Chance

Last night (nothing interesting on telly) I got into a discussion with Ian, my husband, about how the important things in life often happen by chance. One different decision and your whole life could be totally different for ever! Thinking of this set us off on all the 'What if's...?' and we inevitably got round to, 'What if you or I hadn't done this or that? We'd never have met.'

In the early-seventies Ian was living on a kibbutz on the Sea of Galilee and he decided to return to the UK. He didn't know whereabouts in the UK to choose so he closed his eyes and stuck a pin in a map. Leeds it was - and me he met. (It's a good job the pin didn't land in the middle of the North Sea!).

We almost met a few years earlier than we did. I answered an advert in the paper for a bedsit to let in a large house, not knowing that my future husband was living in the bedsit next door. I came along to view it. However, I decided instead to get a bedsit nearer a main road as I didn't fancy walking home alone at nights down a long, dark, lonely road. It was the time of the Yorkshire Ripper, and I couldn't afford taxis.

Anyway, what's all this to do with writing, you might ask. After all, this blog is supposed to be something to do with writing. Well, certainly in writing fiction we have to decide whether or not chance encounters seem realistic enough to include. Often not, I suppose, as life is definitely stranger than fiction (although Charlotte Bronte got away with some whopping coincidences). We do have to keep asking 'What if?' when writing, and this is a good basis for letting our imagination soar.

I don't do much forward planning before starting to write a novel. Maybe I should, but I don't. In my novel-in-progress I'm about to have a young woman closing her eyes and sticking a pin in a map to decide where to live. Now I wonder where the pin will land and what adventures will it lead her into?

Blog Award

Many thanks to Miriam who has given me this lovely Blog Award.

I've now got to list five fascinating things about myself. Well, here goes:

(1) I have just got my freedom bus pass, having reached my Big Birthday.

(2) I'm finding it hard to believe that I have just got my freedom bus pass, having reached my Big Birthday.

(3) I was happy when my husband cooked me a lovely meal yesterday.

(4) I was not happy to find a caterpillar in above meal.

(5) I love writing, reading, chocolate and my husband (not necessarily in that order).

And now I'm supposed to pass the award to five bloggers who deserve to receive it. There are lots of deserving bloggers out there. I'm spoilt for choice. I'll have to give this more thought later.

Valentine's Day

Ian and I have decided that we're going to have some good, old-fashioned, together-time this evening. Well, it is Valentine's Day. This evening at a time not yet decided we're going to turn off our computers, open the bottle of wine I was given after my recent talk at Horsforth Library (organisers of library talks seem to know I like wine), and we're going to eat cheese & crackers with it (vegan cheese for Ian, of course), dim the lights, put on some romantic music, and . . .

At one time that might have been just a normal evening for us, but a 'normal' evening has become something quite different - for which I blame computers. In our living room we have a desk in the corner on which is 'my' computer. Ian has a lap-top. Often we're sitting at our computers only a few feet from each other, doing our own thing, and we might as well be in a room on our own. Sometimes we both happen to notice we're on facebook at the same time (you know that 'chat' thingy in the bottom right-hand corner that tells you who else is online). We have even used the facebook instant messaging service to say 'Hello!' to each other (I kid you not) from across the room. Well, this sort of thing has just got to stop. At least for tonight.

How did you spend Valentine's Day?

Now!

You know those automatic photo booths that spew out passport-type photos? Has anyone managed to get a photo they're happy with from them? And is the whole experience of using one frazzle-free?

At the first supermarket a fraught mother with a child in a buggy was standing by the machine, yelling at the sales person. It had taken her money. Where was her photo? The assistant explained that her money would be refunded.
'But that's no help,' the young woman yelled (she had to yell to make herself heard above the first noisy wail of her child). 'I need a passport photo.' She glared at the machine. 'I've come all the way here especially to get one.'
'I'm sorry. I'll put up an 'Out of Order' notice and phone for a service engineer.'
'When will he come?'
'I don't know. Probably some time within the next few days.'
'A fat lot of good that is!'
'We'll refund your money.'
'But I need a photo now. What are you going to do about it?'
I felt sorry for the assistant. After all, it wasn't her fault.
'I'm sorry but there's nothing else I can do. I can't fix the machine.'
'But I need a photo.' The woman looked ready to stamp her feet and compete with her child in a temper tantrum. 'Now!'.
'Now!' squealed the child in the same irate tone as her mother.
I decided to leave.

Another supermarket. Another machine. The first person in the queue, a pretty teenager, looked pleased with herself as she slipped her photos into her bag. I'm old enough to remember when the photos took about six minutes or more to arrive and ages to dry. Nowadays they arrive in seconds and are dry immediately. Well, that's some progress. My turn now.

I rotated the seat to adjust the height, but no matter how much I swivelled, it remained too low. I don't know why. It's not as if I'm a particularly small person. Not to worry. If I sat up straight and craned my neck a bit I could manage. My four pounds clunked down the slot. 'Take care to make sure your head is inside the oval frame,' a robotic voice warned me. 'Look straight ahead. Keep still. Do not smile. Keep your lips together. I repeat, do NOT smile'. I do as I am told. Here we go. Nothing happened, except some funny whirring noises. I waited. Has it done? Yes, I think so. 'If you are happy with your photo, press the green button.' I peered at the image to check my head was inside the oval. The rest I wasn't bothered about. It would do.

I stepped outside the booth, and almost immediately my four identical photos dropped out of the slot. OMG! How had I missed what I would look like before pressing that green button? It wasn't just that my non-smile made me look a miserable sod, I could have lived with that. But one eye was half-open, the other almost closed. I looked like I'd dropped down from another planet. To say I looked drunk, dopey and totally gormless would be an understatement.

Ian, who'd been buying a paper, came and stood beside me. 'Let's have a look,' he said.
'I'll have to do it again,' I said.
'Don't talk daft. We can't throw money away. It'll do. Let's have a look.'
I showed him.
He collapsed into a fit of uncontrollable laughter that made his eyes stream.
People were staring at us. I went back inside the booth and hid behind the curtain.

The next set of photos were better (well, believe me, they simply had to be). I look a bit pop-eyed on them because I was taking care to keep my eyes wide open, but at least they're passable.
'I'll shred these as soon as I get home,' I said, staring in dismay at the first lot.
Ian snatched them from my hand. 'No, we can't waste money. I'll use them to make funny greetings cards.'
'Don't you dare. Give them back to me.'
He grinned.
'Now!' I said, sounding like the fraught mother in the first store.

I still haven't got them back.

Still trying

I wish getting national publicity for The Dark Threads was as easy as what getting local interest has proved to be. Of course it is not. But the sparklers are still alight at least for regional publicity. This Saturday I'm being interviewed for BBC Radio Leeds 'Saturday Breakfast Show' at around 7am (Eeek! I hope my alarm works!). They say they'll link this with my appearance on Monday's 'Inside Out' TV programme (BBC1).

I've got five more talks lined up over the coming weeks at various locations: library, health centre, community centre, and (wait for it) a church fellowship group have invited me to talk. I know I'm not going to be paid a huge fee or sell shed loads of books at any of these talks, but it's well worth it for me, if only in terms of self-development. Before all this, I was too shy to speak much in front of an audience of more than one! Now I'm actually enjoying public speaking!!! (Well, if I keep saying this, it will make it come true).

I must say though that I'm getting fed up of talking about myself. It's good to talk about different things at my speakers club. I was all set to get up on my soapbox to do my zoo talk last week (about the wrongs of zoos) but it's been postponed due to the weather. Still lots of snow and ice here. Brrrr! I'm off now to make a big pan of soup (vegan of course).

New Year Resolutions

Here they are, the same old resolutions, poking out to taunt me. Write every day. Finish novel. Enter Mslexia short story competition. Renew gym membership. And then all the 'Thou Shalt Nots'. Don't let blogging, facebooking, browsing on internet, erode writing time. Eat less, cut down on chocolate, drink less wine, and don't waste time watching EastEnders.

Well, this year it's different. I'm sending them packing. Nobody will get a chance to say to me, 'But I thought you said you were going to...' The only resolution I've made this year is I WILL NOT MAKE ANY NEW YEAR RESOLUTIONS.

I should have said that years ago. When I was eleven I wrote my New Year Resolution on a card and decorated it with coloured crayons all the way round the edges. In big fancy lettering in the middle of my drawings of balloons, stars and, yes, golden trumpets, I wrote (no doubt at a time of intense feelings of guilt) 'I WILL NOT BE CHEEKY TO MY MOTHER'. How embarrassing when I lent my Bunty Annual to my friend next door, forgetting I'd used this card as a bookmark. How even more embarrassing when my friend's mother came round and gave it to my mother. And how damn infuriating when the next time I shouted at my mother, she reminded me of these words and waved the blasted card in my face.

But, no, I still didn't learn. Worse, much worse, was to come. A few years later, I wrote out my good intention for each day of the week on scraps of paper. I folded up the pieces of paper, put them into an envelope, meaning to pick out one each day and try to live up to it. I promptly forgot about them. When I went back to school, after being off sick, I handed the teacher a letter from my mother to explain my absence. Guess which envelope she'd put her letter in? Imagine the rate of my cringe factor when, in front of the whole class, the teacher picked out each of my notes and read them out one by one, to the amused delight of my classmates.

Anyway, back to the present. I've learnt something about myself. I'm better at writing on post-it notes and making out long 'To Do' lists than actually getting things done. That's why this year I'm not going to plan, prepare and trumpet about what I'm going to do. I'll just quietly get on with it.

One Last Dance?

This photo * of me in the ballroom at the former High Royds Hospital was supposed to go with my post of 9th December 'Forty Years On'. Unfortunately, despite how long I've been using a computer, I couldn't figure out how to put it on in that post. Each time I tried, it kept appearing in the wrong place, ie. on top of the photo I'd put at the beginning of my posting. Other bloggers manage to put more than one photo in different parts of a posting, so why I'm not capable of doing that, I do not know.

I've just found out that the Look North 'Inside Out' programme (Yorks and Lincs) containing my interview will be on Monday 18th January at 7.3opm. It's given in the Radio Times as Monday 11th January, but they've changed it to do a programme about the recent snowfall.

*Photo taken by Mark Davis (copyright).