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Welcome to my Jottings - a place for random thoughts about this, that, and anything else that catches my attention. Come in, sit down, and make yourself at home. What would you like - tea, coffee, cake? And if you have a blog of your own, don't forget to leave the address in the comments so I can return the visit. |
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No, of course I didn’t forget our wedding anniversary. Yes, I did have to do a quick bit of mental arithmetic to work out what number it was! But who’s counting? The important thing is that we’re still together – and still want to be. The secret of a happy marriage? I don’t consider myself an expert, but I’m sure tolerance and not having unrealistic expectations of the other person play a big part. Here’s a slightly edited version of a post I wrote on the subject for my old blog. It’s still true today. Opposites attractWhen I first tried to get a story published in a women’s magazine, my husband was completely supportive. Good idea! Why not? Yes, go for it! So I did. And when the rejections arrived he was very encouraging. Never mind, don’t give up. Send it to someone else. And when I received my first acceptance he seemed as pleased as me. Well done! I knew you could do it! But when that first story appeared in print I was puzzled by his non-reaction. He glanced at my name in the magazine when I pointed it out, but made no attempt to read the story. I was a bit disappointed but assumed he would read it later when he had time to give it his full attention. I left the magazine on the coffee table and waited … and waited … The same thing happened with my next published story, and the next. He was enthusiastic enough about me writing, but clearly wasn’t interested in reading the finished product. I began to suspect he had secretly read some of my work and didn’t think it was any good. Was he keeping quiet to spare my feelings? The penny finally dropped one evening when he came home from work and started telling me how he’d solved a problem with some sub-standard concrete. (He was a materials engineer in road construction.) Gosh, that was clever of you! How fascinating! I did listen to what he was saying, and tried to nod in the right places, but he might as well have been speaking double Dutch with a bit of Chinese thrown in. It was only then that I understood he had the same problem with my writing. He knew it was important to me, so tried to take an interest, but he rarely read fiction of any kind and the world of women’s magazines was completely alien to him. If a magazine accepted one of my stories that proved it was good, didn’t it? There was nothing else he could say. When he – very reluctantly – retired, I wondered what he would do all day. Would he expect me to retire too, and spend all my time with him? What on earth would we find to talk about? I needn’t have worried. Although we’re both at home all day, we still ‘go to work’ separately, and when we meet up we have plenty to discuss. I tell him how my writing or art is progressing, and he explains how he helped a friend with their computer problem or spent all afternoon tinkering with his beloved sports car. He does know more about writing now (he’s even read some of my stories!) and I’ve learnt at least the basics of how computer viruses and car engines work, but the main thing we have in common is that we’re both happy knowing the other person is happy doing their own thing. Which is probably why we’ve made it through another year. Are you and your significant other like peas in a pod, or as different as chalk and cheese?
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 Have you ever learned poetry by heart? Was it a pleasure, or a pain?  A very belated Happy New Year to you! Yes, I know I should have posted this nearly a whole month ago but I’ve had lots of other demands on my time - mostly good, exciting things I’m happy to report. In the real world, husband and I have been busy ticking off items on our ideal home and garden wish list. So far we’ve got a lovely, new kitchen, have redecorated some of the other rooms, put lots of shelves in the garage for ‘his’ workshop, added a small greenhouse and shed to ‘my’ back garden, and re-designed the front garden. Still lots to do but we aren’t giving ourselves any deadlines. It hasn’t been all work. We’ve also allowed ourselves plenty of days off to explore some of the towns, villages and beautiful countryside in this part of the world. In my writing life, I decided to have a go at NaNoWriMo in November after giving it a miss for the past three years. As expected, I didn’t manage anything near the magic 50,000 words target but I did end up with some interesting new characters and a very rough outline of a story that might have the makings of a novella, so I’m hoping it wasn’t a completely wasted month of frantically scribbling nonsense. 2018 ended on an encouraging note with one of my short stories being long-listed for the Bedford Writing Competition. It’s one I’m particularly fond of so I gave it a few little tweaks and sent it straight off to another competition. Fingers crossed again! I’ve also dusted off an abandoned children’s novel, decided it’s not all as bad as I thought, and have nearly finished a revised first draft. It still needs some ruthless editing before I even think of showing it to anyone, but I’m quietly pleased with it – so far. And this year? Lots of things I would like to do but my only firm New Year resolution is not to have an impossibly long to-do list. It's too stressful! Instead, I’ve adopted a new motto: Let’s just see what happens, shall we? 2017 was mostly a year of taking one step forward and two back.
It began optimistically enough with my husband and I deciding to move house. It was something we’d been thinking about for a while. Every time we visited family in Lancashire we fantasized about living there permanently, but we were reluctant to leave our home in Cambridgeshire because it was close to our daughter and son-in-law. Then daughter and son-in-law announced they were going to move – to Canada. It was certainly a surprise, but we soon saw a bright side. They were planning to start a new chapter of their lives – and so could we. We put our house up for sale, found a buyer, and made an offer on a house in Lancashire that had everything on our wish list. A couple of months later, when we were about to agree a completion date, our buyer pulled out of the deal. Aargh! We put our house back on the market and received another offer for it. Everything seemed to be going smoothly – until the new would-be buyers also changed their minds! We put the house up for sale again, but it was autumn by then and the market had slowed down. We had some viewings but nobody was buying. The Lancashire house we wanted was also put back on the market. Two days before Christmas, when we were resigned to nothing else happening until well into the New Year, we had a call from our estate agent. Could we do a viewing? That viewer became our third prospective buyer. The not-so-good news was that the house we’d wanted had been sold to someone else. Fast forward to today … We’ve found another house to buy (which is even better than the one we lost) and have almost finished going through the whole conveyancing process again. Trying not to get too excited, but we are cautiously saying ‘when we move’ instead of ‘if we ever move’. I don’t think I’ll really believe it though until I have a new door key clutched tightly in my hand! And my writing? Some of you may remember that part of my prize for winning a short story competition run by Alfie Dog Fiction was an offer from them to publish a collection of stories if I could produce enough, of an acceptable quality, to fill a book. It was a very big IF, and much harder than I expected, but I’m very pleased to report I’ve finally done it! My collection is now being expertly prepared for publication. Watch this space … |
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