Making Blue-Arsed Flies Look Positively Relaxed And Untrammeled

I thought I had better pop in and apologise for my lack of bloggage and Twittering. I am up to my raspberries in things at the moment so have very little spare time to blog and Tweet as much as I'd like. Here's a wee run down of what's keeping me from you all -

I have my "Writing For Film" class tonight for which I've had to do more work on my film premise as well as lots of reading - our tutor hands out copious notes!

I have a full dress rehearsal for "PUSH", the dance performance I'm involved in, for a big chunk of Thursday.

The performances of "PUSH" are on Friday and Saturday.

I have homework for my "We Are All Human Beings Just At Different Stages In Our Lives" theatre class where I have to perform a 3 minute piece on the subject of "When I Grow Up".

I am knitting! Yes, I know, but it's helping me to relax and focus.

I am also trying to finish reading "A Clash Of Kings" by George R. R. Martin as I have 2 other books to read from the library that need to go back soon.

Plus all the other stuff of life such as feeding the clan, walking the dog and generally keeping on top of things while making sure I'm rested and have the energy so I don't run the risk of an ME or Fibromyalgia flare-up. And I did an interview for the local evening paper about my efforts at dancing with my daughter!

I promise, what passes for normal service will be resumed sometime early next week but until then please remember that I do care about you all and am checking in to Twitter and my blog list where I can to make sure you are all fine. Much love xxx

I'm Hearing Voices Final Day - Emotion Flash Fiction

I’ve had a great week writing these pieces for the blogfest and it’s been great discovering new people and their amazing blogs. Many thanks to all of you and especially Angela and Emily for this great idea. I’m looking forward to April and the A to Z Challenge.

Today - Emotion is the engine of a story. Pick an emotion and in a flash fiction piece of 250 words MAKE us feel it! We want to connect with your character. This will be a challenge in 250 words. Here goes –

(Kit Huntly is a marine biologist doing research into the decline in seal populations due to climate change and melting ice floes. She had a brief fling with Ben Townsend, a research volunteer and had a child by him, which he returned for and abducted. With the help of her midwife Finn and local hermit and mythology expert Eddy, she has ascertained that Ben may be a Selkie and has gone to the high tide to cry seven tears into the waves in the vain hope of calling him back and confronting him. In my fantasy cast, I'd have the lovely Emilia Clarke from "Game Of Thrones" as my Kit.)
Kit: Seven tears? Seven tears, you bastard – I’ve cried at least seven thousand since you stole my baby away. Finn and Eddy, they say this should bring you back. Just so you know, you heartless creep, I don’t want YOU back, just my wee baby. It’s like history repeating itself. I told you how my mum fell in love with a fisherman, how he was lost to her, what that did to her. And to me. How she gave me this fear of the sea, how standing here with the waves lapping round my knees and feeling an undertow makes me want to run screaming back to shore. But I have to stand firm here, I have to BELIEVE. Believe that some part of you loved me, that you at least have the decency and honour to come to me and explain to me why. Why you took my child and what it will take for you to bring her back to me. Shit (rubs eyes) why won’t the tears come? Will you come? For goodness sake, I’m a bloody scientist, the only marine biologist with a fear of the sea. But I’m drawn to it, like I was drawn to you. And now, I’m freezing my arse off on the say-so of a woman who thinks she’s a fish and a man who claims to have fairy blood. Please, Ben, if that is your name, please bring her back. Please.

I’m Hearing Voices Day 2 - Dialogue Introduction

(Much shuffling, squirming and mutterings under breath)

Finn: Sit up straight.
Eddy: I AM sitting up straight.
Finn: Shall I begin?
Eddy: It sounds like you already have (under breath) bossy heifer.
Finn: I heard that! Anyway, sorry dear people. This malcontent to my left is Eddy Annis, also known around these parts as Howie the Trowie…
Eddy (loudly): I have told you before, woman, Trowie is what I AM. That’s akin to me introducing you as Worse the Nurse.
Finn (glares): As I was saying, Eddy here is a hermit who mostly keeps himself to himself…
Eddy : Away from interfering busybodies like you.
Finn (ignoring him): But he has excellent local knowledge and is very useful when he likes. Which isn’t very often.
Eddy: This baggage is Finn the local midwife. Or maybe…a FINWIFE!
Finn gasps then slugs Eddy, knocking him off of his seat.
Eddy: Ouch.
Finn: You deserved that, fairyboy. I delivered Kit’s baby.
Eddy: And look how THAT turned out! But that’s the NHS for you.
Finn: Well, we have to try to make it right.
Eddy: We won’t do that talking to these mundanes. I’m off.
Finn: He’s right. Sorry. Cheerio, my dears

I see Finn and Eddy as being slightly comic like C3PO and R2D2, fitting in with pitch of this screenplay as “STAR WARS…with flippers”! They started out as quite distinct and separate characters, merely fulfilling their roles – Finn as a local wise woman who nurses our protagonist Kit (who you will meet on Friday, I promise) through her pregnancy and childbirth and Eddy as a man with local knowledge who helps Kit with her search – and then moving on but they seem to have, albeit grudgingly, latched onto each other and become more involved in the story, sticking close to Kit and Ben. And if I can have Benedict Cumberbatch as Ben, I’ll aim high and have them played by the wonderful Ruth Jones and Peter Dinklage.

When I Grow Up…

This was a question/ phrase posed and used at my drama group the other night. As our production is inter-generational with participants ranging in age from 9 to 57 you can imagine we gave a lot of differing, fascinating and insightful answers. I was my usual flippant self – first using a line from an old advert “When I grow up my mother say I’m going to be a proper little madam” then I expressed the desire”...that I’ll be in an old folks’ home where they play The Clash and The Sex Pistols”. But obviously it has got me thinking, not so much about what I’ll do when I grow up but if I have actually done so yet.
I mean, I’ve done a lot of grown-up things. When I was a young teenager living at home in some respects I had to grow up fast with two brawling parents who often had to be pulled apart while my brothers cried for them to stop and specifically a father who had a heart condition that I had to phone the ambulance for and a mother with bi-polar depression who I had to check into a psychiatric hospital. These sorts of events are hard on a child and should never be visited upon anyone but, as I always say, c’est la vie. I was actually considering when I was about 14 or 15 (the age my daughter is now) in asking Social Work how I would go about emancipating or divorcing myself from them and raising my brothers alone but I never did. When I left home aged 19 I reckon I thought I was pretty grown up but then had to scuttle back with my tail between my legs when I found out my flatmate had been using my rent money to buy drugs and we were facing eviction!
I suppose having a baby even at the ripe old age of 29 was a grown up thing to do – I remember standing with Gee over Vee’s Moses basket after the midwife had left us after my home birth and thinking “What the hell do we do now?” Gee and I tried the “grown-up” thing for a wee while – we got a mortgage, both had full-time jobs, went on fancy holidays etc. but as I have said before it damn near put paid to us.
I don’t feel “grown up” – I’m fast approaching 45 and I still feel like a young lassie in my heart even if I have the body of a very old and decrepit woman, although I am taking steps to change that, fingers tightly crossed. I like to do daft things, can still be reckless and crazy and find more in common with my teenage daughter than women of my own age with the exception of my best mate who is as looney as I am.
However, I have found myself doing what I consider to be “grown up things” again – nothing as drastic as I did in my 30s but still things that seem very mature to me and have me thinking I’m heading into my declining years. For example, I went on a mad tidying and organising spree and now, instead of a piece of furniture full of the crap and detritus of our lives, I have a sideboard with all of our crockery and dishes (minus coffee and tea mugs and breakfast plates) and, wait for it, A CUTLERY DRAWER. Gee and I have only been living together for 25 years but finally, in 2012, I have managed a place for matching knives, forks and spoons in a red velvet lined tray and not in a random drawer in the kitchen with a lot of mismatched and broken pieces. That somehow makes me feel quite mature in a really strange way. I mean, nobody cares except for me. If I had the wherewithal I’d have everything in wee boxes and compartments that you see in the Lakeland shops – Gee and Vee find it hilarious that I organise our CDs and DVDs in alphabetical order.
For some mad reason probably stemming from my mother’s mother, who was a mini-matriarch in one of those wrap around dress-like aprons, if I don my apron and really get cleaning, I do feel a bit grown up then too. As you can imagine, the 3 bedroomed house of a woman with my recent health record and ailments is basically a dump. Little by little I am managing to win small victories over dirt and dust. It was the kitchen’s turn at the weekend there. I don’t think I have cleaned our fridge freezer since we got it and I took a perverse delight in clearing it all out and attacking it with cream cleaner and ammonia. At the moment it’s still all clean and fresh looking and I’m garnering the courage now to have Gee pull out the cooker and the washing machine – I’ll probably find a lost tribe down there if not a whole new species that has evolved from our detritus.
I think feeling old is different from feeling grown up. I mean, it strikes me with a thundering regularity that Vee is 15 and after the summer is starting her 5th year of high school. I passed by her old primary school today and it seemed like mere moments ago that she was there. Last night she posed the question to us “What are we doing for my 16th birthday?” (she likes to plan ahead) and quick as a flash Gee retorted “Flat hunting”!
I reckon when you grow up is down to you - I find it hard to reconcile making soup and grocery shopping for the week or having a lobby press (Scottish phrase meaning a cupboard where you store towels and linens) where everything doesn’t fall out on you every time you go in for a tea-towel with me making up stories about Highland mythological creatures engaged in battle. I think the science-fiction writer Ursula K. Le Guin put it best when she wrote, “The creative adult is the child who survived”. Not only has my inner child survived, she needs to feel safe because of all the shit she had to go through when she had to stop being a child and be strong and brave. So in a funny way, maybe I am now parenting my own inner child and likewise being protected and comforted by the mother I never had and the best mother for me – myself. And she is happy to let that wee girl take her own sweet time to grow up, if she ever grows up at all x

I'm Hearing Voices Blogfest: Characters On The Couch

I'm Hearing Voices is an awesome blogfest hosted by Cassie Mae at Reading, Writing, and Lovin' it! and Angie at Live to Write...Edit when Necessary. I saw it via Amlokiblogs’s blog – Writing on Writing (links in my blog list).

This blogfest is a series of writing exercises we have to post on the 6th, 8th and 10th of February, and I decided to join in!

This is what the hosts want us to do today, the 6th of February:

Have one of your characters answer the following questions (to make this work to your benefit, choose a character who is the hardest for you to write :) Max 250 words (Not including the questions—only the answers).

(I have chosen the romantic interest/antagonist from the film premise I am currently writing for my evening class. His name is Ben Townsend and he is a volunteer field reseacher on a seal monitoring project in Orkney. In my mind's eye he currently looks a bit like Bernard Cummerbund here from "Sherlock" and "War Horse".)
1. What is your biggest vulnerability? Do others know this or is it a secret?
Definitely that I am not a human man at all but a Selkie. I am a shape changer who can slough off his sealskin and walk among you. Keep that to yourself, OK?
2. What do people believe about you that is false?
That I am a mild-mannered student from St. Andrew's University. I’m also on a mission but my motives aren’t as they appear.
3. What would your best friend say is your fatal flaw? Why?
I don’t have the luxury of a best friend as I am cut off from my kind. Flaws – maybe all the lies I tell (ssshhh!).
4. What would the same friend say is your one redeeming quality? Why?
I don’t want to be redeemed. Just avenged.
5. What do you want most? What will you do to get it?
A baby. Then revenge. Just you watch me.

A Message to You Rudi

My best mates Phil and Dougie's dear greyhound Rudi died yesterday. Dougie's mum and dad were looking after him while they were at a party. Rudi managed to get out of their house and headed for home. He was hit by a car and was so severely injured that he was let go to the forever sleep. Phil and Dougie came home this morning to the sad news and phoned us. We've been up to see them and naturally they are distraught.
They took on Rudi from the Greyhound Awareness League (GAL) last autumn. Rudi was in a helluva state when they got him - he had been raced in Ireland for 3 years and he was very thin. He was being treated for mange, his skin was broken and sore and he had patches of fur missing and to add insult to injury he had his nads off the day Dougie picked him up. Phil and Dougie worked hard on him, fattening him up, having his ailments treated and most of all loving him. Pretty soon he was a handsome boy with his soft grey coat and lean muscles. He was a terrible thief, stealing bread from the bread bin and swiping unattended sandwiches when you turned your back for a split-second. Every time he came to our house, he would head straight for the kitchen and check out the worktops, which he was tall enough to reach, for any freebies. He and our dog Roxie had a grudging relationship - she resented a little that she wasn't Dougie's number one doggy pal but they worked it out. When he visited here, she would acknowledge him then go off up to our bed in the huff while Rudi either lay on her bed or stretched out on the couch. We had to put her sheepskin rug away as he tried to eat it once and also her toys were packed away as he liked her orange hippo a bit too much. Phil and Dougie had a coat for him and pyjamas - I think if they sould have got away with it they would have dressed him up for Hallowe'en, Xmas and Easter. He was a big silly sap who would lean into you for an ear scratch and never passed up on a biscuit. His silent but deadly farts should have been outlawed under the Geneva Convention.
It's not fucking right and it's not fucking fair. Sometimes the Universe is a bastard and today is an example. The world is a wee bit lighter without him but feels so very much heavier.
Goodbye Streetch - run after those rabbits xxx

Walk Hard!

I sit typing this post wearing a big woolly jumper and legwarmers – flushed with the success of World War Z, Glasgow now seems to be vying for films like Ice Station Zebra or The Day After Tomorrow. In short, it’s fucking freezing – our wee thermometer currently reads 1C, which is small improvement on the –3C it was this morning.
I’m also sore for the first time in ages – my back is aching and I have Fibro flare-ups all over my wee fat body. And this is allthanks to my bloody “Health Walk” yesterday.
As you may know if you follow this blog closely, as part of my new fitness regime I had started going to organised walks around my local park in addition to my twice-daily walking of our dog. I went along yesterday as usual with Roxie dog in tow (my fitness instructor Kevin said it was fine to take her along and she has come with me the two times before). I should have suspected something was up when I arrived there and no one was waiting at our meet-up point. I discovered that they were inside the office of the children’s farm having a meeting with the walks co-ordinator – they smuggled Rox and I in but the meeting was over and we headed out. There wasn’t the usual dividing up of us into 3 groups – Slow, Moderate and Faster - and folk just seemed to head off. I had wanted to ask about joining the Faster group this week as I had been with the Moderate one the two times before and found it a bit slow, plus I had been walking further and more quickly on my own so wanted to push myself. I shouted to the group leader if it was OK to join them and got a yes. I need to say here that with the agreement of the walk leaders I have been walking with Rox off of the lead – she normally walks round with me quite the thing like that – and they were OK with it.
However, I soon realised my mistake – the main faster walkers sped off at a helluva pace along with the group leader and Rox and I were soon left behind. I hadn’t any inkling that this was almost a race standard group – these walks are advertised as being for older or disabled/ recovering people like me to get their fitness back. Even the 2 older women in their wool coats were speeding on. By the time I had huffed and puffed trying to keep up even with them, the front pack were over the other side of the hill and out of sight. The group leader must at some point realised I was away back and stopped to let me catch up. We saw the moderate group coming towards us and I said I would join them as they passed. However, for some reason Rox had run on ahead and joined the super-fast walkers. When I realised this, I stopped as I always do and called on her to come back to me but she was too far ahead. I called and called, even offering her biscuits, which always worked before but to no avail (“Fenton, Fenton” went through my mind!). I eventually caught up with her on the other far side of the park. By this time I was exhausted and in pain. She knew she was in trouble as she sat down as I approached and wouldn’t come to me. I got her on the lead, told the group leader I was going home and left. As I limped home, I was raging with anger, not just at the dog (who in 4 years has never behaved like this) but also at the group leader and the other walkers.
When I did get in, I admit I shouted at and smacked the dog – I don’t feel good about that but I was red misting. Fortunately Gee stepped in before I lost it. I phoned the walk co-ordinator (who was at the meeting before the walk). I expressed my anger and frustration that the pace was miles faster than the moderate group and that the group leader had not kept an eye out for me. I also told her that I would not be returning. She took on board my comments – I did agree that the dog should strictly speaking have been on a lead but it hadn't been a problem before.
The questions I still have –
· Surely the group leader should have walked at the pace of the slowest walker? That happened in the slower groups.
· Surely he should at least have noticed I was keeping up well before he did?
· What are competitive-standard walkers doing walking in this group at all? There are other groups for that.
· Why did my dog run off with them? Did they entice her?
· When it was clear my dog was ahead of me why didn’t someone stop or send her back to me? They must have heard me calling and calling her.

I know you can never expect for other people to think as you do but in my experience if a dog is separated from its owner, folk usually stop and try to reunite you. It took another dog-walker to alert me to where she was.
I am feeling really, really scunnered. I was feeling so buoyant yesterday morning, glad that I seemed to be losing weight and gaining more stamina. I went to my writing class last night with a knee support on my right leg. Fortunately that was a good class so I was glad I went but today I am a lot of pain. Rox is in the doghouse – I was all for taking her back to the rescue centre yesterday. I have lost confidence in my pal and she is wary of me. I did go on a walk with Gee and her this morning – he had her on the training lead we had when we first got her (she was on the lead for the whole walk) and we are taking steps to re-integrate her back into the pack by taking her back to basics so hopefully that will work. I was seriously discouraged but am determined to keep up with my attempts to lose weight and become fitter. I will walk as I have done and when my fitness coach as why I dropped out of the walks, be sure I will tell him! I am hoping I am fit for my theatre group tomorrow night _ I don’t want to miss that. I’m going to take it easy over the weekend and I had planned anyway to switch to the Thursday circuits class anyway next week as I also have another dance rehearsal then. I want to bounce back from it but right now I don’t feel very bouncy. Damn xxx

PS – My tutor wanted to workshop a film premise last night and I was the only one who volunteered. So my wee idea of a film based on Orcadian legends got quite a good reception and I have been working on that today so at least something good came out of yesterday!