NAG ME!

March 24th was my birthday, and was also the day I smoked my last cigarette.

This photo of the OH shows how we had to dress up last December in Derbyshire just for a smoke - thermal hat, fleece jacket, the lot!

After smoking for about 75% of the last 50 years (pregnancy and breast-feeding intervened on occasions, and I actually gave up once for some years) I shall need all the encouragement and/or nagging you care to dish out.

And there's no point in mentioning the savings - my cigarettes out here only cost 10.50 euros for 200!

CLOCK CHANGE DAY

Oh how I hate these clock-change days!
Every time the time is mentioned, the OH says, "Of course, it's really only ...."
He should save it for someone who gives a damn.
I suppose I could get into a philosophical discussion about the meaning of Time, and how it is only a man-made concept anyway. Unfortunately, that would take the wind out of my sails when I want him to commit himself to a time when he will return for his meal.
Even the cat is against me - she started demanding her supper at the new British Standard Summer Time 5pm - by the hall clock - which was, of course, really only 4 o'clock. Which should have been an hour too early for her body-clock.
Or was it?

A single life for me

I have a filthy cold and a temperature and a hacking cough, and the OH still expects me to care whether I have leeks or runner beans. FFS! I'm not even sure I'm going to eat today. Can't he just cook it and let me decide later? No, I have to decide now, and would you believe we had a shouting match because my brain was too woolly to choose? A single life for me - please!

A Floating Muse?

I am sitting up in bed with a sore throat and a temperature so this will probably be a bit garbled.
I have had a strangely similar conversation three times this week, in which I was encouraging others to write.

   The first was D whose personal diary of his solo Atlantic voyage I typed up for him. I then said he should at least publish a few copies for his grandchildren and suggested some modest improvements,. That was before Christmas and he has followed my advice by adding photos and a rigging plan to explain his references to sails.
Then blow me down - from an initial reluctance even to consider his "scribblings" as a book (40.000w) he has come to two Writers' Circle meetings with me. On the way home last Monday he said, "D'ye know, Liz - I might even try my fist at a short story."
  Then P turned up to stay with us for a week of R&R and we got talking about his writing. He says he likes describing scenery, settings etc, and can visualize his characters easily, but gets bored with his plot when only two chapters into a book. Try writing short stories, I said, and he might do just that.
  This morning the OH and I attended a reception for the British Ambassador to Spain in Santa Cruz. (I'm only along as spouse of the Chairman of the RBL) and there was N, a woman I met last year in Madrid, waiting in a designated spot to have our hands shaken by HRH Charles. N had an MBE for being a prison visitor for many years, and she said, as you do, "I've got enough stories to fill a book."I said "Why not try?" She took my email address and said she'd be in touch. Of course she didn't, but today she decided my re-appearance must be a sign to get on with writing.
   So am I a floating muse?

Give the woman a big hand!

We picked this strawberry from our terrace yesterday. It looks uncannily like a mitten and of course, being so full of myself, I took it to mean that even the garden is applauding me. And it's all mine because the OH has his gout back and has had to swear off strawberries.
Poor old b....r, married to such a sad woman!

On another matter entirely, I went to the Copy Centre yesterday with a memory stick to get a 280 page ms printed (I take large docs there to save our printer from an early demise). When the girl tried to open it, it came up as a Notepad doc with hieroglyphics. I never use ?Notepad - don't even know what it is, to be honest.
I got a new laptop last year and couldn't get it to take Word 2003 so now I'm on 2007. Perhaps the Copy Shop system is older than mine? Anyway, I re-copied the doc in 2 different formats onto my memory stick, returned to Los Cristianos (carrying my laptop as well just in case) and got it printed OK this morning. Technology ain't all it's cracked up to be.

Our first strawberry - and an agent dream.

We bought the plant a month ago and stuck it in one of the square mini-beds of our garden wall. This is all the garden we've got - a wall two cement blocks high enclosing a bed eight feet by two - but we've got chillis, mint, parsley, bouganvilla, cacti and a small tree draped in a solar-powered string of lights, so we've made the most of it.
One strawberry between the two of us! It only added a taste to sponge cake topped with whipped cream, but it was delicious.
                               ****
I woke up this morning on the tail-end of a dream in which the OH called me to the phone to talk to an agent - or possibly a publisher. I didn't quite catch the name, unfortunately, though the echo when I woke sounded like "Blueberry". Was this because of our strawberry, or a premonition? If anyone recognizes the name, please tell me - one can only dream!

A real critic

I wrote a short story over the weekend.
On Monday I gave it to the OH asking him to tell me what he suspected as he read it, and whether he was surprised by the denouement. His only comment when he gave it back was "Very good." Pressed further, he added "The man was a prat." True but not what I was after.
Next step - show it to M, my daughter and best critic.
She read it carefully and said halfway through the first page, "I think she's OCD."
I was afraid I'd overdone that sentence - made a note to change it.
Two pages later she guessed the outcome too soon.
A discussion ensued, during which it became clear that I had made my hints too subtle.One of my failings is to be so bound up in my story that I forget my reader is coming to it fresh, without my insight into the plot.
After a re-write, M's opinion was that I had succeeded in making my character sound more sinister, and the hints would now lead the reader up one or two blind alleys. Great - just what I'd been aiming for.
Sorted, sent off with fingers crossed.
Every writer should have a daughter like M.

No photos thankyou

There I was with a short story simmering away nicely. Thought a cup of tea and a biscuit would help it along. Sat with same on the terrace, watching cat sunbathing and wondering what it would be like to be able to rest my nose on my back feet. Took a bite of biscuit and - Arrghh!
A crown broke off. It's been in my mouth for 40 years (courtesy of NHS when my son was a baby) but I had no clue it was about to quit. It took the underlying tooth stump with it, and it's right in the front. Not a pretty sight.
First thing this morning we drive to the dentist - they know us well as the OH had major work done recently. They were shut for refurbishments till Monday. Probably spending the thousands we paid for his teeth.
So I'll be writing the story to take my mind off the fact that Sod's Law seems to have been written especially for me.

What kind of fool?

A recent conversation -
Me - "Have you seen the news coverage of Mount Etna? Those poor people!"
Him - "Don't feel too sorry for them - what kind of fool chooses to live that close to a volcano?"
Me - "Er - our kind. We're less than an hour's drive from a mile-high one."
Him - "Ah - well - now you mention it...."