYIhXrYBHc9uQc9PuBdHrsX7GGwoGifRhGke8H9Ft6st6CMyYUGjqULZ80lQmxPWwPS7ZKGwyy7wPrIs19yyoLyZEXaSyh12C9xxROaU-lVCxRymdg7o9qWTVIGEPmA9ew/w220-h293/alberto-barbarisi-sO3WT9XJOhE-unsplash.jpg" width="220" /></a><br /><br /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">alberto-barbarisi-sO3WT9XJOhE-unsplash.jpg</span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Waiting. Waiting for anything. For taxis that are late or for phone calls which don’t happen. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">But worst of all, is waiting for medical appointments, for instance if the doctor or dentist is running half an hour late or longer. As I turn up early for appointments, that makes the wait even longer and even more stressful. So by the time I get to see the doctor or dentist I’m already in a state of heightened anxiety. But there is also a palpable relief that the waiting is over!</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">You’ll love this<o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">No I won’t. Not now you’ve told me to! They tell you before you’ve had a chance to come at it fresh and untainted - whether a song or a programme or a book. You’ll Love This. Well, I might have, but not now you’ve told me I will. I'm cussed like that. I like to discover things for myself. I don’t like you making up my mind for me or compelling me to fulfil your expectations of me. That’s pressure! What if I don’t like it? What if I prove you wrong? If you’d only say ‘I think you’ll like this’, that’s an altogether different proposition. Those two words ‘I think’ helps us both. It gives you permission to be wrong and allows me flexibility and lets us both save face.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Wrong dates<o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">This will sound very nerdy to some but I hate it when people put the wrong dates of songs on YouTube. Here's one that I once saw: O Lori by Alessi 1976. What? It was 1977 not 1976! What's in a year you may ask? Well, quite a lot when you're 17 and those summers couldn't have been more different weather wise. 1976 was hot and dry; 1977 cool and damp, and When Alessi sang about riding a bicycle with you and chasing you through the meadow it evokes memories of that cool summer. Another one: Men Without Hats was 83 and not 82. I could go (and on) but for those of us with memories attached to songs (or other events) we don't just pinpoint the year, but the particular month of a year. Jeez, we could probably pin it down to the hour if we thought about it!<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Changing duvet covers<o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcWi5jwnmxEvu5CEHJBwXpaptPULstg3-0Sj2OnylBPCIA7tCkiU-ek2cxP7xyyQjqq_3KcpBTCywTerbBYjm6fUTu3zNnus6tR4k_kiSrZf-R38pgQmIq_g8TYeKpQQRrJm6DTE_rP3yDvpEd1NTTPHopXxcxfJsONXh4S9Y-Zop3yJXC_3VtEQ/s7360/jurien-huggins-dEUYgSzEosc-unsplash.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="7360" data-original-width="4912" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcWi5jwnmxEvu5CEHJBwXpaptPULstg3-0Sj2OnylBPCIA7tCkiU-ek2cxP7xyyQjqq_3KcpBTCywTerbBYjm6fUTu3zNnus6tR4k_kiSrZf-R38pgQmIq_g8TYeKpQQRrJm6DTE_rP3yDvpEd1NTTPHopXxcxfJsONXh4S9Y-Zop3yJXC_3VtEQ/s320/jurien-huggins-dEUYgSzEosc-unsplash.jpg" width="214" /></a><br /><br /></span></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">jurien-huggins-dEUYgSzEosc-unsplash.jpg</span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span><p></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">This surely has to belong in everyone’s. Grappling with a thing twice as wide as you and trying to fathom out where each of the four corners are inside of the wretched cover. You can always get someone to help you. But that can be double the trouble as you pinch the corner of your side’s bottom corner and swear blind you’ve got it right, stuffing the duvet into its designated corner to prove it – only to find that it’s somehow ended up in the top corner opposite or found its way out altogether! After half an hour of wrestling and swearing, if you’re lucky, the duvet will eventually take shape beneath the cover, albeit a lumpy one. But if you can shake it out so that the duvet reaches all parts and you can punch down the lumps, you know you’re on the home straights.</span></div><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">NB: we've discovered duvet covers with three-sided, zips! Expensive but they make all the difference to this tedious task!</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt;"><span style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">And that's it for now (although I will probably update from time to time, particularly the first one on lingo and expressions.) But I hope you've enjoyed the series and that some of it, at least, has resonated. Or perhaps brought about a completely different reaction which is equally fine! We are all very unique in our loves and hates but I've enjoyed engaging with those who've taken the trouble to read and added comments in the comments section. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt;"><span style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Happy Easter/springtime, one and all! </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></p>Kate Jay-Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00949531996279399373noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1581599731153691087.post-57815103596616691032022-02-22T07:57:00.000-08:002022-02-22T07:57:13.214-08:00Little Guide To Pet Peeves - (Pt 8 – Pertaining to transport - pre-Covid, anyway)<p style="text-align: left;"><b><span><span face="-webkit-standard" style="font-weight: normal; text-align: justify;"><span></span></span></span></b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b style="text-align: left;"><span face="-webkit-standard" style="font-weight: normal; text-align: justify;"><span><b style="text-align: left;"><span><span face="-webkit-standard" style="font-family: times; font-weight: normal; text-align: justify;"><span><br /></span></span></span></b></span></span></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b style="text-align: left;"><span face="-webkit-standard" style="font-weight: normal; text-align: justify;"><span><b style="text-align: left;"><span><span face="-webkit-standard" style="font-family: times; font-weight: normal; text-align: justify;"><span>The usual preamble––</span>I began this 'little guide' for fun regarding some of my personal bête-noires and so here I am again, with my penultimate one. This was all written before Covid but since 'opening up' maybe a lot of it has become relevant again.</span></span></b></span></span></b></div><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;"><b><span face="-webkit-standard" style="font-weight: normal; text-align: justify;"><span><b style="text-align: left;"><span><span face="-webkit-standard" style="font-weight: normal; text-align: justify;"><br /></span></span></b></span></span></b><b><span>Train Ticket Queues</span></b><b><span><br /></span></b><span><br /></span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times;">I use trains less and less these days, but not being the calmest of people, one thing that raises my blood pressure is when you want to buy your tickets for that day’s journey, and there’s someone at the head of a long queue, snaking towards the entrance, booking tickets for several weeks in advance and asking the ticket official all sorts of non-relevant things––can my dog and my three aunties have forward facing seats too? Hmm, I’m still not sure whether to get the 15.23 or the one an hour later; can you give me the times of arrivals again? OK, and how much will that be? Then said woman (it is usually a woman) fiddles around for her card––can I pay with this card?––and is still firing questions at the hapless ticket officer while he or she dispatches her tickets and receipts.</span></div><span style="font-family: times;"> </span><p></p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: times;">Train Window Screens</span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt;"><b></b></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg0j2F0maqH-DcRPy1k6afkaEgfBTJzCtkhKnRHHiUSRVcFb_t8lDdENB9CS_GGg1bhJ8IpJqG36WmBfow-fXcqG6NsKKokMyTxVfDnfMQwbLH9nlt77Ydlo7cr0I8v4dYX4XIzZoxdl_KIEDPNPvHYnc7OMHN_pi_kY7kReJWypJtHtdddFacLRA=s3495" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3495" data-original-width="2997" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg0j2F0maqH-DcRPy1k6afkaEgfBTJzCtkhKnRHHiUSRVcFb_t8lDdENB9CS_GGg1bhJ8IpJqG36WmBfow-fXcqG6NsKKokMyTxVfDnfMQwbLH9nlt77Ydlo7cr0I8v4dYX4XIzZoxdl_KIEDPNPvHYnc7OMHN_pi_kY7kReJWypJtHtdddFacLRA=s320" width="274" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span face="-webkit-standard">free image courtesy luca morvillo (pexels)</span><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><br /><span style="font-family: times;"><div style="text-align: justify;">The local line between Totnes and Exeter passes some of the most stunning views in the country. Once you’ve passed through Newton Abbot, you can enjoy a most spectacular ride, particularly if you’re lucky enough to get a forward facing seat on the sea side. The estuary opens out at Newton Abbot as you look over to Shaldon nestling over the water beyond the bridge and boats. (Coming in the other direction, towards Newton Abbot on an autumnal evening you will be treated to some striking sunsets or misty skies). Before you pass through Teignmouth station the beach-hutted land at the harbour stretches our towards Ness Rock at Shaldon. Boats and masts provide a splash of colour before the estuary widens out and becomes open sea. Between Teignmouth and Dawlish Warren––another place of outstanding beauty and renowned for its rare winter bird visitors and its dunes––there are five tunnels for the train to pass through. Brunel had them built into the distinctive red Devon cliffs so the railway could connect those in the south west with the rest of the country. </div></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times;">You may even recall how we were all marooned for a few weeks after the storms of February 2014 battered the rails and the line was left swinging and unmoored. (just a little plug here—I go into a lot more detail about this line in my book The Dead Club!)</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times;">The open seas have so much variation: you may be treated to great spumes of wave froth on a rough spring tide, choppy white horses or a picture-card sparkling sea on a beautiful summer’s day with families enjoying the beach in summer. Or people will wave at the train from the sea wall. Beyond Dawlish Warren’s sandy dunes, where on the low tide you can see men with their buckets collecting molluscs, lies the lovely seaside town of Exmouth. We had a lovely friend who lived there––we used to meet in Teignmouth, a kind of halfway point between our two homes. Sadly she’s no longer with us but we carried on waving over to her spirit as we passed! And it’s not as though all the scenery is on the sea side either. On the land side you have the towering red cliffs, you have the seafront houses and hostelries of Dawlish and then the beautifully named Starcross. Beyond is Powderham Castle and the deer park, the deer often to be seen congregating in the fields as you rattle by. Back on the seaside, little clusters of habitation appear again, as the sea narrows into estuary once more, in the form of Lympstone, and Topsham (where we’ve spent many a family celebration) before arriving into Exeter. And I’ve barely mentioned the skies and cloud formations.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span>Now the point of this rather long preamble will become clear! Why with so much beauty, variation, and nature would anyone pull the window screens </span><i>down </i><span>when it’s sunny outside and </span><i>prefer</i><i> </i><span>to be ogling some tiny screen of phone or tablet rather than the seaside! Such is life in the Internet age. But I have to confess that if I’ve been sitting on a seat behind or in front with a shared window screen to one of the guilty ones, I’ve whisked the screen up to reveal the erstwhile obscured view. As yet, nobody has dared to pull it down again!</span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></span></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><b><span style="font-family: times;">Minging cars <o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><b><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #353535; font-family: times;">Car interiors seem to absorb smells into their fabric if not cleaned regularly. Stale crisps or old dog or rotting umbrella canvas, I'm sure you've all travelled in cars that ming like this. Someone—a friend or acquaintance—has kindly offered you a lift somewhere and it would show ingratitude to turn it down. You may not even be aware of the state of their carriage until it turns up and by then it's too late anyway as you try and mask your urge to dry retch and ask how the windows open in the back. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #353535; font-family: times;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #353535; font-family: times;">I once worked for someone like this and his car was like a travelling hovel—people spoke of old nappies in the back—and it wouldn't have surprised me. But when people are offering to take you from A to B, you put up and shut up. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #353535; font-family: times;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="color: #353535;">Train carriages can be like this too. For some reason people taking the lid off their soup or opening a packet of cheese and onion crisps (already listed as a pet hate) or opening up their box of cold pasta and hummus can make the lives of others passengers hell as the stinking aromas taint their journeys. They certainly have me moving seats.</span><span><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #353535; font-family: times;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #353535; font-family: times;">Do you have any travel pet hates? Please do leave them in the comments section!</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #353535; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #353535; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></p>Kate Jay-Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00949531996279399373noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1581599731153691087.post-15449490463974920422022-01-03T08:13:00.006-08:002022-01-04T04:38:40.705-08:00Writing and other goals for 2022 <p><b style="color: #454545; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px;">Writing and other Goals for 2022</b></p>
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<p style="color: #454545; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">It's that time of year again where I like to set out my goals for the year ahead. One year often seems to flow into the rest so much of what I intend for this year will just be more of the same and nothing dramatic.</p>
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<p style="color: #454545; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Last year I finally published 'The Colour Of Wednesday' the follow up novel to 'Down The Tubes' and co-edited the Poetry Collection from our Facebook Group 'Don't Go Breaking Our Arts' (for artists and writers with long term conditions and disabilities) with Poet Alan Morrison. </p><p style="color: #454545; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhjo8ohhONdOvOfrt2RvzyaB6mfYz1dE1lr260eUYuJQYZ9Qjt8KTSxwsTgV-HwROPvymYgMn94Gw6JBpCgIvoH-qS7dBG7nhrL2S57SfjToDXGTJ5ywPw7g5NFr5vi0AaDn5ZkObjHRvanKy-w7WjUGIQzOe-eFKLWl5Zobt4irnL7gR0F2XyLtA=s3478" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3478" data-original-width="2314" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhjo8ohhONdOvOfrt2RvzyaB6mfYz1dE1lr260eUYuJQYZ9Qjt8KTSxwsTgV-HwROPvymYgMn94Gw6JBpCgIvoH-qS7dBG7nhrL2S57SfjToDXGTJ5ywPw7g5NFr5vi0AaDn5ZkObjHRvanKy-w7WjUGIQzOe-eFKLWl5Zobt4irnL7gR0F2XyLtA=s320" width="213" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhOUDaoIXgsGYRK2XCWi8uEuKGKvjeZ9XCM6-SJb3j39R_3hJ5uHLGoxMn51YEfLiJqcl_HvoPSau5ebLM6AXxzEpa5-NwlKNj2dJOsvrU5oYDQihdaVz9gcSBXNA0-4Y5RBnmbiMOkAjbHS4TxyifDxYIt36za6cKgM6HZDBvPbbA1GSpdikezSA=s1770" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1770" data-original-width="1252" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhOUDaoIXgsGYRK2XCWi8uEuKGKvjeZ9XCM6-SJb3j39R_3hJ5uHLGoxMn51YEfLiJqcl_HvoPSau5ebLM6AXxzEpa5-NwlKNj2dJOsvrU5oYDQihdaVz9gcSBXNA0-4Y5RBnmbiMOkAjbHS4TxyifDxYIt36za6cKgM6HZDBvPbbA1GSpdikezSA=s320" width="226" /></a></div><br /></div><br /><p style="color: #454545; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p>
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<p style="color: #454545; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">I also began my next big writing project: an autobiography of sorts, with an angle, which has been exciting and nostalgic to do. It really helped to discover that I can write on my phone in comfort and will sync with my iPad and computer. So all I have to do is copy into a Word document when next on my computer. I spent many a pleasant hour in the summer month in the shade of the beautiful gardens opposite tapping into my phone—doing two things I enjoyed at once. As a consequence I’ve written many thousand words already although I’m nowhere near finished so I may have to break it up into more than one volume. </p>
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<p style="color: #454545; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">I also had one of my poems ‘Lessons’ published in The Morning Star and I almost completed my Pet Peeves series of blogs; just a couple more to go now. So I’m pretty chuffed with fulfilling most of my writing achievements. </p>
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<p style="color: #454545; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">This year I’m hoping to make a lot more headway with my memoirs, improve on the quality and output of my poetry and do more poetry submissions as well as finishing the Pet Peeves blog and maybe beginning another series of blogs on something completely different. I’m also hoping to find about more about arts council funding. </p>
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<p style="color: #454545; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Other activities</span></p>
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<p style="color: #454545; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Singing</span></p>
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<p style="color: #454545; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Hoping to continue with online singing via Zoom which gives much pleasure as well as keeping the old vocal chords oiled. Although I don’t want Coronavirus to continue restricting activities I do want the greater choose and online opportunities that have arisen from the pandemic to continue in perpetuity.</p>
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<p style="color: #454545; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Genealogy </span></p>
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<p style="color: #454545; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Continuing to collate the stories and information of my Jewish ancestry to honour and remember those who were Holocaust victims. </p>
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<p style="color: #454545; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Health goals</span></p>
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<p style="color: #454545; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Last year I did try acupuncture for my hyperhidrosis. I’m not sure it helped a lot but I only had three sessions. It may have helped a bit as the Hyperhidrosis hasn’t been so bad since but that may be the mild weather. Social anxiety is a big trigger and the hyperhidrosis seems to be just as bad in these situations. There are one or two other things to try or retry but with each new thing that doesn't work it's easy to lose hope...</p>
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<p style="color: #454545; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">I did continue with the therapy for ME/CFS remotely, but that has ended now. I’m hoping to be accepted for the decode ME study in the new year, the largest of its kind and hope that by partaking in this research it will throw new light on causes and treatments of this debilitating conditions. ME has too long been overlooked and ridiculed. </p><p style="color: #454545; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="color: #454545; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">At some point I would like to be assessed regarding neurodiversity. I think a lot of problems I had in childhood were now what we'd call 'on the spectrum'. I know several adults who have been diagnosed late in life and also many women on the spectrum have been under diagnosed because of their ability to 'mask' and 'fit in'.</p>
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<p style="color: #454545; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">I obviously have much wider wishes for 2022 that extend to a fairer world and a preserving of our planet but that is too mammoth in scope for my little corner of the Internet...</p>
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<p style="color: #454545; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">So it just remains for me to wishing you all a happy and healthy new year!</p>Kate Jay-Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00949531996279399373noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1581599731153691087.post-80510286279813131262021-11-23T06:39:00.000-08:002021-11-23T06:39:14.743-08:00Little Guide To Pet Peeves (Pt 6 - out and about)<p><b style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></b></p><p><b style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span face="-webkit-standard" style="font-weight: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Times;"><span>I began this 'little guide' for fun regarding some of my personal bête-noires and so here I am again, hoping to finish the series before Crimbo. This was all written before Covid but since 'opening up', maybe a lot of it has become relevant again.</span></span></span></span></b></p><p><b style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Chuggers</span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I’m sure ‘charity muggers’ are unanimously loathed, which is maybe why they’ve largely disappeared from our streets. But at their height, charities would send out over-zealous keen young things to jump in your path or dance in front of you with their clipboards and silly comments. In an aggressive market economy, even charities felt they had to up their game and profits with a sound business plan and a decent pension plan for the CEOs. So out went the humble tin which volunteers shook with the obligatory badges to pin on your lapel to show you’d donated. In came the chuggers with their clipboards and contracts for you to sign since it was no longer enough for you to give one-off donations. I had young men dancing in front of me telling me how nice I looked today (believing flattery would get them everywhere - it didn’t.) I’m afraid I’m the wrong person to mess with however chirpy or good- looking the boy might be. But I think the booby prize has to go to the young girl who shouted half way up the high street as I was advancing, ‘hello lady in green’. What was this supposed to achieve? A sense of flattery that I’d been especially selected from my fellow shoppers or one of embarrassing me into submission? Probably a bit of both but it achieved neither. I scowled into Peacocks to avoid said offending chugger, annoyed with myself for not having a ready retort</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Formal Forms of Address<o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">This is the flip side of the informal and nauseating terms of address such as the ubiquitous hun (see Pt 1). But it also irks me to be called Miss Rigby. It’s not just the ultra formality - and, sometimes insincere, politeness - it stems from an archaic time when a woman’s title was largely determined by her marital status. Of course that’s why Ms was invented - to disguise whether you were a Miss or a Mrs. But the pronunciation is always cringey and none more so in a situation when someone asks ‘is that Miss or Mrs?’ forcing you onto the back foot when you mumble in reply ‘Well muzz actually’. It makes you feel like a fussy feminist purist rather than the casual affable laidback person that was in conversation moments before. And leaving off your title is no guarantee of someone not supplying you with one anyway.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Years ago, tired of my local Nat West Bank addressing me as Miss Rigby every time I did a transaction, I got the title removed from my account in the hope that they would dispense with the formalities. But no. They still addressed me as Miss Rigby!<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">They do it because they can, they’ve got your name and your number – and I didn’t know what to do to stop them. But then I discovered a way of getting my own back. Thank you, Mr Parker. Much obliged to you Mr Parker (Nosy by any chance?) Well, they always had their name tags with first and last name on their lapels.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">In the end I had to make a point of saying ‘please, call me Kate’ - which to their credit they did once I’d pointed it out to them. But I’d rather they didn’t call me anything or at least asked me how I liked to be known!<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Untrusting Cashiers<o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Maybe you’ve also had this where you go to the till with an item and it’s not got a price on. The assistant at the till then asks you if you remember how much said item was and you do, you remember clearly, you can visualise all the other same items with their price tag on, it’s just that you happened to pick the one where it somehow got detached or maybe it was never priced in the first place. You tell the assistant that it was 1.75 without wavering and she still rings the bell and calls someone to check the flipping price!</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">People spreading their germs about in public.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Have people never heard of the saying coughs and sneezes spread diseases? And fair enough, you might expect it in a doctor’s surgery waiting room but what about those martyrs who stagger into work, thinking they’re being heroic and and then infecting the whole damned office with their horrible lurgey? It would have been so much better if they’d just had the common sense to stay off work because infecting half the work force isn’t impressing the boss, especially if he or she is laid up with it for three weeks as a result.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Then there are shops where a snuffling assistant hands you your loose change, the same hand which nanoseconds before handled a snot-filled tissue. This requires the hand gel on hand to smear liberally over your palms before you’ve even left the shop. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Or cafes and restaurants. If you’re anything like me you will leave as soon as you get wind of a sniffle or a cough because the last thing you want are those nasty droplets breeding all over your Danish pastry. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Or on the trains where there is some oblivious yoof - usually male - sneezing and coughing in the seat in front of you. You catch him using his bare wrist to wipe his snitch. These are probably the worst offenders. They just accept that colds are a part of life and a small inconvenience or price to put up with for that three day music festival camping in a wet field. In the presence of these types my seat is promptly vacated and if I’m lucky I will find another well clear of a non germ-free adolescent.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">As mentioned above, this was first penned in pre lockdown and I'm still hopeful that some people have become more aware since we 'opened up' the economy and society post vaccination, but there are many others who many seem to have reverted to type!</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Please feel free to share yours in the comments section below. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p>Kate Jay-Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00949531996279399373noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1581599731153691087.post-55594230478057979902021-10-26T06:19:00.002-07:002022-06-08T07:28:51.543-07:00Little Guide To Pet Peeves: Part 5 (On TV)<p style="text-align: left;"><span style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Times;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">I began this 'little guide' for fun regarding some of my personal bête-noires and so here I am again, bothering you with another!</span></span></span> </p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">This one will probably only apply to a certain age group who still watch TV in a traditional fashion as opposed to live-streaming or catchup) but then adverts and usual irritants may still apply. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Playing favourite or nostalgic songs in adverts <o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I’m very careful to play my songs sparingly because overplaying can kill that nostalgia. Intros or select phrases of Johnny Cash’s This Thing Called Love, Boston’s More Than A Feeling, Boo Radley’s Wake Up Boo and Stevie Wonder’s For Once In My Life have all been subjected to prime time endless repeats at some point it the past few years or so. So much so, in fact, that I feared it would give me less than a feeling, or would feel this thing called hate whenever hearing Johnny Cash or Stevie Wonder for one too many times in my life. So wake up you advertisers, please, and pick on songs that we all hate already or perhaps some anodyne frothy tune that can lend life to your product.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Eastenders</span></b><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">For the last few years I have called it The Beast (short for Beastenders). It is the worst kind of sound pollution. The number of beasts that populate it several times a week are many and frequent. But the one who epitomises it most has to be Phil Mitchell: white, male, round red face, thuggy, speaking in husky threatening tones in words of one syllable. But the female version is just as grating. She is epitomised by Kat Slater. She shrieks in impossible decibel levels at anything and anybody in TV cockney. In fact, they all prefer to bellow at each other. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Peggy Mitchell was one such screecher (pictured below).</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">So why am I even writing about it? Surely I can just give the horror show of dark depressing themes and characters the widest berth imaginable? Not so easy if you share a house with a loved one who is hooked. And my computer just happens to be in the same room as our TV. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Update: then we chanced upon these problem-solvers called headphones and now peace reigns supreme once more - at least in my earholes anyway. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Second update: the old TV has been relegated upstairs so now no need even for headphones!<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjx9UMht_GzKUu0nQcicTSo5WlW0vbqWSP7AkDttf5qb1_DMm7yofbVzMwTewQoFErZEWQfbLwFF0umAW08mSf8WBXX4-iRGfbMGkoyV0UZHD_eGaxi_2DCAEgZ_nqNVQuuE7r93LDTow/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="679" data-original-width="500" height="277" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjx9UMht_GzKUu0nQcicTSo5WlW0vbqWSP7AkDttf5qb1_DMm7yofbVzMwTewQoFErZEWQfbLwFF0umAW08mSf8WBXX4-iRGfbMGkoyV0UZHD_eGaxi_2DCAEgZ_nqNVQuuE7r93LDTow/w204-h277/kisspng-t-shirt-eastenders-queen-vic-fire-week-toddler-sle-+Etutu.png" width="204" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /><br /></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Mrs Brown’s Boys<o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">When I first saw the trailer to this whenever it was I thought ‘that looks funny’ in the manner of Father Ted being funny. Wrong! It very quickly disappointed. A guy dressed as an old washer woman, come on! It’s hardly fresh, is it? It’s so 1970s. I can’t stand that cringy little laugh that comes just after all the credits go up either - just to remind you it’s not quite finished.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjItqgr_NAVmz13z1LYE2DFaCV64Ks0SFsEpjw1U7oZd-s7BmF59E5TSuUfU2k_4UFBblvgYUEMQjCZnd_8kGYL5Xdbc2iSs2H8qMSF6mFqIp5VnKWBHRTFMah0h_j_ciCzvwSPAhGxIQ/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="535" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjItqgr_NAVmz13z1LYE2DFaCV64Ks0SFsEpjw1U7oZd-s7BmF59E5TSuUfU2k_4UFBblvgYUEMQjCZnd_8kGYL5Xdbc2iSs2H8qMSF6mFqIp5VnKWBHRTFMah0h_j_ciCzvwSPAhGxIQ/" width="270" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /><br /></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Wrong lingo<o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">t does really irk me if slang and colloquialisms in retro TV dramas use the wrong expressions for the time. For instance, '</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Call The Midwife', have done it a lot.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">In the dramatization 'Des’ about Dennis Nielson, aired in autumn 2020 but set in the 1980s, the expression ‘in case all goes pear-shaped’ really jarred. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">As I write this, 'Ridley Road' has just aired on BBC1 (October 2021). It's supposed to be set in the early 1960s and for the most part the scenery, clothes and backdrop have been very authentic. But then it let itself down with the postchronistic expressions. In the first episode one of the characters said ‘twenty minutes max’. In the second episode we were given ‘can you share where he is?’ (‘share’ in this context is very transatlantic and millennial) ‘having a right mare’ and ‘why don’t you just do one’. In the third episode we were treated to 'wowsers', 'grow a pair', 'I'm blagging it' and many more, and in the final episode 'bog standard'. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">It's not difficult nowadays to do your research and while we can all forgive the odd bum note, s</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">o many of the expressions weren't just a few years out of date, but decades.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">This triggers the same feelings that prompted the first blog (words and phrases) and is shared my many others, judging by the conversations I've had on social media.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Fictional new year ahead of its real life counterpart<o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I’m not a lover of new year at the best of times. I’ve always been more of a Christmas person and when I was younger it was because I was either always ill or there wasn’t anywhere to go. Now of course it means one year older. Why celebrate the all too swift passage of time? But just homing in on the rituals for a moment, there is something edgy and thrilling about counting out the last ten seconds of the old year in real time - before Big Ben bongs in the new. The operative words here are ‘in real time’. I do not want to see the cast of Beastenders (another pet hate we’ve already visited) or even my favourite Corrie characters singing in the new year with Auld Lang’s Syne a few hours before me. It makes it seem passé and stale by the time me and mine get to do it. So a note to makers of soaps - can you not schedule those scenes to go out on New Year’s Day instead? At least then we can be ahead in real time.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Well, that's all for now. I'll have another - hopefully this side of new year! In the meantime, please do share your own TV bugbears.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Update: I've remembered another but more to do with films. I hate anything to do with vampires or skeletons jumping out in horror movies. They're so unscary and hackneyed. Many a good horror movie has been spoilt by OTT endings and ridiculous gory faces!</span></p>Kate Jay-Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00949531996279399373noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1581599731153691087.post-59907195665891503992021-08-08T05:56:00.001-07:002023-02-24T14:07:57.809-08:00Little Guide to Pet Peeves - Part 4 (Interior decoration and outside spaces)<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt;"><span style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Times;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Times;"><br /></span></span></div><span style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Times;">As mentioned in my previous blog post, I began this 'little guide' for fun regarding some of my personal bête-noires. This one's short and a bit of a rag-tag of ideas. Apologies if your indoor or outside space is guilty as charged.</span></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Metro Tiles<o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">At the time of drafting this 2018-19, I noticed these horrid white tiles springing up everywhere. Especially to be found in bathrooms and kitchens. If you watch TV programmes about selling or improving homes you will see these replacing much more attractive bathroom or kitchen furnishings. But how did they become all the rage? I guess they are supposed to represent a clean minimalist look. But their stark shine makes them more suited to a butcher’s, maybe wiped clean of pig’s blood spatter. Or the functional brittle look of public toilets for easy disinfection or how I imagine the walls of a morgue to look.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjTI2IBdCOg2vUdNEqwC1iJxJyHdhxpkjSsykto0nxp4Qb9XtN8HAx6tefFZ2n_6s3hfcMJTU2-i-awEfeWbUXSFMWXqjF8eFqEdfipMID3HBtJ3S5InCq5VVP3DfeElmz39yi63cWhA/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="901" data-original-width="1350" height="253" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjTI2IBdCOg2vUdNEqwC1iJxJyHdhxpkjSsykto0nxp4Qb9XtN8HAx6tefFZ2n_6s3hfcMJTU2-i-awEfeWbUXSFMWXqjF8eFqEdfipMID3HBtJ3S5InCq5VVP3DfeElmz39yi63cWhA/w378-h253/Photo+by+carolyn+christine+on+Unsplashjpeg.jpeg" width="378" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span face="-apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "San Francisco", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Ubuntu, Roboto, Noto, "Segoe UI", Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: whitesmoke; caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17); color: #111111; font-size: 13px; white-space: nowrap;">Photo by </span><a href="https://unsplash.com/@carolynchristine?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText" style="-webkit-text-decoration-skip: ink; box-sizing: border-box; color: #767676; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "San Francisco", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Ubuntu, Roboto, Noto, "Segoe UI", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; text-decoration-skip-ink: auto; transition-duration: 0.1s, 0.1s; transition-property: color, opacity; transition-timing-function: ease-in-out, ease-in-out; transition: color 0.1s ease-in-out 0s, opacity 0.1s ease-in-out 0s; white-space: nowrap;">carolyn christine</a><span face="-apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "San Francisco", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Ubuntu, Roboto, Noto, "Segoe UI", Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: whitesmoke; caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17); color: #111111; font-size: 13px; white-space: nowrap;"> on </span><a href="https://unsplash.com/s/photos/subway-tile?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText" style="-webkit-text-decoration-skip: ink; box-sizing: border-box; color: #767676; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "San Francisco", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Ubuntu, Roboto, Noto, "Segoe UI", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; text-decoration-skip-ink: auto; transition-duration: 0.1s, 0.1s; transition-property: color, opacity; transition-timing-function: ease-in-out, ease-in-out; transition: color 0.1s ease-in-out 0s, opacity 0.1s ease-in-out 0s; white-space: nowrap;">Unsplash</a></div></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Industrial Hedge Cutters<o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">You know the sort; used by people contracted to housing associations and councils to trim public or communal garden areas. You’ll have heard them, often blasting you from your slumber at some unearthly hour with a persistent annoying racket. Whining on and on. And just when you think the hedgecutter has finally been switched off for good, s</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">tuttering to a growl,</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">up it will start again, only nearer this time. When you think of wo/man’s endless capacity for improvement and invention, surely it’s not rocket science to come up with a quieter hedge trimmer? Especially now that I’ve identified a gap in the market. You’d think they could invent something ear-friendly!</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzy-q5XbEoSvfBAGTc_HGo3FWHFP0CeX_tTgGIeW_elExEyArJpUWTOReMWWN6lyKz7AQjR3KCrLoWx8zfuNy1zfSjMF8JnUHSe3ao9BaibGsV1ovRAJjFwIkgfIzNUSM3MikoWevfPA/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzy-q5XbEoSvfBAGTc_HGo3FWHFP0CeX_tTgGIeW_elExEyArJpUWTOReMWWN6lyKz7AQjR3KCrLoWx8zfuNy1zfSjMF8JnUHSe3ao9BaibGsV1ovRAJjFwIkgfIzNUSM3MikoWevfPA/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_FMmOxc21hU7GZRt1rxn318CTE2hQSMUUmDRmtcGJQW0ifv4QhC32GRhF3w40tkT4bDCPIn5Dtvx0H9dxIJ57noiOD-N94exn5ccqySH7a0-Y4oSIevM5HIsV3ZgUJ6B2iBfogsyfCg/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="900" height="267" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_FMmOxc21hU7GZRt1rxn318CTE2hQSMUUmDRmtcGJQW0ifv4QhC32GRhF3w40tkT4bDCPIn5Dtvx0H9dxIJ57noiOD-N94exn5ccqySH7a0-Y4oSIevM5HIsV3ZgUJ6B2iBfogsyfCg/w201-h267/hedge-trimmer-1536425.jpg" width="201" /></a></div><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> Image courtesy </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><a href="https://www.freeimages.com/photographer/LeoSynapse-41665" id="photographer-name" style="background-position: 0px 50%; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(54, 63, 72); color: #77980e; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: nowrap;">Keith Syvinski</a>: www.freeimages.com <p></p><div class="detail-preview" style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(54, 63, 72); color: #363f48; font-family: "Open Sans", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 25px; text-align: center;"><div class="detail-img" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; z-index: 8;"><div class="detail-govern" style="bottom: -36px; box-sizing: border-box; left: 0px; margin: 0px; opacity: 0; padding: 8px; position: absolute; right: 0px; text-align: left; z-index: 920;"><a class="pull-right" data-url="/ajax/file/dislike/1536425" id="dislike-button" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6); border-bottom-left-radius: 2px; border-bottom-right-radius: 2px; border-radius: 2px; border-top-left-radius: 2px; border-top-right-radius: 2px; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: white; display: inline-block; float: right; font-size: 12px; height: 36px; line-height: 36px; margin: 2px; min-width: 16px; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px 12px; text-align: center; vertical-align: middle; white-space: nowrap;"><b style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 5px;">0</b></a><a class="pull-right" data-url="/ajax/file/like/1536425" id="like-button" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6); border-bottom-left-radius: 2px; border-bottom-right-radius: 2px; border-radius: 2px; border-top-left-radius: 2px; border-top-right-radius: 2px; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: white; display: inline-block; float: right; font-size: 12px; height: 36px; line-height: 36px; margin: 2px; min-width: 16px; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px 12px; text-align: center; vertical-align: middle; white-space: nowrap;"><span class="fa fa-thumbs-up" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline; font-family: FontAwesome; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-rendering: auto; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><b style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 5px;">4</b></a><a href="https://www.freeimages.com/photographer/LeoSynapse-41665" id="photographer-name" style="background-color: transparent; background-position: 0px 50%; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #77980e; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Keith Syvii</a></div></div></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Royal Blue Walls<o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">That sort of royal blue on walls in bedrooms. You know, Chelsea Blue. I won’t say Everton Blue (even though I’m a Liverpool supporter). I’m not that much of a fan of red walls either but there’s something about that shade of blue on walls that makes me feel a bit, well, blue! OK for kids but nothing worse for anyone else. The fact that I couldn't find an image with said blue walls is testament really. The picture below (which I had to adapt) gives the right shade but not the image in my mind's eye which is usually a cluttered sort of room.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjShojM-jSDBg9Los2HOEeHL6YZzZ51y-dRVVCIFa7GpUsEUX0AD1V7dkI8mytjH3-ZuwpdU2GfKjShHtgW4nAgrnloXktFRDkpPdMp94EQfu7OWIfoASZpFgNmUusuA0hXWaNCczx7MQ/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="675" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjShojM-jSDBg9Los2HOEeHL6YZzZ51y-dRVVCIFa7GpUsEUX0AD1V7dkI8mytjH3-ZuwpdU2GfKjShHtgW4nAgrnloXktFRDkpPdMp94EQfu7OWIfoASZpFgNmUusuA0hXWaNCczx7MQ/" width="180" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-align: center;"> Adapted from an image by Spencer on Unsplash</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Indoor furniture in gardens<o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">A comfy settee with soft fabrics just looks wrong in a garden unless it can be packed away in the event of rain or change of season. What’s wrong with good old-fashioned deck chairs or sun loungers with their padded cushions? Surely these are the most sumptuous of outdoor furniture while still being practical? They are lightweight and can be stored away in the summerhouse or shed or conservatory out of season. But now the twenty-teens-and-twenties way is to have a gert big settee on the decking complete with cushions and coffee tables and the rest of it. Yes you can drape covers over them but are they really protected from the elements? They just seem a luxury too far to me.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfm5U_gejVV12HeJmJG8On4k9CUpqL-8fQ96o5WPqaPoSTeejP4YBMpjcia3OA48K7t3TEKBJx0ryZ2iXxZeLOUTl3SZa4hgqfvJHQCy1_4miAFn6lZ2vd_pRGSwbFmRzA95KCfhaX8A/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="750" data-original-width="500" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfm5U_gejVV12HeJmJG8On4k9CUpqL-8fQ96o5WPqaPoSTeejP4YBMpjcia3OA48K7t3TEKBJx0ryZ2iXxZeLOUTl3SZa4hgqfvJHQCy1_4miAFn6lZ2vd_pRGSwbFmRzA95KCfhaX8A/" width="160" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /><span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span><span>Courtesy of Canna Curious Club on Unsplash</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><div><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><b>Scaffolding</b></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><b><br /></b></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Everything about it. From the initial erection - that brain-shuddering metal clanking; that drilling and heavy-booted clomping about - to the ugly site structure stealing your light and invading your privacy, and staying up for an eternity. The only good thing about it - is when it's finally gone. <br /></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Well, that's me. Now over to you. Do share your own <span style="caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333; font-family: Times; text-align: justify;">bête-noires</span> of the home-and-garden sort!</span></p></div>Kate Jay-Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00949531996279399373noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1581599731153691087.post-57186529510701928032021-05-25T07:22:00.000-07:002021-05-25T07:22:31.024-07:00Lille Guide to Pet Peeves - Part 3 (Eats)<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Times;">As mentioned in my previous blog post, I began this 'little guide' for fun regarding some of my personal bête-noires. At the moment it's serving to take my mind off other more serious things that have been going on in my life. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Times;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Times;">So with no further ado I bring you Part 3 - edibles.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Times;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: Times;">Spearmint </span></b><span face="-webkit-standard, serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times;">Ugh. I suppose I never noticed it as much when it was a stick of chewing gum as in Wrigley’s. (Though my mum hated an advert from the sixties for Wrigley’s Spearmint Chewing Gum with a vengeance). <i>Wrigley’s Spearmint tastes just nice, never spoils your appetite, </i>I can still hear the catchy little American(ised) ditty and my mother cringing every time she heard it. </span><span face="-webkit-standard, serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5E95Jv9ejRxJZ2wqanAqQ75Mn3PAFW4JEky55BkMfw9G_Ynr4AImDmJbp1SSVUQIYwANqO8vtUgezo4X8ltgI5AxLJLKXbn0Y4x_SU5p_5wxOFy6leeOmtwr4OQngAkU13qJXoE9yWA/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1632" data-original-width="1224" height="287" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5E95Jv9ejRxJZ2wqanAqQ75Mn3PAFW4JEky55BkMfw9G_Ynr4AImDmJbp1SSVUQIYwANqO8vtUgezo4X8ltgI5AxLJLKXbn0Y4x_SU5p_5wxOFy6leeOmtwr4OQngAkU13qJXoE9yWA/w216-h287/IMG_5997.jpg" width="216" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: Times;"><br /><br /></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times;">But it wasn’t that which switched me off to spearmint flavour, unless subliminally. After all, the Wrigley’s was the least offensive to my palette and could be chewed happily alongside the peppermint (though not usually at the same time). I remember the peppermint Beech-Nut chuddy which had a crisp coat and were individual pillows rather than sticks. You had to chew away the outer coat until it was absorbed into the general mound in your gob. But maybe I have dim and distant memories of a spearmint flavour too? A quick google of the stuff shows that there was a spearmint as well as a peppermint flavour. <span style="font-size: 12pt; text-align: start;">But I think the main offenders came in the form of those penny Arrow bars, some of which were toffee but others were a pink spearmint flavour (why pink, I have no idea, except maybe pink was more appealing to children). Other offenders are those spearmint flavoured sweets, chews and other minty delights that children buy and you knew the spearmint by its usual colour.</span><span face="-webkit-standard" style="text-align: start;"></span>Spearmint as a colour for a summer dress or T-shirt I have no problem with – it’s that cloying sweet minty flavour with something nasty lurking in there. Who could possibly enjoy it? I just want to spit it out and rinse my mouth out with the real deal – peppermint!</span><span face="-webkit-standard, serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: Times;">Rowntrees Fruit Pastels</span></b><span face="-webkit-standard, serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times;">Many childhood sweets an</span><span style="font-family: Times;">d snacks conjure up wonderful memories of spending our threepenny bits or sixpences in a dark corner sweet shop with rows of jars containing such delights as pineapple chunks, bonbons and peardrops, and a bell that jingled on entering and exiting. Memories of tearing off the packet in a spiral to reveal the next colour in the tube of wine gums or Refreshers and sharing with best friends. But I'm afraid me and those fruit pastels never saw eye to mouth. The sugar coating did indeed disguise something horribly cloying underneath but you'd need a more palatable sweet to rid yourself of the offending aftertaste.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times;"></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVv-13KbxWjiS1DEMJExDeoLQ1r51mXqD5oZoyppuLPomNrjKsDEEVpyrteP8sYfC8yiSMdA8fqXdFZRPpsLF3KvBqqfhPi0OuSVJ8DuCN6nXyDZ7PXFItlDfUn-16WMFi_9fyg-qkjA/" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="899" data-original-width="1353" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVv-13KbxWjiS1DEMJExDeoLQ1r51mXqD5oZoyppuLPomNrjKsDEEVpyrteP8sYfC8yiSMdA8fqXdFZRPpsLF3KvBqqfhPi0OuSVJ8DuCN6nXyDZ7PXFItlDfUn-16WMFi_9fyg-qkjA/" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span> </span>Ekkanat Sartsoongnern - Unsplash.com</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: Times;"><br /></span><span face="-webkit-standard, serif"><o:p></o:p></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: Times;">Blue Cheese </span></b><span face="-webkit-standard, serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times;">Just picture it. You’re looking forward to the smorgasbord of cheese delights: maybe some smoked Applewood, a bit of creamy crumbly Caerphilly, maybe some cream cheese peppered with - well, peppercorn - or apricot even, and then there’s this ugly stinking thing on the board, like a neighbour from hell, threatening to contaminate your chosen cheese or the knife which you were going to cut a slice of your said favourite cheese. I mean, cheese that stinks and looks as if it’s riddled with mould (it is!) and it’s some people’s idea of cheese heaven. Danish Blue is guilty enough but Stilton takes the biscuit – in fact it kills off the biscuit and everything in its wake. </span><span face="-webkit-standard, serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times;"></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQjoCVt8x9hyphenhyphenQNQXlOLk5pdlx282kPVweo_Qjtp1rU2TYmI4DcqQwIX6uMnPDmYylZMbNvIVE6_Kbj-oBeIGuoavVyWlXPHVuGheVboZytYADVXzR2kRsf2d60IwRTMi7G4yJYUJAkWQ/" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="960" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQjoCVt8x9hyphenhyphenQNQXlOLk5pdlx282kPVweo_Qjtp1rU2TYmI4DcqQwIX6uMnPDmYylZMbNvIVE6_Kbj-oBeIGuoavVyWlXPHVuGheVboZytYADVXzR2kRsf2d60IwRTMi7G4yJYUJAkWQ/" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">PDPhotos - Pixabay.com</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: Times;"><br /><span> <span> <span> </span></span></span><br /></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: Times;">Chutney</span></b><span face="-webkit-standard, serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times;">I do get the sweet and sour thing; the need for contrast on your taste buds now and again. I suppose this is why chutney has become the favoured complementary accompaniment to curry. As a child I hated curry, it’s not the first choice of dish for an infant’s sweet tooth, I suppose that’s why chutney seemed a light relief in comparison back then. But my palate matured into curry while leaving the crude chunky bitterness of chutney behind (especially mango chunky with slimy sweet pieces lurking within the jar). If you want sweet with curry, bananas and coconut work fine, thank you very much.</span><span face="-webkit-standard, serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: Times;">Rhubarb</span></b><span face="-webkit-standard, serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times;">Please let me know me any saving graces about this horrid, stringy, slimy fruit (apart from the fact it may be good for you). But it’s a goodness I can happily live without. My sister Ann and I always hated rhubarb as children, followed closely by gooseberry and, for me, blackcurrant (too sharp). But whereas gooseberries could taste faintly juicy picked straight from the bush (if you could get past the hairs) and quite inoffensive in a fool (that is, smothered in cream), rhubarb could have nothing done to it to render it pleasant. You can’t eat sticks of it raw to my knowledge (and why would you want to?) and cooked it becomes the disgusting slimy bitter mush mentioned above. Some childhood fads you grow out of as your palate develops but to this day rhubarb still remains the bête-noire it always was. </span><span face="-webkit-standard, serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times;">A friend who once invited Ann and I to stay over, wanted to know if there was anything we didn’t like to eat. Being non-meaters we’d emphasised that important detail for the main course but hadn’t really thought about puddings.</span><span face="-webkit-standard, serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times;">So imagine our horror when she said she’d got rhubarb crumble for pudding. She said ‘I hope you like rhubarb crumble because I know someone people don’t.’ I had to bite my tongue at that moment to stop it yelling <i>So why serve it up then?! </i>Of course Ann got in before me and said she didn’t feel like any pudding because her stomach was still a bit wobbly from the journey (it was a perfectly valid and genuine excuse) which left me having to spoon my way painfully through the bitter stringy abhorrence, hoping that the custard and crumble itself would act as suitable masks. </span><span face="-webkit-standard, serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times;">Then horror of horrors we stayed overnight in her girlfriend’s mobile home and were invited to help ourselves to the coffee cake there on the side the following morning. (See <b>Coffee Cake</b> below)</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times;"><br /></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="font-family: Calibri; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6E0hILdQvJ7325aaZmfX1r83-aWQXxq4ey8p8gbwZxm9Vr4Ae8QG9Av3W5pt4Alqt2hhVhtOY806TjPm54lltiZHcT6ec6qboP-8_O3j2ANgb4Zc7lL6QZEewm6BUj1WQb-29KOZ_Hw/" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="720" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6E0hILdQvJ7325aaZmfX1r83-aWQXxq4ey8p8gbwZxm9Vr4Ae8QG9Av3W5pt4Alqt2hhVhtOY806TjPm54lltiZHcT6ec6qboP-8_O3j2ANgb4Zc7lL6QZEewm6BUj1WQb-29KOZ_Hw/" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />This picture of rhubarb by julien merceron (pixabay)<br />also demonstrates the </span><span style="font-family: -webkit-standard; text-align: left;">ubiquity of the offending whipped cream</span></td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /><br /></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: Times;">Coffee Cake</span></b><span face="-webkit-standard, serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times;">When I was aged five I had a bad encounter with coffee cake and never recovered. Maybe I wouldn't have been partial anyway. But this coffee cake seemed to be one of those two or three storey affairs. Maybe it just looms large in my memory, carried forward from a time when all things were mega large: schools, teachers, fellow pupils, houses, only to diminish in proportion if you revisit them in later years. But this cake was filled with a rich rum butter filling. I just remember the words ‘rum butter icing’ probably a conflation of the top and the filling, but the icing (though probably sweet and coffee flavoured) wasn't the culprit. But did I spew and puke up on that nasty rich buttery filling and it's been off the menu ever since. I apologise to my mother if it was home-made, because her home made chocolate cakes are to die for.</span><span face="-webkit-standard, serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCvqZD1Dss-Hh9cR_cmwGqU9K428r_RCBWr7RykZGsTBvou0HilFyXyCgPfMGUsMbc9GSlZGp-jvzygEM-x_-9LSfzvQvdy7Y-9IJH8mGKHcZ6UILlvkHrjzSQMSUPyf3N8aV1CUuLGQ/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="466" data-original-width="640" height="233" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCvqZD1Dss-Hh9cR_cmwGqU9K428r_RCBWr7RykZGsTBvou0HilFyXyCgPfMGUsMbc9GSlZGp-jvzygEM-x_-9LSfzvQvdy7Y-9IJH8mGKHcZ6UILlvkHrjzSQMSUPyf3N8aV1CUuLGQ/" width="320" /></a></span></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times;"><span style="font-family: Times; text-align: left;"><br /><br /></span></span></p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: Times;">Cheese & Onion Pasties </span></b><span face="-webkit-standard, serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times;">My mother and I share this strong aversion. Now I do love a quiche, especially a home made one if it contains other vegetables such as broccoli, tomato, courgette, peppers and the onion isn't the predominant flavour. Now I come to recall it, I'm sure the famous meal with the rhubarb crumble for afters may have had some sort of cheese and onion quiche for the main dish. This isn't one of my sister’s aversions but I think for me the whole meal was a write-off. Maybe it had saving graces in the form of other vegetables. But the worst main course imaginable is one of those cheese and onion pasties that you used to be able to buy circa 1970s. I say used to because I sincerely hope that pasty fillings have improved since then. But if you can imagine a cheesy mush being drowned out with a cheap raw onion taste between thick pasty-pastry you will get a feeling for how disgusting these were. I have to add that cheese and onion crisps are not far behind in the stakes. They stink, what's more, and if you're ever traveling in a train carriage where someone's just popped open a bag of them, you will want to move seats pronto before you barf if you're anything like me.</span><span face="-webkit-standard, serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: Times;">Whipped Cream</span></b><span face="-webkit-standard, serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span face="-webkit-standard, serif"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times;">Strawberry tarts, mandarin tarts, or delicious creamy lemony desserts in a cafe are delicious just as they are, if you are partial to this sort of thing. But so many times they are ruined with a tower of piped mush over the best bits. Many a time I've fancied one of those French pastries filled with fruit and creme patisserie only to find half of it obliterated with the white hat of shame. It doesn't look good, it tastes yuk, and it’s like buying haute couture clothing then covering it with cheap lace from the Pound Shop! What's more it makes a right mess of your mush. </span><span face="-webkit-standard, serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEcYjp3JjUtnfXb8ry30qUFBCZwqQCwOlACi4etOb9gjyWf77mBOUgyyQbFYDx2o95qYgg35iLWJO9arrgPWgVKU2QGryyfWbCepXDtJddG2J8VjVFXLmJY2OfHrL4AYDBniIZPiOg2A/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="882" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEcYjp3JjUtnfXb8ry30qUFBCZwqQCwOlACi4etOb9gjyWf77mBOUgyyQbFYDx2o95qYgg35iLWJO9arrgPWgVKU2QGryyfWbCepXDtJddG2J8VjVFXLmJY2OfHrL4AYDBniIZPiOg2A/" width="294" /></a></span></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times;"><span style="font-family: Times; text-align: left;"><br /></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">At least in this delicious looking sweet (monika1607-pixabay)</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">the offending whipped cream is on the side and not smothering the poor dessert!</span></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times;"><span style="font-family: Times; text-align: left;"><br /><br /></span></span></p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: Times;">Fried eggs </span></b><span face="-webkit-standard, serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><i><span style="font-family: Times;">Boiled </span></i><span style="font-family: Times;">eggs for breakfast, done just right with the yoke still hot and liquid, ready for spooning out of the shell into your mouth and dunked with a buttered soldier, now that’s yum. <i>Scrambled </i>eggs on toast, as long as it is creamy and just set (even with runny bits) that’s scrumptious too. Even poached eggs are passable - clean cooked and usually served with the complementary toast which will absorb any stray yoke. But who seriously enjoys cold coagulated egg yoke, bleeding its thick yellow over a fat-cratered egg white, frilled with a burnt hem, onto your plate, where it’s joined by cold tomato and other seepages from your Full English? No thanks.</span><span face="-webkit-standard, serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times;"></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZlCqY36WjERRopU5BklktTvGBsBOS54QSHGxW2kdEvktkmqQeXJpqLsdlm_B_cDgnHsSzqaDH8wAL-90K-IPUy25l6PGyvBZTmqxjPSbkLZhrAIzFdNlgHPkDLiETLQQ1NXGE2oS2bA/" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="625" data-original-width="960" height="215" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZlCqY36WjERRopU5BklktTvGBsBOS54QSHGxW2kdEvktkmqQeXJpqLsdlm_B_cDgnHsSzqaDH8wAL-90K-IPUy25l6PGyvBZTmqxjPSbkLZhrAIzFdNlgHPkDLiETLQQ1NXGE2oS2bA/w331-h215/Alexas_Fotos%2528Pixa%2529.jpg" width="331" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">by Alexas_Fotos (Pixabay) </td></tr></tbody></table><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times;"><span style="font-family: Times; text-align: left;"><br /><br /></span></span></p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: Times;">Shortbread</span></b><span face="-webkit-standard, serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times;">Not so much a pet hate but very meh. Bland. Vanilla. I don’t mean the lovely homemade sort. My mum used to occasionally make it and it almost had a melt in the mouth soft centre, and straight out of the oven it was rather good. No, it’s those tins which have loads of oblongs perforated with dots and sugar and have this icky aftertaste. Strange because the short in shortbread is obviously due to the high butter content but homemade short crust pastry and - my mum’s shortbread, as already ascertained - didn’t have any of this nasty flavour.</span><span face="-webkit-standard, serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7P6Tnl9nakQaK8lmIAyRne77x_uYriXdn_FoU-YnsrimRUpFxMzsNqcXG0daA76kRCKSXwZERORseHOsklg4-Mnoi_VEVh8H7XNnEaetNLWL4XP4LECc9PorIdNexv5-GNN4zqdwCzQ/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1167" data-original-width="1166" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7P6Tnl9nakQaK8lmIAyRne77x_uYriXdn_FoU-YnsrimRUpFxMzsNqcXG0daA76kRCKSXwZERORseHOsklg4-Mnoi_VEVh8H7XNnEaetNLWL4XP4LECc9PorIdNexv5-GNN4zqdwCzQ/" width="240" /></a></span></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times;"><span style="font-family: Times; text-align: left;"><br /><br /></span></span></p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times;"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times;">Well, that's all until my next lot. Do share your own in the comments section!</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><br /></p>Kate Jay-Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00949531996279399373noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1581599731153691087.post-51624580456770212082021-04-02T07:02:00.003-07:002021-04-04T05:49:31.447-07:00Little Guide to My Pet Peeves - Part 2 (Social Media & other online annoyances)<p><span style="caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333; font-family: inherit; text-align: justify;">As mentioned in my previous blog post, I began this 'little guide' for fun, so please do take it in the spirit in which it’s meant.</span><span style="caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333; font-family: inherit; text-align: justify;"> </span><span style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">These are just my personal </span></span><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">bête-moires</span></span><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> which I'm sure some </span>of<span style="font-family: inherit;"> you will share.</span></span></span><span style="caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333; font-family: inherit; text-align: justify;"> </span><span style="caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333; font-family: inherit; text-align: justify;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit; text-align: left;">Many of you probably find the whole of social media is a pet hate. </span><span style="font-family: inherit; text-align: left;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit; text-align: left;">Facebook is still my main social media platform and though there’s many things to like about it, for instance, connecting with likeminded people, reconnecting with old friends, sharing memories in nostalgia groups and much more, it’s a double-edged sword. Facebook is becoming more and more tedious, algorithms take charge and fewer and fewer of your friends’ post are visible without hunting high and low. Here are a few things which irk me on Facebook and more generally online:</span><span style="font-family: inherit; text-align: left;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit; text-align: left;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: inherit;">Visual Noise and GIFS<o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">This includes any flashing pictures or carousels that assault your vision every time you visit certain websites. If you’re lucky you’ll find a well-hidden pause button so you can at least freeze the movement. It includes adverts that pop-up on any Google page because we all know Google collects cookies so that little pictures of coats or dresses or - I dunno - hoovers which you’ve already bought (so why would you want to buy another?) pop up with impossible regularity. As soon as you click on the little cross that closes the infernal window another one pops up further down, sometimes the same one, to boot. Take note, gamers. There’s surely a good game to be had at seeing how many Google ads you can zap in a specified time. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And don’t even talk to me about GIFS! For the uninitiated, these are big in-your-face animations that you can add to a thread on Facebook to express a feeling. An occasional one you may be able to ignore but to have bells and whistles and flashing lights at you when you’re just trying to follow a conversation? Has Facebook never heard of the visually challenged? Those who suffer with migraines? With epilepsy? Facebook has also increased the number and range of coloured backgrounds for your statuses. It’s all about bigger and brighter and READ MY POST OR ELSE!<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: inherit;">People talking over you <o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It’s rude in real life, when you’re stuck between two people and they carry on a conversation over your head. The more polite will be aware of you sitting like a lemon betwixt them and will say ‘shall we swap places?’ in order to continue their chinwag without subjecting your ears to any more than necessary. But on social media, although people are aware of ‘hijacking’ threads and are pulled up over it, there seems to be no etiquette about people talking over you. You start to feel invisible when you’re leapfrogged, while rude and inconsiderate just carry on their verbal ping-pong without a single thought to you or your comment. Sometimes more people join in, making you feel a complete outcast!<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: inherit;">People friending you on FB just to like their page<o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I’m sure you know the type, especially if you’re an author or do anything else creative. As I’m an indie author, I’ve had many Facebook friend-requests from fellow authors. Usually they come from mutual author friends and in the main they’re supportive and respectful. But nothing makes my heart sink more than to get a friend-request from a new author who immediately asks me to ‘like their author page’ before speaking to me. Not even a ‘hi (or hey) nice to meet you and what do you write?’ It is the ultimate in bad manners and narcissism and always results in my unfriending them forthwith. I mean what do they think? Maybe what I write or indeed the fact that I’m a writer has barely grazed their self-inflated heads. Maybe somebody somewhere told them to friend lots of other writers and spam them to bits. They probably didn’t use the word spam, they probably told them to market assertively (aggressively). But surely by now everyone knows that targeting other writers - especially writers you don’t know - does not work. Other writers want other readers to read and review <i>their </i>work too. Other writers are busy <i>writing. </i>Why would they bother with some self-important, bad-mannered jerk? You’ve got to wonder! <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: inherit;">Let’s Play a Game - each adding a word on social media<o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I see this occasionally in writers’ groups or forums. This is where each person on the thread just adds a new word, presumably to feel part of this larger joint story and to enjoy a transitory power in being able to alter its course. But the problem is, on Facebook, say, all but the last two or three contributions are visible and who cares anyway about this tedious and endless story?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">My sister and I used to have a version of this as teenagers. But with much more exciting variations and outcomes:<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Each word we wrote would be in pen in a notebook<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Each word was written by a different character we’d invented (alternating between one of Ann’s characters and one of mine)<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Each word was also written in that character’s own handwriting<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And finally, we had a finite list of characters who we enacted so the total number of words would be something like 70.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">This would mean a 70 word paragraph and even if our characters had two contributions per exercise, we’d have a finite nonsensical very short story. But it’s finite nature was part of its charm. To this day I still remember the first line of one of those fun exercises which went: On top of my gothic football!<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: inherit;">Captchas <o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Yes those. Those annoying things that suddenly appear when you’re tying to sign in to a website to prove you’re not a bot. I don’t mind those that require you to tick all the pictures that feature, say, a car or a flower. No, it’s those infernal ones that have a series of numbers and letters embedded in some obscure cobwebby grid so you can’t see the blessed figures or numbers. It’s OK if it’s your bank sending you a PIN number through the post - you expect a certain level of obscurity but are bots so sophisticated that they’re able to read numbers and figures embedded in a tangled maze more than we can? These captchas do give you an option of trying another and then another. I don’t know know about you, but I find they get successively more obscure and wish I’d persisted with the first option! By this time I’ve lost the will to live and wonder whether the site I was trying to access is worth all the aggro.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b><br /></b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Compulsory ‘fields’ on </b><b>online forms <o:p></o:p></b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It’s the requirement to give your phone number before being able to ‘turn’ the virtual page that does it for me. There are great red lines on the page, like you’ve had a ticking off for handing in suboptimal homework. I’m sure many of you will do what I do and fill out the telephone field with a row of noughts or ones and merrily get through the magic barrier. I have to say though that some sites have wised up to this and spot that it isn’t a ‘real’ phone number. Sometimes, I decide these firms don’t deserve my custom if they’re to be that intrusive. Why do they need my phone number anyway if they have my email? Hmm….<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Card readers </b><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b><br /></b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I understand the need for safety and security with all the scams and phishing that abound online. I really don’t mind even using the confounded card reader when I have to pay a new payee (as long as it doesn’t come up with an error, but that’s the trouble - too often they do). But when they’re working OK, I understand why I have to have extra security for a new payee. It doesn’t happen very often, right? But what I do object to is having to use one every time I go into my online bank account. I had been with my bank for 43 years and never an overdraft. That and my loyalty surely counted for something? I phoned them and complained, but still the need to use a card reader every single time and all because I couldn’t use my mobile (it doesn’t get a signal for me to receive their one time passcodes). So I’ve now found a bank that - shock, horror - is quite happy to send me a One Time Passcode by email. It’s not rocket science, it’s quite painless on both sides. So I decided the bank who had my money for 43 years didn’t deserve it a moment longer!<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: inherit;">Black Friday and Cyber Monday<o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It has naff all to do with us here in the UK. I appreciate that for my friends and family across the pond, Black Friday relates to the equivalent of Boxing Day sales here (after, in this case, Thanksgiving). In fact, maybe they got the idea from us seeing as they don’t celebrate Boxing Day and hence no Boxing Day sales. But we do not celebrate Thanksgiving, so Black Friday is just unmoored to anything. As for Cyber Monday, that must be highly annoying, even to our US friends, dragging out the consumerism even more. Soon we’ll be having Uber Tuesday and Red-Hot Wednesday tacked on if we don’t watch out!<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: inherit;">Watch Parties<o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><span><b style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">This is the latest annoyance on Facebook – alerting me to some watch party in my notifications. All they do is slow my computer down and stop my browser working!</span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>WhatsApp </b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b><br /></b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">It probably has its place but I really can't get on with WhatsApp groups - they seem to consist of one long continuous thread and haphazard conversations. I had to search high and low too in ordered to switch off the infernal notification noises.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">Well, that's all for now. Do share your own in the comments section!</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>Kate Jay-Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00949531996279399373noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1581599731153691087.post-43916243227910429262021-03-15T08:07:00.026-07:002022-03-06T13:31:32.808-08:00Little Guide to My Pet Peeves - Part 1 (Words & Phrases)<p style="text-align: justify;"><b> <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Little Guide To Pet Peeves</span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">A long overdue follow up to my book Little Guide To Unhip but I have decided to do these as a series of blogs.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">I shall being posting these over the next few weeks (or probably months at this rate) as it keeps evolving, especially as all our lives have changed so much since I began this. But some things </span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">are just as relevant as they ever were, for example,</span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">in relation to the online world!</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I began this for fun, so please do take it in the spirit in which it’s meant.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I’ll put my hands up and say I probably have as many annoying little turns of phrases and behaviours as the next person.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">These are just my personal bête-noires.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I’ve divided them loosely into ten areas (which may change as I go along) but the first thing that inspired me to begin this was Part 1 – <b>words and phrases</b>. Please feel free to share your own in the comments section.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Part 1 - Words & Phrases<o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Hun</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">- This really gives me the heebie-whatsits. It’s ubiquitous, you can’t escape it. The most guilty are women on social media or other internet platforms talking to other women. The worst thing about it is that it’s meant to be a term of affection, or extending friendship. <i>Sorry about your tooth pain, hun. PM me, hun and I will give you a link XX. </i>But why? I want to scream ‘My name is Kate’ or whatever user name I happen to be using, so why the heck all this hun malarkey? I’m not part of the hun club and you won’t catch me following the herd to be accepted. I am past all that. I can forgive a person if they are Australian as I think its use there predates the false chumminess of the internet. I think it may be true in Scotland too. My mother used to call me honeybunch as a term of endearment when I was a child. But she is my mother and not many others used it. Certainly not every other person.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">A close runner is <b>Sweetie. </b> Sometimes I give in to temptation and call them 'flower' or 'petal' or 'my dear' in return. My sister loathes it when men call her 'dear'. She always replies by calling them 'pal'.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Irregardless</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">– it is regardless and irrespective but now the two seem to be conflated, and the uninitiated will continue to say irregardless, regardless of what I write and what is right. In fact, I couldn’t help but sneak this into a novel. Speech blunders are wonderful for character studies!<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Panties</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">– I know I’m not alone with this one. In one of the book groups on Facebook there were 291 comments below the original post by someone claiming it was one of her pet hates too some years ago. There were some hilarious contributions to the thread and particularly from one man who was persuaded to remove his ‘panties’ from the character in his book. This is the wonder of an international discussion where in the US women’s underwear is panties and the knickers of the Brits are not used. One of my contributions to this long thread was the reason I loathe the word ‘panties’ is because it sounds <span style="color: #16191f;">a mixture of infantilising and porno in equal measure, ugh! It seems to be generally us British women who cringe at its use.</span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="color: #16191f; font-family: "Times New Roman";">So</span></b><span style="color: #16191f; font-family: "Times New Roman";">– this tiny little word at the beginning of every sentence, or in answer to any question put to a politician, or to begin any Facebook status. This annoys my brother more than me although I did incorporate this annoyance into the same work of fiction as the irregardless mentioned above. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="color: #16191f; font-family: "Times New Roman";">Going Forward</span></b><span style="color: #16191f; font-family: "Times New Roman";">– like ‘so’ heading every sentence, or ‘hun’ ending every social media comment, ‘going forward’ has spread everywhere like mold spores. What began as a considered, emotionally intelligent way of getting one out of a sticky hole and not repeating the awful mistakes of the past in a given situation, now seems to be a redundant glue word. ‘What we are doing, going forward, is this..’ ‘What do you want to do now, going forward…?’ As if there was some doubt regarding the direction of travel. What else are we doing? As good as it would be to time travel, I don’t think physics has quite caught up with that yet, so we shan’t be going backward any time soon. Whatever happened to ‘in the future’? </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="color: #16191f; font-family: "Times New Roman";">My bad</span></b><span style="color: #16191f; font-family: "Times New Roman";">– when I first heard this – or should I say, saw it written down in a forum – I thought there must have been an error; that the author had omitted a word. It didn’t even make any sense. I wanted to say My bad <i>what? </i>But then, as is the way when you hit on a new expression, I started seeing it everywhere. I mean, why not just say ‘my mistake’ or ‘I’m sorry’? That would be too simple, though.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Have Your Cake and Eat It </span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">– I’ve never really got the measure of this silly expression or what it’s trying to convey. I know the sort of context in which it’s it’s said. But if it’s meant to mean you can’t eat your cake twice then why not just say that? That’s perfectly clear to me. But also it’s stating the bleeding obvious too. Why would anyone try and eat the same cake twice? I think we need a completely new expression or why not stick with the much clearer ‘you can’t have it both ways’. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Anymore For Any More</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">– Usually said when some hostess with the mostest is wanting to know if her guests want any more helpings of food. It just seems to be one of those irritating, over-achieving over-used expressions which isn’t all that. Maybe it’s just me, but just ask me and my table neighbour if we’d like any more. You don’t have to be clever: a hackneyed phrase that wasn’t all that clever to start with is just, well, annoying.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Panic Attacks</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">- when what is really meant is a minor panic with none of the accompanying palpitations, quaking legs, flip-flopping stomach, sizzling/icy sweats, dizzy vision, swimming head, thoughts going faster than the London Marathon, you get the picture.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Furthest from the work place</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">– this is one of those veiled vicious phrases employed by the Department of Work & Pensions to pass judgment on you or your sick and disabled friends, single mothers, long term unemployed etc and to single you out for some Nudging, Work Related Activity, Help with Your CV or something equally patronizing. Worse, you may be bullied, humiliated, sanctioned or all three with the new sweeping powers bestowed on the Employment Services and Disability Health Assessors.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Here are a few more phrases that are pretty annoying because of the regularity with which they’re used:</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Kicked the can down the road (or into the long grass)</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">–it was a good descriptive metaphor for the first person who used it, now I just want to kick it into oblivion. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Thrown him/her/me under the bus</span></b><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">– similar to above. They could at least change the mode of transport. The poor bus gets it every time.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Tin ears – </span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">there was a time circa 2019 when every other politician accused his or her opposite number of having their lugs made of a particular metal</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Mood music – </span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">another platitude latched onto by (mainly) politcians</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Let’s unpack this</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">- </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">not in relation to returning from your holidays either, but ‘let’s go into this in more depth’.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Drilling down</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">– similar to the above ‘let’s drill down into these numbers’</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Early doors – </span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">the doors bit is completely redundant. What people mean is ‘early on’. But the doors part obviously originates from going to a venue when the ‘doors’ were just opening eg for a gig or theatre production. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">It is what it is – </span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">a truism of ever there was one. <b>It isn’t what it isn’t </b>might be a bit more original. Or perhaps try saying <b>it isn’t what it is </b><b>or it is what it isn’t </b>which might at least raise a few eyebrows or spark some interesting philosophical debates</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Dial it down – </span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">again, it was good on first hearing, a little less on second but very quickly slipped into clichéhood. How many devices have dials these days in any case?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">It doesn’t even touch the sides –</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">another tired and over-used phrase<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Row back – </span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">at the time of writing this (March 2021), this is used with increasing frequency. Meaning to change your original opinion or decision <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Double down – </span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">apparently this comes from blackjack but it’s taken off now and applies to sticking to one’s position resolutely even in the face of adversity<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">From the get-go – </span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">nothing against US expressions when they’re from people from the US! But this has now largely replaced ‘from the start’.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Pushback – </span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">what happened to the good old-fashioned words such as resistance or opposition?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">A friend of mine detests - </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-weight: bold;">singing from the same </span><b>hymn</b><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><b> sheet.</b> I sort of know what she </span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">means.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><b><u>Update</u> </b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><b><br /></b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><b>Uptick - </b>keep hearing this a lot!</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><b>Shift the dial - </b>I guess, as with 'dial it down' people are getting very nostalgic for dials!</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><b>Get out of jail card - </b>this has been popular in the last few years especially among sports' commentators</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><b>Lessons will be learned - </b>this deserves a section all of its own. Suffice to say, it has inspired a poem which has been published.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><br /></span></p><p style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b><span style="font-family: inherit;">Baked in </span></b></p><p style="color: #454545; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">
</span></p><p style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b><span style="font-family: inherit;">Blue sky thinking </span></b></p><p style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></b></p><p style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b><span style="font-family: inherit;">Low hanging fruit</span></b></p><p style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></b></p><p style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b><span style="font-family: inherit;">Perfect storm</span></b></p><p style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></b></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b style="color: #454545;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">We're </span></b><span style="color: #454545;"><b style="caret-color: rgb(69, 69, 69);">pregnant! - </b>Now, I'm all for men taking part in childbirth and supporting their partners; they did have a big part to play, after all, but they are not seahorses. They don't carry the baby in their tums, so this is a step too far for me. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I shall be bringing more pet peeves next time!<o:p></o:p></span></p>Kate Jay-Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00949531996279399373noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1581599731153691087.post-79339957762742589272021-01-04T02:58:00.001-08:002021-01-04T02:58:53.067-08:00My Writing and other Goals for 2021<p><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">It's that time of year again where some of us like to set out our goals for the new year. This is something I've done for the last few years and found it helpful at the end of the year to see where I'm at. I did achieve most of my goals last year and wrote more blogs in the year than I have since beginning this blog in 2010 - but even then that only amounted to the princely sum of seven!</span></p><p><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">I'm aware as I'm writing this just what a trying year last year was - for so many it's been devastating. For others, it's been an opportunity to reset and reevaluate. This formed the subject matter of a couple of my blogs last year. I do think the next few weeks will be tough, but am hoping we can emerge in the spring with some 'green shoots' of hope and the worst of the pandemic behind us.</span></p><p>So with no further ado, these are my goals for 2021:</p><p><u>Writing goals</u></p><p><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"> 1) Publish 'The Colour Of Wednesday' the follow up novel to 'Down The Tubes'. This has been a long time in the making but it's nearly there now. I could carry on tweaking and fine-tuning it, that's what I have done in the past with books, but there comes a point where you need to move onto other projects (see below).</span></p><p>2) The Poetry Collection from our Facebook Group - Don't Go Breaking Our Arts (for artists and writers with long term conditions and disabilities). This was in my goals for last year but I'm thrilled to say there was a lot of progress last year. I began collecting up a lot of the poems from the group archives with the help of another member. Now with the support of Disability Arts Online we have found someone very experienced to collaborate with and have also had a generous donation towards the paperback production. It's all a bit under wraps now so can't reveal too much.</p><p>3) Beginning my next big writing project. I've wanted to do an autobiography of sorts, with an angle, but shall have to see. I'm excited to have a go anyway and if it turns out to be something other than what I envisaged, then so be it. Writing has a habit of doing that - evolving into something else.</p><p>4) Collect together my own poems for a possible collection and also write more short stories. As it takes me so much longer to complete anything these days, I need to stick to shorter stuff.</p><p>5) Get my latest Little Guide into a series of blogs (to begin with). That's something else I've nearly finished for the time being (as much as these Little Guides are ever completed).</p><p><u>Other activities</u></p><p><u>Singing</u></p><p>Last year was really wonderful for getting back to singing again. Zoom has created so many opportunities for those of us who sadly had to give up live community choirs long before Covid reared its ugly head. But a very old friend of mine introduced my sister and me to her daughter's online singing group, and that's been so uplifting. People wonder how it works when mics are on mute. Well, as my sister does it with me, we can each do a part. Sometimes if the person leading the sing is doing a third part we can get a three part harmony going! My sister and I have been going weekly on a Wednesday to a small Zoom group and fortnightly every Saturday to a bigger Zoom group where two guest singers as well as the coordinator teach us one of their songs or another song of their choosing. In one of the Saturday groups before Christmas there was nearly 140 participants! So although you're not getting the experience of hearing all the other voices that you get in a choir, you do get something else, the pleasure of singing along with one or two others and the personal connections from the other regular Zoom singers, particularly in the smaller group.</p><p>I can honestly say that I have been introduced to many new gorgeous singers and songs, as well as seeing familiar ones! I hope that these choices and opportunities will continue post-Covid.</p><p><u>Genealogy </u></p><p>As I mentioned in my end of year blog, I had quite journey last year in this respect. It came as a massive shock discovering that hundreds of my third and fourth cousins had been killed in the Holocaust. I'd always thought that my family's branch wasn't affected. Well, the direct line wasn't as my great great grandfather came to London, luckily for us. But there were devastating consequences for so many of the descendants of his siblings who stayed in Amsterdam. A family member and I have been documenting the lives and stories of those who were affected and it's been a long and harrowing journey. I have thought of doing some blogs on some of them to honour and remember their lives.</p><p>The upside of all this research is discovering new cousins we didn't know we had. </p><p><u>Health goals</u></p><p>I want to try acupuncture for hyperhidrosis as I've heard it can help - I've tried everything else. I shouldn't really pin my hopes on it though, as I've been disappointed so much in the last few years. I can't try it anyway until I feel safe to go to appointments and such places are open for business.</p><p>Further investigations to rule out autoimmune diseases. I did have an online consultation with a rheumatologist who has recommended I get some further blood tests. Again, I have to wait until all these high tiers/lockdowns are removed.</p><p>Continuing with my therapy for ME/CFS which has been done remotely and proved a better way of interacting at the moment i.e. from the comfort of my own home. My therapist also observed how much more relaxed I was in my own environment, and I also have mindfulness exercises to practise. Although mindfulness and meditation aren't new to me, I find it helps to be reminded and to brush up on these techniques so they become second nature. It's easy to forget if you don't have them as homework!</p><p><u>Household</u></p><p>More small jobs to make better use of space, so probably more cupboards and shelving, plus small things which will provide more comfort, thicker curtains etc! As I spend most of my time at home these things become increasingly important and yet Covid has made it more difficult to get work done in the home. Last year we had about three jobs lined up just when lockdown hit us!</p><p>So that's about it. I suppose my hopes for 2021 are the same as most people's. For this crisis to pass and for people to be able to return to the best parts of their lives - their work, seeing their loved ones, travel and so on.</p><p>So it just remains for me to wishing you all a happy and healthy new year!</p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;"><span class="s1" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"> </span></p><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" />Kate Jay-Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00949531996279399373noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1581599731153691087.post-64512086218898466822020-12-11T06:47:00.000-08:002020-12-11T06:47:45.272-08:002020 Review<p><span style="font-family: times;">Well, this year didn't turn out quite as expected. It began with a little-known virus which spread rapidly across the world, causing huge disruptions to all our lives. I have already written blogs earlier this year about some of the positive changes that occurred for me.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">Zoom has opened up opportunities for those of us who live largely indoors - it's been fantastic to be able to sing again. Having not been able to go to real life sessions for a few years, I've gone from no singing to lots of singing. I've learned some wonderful new songs, connected with some fantastic singers and songwriters and a warm-hearted online singing community. Even when we return to the 'new normal' I hope some online singing opportunities continue, otherwise I shall feel bereft!</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">Early in the year, I also discovered some devastating information about third and fourth cousins of ours, hundreds of whom were killed in the Holocaust. So, since the spring, another family member and I have spent a lot of time finding about these relatives and their lives, to honour them. We've still got a lot more to do. But on the plus side we've connected with new cousins across the world - relatives whose great grandfathers decided to move away from Amsterdam as ours did. I may write future blogs on some of those people I'd like to honour, a lot of the information is in the public domain courtesy of Joods Monument.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">Now for the review of the writing goals I set myself at the beginning of this year - seems a lifetime ago now!</span></p><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><p><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;"> <u> Goal 1:</u> I really hope to finish the follow up to Down The Tubes this year.</span></span></p><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: times;"><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjok5nDmahPnC4zFOs33IS7L8h1RL9ctQMWjkNF7eppuaNAuByCd_mrlFYDNFo0Fwdcj7U36ppbTCRCq8dho23fLAyvjv01_3msPo2KEKOyuppvgFVJKWCXb4eJ-OJxvAAfgYLRI9_y2g/s1600/****tubes2-blank-fluoextine-image-larger-letters-staggered-sz-title%2528may-2018%2529.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="996" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjok5nDmahPnC4zFOs33IS7L8h1RL9ctQMWjkNF7eppuaNAuByCd_mrlFYDNFo0Fwdcj7U36ppbTCRCq8dho23fLAyvjv01_3msPo2KEKOyuppvgFVJKWCXb4eJ-OJxvAAfgYLRI9_y2g/s320/****tubes2-blank-fluoextine-image-larger-letters-staggered-sz-title%2528may-2018%2529.jpg" width="199" /></a></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><b><i><u>Update:</u> it's almost finished! It's just been out with my beta readers and should be ready for release in the new year. </i></b><br /></span><br /><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><u>Goal 2</u>: It would be nice to get on with another Little Guide seeing as it's nearly a decade since I had Little Guide To Unhip published. </span>I have been doing another one but maybe will do them as a blog for now. And talking of blogs, I do hope to do more blog posts than last year!</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;"><b><i><u>Update:</u> I'm going to do these as a series of blogs, I decided. The first one may even be out very soon!</i></b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><u> Goal 3:</u> I also think it would be great to bring out a collection of poems from Don’t Go Breaking Our Arts, our creative group for people with disabilities. I have thought this for years but I'm not very organised and so would to collaborate with other members and and also decide where to send any royalties - I wouldn’t expect many as these are soon offset by promotion costs etc</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;"><b><i><u>Update:</u> This is also happening! We have been archiving some of the poems from Facebook throughout the year, collecting them into a Word document Then I pitched to Disability Arts Online I'm so grateful for the help of Colin Hambrook for enabling this and putting me in touch with a writer with a wealth of experience who was - coincidentally - planning another publication along the lines of what our group was planning. Watch this space.</i></b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><u> Goal 4:</u> I hope to get another book out in paperback - this would be one of the older ones now that have gone out of print, since all the ones previously unpublished are in paperback now.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"><b><i><u>Update</u>: I have another book out in paperback!</i></b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><u>Goal 5</u>: Begin the autobiography that's been brewing for a few years now and also to crack on with some more short stories/do something with my poems</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;"><b><i><u>Update:</u> Apart from organising a few notes, not much progress here alas, except for the poems</i></b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">And other goals...</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><b>Health goals:</b></span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"> </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">I wanted to rule out autoimmune illnesses like Sjrogrens Syndrome and Lupus. I 'd had a positive result for ANA antibodies which can be a sign of an autoimmune illness such as the above or rheumatoid arthritis. Because of Covid19, however, progress has been painfully slow. I did have telephone appointment with a dermatologist in the spring or summer. This was mainly about the hyperhidrosis which is one of my most debilitating symptoms. There was nothing further to try on the medicine front which I've not tried </span>already. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">More recently I had a video appointment with a rheumatologist who did ask a lot of questions and didn't think I had Lupus from what I told her. But she did suggest more blood tests in the new year (whenever I can have this done safely at the surgery!)</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><b style="text-decoration: underline;">House goals:</b> I wanted b</span></span><span style="font-family: times;">etter seating in the sitting room, comfort becoming increasingly important the more I need to stay at home! Plus more storage for bedroom eg better drawers.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">We do have a new settee which was ordered in January and because it was bespoke wasn't due until April but then lockdown meant it doesn't come until May or June! The same thing happened with blinds and shelving.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">Still no further on the little pod or something for the garden. Other things became more pressing. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;"><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjukWbZuCH55pyZQAvNpsZIdZg57I-Hw5JNjwaUaMvUTSbhJFDD7O6Ngj9x0iolikxrSG0JoX_NLn-NnvpU2QaD1pFzig8IplQhjKQumd7CEvn03G715bvQBm0bF61E4IMrGqRyJ5kaSQ/s1600/pods2u.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="720" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjukWbZuCH55pyZQAvNpsZIdZg57I-Hw5JNjwaUaMvUTSbhJFDD7O6Ngj9x0iolikxrSG0JoX_NLn-NnvpU2QaD1pFzig8IplQhjKQumd7CEvn03G715bvQBm0bF61E4IMrGqRyJ5kaSQ/s320/pods2u.jpg" width="240" /></a><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><br /></span><br /><b><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"> </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;">Family goals:</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"> </span></b><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">I hoped to support family members as best I could, as some of their needs are great or greater than mine. I hope I succeeded.</span><br /><br /></span></p></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;">I thought that the above - especially the writing goals - was all way too ambitious but I'm thrilled to have achieved many of the goals or am partly in the process of achieving them. I also mentioned that anything unachieved could be carried over to the next year!</span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;"><b><span style="font-family: times;"><i><br /></i></span></b></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;">I do hope you've managed to achieve what you wanted in 2020, in spite of Covid19 restrictions, or maybe because of them. Maybe you've been appreciating nature more, baking more bread or finally decorating the house. Maybe you've finally finished that book or even started writing or some other creative pursuit. Do tell!</span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;">In the meantime, happy festivities and here's wishing you all a happy and brighter 2021 😊</span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: times; font-kerning: none;"></span></div></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: times; font-kerning: none;"></span></div></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: times; font-kerning: none;"></span></div></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: times; font-kerning: none;"></span></div></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: times; font-kerning: none;"></span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: times; font-kerning: none;"></span></div></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: times; font-kerning: none;"></span></div></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: times; font-kerning: none;"></span></div></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: times; font-kerning: none;"></span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: times; font-kerning: none;"></span></div></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: times; font-kerning: none;"></span></div></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: times; font-kerning: none;"></span></div></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><div><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><br /></span></div></div>Kate Jay-Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00949531996279399373noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1581599731153691087.post-568823923432782722020-10-13T07:16:00.003-07:002020-10-13T07:18:37.271-07:00 Long Covid recognition but what about ME/CFS?<p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14pt;">I’m taking a diversion from the usual writing topics for my blog this month as none of us live in a vacuum and let’s face it, Coronavirus had been dominating our lives for most of the year.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14pt;">There’s been a lot of talk about ‘long Covid’ and I’m very glad that it’s being taken seriously. These are the lingering and debilitating symptoms after having a bad hit of the virus. People with long Covid experience a physical, mental and cognitive toll on their ability to do the things they used to be able to do. They feel exhausted after exercise or a short walk with muscle pains and general fatigue. This will all sound familiar to those of us who have been diagnosed with ME (sometimes called CFS and I won’t go into the politics of that just now). One of the tell tale symptoms of ME and one of the diagnostic criteria is what is known as P.E.M or Post Exertional Malaise. This can be physical, mental or social. It usually doesn’t show up immediately after the activity but people with ME or PEM will typically ‘crash’ the following day or some hours after the event. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14pt;">Most people with a diagnosis of ME can pinpoint the illness that led to their disability. For me it was a very nasty virus in 1994 and a recurrence either of the same virus or a different one six months later. Both bouts were characterised by severe coughing, pleurisy, breathlessness (One GP thought my lung might have collapsed) and months of acute pain around the chest and back. I wish that the medical community had told me the strain or name of the virus back then – rather than just, ‘there’s a nasty cough virus going round’ so at least there was some way of checking back and comparing development with others who suffered from that same virus and had a similar outcome. Of course, as with Covid, everyone’s immune system reacts differently and there are of course other virulent infections and coronaviruses that have circulated before and after the one I had. But having a name and strain is empowering – it means we know what we’re dealing with, rather than foundering in the dark, and experts can chart its progress, build up a picture and develop effective treatments.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRgtHDqa_SRtn7KhnT7QPHv1lcP1cDPwMo6G3ovkAxwJrY-OWFY8-dA92wOPJs4uFxRAxKImkn9qaM21_uCYlr7qQyOrs-4CrOY5uwu-zxqNAPJtOjgwQUqGvDk7vKgCd3UYHU1x4DIg/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="267" data-original-width="188" height="442" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRgtHDqa_SRtn7KhnT7QPHv1lcP1cDPwMo6G3ovkAxwJrY-OWFY8-dA92wOPJs4uFxRAxKImkn9qaM21_uCYlr7qQyOrs-4CrOY5uwu-zxqNAPJtOjgwQUqGvDk7vKgCd3UYHU1x4DIg/w297-h442/Unknown%2528sharper%2529-1.jpg" width="297" /></a></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14pt;">The sad thing is, not that people shouldn’t be taking Covid seriously, but it has taken Covid for people to use basic common sense when they have an infection. Back in 1994, I was around infected people at work and was subjected to ‘large viral loads’ as I was around such people for large parts of the day. I can actually remember the person who had a severe cough in 1995 and spending a large part of the day with her in close proximity – this too, when I was already vulnerable from the previous bout. But because there was no real public awareness and entrenched attitudes – some people thought it showed their fortitude and strength of character to be able to come into work and battle on when severely ill. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #1c1e21; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14pt;">However, in the light of Covid, things have had to change. Hopefully we will never go back to the casual and foolish attitude of people expected to ‘come into work’ when clearly they should be in bed. Far from anything else, it’s a false economy in ‘saving the economy’ if the whole work force is infected instead of one.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #1c1e21; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #1c1e21; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14pt;">The government have announced they are setting up specialist clinics for people suffering with ‘long Covid’. Before this announcement people were being referred to ME/CFS services.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"></p><div style="font-family: Calibri; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #1c1e21; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14pt;">But those of us who have suffered such symptoms for years can't help but feel slightly miffed about the neglect of M.E. these past four decades and the ridicule and dismissiveness that has been heaped upon us. I remember the same conversations going on in the eighties. I hope the conversation will change now.</span></div><span style="color: #1c1e21; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="background-color: background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"></p><div style="font-family: Calibri; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14pt;">Dan Wyke recently wrote in the Facebook group ‘Invest in ME Research’ summed up perfectly the fears and frustrations that many people with ME share: “The frequent sight of doctors publicly bemoaning the lack of understanding of Long Covid and asserting its seriousness/realness is particularly galling to ME/CFS patients whose chronic, post-viral disease has been ignored by them (and to some extent the media) for decades.</span></div><span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 18.66666603088379px;"><br /></span></div><span style="background-color: background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"></p><div style="font-family: Calibri; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #1d2129; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14pt;">Misunderstanding/ignorance regarding ME/CFS is so entrenched within the health profession that even now many doctors are incapable of seeing the parallels with Long Covid. They aren't awar</span><span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14pt;">e of the extensive body of ME/CFS research or (limited) treatment possibilities for themselves/their new patients.</span></div><span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><div style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">The prospect of unwell GPs raising awareness of Long Covid, while continuing to completely ignore ME/CFS, is a very real possibility.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 18.66666603088379px;"><br /></span></div><o:p style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14pt;"></o:p></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14pt;">Should GPs succeed in creating a separate medical category for Long Covid and a narrative of public understanding/acceptance (denied ME/CFS), it will be another cruel blow to the +250,000 ME/CFS patients in the UK.”*<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14pt;">* I wish to thank Dan Wyke for permission to quote him. <o:p></o:p></span></p>Kate Jay-Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00949531996279399373noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1581599731153691087.post-61348444337914789442020-07-02T06:24:00.002-07:002020-07-02T06:24:37.069-07:00Unhip and Unloved!<br />
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At home I have a cupboard full of printed books that are what you might call ‘seconds’. They’re either proofs or they’ve had their covers updated, or some of the text updated or typos corrected. Sometimes a small detail or sentence has been added or omitted or other minor structural work performed. To all intents and purposes they are as near as perfect as they could be at any point in time, otherwise I wouldn’t have paid for the proofs.</div>
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But what to do with these slightly imperfect spares? I did try giving several away as review copies on Goodreads some years ago, alerting any people who asked for a copy that they were seconds. Not only had these books been paid for out of my own pocket but I’d also bought the padded envelopes and paid for the postage (I did a UK giveaway only). But hey, if it got me a few more reviews it would be worth it, wouldn’t it? I had done a giveaway once before on Goodreads and I may have received one review as a result of that so I knew I wouldn’t get many. But the second (and last ever time) I actually got none. So I crossed that off my list as a viable project. We live and learn.</div>
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But still the spares amass. I try and improve on my covers and my latest experience has confirmed to me that a book is most definitely judged by its cover.</div>
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You see once CV-19 hit our shores and people had more time and less money I thought it might be a perfect opportunity to give away some of these imperfect books of mine. But I didn’t want to leave a basket of books in my porch for passersby. It would have been too embarrassing and a girl has her pride. I don’t have a lot of confidence and I live in small town. Online is where I do most of my trading!</div>
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But then during the dry sunny months of April and May, I noticed the lovely gardens opposite me began offering a box of secondhand children’s books. The offer was for people to swap. Perhaps one or two books aimed at older people started or maybe I began the trend, I can't remember now. But I plucked up the courage and took over a copy of Little Guide To Unhip with one of its old covers, together with another used but acclaimed book, and snuck them in the box when nobody was looking. I went back on successive days and took a sneaky peek into the box when I passed it - other books came and went but Unhip remained! The weather was so dry that, after a while, the people organising this just left the box of books in the morning and collected them in the evening. Then one day the heavens opened. Unhip was pelted on (maybe it should have gone under the umbrella of the plants table - there is some sense and irony in this because the unhipness of brollies is mentioned in the book!). Next time I went in the garden there was Unhip with misshapen and cobbled pages, the way pages dry after a good soaking. Who would want it now? It least before the rain it had been in almost pristine condition,</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAv3fVEylFSVKyfEXThohTJB4Hys6Q3jxznPSNrgGw1nDY5A0KbZA2hUKO5Zq8A0xAyQJyvMy2lABmHTQSgasNWaKTcKK-vAKIAId6m1heGsxiIrNb-AY2gyqXcopWBlvXfp3dApho0g/s1600/old-unhip.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAv3fVEylFSVKyfEXThohTJB4Hys6Q3jxznPSNrgGw1nDY5A0KbZA2hUKO5Zq8A0xAyQJyvMy2lABmHTQSgasNWaKTcKK-vAKIAId6m1heGsxiIrNb-AY2gyqXcopWBlvXfp3dApho0g/s320/old-unhip.jpg" width="207" /></a></div>
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But over the coming days more books were appearing and it also looked as if Unhip had gone (or maybe the garden librarians had felt sorry for the tatty thing and decided to put it out of its misery.) But seeing it gone I got bold. I took in an old proof copy of Far Cry From The Turquoise Room and snuck it in the book box.</div>
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A day or two later I saw Unhip back in the box. So it hadn’t been adopted after all! However it wasn’t long before Turquoise Room had gone and never reappeared. So I can only assume it found a home. Maybe the doll on the front appealed to one of the children - even though it’s an adult/young adult book.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">But every time I walked through the entrance subsequently I had to do the walk of shame and see an edge of Unhip peeping out from the other books. After a while I was past caring. I started to see the funny side. As my sister said 'the book is so unhip that nobody would dare take it.'</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Once June came, the weather became more unsettled and the box of books was no more. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">There is a moral to this story somewhere - I think it's not to be too precious about your books and to realise that you have to laugh sometimes in this indie publishing business to save yourself from weeping.</span></div>
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<br style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;" />Kate Jay-Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00949531996279399373noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1581599731153691087.post-57502152050571001712020-05-03T15:33:00.001-07:002020-05-03T16:00:52.185-07:00Is a life indoors valued less?<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br style="font-size: 12px;" /></span>
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<br style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;" /><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">I have been thinking about this a lot since lockdown - and I know I’m not alone in this; that many other introverts will have been thinking about it too.</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;" /><br style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;" /><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">It’s the extraverts who are finding lockdown the most difficult - not being able to physically meet up with friends, to socialise every day, to be out and about. I know it’s more complicated - that there are introverts who like to go out and walk alone and think. I am restricted because of physical health conditions as well so it’s just as well that my temperament is suited to the indoor life. I get it, that people with other mental health conditions, especially depression, need that social contact in order to boost their well being and self esteem. I am also very fortunate in that I’m not locked down alone - that I have company. I also miss seeing my family physically and that physical contact with them.</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;" /><br style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;" /><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">I am also very well aware how a life indoors may be a living hell for people stuck with a violent or abusive partner or family member. Or having now outside space to call their own.</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;" /><br style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;" /><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">But the flip side of all this is that people are waiting for ‘life to return to normal’ - as if somehow this indoor life is unnatural and undesirable. It’s certainly not what the government have in mind when they talk about easing restrictions. Society always seems geared towards extraverts as a default so that those of us who don’t fit in by temperament feel excluded.</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;" /><br style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;" /><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">Now all that had reversed and we’re the ones who have the skills and strengths, </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">because although there are disruptions to my life as mentioned above, for me it’s business as usual. I was living a mainly indoor life anyway because fatigue, pain, anxiety and hyperhidrosis make the outdoor life largely unpleasant and unenjoyable and an uphill struggle.</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;" /><br style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;" /><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">For me the lockdown has exposed how we as a society view people who live their lives indoors. As a writer I am used to it and have plenty to keep me busy- energy and health permitting. In fact I have found more demands on my time and energy trying to keep up with friends and relatives in lockdown - or people who now suddenly have more time on their hands and assume I do too.</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;" /><br style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;" /><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">But the conversation is happening. I’m hearing people not wishing to return to their pre-lockdown lives on the hectic treadmill. Now people have had the time to reflect, many are enjoying the slower pace, hearing the bird song, the more natural pace of life. This isn’t to say that there won’t be an economic fallout and that many businesses will need so much help to get back on their feet. The high street was already on its knees before CV-19 and it was obvious that it needed government subsidies to stay alive and to keep that vital sense of community.</span><div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">So back to my initial question. Is a life indoors valued less? I think it was. But I hope it won’t be in future. </span><br style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;" /><br style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;" /><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">I have enjoyed embracing my indoor self and hope society will value those introverts among us more in future!</span><br />
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Kate Jay-Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00949531996279399373noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1581599731153691087.post-21041125926086581472020-03-20T08:23:00.004-07:002020-03-20T09:27:02.510-07:00Tips from a Natural Self-Isolater<div class="p1" style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: ".sfuitext-regular"; font-size: 17pt;">I expect a lot of people have similarly taken to the blogosphere as a result of the extraordinary and terrifying times we live in. Life has changed so dramatically in two weeks and yet it's heartening to see the <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>kindness and generosity of the human spirit at such times. Little community groups springing up to help people in their time of need, whether to get their prescriptions, shopping, or just looking out for an isolated, vulnerable or elderly neighbour. Alas, it's also brought out the worst in people too, clearing the shelves of supermarkets, but that's for another time.</span><br />
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: ".sfuitext-regular"; font-size: 17pt;">I'm </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-regular"; font-size: 22.66666603088379px;">really hoping that all those who've </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-regular"; font-size: 17pt;">been laid off because work has dried up, those in insecure work, the self-employed and those who rent will be given financial help and security urgently, so they're not having to worry about the future or the next pay cheque. </span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: ".sfuitext-regular"; font-size: 17pt;">Many others will be self-isolating at this time if infected with CV-19 or recovering but have to remain in isolation.</span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: ".sfuitext-regular"; font-size: 17pt;">Many of us who are introverts and/or differently abled (whether physically, mentally or both) are natural self-isolaters so feel well-equipped to deal with life indoors and this is what prompted me to write this blog. Yes, things have changed there too in many ways, not least being able to get home deliveries when needed or the items we normally buy. Many of the home improvements that we had planned to do have also had to be put on hold.</span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: ".sfuitext-regular"; font-size: 17pt;">But for me there's always plenty to indoors when energy permits!</span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: ".sfuitext-regular"; font-size: 17pt;">As a writer there's always my latest Work In Progress to be getting on with, and there's never just one! Older books need promoting or bringing out in paperback. Or the poetry collection some of us online are putting together as and when.</span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: ".sfuitext-regular"; font-size: 17pt;">However, it may be an opportunity for you to pursue or take up a new hobby: painting, crafts or photography. If you have an outside space there are always things to photograph. You can even do these from your window: clouds or sunsets or rain on the window pane. Or maybe pictures of your furry friend(s). Lots of skills can be learned enhancing those pictures in Photoshop. I have many old photos and slides still to be uploaded onto computer. These are social documents of a bygone age and are a source of pleasure and reminiscence for loved ones.</span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: ".sfuitext-regular"; font-size: 17pt;">The picture below is one my father took as a slide in 1964 of Liverpool sea front. Th slide was badly damaged but I was able to use a slide converter and then restore a lot of it in Photoshop. It's also a social document.</span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: ".sfuitext-regular"; font-size: 17pt;">Or what about all this books you've been meaning to read? Authors love readers too! There are so many authors looking for readers. There are any number of ebooks as well as paperbacks. Readers are the new writers. If you offer to review books for authors I can guarantee you will be inundated with free review copies so you may wish to narrow it down by your favourite genre. You can even start your own review blog.</span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: ".sfuitext-regular"; font-size: 17pt;">Perhaps music is your thing. There are so many online tutorials on how to learn a new instrument. Or if you're anything like me you might be glad of having some time to bring your music library up to date! I have a backlog of songs I want to put on my iPod.</span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: ".sfuitext-regular"; font-size: 17pt;">There are so many distance learning things on YouTube or in other Apps. You can polish up your language skills. My mum has used an Apps called Memrise and Duolingo:</span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: ".sfuitext-regular"; font-size: 17pt;">I love a good cryptic crossword too. Lovatts do a free online one and the word goes green if you've got it right - always helpful. They're great for increasing your vocabulary and keeping your brain exercised. </span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: ".sfuitext-regular"; font-size: 17pt;">There are plenty of interactive games online too. </span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: ".sfuitext-regular"; font-size: 17pt;">If there are a few of you stuck at home, maybe it's time to get out the old board games.</span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: ".sfuitext-regular"; font-size: 17pt;">It's my feeling that a lot of the old-fashioned more simple pleasures will be rediscovered. No bread in Tescos? No problem, you can make some soda bread with just a few ingredients. </span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: ".sfuitext-regular"; font-size: 17pt;">I've been thinking of writing some good old-fashioned letters too. Emails are fine but nothing beats the aesthetics of a handwritten letter fashioned in your fair hand and that's for keeps. Maybe you know an elderly person who lives alone and is a bit daunted by technology and the internet. Just think what it would mean to them to receive a handwritten letter.</span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: ".sfuitext-regular"; font-size: 17pt;">It's important not to forget your physical exercise too and I'm not the best one to advise on that! But as long as you keep social distancing in mind, you can enjoy local walks, gardening (maybe to grow some of your own vegetables) or even dancing to the music on your iPod!</span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: ".sfuitext-regular"; font-size: 17pt;">These are just a few ideas and things that have enriched my life. </span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: ".sfuitext-regular"; font-size: 17pt;">Of course there will be some of those boring chores you've put off for ages - I hear there's a lot of people sorting out their wardrobes at the moment!</span><br />
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: ".sfuitext-regular"; font-size: 17pt;">I do think that life is changing rapidly on a daily basis as we try to rethink the way we do things. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Suddenly it's dawning on us all what's important in life and out of this tragedy, I hope this growing sense of solidarity and support won't be short-lived. I hope there will be no going back to the selfishness and greed, the divisions and the polarity. </span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: ".sfuitext-regular"; font-size: 17pt;">CV-19 has been a great leveller, it doesn't discriminate, and we may look back on this time as earlier generations looked back on WWll, as a time when we pulled together and triumphed in adversity, when we rebuilt the social fabric to benefit all.</span><br />
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: ".sfuitext-regular"; font-size: 17pt;">Just to end with this lovely quote sent by a friend:</span><br />
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"And the people stayed home. And read books, and listened, and rested, and exercised, and made art, and played games, and learned new ways of being, and were still. And listened more deeply. Some meditated, some prayed, some danced. Some met their shadows. And the people began to think differently.</div>
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"And the people healed. And, in the absence of people living in ignorant, dangerous, mindless, and heartless ways, the earth began to heal.</div>
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"And when the danger had passed, and the people joined together again, they grieved their losses, and made new choices, and dreamed new images, and created new ways to live and heal the earth fully, as they had been healed."</div>
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- Kitty O'Meara</div>
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Kate Jay-Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00949531996279399373noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1581599731153691087.post-29030917107022182972020-02-24T07:11:00.000-08:002020-02-25T07:59:27.195-08:00It's a small world sometimes ... <div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">...when a Facebook friend mentions he has an ancient copy of your book in his possession. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">This may not seem like a coincidence to many well-known authors - making friends on Facebook and then discovering someone bought one of your books years ago. But for someone like me, a relative unknown, I find it one of those synchronicity moments, where you're reminded that the world is actually quite small. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">It's always interesting to hear how one of the books you've authored ends up in another's hands - and even more when it's one as long ago as 1990, especially when it was the US hardback of the book, and especially where it was only a short print-run.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">This happened last week. I've been friends on Facebook with someone called Ian for a few years. The interesting thing is we didn't connect because of mutual reading and writing interests. In fact Ian's moniker was Jah Wobbly before the Facebook police ordered him to give what I assume to be his real name. I thought the 'wobbly' referred to his disability or differently-abled body as that's </span>how we came to be friends - through mutual campaigning groups against cuts to services and benefits for the long term sick and disabled. I've needed to update this blog though as Ian has put me straight: his Jah Wobbly moniker came "from an old Jamaican gent that used to drink in the old queens head on the Stockwell Rd London. I won a bottle of Jamaican Rum and (being the only white boy that used said boozer) shared said bottle with a few old Jamaicans, got extremely drunk, got up to put some music on and could hardly stand, wobbled all over the place and they were howling with laughter, came back and sat down and was told that from then on I was going to be called Jah Wobbly!' Ian said his disability came later when he snapped his Achilles Tendon. But Ian is quick to point out he prefers being thought of as 'wobbly' which sounds a lot better than being called disabled.</div>
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Anyway, with a moniker like Jah Wobbly, Ian was/still is obviously a punk music lover! When we first connected we chatted a lot about music and shared songs and a lot of bantz, but as is the way with Facebook, settings get changed and altered, and suddenly people seem to disappear from your online life and timeline. </div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Then Ian's posts mysteriously started appearing in my newsfeed after a long absence and I left a comment. Facebook algorithms mean that commenting again on friends' posts - friends you thought had disappeared into the digital ether - suddenly re-appear again with a new regularity. I must have had a promotion on for Fall Of The Flamingo Circus and seeing it, Ian mentioned in passing that he had a copy of it somewhere. I naturally thought he meant he'd bought a copy of the e-book and by 'somewhere' I took it to mean on a Kindle or iPad. Nothing unusual about that.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">But then a couple of weeks later a picture of the cover of the hardback copy of this book - only published in the US - appeared with a tag on my timeline from none other than Ian to say 'I knew I had a copy somewhere'.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The print-run was pretty small and I only have one copy left myself of the hardback edition in my collection (one of the complimentary copies I got when it was first published).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #151719; font-family: inherit;">This is </span><span style="caret-color: rgb(21, 23, 25); color: #151719; font-family: inherit;">how</span><span style="color: #151719; font-family: inherit;"> our conversation went: </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="text-align: start;"><span style="color: #151719;">Me: That's a really old copy </span><span style="color: #2b4386;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(43, 67, 134);">Ian</span></span></span><span style="color: #151719; text-align: start;">!</span><span style="color: #151719; text-align: start;"> I thought you meant you had an e-copy. That's the US hardback from 1990. Is that when you bought it or did you come across it later in a charity shop, lol? I only have one of this left myself though my mum may have got one somewhere. I do have a couple of the paperbacks still.</span></span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="text-align: start;"></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #151719; text-align: start;">Ian: </span><span style="color: #151719;">must have been 2nd hand bookshop Kate tis where I pick up most of my books unless its a rare music one I want..</span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 12pt;"></span><span style="color: #151719;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I think I brought it coz I liked the artwork and Flamingo's</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #151719;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(21, 23, 25);">Me: </span></span><span style="color: #151719;">So you did judge a book by its cover </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: black;">Ian </span><span style="color: #2b4386;">:)</span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #2b4386;">Ian:</span></span> <span style="color: #151719;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Hahaha sometimes - </span></span></span><span style="color: #151719;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">so its a rarity in hardback?
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #151719; text-align: start;">Me: Well there wasn't a big print run </span><span style="text-align: start;"><span style="text-decoration: none;">Ian</span><span style="color: #2b4386; text-decoration: none;"> </span></span><span style="color: #151719; text-align: start;">nor in the UK! But I guess a rare book by an unknown author ain't gonna make you rich, lol! Although that is my best known one </span></span><span style="color: #151719; font-family: "helvetica neue"; text-align: start;">:D</span><span style="text-align: start;"></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #151719; text-align: start;">Ian: yours is not the only book I've brought like that
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="text-align: start;">Me: </span><span style="color: #151719; text-align: start;">So I guess you must have picked it up years before we met on FB</span></span><span style="text-align: start;"></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #151719; text-align: start;">Ian: </span></span><span style="color: #151719;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">yeah I guess so Kate I do buy loads of books always pop into the bookshop in town</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #151719;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Then Ian shared the back of the book - same as my only hardback copy </span></span><span style="color: #151719;">obviously, except with a lot of added library information.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Then a bit later on the thread Ian said: <span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #151719;">I remember where I got it from now a library</span><span style="color: #151719;"> </span><span style="color: #151719;"> </span><span style="color: #151719;">in the US closed down and the 2nd handbook shop brought a container load of books and I had first pick for helping catalogue them.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #151719; font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Then he enclosed a photo of the </span>actual<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span>library<span style="font-family: inherit;"> ticket inside the book!</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">So Ian's copy of my book has been on rather a long journey and has a history. I love the fact that it's had an interesting journey and the fact that Ian was a Facebook friend <i>before </i>and not <i>because</i> of the book which makes it that bit more curious. In the first draft of this blog I mentioned I had no idea </span>what Ian felt about the bits between the covers and that I didn't ask! I said he'd probably long forgotten but that this tale was an extraordinary one in itself - to me, anyway. Ian put me straight on that too - he says he has a tea chest load of books he's not read yet! I know the feeling...<br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">So, do you have a 'synchronicity' story of your own? If so, I would love to hear from authors and readers alike!</span></div>
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Kate Jay-Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00949531996279399373noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1581599731153691087.post-33467594673766192892020-01-03T06:46:00.000-08:002020-01-04T08:25:49.761-08:002020 Goals<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Happy New Year to you all! 2020 certainly has a ring about it, if for no other reason than its description of normal vision! </span>For the last few years I have made myself some goals for the new year. Keeping on the vision theme, I suppose you could describe these as vision for the year ahead. I've found it's helpful to do that and to see how many I've achieved at the year's end. So here we go for this year!</div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"> </span><span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;">Writing</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"> 1) I really hope to finish the follow up to Down The Tubes this year.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"> 2) It would be nice to get on with another Little Guide seeing as it's nearly a decade since I had Little Guide To Unhip published. </span>I have been doing another one but maybe will do them as a blog for now. And talking of blogs, I do hope to do more blog posts than last year!</div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"> 3) I also think it would be great to bring out a collection of poems from Don’t Go Breaking Our Arts, our creative group for people with disabilities. I have thought this for years but I'm not very organised and so would to collaborate with other members and and also decide where to send any royalties - I wouldn’t expect many as these are soon offset by promotion costs etc</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"> 4) I hope to get another book out in paperback - this would now be one of the older ones now that have gone out of print, since all the ones previously unpublished are in paperback now.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"> 5) Begin the autobiography that's been brewing for a few years now and also to crack on with some more short stories/do something with my poems</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12px;"> I think this is way too ambitious seeing as my energy is very compromised but anything unachieved can be carried over to the next year (see below).</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"> </span><span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;">Health</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"> I want to continue trying to confirm or eliminate conditions that may be contributing to causing my many symptoms eg autoimmune illnesses like Sjrogrens Syndrome and Lupus. I recently had a positive result for ANA antibodies which can be a sign of an autoimmune illness such as the above or rheumatoid arthritis. These can often go hand in hand with Fibromyalgia and ME which I’m already diagnosed with. But the one thing I really want to get on top of is the debilitating hyperhidrosis. That on top of fatigue means I am semi housebound as the effort and the organisation to get out anywhere uses up too many spoons!</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"> I have several appointments lined up - one for physio next week. I also have a GP appointment to discuss the antibodies and I’m trying to get a referral to see a dermatologist or a rheumatologist since it is the experts who can look at specific trends and groups of symptoms rather than dealing with the general as GPs do. But the state of the NHS doesn’t bode well and my ME therapist did also say she could recommend some private specialists - I think this was to do with the menopause. That will have exacerbated a lot of pre-existing conditions. I don’t like the idea of private at all but I am quite desperate.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"> These tend to be related to the above and are about greater comfort. Better seating in the sitting room, is one such thing - indoor things and comfort becoming increasingly important the more I need to stay at home! Plus more storage for bedroom eg better drawers.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"> A little pod or something for the garden. The one below I saw last summer and like to dream about it ever so often!</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"> I hope to try and continue to support family members as best I can, as some of their needs are great or greater than mine. It is all a juggling act!</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"> Anything else will be a bonus.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"> Please do share your own new your goals or wish lists if you do them. Maybe you don't, or have given up on them by January the 2nd. I never used to bother myself, although I have had a to-do list for decades!</span></div>
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Kate Jay-Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00949531996279399373noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1581599731153691087.post-62975735428236986072019-12-19T08:55:00.001-08:002019-12-19T08:55:04.686-08:00This year's goals...mostly fulfilled!<div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-indent: 17.9px;">
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="text-indent: 17.9px;">That time of the year again. I reached a milestone age this last year and now it's December already and time to review whether I achieved the goals I listed at the beginning of the year. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I'm happy to say I finished the first and second draft of the follow up to Down The Tubes. I really hope to get it finished by next year!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">My second writing goal was to crack on with another Little Guide. I have made a lot of headway although it's a slow burner, something to fill in those little pockets of time on the go (when I remember!)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I didn't get round to updating my satirical anti-novel Lost The Plot but I did manage to get another novel into paperback. This was my first ever novel, now called Did You Whisper Back? which won a Southern Arts Bursary back in 1991 (after a major rewrite) and that's been out on Kindle for a number of years. It's an important story about one young woman's struggle with mental illness and it's set in the 1970s when the stigma was much greater even than today. I enjoyed designing the cover for it to match the subject matter and era.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">As I mentioned at the end of last year I was I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia ten years ago. I wanted further investigation into ME too as there is a large overlap between the two conditions and I got the official diagnosis this year. It was agreed for me to have a group of further sessions on activity management with a specialist and I have had one and a half so far. The half session had to be cut short due to the condition below.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I would still love to get on top of the hyperhidrosis which is worse in the cold weather, paradoxically. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; text-indent: 17.9px;">In my goals for last year I planned to try CBD oil, and Turmeric with Black Pepper for the above conditions, which may have not helped with this condition but I like to think they're helping in other ways. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">We got our bespoke book shelves and units in our sitting room (now filled with books!), we've had the upstairs s</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; text-indent: 17.9px;">hower removed to create more storage space and a shower installed over the bath downstairs. I do feel better when I have more storage space and clearing things out. But still plenty to be done.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I've not been able to return to drop in singing sometimes (because of ongoing health problems mentioned above). This is a cause for regret - but perhaps I can get someone to come to me instead.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Help my sister with a website for her art - not achieved! (But she needs to get some art ready for selling, even if only in card form).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Some of the unachieved will rollover to next year, no doubt, when I do next years's goals. I find it enormously helpful to do this - it gives a sense of achievement and shows you really are getting things done, even when it feels to the contrary. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">When I put up last years's goals, my good author friend Chantelle Atkins said we should also try and arrange for another meet up. I thought this would be a great idea although I wasn't too hopeful since going out anywhere, let alone travelling, is an uphill struggle. But I decided I'd really like to go to Mudeford and Christchurch on holiday and as this is nearby, we managed a meet up, yay! We had a great catch up and natter in our AirBnB in Christchurch. Now Chantelle's latest book is just out - yippee!</span><br />
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My favourite beach huts at Mudeford.</div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I don't seem to have kept up much with this blog this year, maybe that will be a goal for the new decade. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; text-indent: 17.9px;">I'd only realised the other day that yes, we're coming to the end of another decade! I </span><span style="text-indent: 17.9px;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">do try to keep this blog mainly about writing. The only other blog post I managed between the years's beginning and end was a political one, and the less said about all that the better. Onwards and upwards.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I wish you all a happy, healthy and creative new year and decade :)</span></div>
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Kate Jay-Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00949531996279399373noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1581599731153691087.post-50465966510463398042019-04-09T07:36:00.001-07:002019-04-09T07:36:50.073-07:00Notes From An Exasperated Remainer<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 4.5pt;">
<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(29, 33, 41);">I don't usually do political on this blog but recent events and being laid up in bed set off a kind of stream of consciousness outpouring...</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d2129;">It’s Brexit Day, not.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d2129;">We’re fracturing before our eyes. I listened ill in bed, while they popped up like meerkats in parliament, here’s Liz Kendall, shrill, the never ending Tory psychodrama, something like that, she says, and earlier in the week, parliament taking over, shall it be EFTA or Norway with knobs on or Canada without bells and whistles, and I’m getting confused, and I consider myself with enough brain cells left still, and maybe a confirmatory vote, because we’re not sure now quite what the will of the people is or was, because let’s face it all the crap about the billions of pounds for the nhs on the side of the Boris leave bus was a lie, and there was big fraud on that side, but we must respect the will of the people, even though we don’t know what the will of the people is, not now, the will isn’t static, there are 16 year olds now who weren’t old enough then but it is their future, and I’m sick of hearing about the will of the people because half the people voted against leaving, so what about their will? But the hard line Brexiteers or Brexiters want us to crash out of the EU without a deal and let’s have WTO, even though Kenneth Clarke says people really don’t know what WTO means and that this is only a default undesired option for countries who’ve not set up better deals or something like that, but there are the people outside waving their purple flags, Nigel’s UKIP flags or Brexit Party flags because they have been betrayed by parliament they say and worse, Tommy Robinson is across the square with his brand of populism and not in a very long time has parliament been on the precipice, as Theresa May tries to get her Withdrawal Agreement through for a third time, division, clear the lobby, John Bercow bellows and the numbers come back and the PMs deal has been defeated again, though with narrower margins even though she agreed to sacrifice her leadership if she could just get it through and even Jacob Rhys Mogg would backtrack on his previous stance if the DUP will too but the DUP say not on your Nellie or they may as well have said that because of the Irish backstop and the fears of a permanent customs union but they don’t want to be treated any different from the mainland UK, are you following so far, and the joke is that Theresa May fell on her own sword and missed, and very few Labour MPs were persuaded across to vote for the deal and they are right when they say the Prime Minister should have reached across the house at the start not at five to midnight to start discussions and so parliament have had to have indicative votes to suggest where to go next because none of the ideas got an overall majority although a people’s vote came close, and people keep asking about Corbyn and Labour’s stance and they are between a rock and a hard place because their membership - of which I am one - are divided as much as the country and those in the deindustrialised areas felt left behind and neglected by successive governments and Westminster and you can’t blame them and there were those Leavers who marched all the way from Sunderland and many in parliament square converged there on this day to celebrate but now they say how they feel betrayed and will never vote ever again, and it was all David Cameron’s fault for running scared of UKIP and putting party interests before what was best for the country and being complacent about the result, or thinking it through and making a huge miscalculation that cost him dearly and left everyone else to clean up his mess, but there’s been no clean up, just a bitter divisive country, which Theresa May inflamed by putting herself with the people against parliament on the steps of number 10 in an unprecedented statement and my MP left the Tory party to become a tigger, that is one of the independent group, who changed their name to<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><a href="https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2FChange.org%2F%3Ffbclid%3DIwAR0Hbs8LKHG2K5sHesgQHAo1vf95tjC2Nga2Rf0b7tJoaw91Z_QWlAyY7_g&h=AT1yLpM4XWjJIWYwzlBKPxxwd9UiGqRZQao5ZCZUfFPkaUQv8TYudI1xY8mBjrXMTtDp4BQyi-5XnJkxbA3r6KjVbXcpLB6DuTxCQubslqXYWsNycS87l1JZKN1K3iYxh6ZUumtUOtsdJefsLXMsD8K6ySmOkQ" style="color: #954f72;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #365899; text-decoration: none;">Change.org</span></a><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="color: #1d2129;"> </span></span><span style="color: #1d2129;">initially without realising that this is a big campaigning organisation and so now have changed to<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><a href="https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fchange.uk%2F%3Ffbclid%3DIwAR0OlcuuKwwCi9HIhMdkD5LBNvZrdD74hr0B4GV8kkPqzknjbJQaXrmF-KU&h=AT3K3_1pbm1Naz1ZFO4UHH9Tv6TrfnPXUZyTC5I1cxhSRC066eTfn61X7aiDBnRNQCDyCTfimb3B1wqtcWfamjikwVi6Vv8U6VqPJwD_2GzmROMxG-MMdgHNhOKAATAyw9GhIupnLrIDG0K3MHON6F2iAl68oA" style="color: #954f72;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #365899; text-decoration: none;">change.uk</span></a><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="color: #1d2129;"> </span></span><span style="color: #1d2129;">so more fragments and even more likelihood of a hung parliament next time round, which may be sooner than we think because of talk of a general election which Jeremy Corbyn would like, and I’ve not even started in Scotland yet who feel they’ve been sidelined, and if they don’t get a deal which keeps us close to Europe then they would be justified in having another independence referendum because they are outward looking and they welcome and rely on migrants, and the people who don’t want May’s deal are united against it for very different reasons, the hard line leavers say it’s worse than staying in the EU, and outside parliament all week it was the Pro Remainers with their blue starry European flags and roaring Stop Brexit and there was the petition to revoke article 50 which got 6 million votes or was that the call for a final people’s vote and businesses say we just want certainty and foods and valuable medicines from Europe may be in short supply or unobtainable altogether and the stockpiling has started<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d2129;">And slow forward a few days, well April fools day when there are more debates and I am still ill in bed listening and one MP is saying if people could look his way rather than elsewhere and there are titters and its quite clear that something’s going on in the balcony area, a demonstration has been referred to, and acknowledgement of the rights of people to demonstrate but they have to get on with the important business of the house but I can hear the cacophony in the house and crane up to see my iPad and see Ed Miliband glancing up every now and then to what must be the out of sight balcony, but it’s not until later when I google and see not the titters but the bums, looks like some sort of porno picture but no it’s extinction rebellion, they’ve superglued their arses to the glassed off area in the balcony in protest about the neglect of environmental issues being debated in parliament and slow forward again and the cabinet are locked in discussions for 7 hours or more and the upshot is OMG Theresa May has at last decided to reach across the house and have talks with Jeremy Corbyn and this is the final straw for the ERGers who thinks she’s committed treason for cavorting with the enemy even though she lost her majority and this is what civil countries do - ironically European countries! - where there are hung parliaments or more precisely coalitions, this is the way modern politics works, and isn’t this the whole point? We need to change the way we do things here if democracy is to survive and get up to date and be fit for the twenty first century, but people are saying it’s a trap for Corbyn, and he should keep his hands off Brexit because he could be blamed if it all goes belly up, and then there was the sewage leak onto the chamber where MPs were debating, you could hear the gush of water and you could not make it up<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d2129;">Kate Jay R © April 2019<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Kate Jay-Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00949531996279399373noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1581599731153691087.post-62098301287255504332019-01-04T06:50:00.002-08:002019-01-04T06:50:47.854-08:00Goals for 2019<div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-indent: 17.9px;">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="text-indent: 17.9px;">A fresh new year is a great time to start anew or to make yourself some goals for the year ahead </span><span style="text-indent: 17.9px;">and this year is especially important as I'll be reaching a milestone age whether I like it or not! But </span><span style="text-indent: 17.9px;">I've been doing my year's goals for the last few years now, and for the last year or two I decided to include them in my blog - the writing goals at least. It's a good exercise in taking stock and reviewing what is important, as well as seeing which goals have slipped down the list or off it altogether! This may be due to lack of time or energy or interest. But that is life. Ideas evolve, things on the back burner move to the front one and vice versa, </span><span style="text-indent: 17.9px;">while others still are taken off the ring for the foreseeable. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><u><br /></u><span style="text-indent: 17.9px;">Last year I made a lot of progress with my follow up to Down The Tubes. My last word count showed my work in progress to be just shy of 50,000 words which is the usual length of my books! However I've not finished the first draft yet. I've not been writing quickly, just steadily, and not rushing at it. But it's the research that's been slowing me down. It always seems as if I'm not doing anything while I'm researching. There's nothing tangible to show for it, as I collect reams of facts or images or immerse myself in a subject area, even though I'll only be using a fraction of it. But that immersion is important. So this is my first writing goal. To make good progress with Down The Tubes. Preferably finishing the first draft which I think is achievable. The second and subsequent drafts should be a lot easier.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">My second writing goal is to make progress with another Little Guide. I have already started elaborating on the ideas but progress is very slow, in part, due to long term health problems (see below).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">My third writing goal is to update my satirical anti-novel Lost The Plot and to get another couple of books into paperback. I'm never sure though whether all the time and effort putting an e-book into paperback is worth it since I don't sell paperbacks at all. They're nice to have and hold, and to give us gifts. But I guess many people won't take the chance on an unknown writer - not for the price of a paperback in comparison to an e-book. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; text-indent: 17.9px;">Finally, I shall still try one or two traditional publishers or small presses. I think we all like that vote of confidence and self-belief that publishing affords, and yet at the same time I do like being in control of my own</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; text-indent: 17.9px;"> products.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Nearly ten years ago I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia. But the symptoms are so similar to overlapping conditions, especially ME. In fact, many people with FM also have ME. The ME specialists in my neck of the woods are good with ME and treat it a neurological condition so I would like to be referred to a specialist. I did a free 30 minute phone consultation with the ME Association and my symptoms are very consistent with ME. I'm not sure how this will help in the treatment stakes but at least they will do a batch of tests to rule out other conditions (I hope). Some of these I have had to do myself. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I would love to get on top of my other conditions, the worst being Hyperhidrosis. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Because of the above, I feel I need more input from an enabler, especially with practical help. We (my sister and I) have some very welcome help in the form of transport but other practical help would be welcome too. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">This also relates to my resolve to practise assertiveness and not to be coerced into or expected to do things that make me feel distressed, in pain and fatigued and also not to feel guilty. I did go on assertiveness course many years ago and in a recent situation where I was expected to do something I couldn't, I just ignored it. I can't change others behaviour but I don't have to engage with it. So I am going to draw on that very rusty advice in future! </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">To try CBD oil, Turmeric with Black Pepper, and Melatonin. But I have to do these methodically and one at a time to know of there are any benefits.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Making better use of the space in our sitting room, particularly book shelves and units. Need to get something bespoke.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Also possible shower removal and have a shower over the bath. The removal of the shower can then give me a larger bedroom because as it is I have very little room for manoeuvre.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I would love be able to get back to drop in singing sometimes (but this will depend on getting on top of certain health problems)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Help my sister with a website (this is one of those goals which keeps getting postponed but I need my sister to have something to put on her website first! She has the original art but she needs to get some cards or smaller copies of her work.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Well, not sure all these are achievable and as always they will probably evolve during the course of the year but hey, c'est la vie.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Happy New Year!</span></div>
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Kate Jay-Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00949531996279399373noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1581599731153691087.post-548655394688911652018-12-11T06:52:00.000-08:002018-12-11T08:05:20.563-08:00That Time Of Year Again!Yes, December has come round again and it's that time of year to evaluate what I've achieved this year!<br />
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One of my first goals for this year was to do more writing. I have tried to stick to that where I can, without getting too distracted by social media but it has been a struggle sometimes. But at the last count I had almost reached 50 thousand words with my follow up to Down The Tubes. As I only begun it last October I am quite pleased with this. Like knitting rows, the lines grow, slowly and surely into a shape. Well, I'm hoping it's a shape. But the first draft is the hardest, the shaping and polishing of the second and subsequent drafts is the really enjoyable part.<br />
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I also resolved to put another two books back into print. The ones that seemed most likely at the beginning of the year were <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Did-You-Whisper-Back-disturbing-ebook/dp/B0077E2M26">Did You Whisper Back?</a> and <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Suckers-Scallies-gritty-plenty-Scouse-ebook/dp/B004WTARYY">Suckers n Scallies</a>.<br />
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But in fact it turned out to be <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Thalidomide-Kid-Kate-Rigby/dp/1719306621/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=">Thalidomide Kid</a><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYE531dTk4Lqmdo0T_2NZvChKywxwu8YllLSUCvf8g_4T1U4IQ63vfqoYrBgXEQNeY3jAp7UjCEjtvzwJEb8RBgj9dKTV45t3ropDV6_k5hMi5oJWihZ4sbezaAPjRqwXIp3E2ziC1OQ/s1600/**thalidomide-kid%25282018%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1125" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYE531dTk4Lqmdo0T_2NZvChKywxwu8YllLSUCvf8g_4T1U4IQ63vfqoYrBgXEQNeY3jAp7UjCEjtvzwJEb8RBgj9dKTV45t3ropDV6_k5hMi5oJWihZ4sbezaAPjRqwXIp3E2ziC1OQ/s320/**thalidomide-kid%25282018%2529.jpg" width="225" /></a></div>
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And <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Other-Side-Carrie-Cornish-neighbour/dp/1731498926/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1544538973&sr=1-1">The Other Side Of Carrie Cornish</a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1XDKqXJrrFUC6iLYP3vtReP2_0HVSdzOajmlf_XE0f7kfMf_-KiriYHydPGfVmHrjM2mpZ1sE_t-t_IlEbATLrpea1cyjXutFBk49_4s5t1ZDyfWm2PTiaEP3b6sIPC9Hx1VslkRY0g/s1600/carrie-cornish%2528e-book%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1060" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1XDKqXJrrFUC6iLYP3vtReP2_0HVSdzOajmlf_XE0f7kfMf_-KiriYHydPGfVmHrjM2mpZ1sE_t-t_IlEbATLrpea1cyjXutFBk49_4s5t1ZDyfWm2PTiaEP3b6sIPC9Hx1VslkRY0g/s320/carrie-cornish%2528e-book%2529.jpg" width="211" /></a></div>
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I also wanted to begin another Little Guide type of book and I am pleased to say that I've at least started jotting down some notes for this. </div>
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These were my main writing goals. I had reading goals (books to be read) and I have managed to read and review most of those I'd set myself to read this year. The other goals were non-writing ones but we also managed to have our garden decking replaced by paving! This had been on the cards for ages so we're really pleased to get it done and have it admired by several neighbours! And the great thing about it is, the rain really brings out the colours of the stones as you can see.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizpkzOjnyDVwjwvS_KW2X4hGJfZiePRObCTk3RhSIj1B-3NZDy5oabC5pLq0XaAtM4ULtQHQrWJiF7Sulh8DryHyqOLDRrcsmZXdqgbKjwVaF8HHRGkNTaBpNlsupbGYtT_IY6LByXPA/s1600/wet-patio4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizpkzOjnyDVwjwvS_KW2X4hGJfZiePRObCTk3RhSIj1B-3NZDy5oabC5pLq0XaAtM4ULtQHQrWJiF7Sulh8DryHyqOLDRrcsmZXdqgbKjwVaF8HHRGkNTaBpNlsupbGYtT_IY6LByXPA/s320/wet-patio4.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
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Well, I hope you've all had a good 2018 and managed to fulfil your goals and chase your dreams. I try not to make too many at the beginning of a year so they are manageable and achievable. It will soon be time to make those for 2019 so I better remember that!</div>
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Anyway, that just leaves me to wish you all a merry festive season and a big thank you to new readers and reviewers who have read and enjoyed my books, and supported me through out the year. It means so much and makes all the difference.</div>
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A happy new year to one and all X</div>
<br />Kate Jay-Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00949531996279399373noreply@blogger.com0