WHAT A DIFFERENCE A DAY MADE....

It has surely been a 24 hours of huge change! Yesterday, within five minutes of getting to the office the MD came round to say goodbye to everyone as he had resigned with immediate effect. I now know a few had kind of suspected it was going to happen but most of us were left reeling in shock. Such a nice guy too!

Met Mother for lunch yesterday and she told me she is definitely going to be moving to West Sussex next year to be nearer Middle and Youngest Sister. So who will I meet for lunch once a week, then?

And to top it all off Sarah the Publisher and I have had a long talk about the second book and decided it needs a complete re-write. She wants the third story I had planned for the series to form the basis of the second story and says we'll think about the third one in the new year. This is actually good news for me because I wasn't a hundred per cent happy with the third draft of the second book either (confused? You will be!) and this way I can have a bit of breathing space. So the idea is that I concentrate on making the second book totally brilliant and Sarah concentrates on pushing the first one into the public eye. All this in 24 hours! I am not sure if I can keep the pace!

Other good news is that Pregnant Colleague referred to in the first post has had a baby boy whom they are going to name Matthew, Engaged Colleague is now Other Other Married Colleague who is honeymooning in Singapore and Middle-Aged Me has defied all odds and finally sorted out the home internet and emails - and I did it without the help of Clever Son-In-Law. All this must bode well for the weekend......

CLOSET PUBLICIST STRIKES AGAIN

Had one of our early morning coffees today!. Fell out of bed at 5.15, left the house at 5.40 and met Hubby outside East Croydon at 6.00. The things we do for love!

During the course of the next hour Hubby became almost maniacal about the Book - the first in the series - and what we should do to sell it. He thinks we are letting too many opportunities slip through our fingers. Between us we made a gigantic list of who we could contact and I reckon that just from these contacts alone , we could sell at least half of the number Sarah the Puiblisher says we need to justify a print run. At one point he said to me "Surely this is the publisher's job?" and I completely agree. So the plan today is to contact Sarah the Publisher. Should we even be thinking about the two sequels before we sell the first one? I don't know enough about publishing, that is half the problem. I know lots about being a writer. But I must admit he had some very valid points and I do feel some action needs to be taken. Especially now the book can be also pre-ordered through W H Smith and Amazon! In the meantime - please go, this instant, to http://www.yucketypoo.co.uk/ and click on the Order button. The print edition costs just £5.95 and 10% of every copy sold goes to the CLIC-Sargeant charity which cares for children and young people with cancer. What's more tell everyone you know to order it as well! Please, please, please. I will even sign them if you want me to. I am not sure how but I am sure we could find a way

And now I have got that off my chest (I am truly fired-up today and it is still only 8 am - blame Hubby for being my closet publicist!), I can move on.

I have a question - is being a bag of nerves all part of being menopausal? I ask this because I keep getting panic attacks and feelings of complete inadequacy where, before, I have always been very calm, cool, collect and level-headed. I almost gave myself a coronary yesterday when it looked for a moment as if a huge furniture order I had overseen for one of the reps at the Day Job
had gone missing. I mean I felt physically sick. I was almost light-headed. Yet I knew I had put it through so there was no way it could have gone missing. As it turned out, the goods were at another depot so I needn't have wasted so much nervous energy worrying. A few years ago I wouldn't have done. I'd have found Logical Self and sorted the whole thing out in twenty seconds flat. Answers in a postcard please.

Got a pleasant surprise earlier when I found that my personal profile here on Blogspot had been viewed almost 30 times. I am only responsible for half a dozen of those, so someone somewhere is reading this. Please don't be shy - get in touch. Let's do lunch.

BATH TIME AND BEYOND

I was lazing on the sofa last night with Cat snoozing on my chest when she suddenly did a humungous sneeze and showered me in cat-snot! It went in my eyes, up my nose - everywhere. I moved her off in some disgust - although to be fair to her, she couldn't help it - and immediately felt my eyes puffing up and nose clogging. I head straight for the anti-histimines (being the sensitive soul I am I take one of these a day and keep boxfuls in the first aid cupboard for most of the year) and took one, but by then the damage was done and I suffered for the rest of the evening. My right eye is still a bit puffy today but I haven't broken out in hives or anything so the antihistimine must have done some good, after all.

I realise today that I have not been back and written since I mentioned finding myself in a dense black wood all on my own in the middle of the night in Batheaston last Friday. Obviously when I called for Hubby, his voice floated back from a few feet down the tiny path. "You might have waited for me!" I grouched as I fought my way through to join him. "I thought you were right behind me," he grouched back. We stood amongst the trees, moonlight totally obscured. "Well there's nothing here," Hubby muttered. "Let's go back to the hotel."

Over the rest of the weekend, we saw as much of Bath as we could and it really is a beautiful place. The Roman Baths, Abbey and historic town itself is well worth the visit and we managed to fit in two city bus tours in open-top buses and two trips down the river, as well as the Jane Austin Centre and the Museum of Bath Work. In fact we did so much that by the time we limped home on Monday evening, we felt as if we'd been away for a week at least and sat down to a take-away Chinese for dinner.

Tuesday dawned and it was back to earth with a bit of a bang. Sarah the Publisher had asked me to take another look at the second story book; it wasn't quite what she had expected and she felt it needed more. It is Friday now and it has taken me all week to re-draft it and get it back to her. The third one is due by the end of September and I haven't even started on it yet. The situation is not helped by the fact that I simply cannot get my new Sky broadband box up and running. The first one arrived six weeks ago and I noticed I was having problems with it right from the beginning. At first I couldn't get the new email addresses set up, and then, when I did manage it, we found we could send emails but not receive them. We eventually (with the help of Clever Son-In-Law) got onto the internet but then I noticed that had gone as well. Dozens of phonecalls later, Sky decided I had a faulty Broadband box and sent me a new one but when I tried connecting that up on Tuesday just gone - what a surprise - no email, no internet. Not only is this frustrating and infuriating, it means that I can only email from the office during my lunch-breaks and if I get into the office early (even this blog is being written during my lunch-break!) - which is not good when you are a writer! So I have written one of my Very Angry Letters and told Sky to either refund my £40.00 connection fee immediately so that I can go elsewhere, or fix the problem for once and for all. It isn't the computer, which is a lap top less than eight months old, so it has to be down to Sky! Anyway - we shall see.

Have a busy weekend coming up. On Saturday, Hubby and I are going to Engaged Colleague's wedding in East Grinstead - our sixth wedding this year, so out will come the wedding outfits. Again. And on Sunday we have a particularly gigantic hedge to cut back (what fun!).

Unless Sky can sort themselves out, lucky you won't have to put up with my ramblings until Monday next week.

And by the way - my hot flushes have receded. Am I Over The Worst? Or is The Worst yet to come?

Better go - lunch-break ends in thirty seconds .....

BATH TIME

Have just returned from a gorgeous bank holiday weekend in Bath down in Somerset. Can't believe how lucky we were with the weather either. In the words of one of Bath's most famous daughters - novelist Jane Austin - What Can One Make Of Bath? Well - when One and One's Hubby disembarked the coach at Bath Spa Bus Station at around 6pm on Friday evening - it looked like we'd dropped into the middle of a giant building site, as the area just outside the town centre undergoes some major renovation work. We could have let that cloud our vision, but being the Nice People we are, we decided to look beyond the rubble and not allow ourselves to be prejudiced. This confidence was knocked however when a cab driver charged us almost £9.00 to get to the Old Mill Hotel in Batheaston instead of the £6.00 we had been told it would cost. Still, this was our first weekend away for some time and we were determined to make the most of it, so we let that go as well.



The hotel itself is lovely. It is on the bank of the River Avon, surrounded by hills and fields and has views to die for; though we also let pass the fact that we didn't actually get the room with the river view we had asked for, and settled for our room with the Car Park view instead, because this was our first weekend away for some time and we were determined to make the most of it (!).



Having unpacked, freshened up and changed, we went down to the dining room for the one evening meal we had booked at the hotel itself. We were seated on a tiny table for two in the corner overlooking the hotel's picturesque garden, with its weeping willows and enormous mill wheel that still turns. We noticed a wedding going on and watched the proceedings as we waited for our meals. When the waiter brought my Vegetable Wellington over he mentioned that the plate was warm. Still watching a particularly sweet little bridesmaid, I went to move it slightly aside in order to reach the salt and pepper and was so shocked by its searing heat that I yelped. And sent my fork flying across the carpet in a fair imitation the late Concord. One's Hubby was not amused! And he was even less amused when I collapsed in a giggling heap.

Giggles aside, we enjoyed the meal and decided to round off the evening with a quiet drink in the bar. No chance. The majority of the wedding guests had spilled out of their banqueting suite and into the bar and we felt decidely out of place as we hunched in a corner with our budweisers. This was Wedding Crashers with a touch of Elephant Man as we felt numorous questioning glances being thrown our way. "Let's go for a nice walk," Hubby suggested as we finished our beers too fast and put ourselves at risk of severe hiccups. After all this was our first weekend away for some time and we were determined to make the most of it (!!).

The Old Mill is quite rurally situated so there was not a huge amount we could do once we left the bar but as we walked, we saw a shooting star (so romantic) and, just down the road, we found a little over-hung path and clambered over the stile. Venturing into a vaccuum of darkness, we stuck closely together and, for some reason, spoke in whispers. After a while we could hear the weir on the other side of the trees. We didn't want to risk falling in and going for an unscheduled drown so we turned round to head back. "Oooh look," said Hubby. "There's another path." This one was even tinier and I felt a little bit alarmed - not a Psycho/Slasher/Watcher In The Woods kind of alarm, you understand; more a fall-down-break-ankle-end-up-in-hospital alarm.

Hubby stood like a Great Explorer at the mouth of the Amazon between two rather squat bushes. "Let's have a look ..." he said. "I'll light the way with the camera," I said in a moment of pure brilliance and held the camera up so that the little red light that heralds a flash made the path at least slightly vivible. "Damn it!" I muttered as the flash went off. "That wasn't meant to happen." I decided to turn it off; we'd just have to manage. I scrabbled in the dark to press the button and looked back up a moment later to find that Hubby - who just moments before had been inches in front of me - was now nowhere to be seen! Suddenly it did feel very Psycho/Slasher/Watcher In The Woods- ish and I was frozen with terror. "Steve," I squeaked. "Where are you?"
To Be Continued

DEEP PURPOSEFUL PLAN

At the beginning of 2007, once the contract for the book had been finalised and it was Action Stations, Hubby announced I needed to make my study more user-friendly. The study I had was fine but disorganised and that could not be the case for the New Successful Writer, he decreed. Over the course of the next couple of months, some subtle changes were made. Hubby took the old desk and chair and bought me nice smart new ones. We visited the local Second Hand Office Furniture store and bought two filing cabinets. My day job is with an office supplies company so we bought new suspension files, new pen holders, new letter trays etcetera etcetera etcetera. By March I had a good, New Successful Writer's study complete with a new laptop and a CD player so that the New Successful Writer can listen to appropriate New Age Music, Simon & Garfunkle, Cat Stevens and All Angels cds as she writes. No female writer could ask for a more supportive and confident husband.

Why then did I last night go up to the study and fill my arms with notebooks, pencils, erasers, sharpeners and other paraphernalia and head downstairs to write in the living room? I mean Hello! Half way down, with enough gunk to climb Everest piled up in my arms, I came to my senses and thought What am I doing? All that time, money, effort and planning spent on the New Successful Writer's study and I was struggling to get to the living room?

I promptly did an about turn and head back to the study. I rearranged the desk to make some space, opened the window to let in some air, sipped on my Diet Ginger Beer and put on my writer's head. An hour and a half later, I had some pretty thorough notes to work from for the third and final book in the series, having emailed the second one over to Sarah The Publisher by the end of last week. Now I just need to actually write the third one. My deadline is 16th September which is just over three weeks away. I know I can do it. I have no choice. It is what being a writer is all about. I think.

Woke up this morning brimming with new ideas for the new story. Met night-worker Hubby for coffee at Costa's at East Croydon. We treat ourselves to this once (and occasionally twice) a week because, believe it or not, we actually get to spend more time together. Look at it this way - if we don't meet for coffee, Hubby gets in by 6am which is when I am falling out of bed. He is getting undressed as I am getting dressed then we sit down to cerial and toast at about 6.30, Hubby goes up the wooden hill to Dreamland at about 7am and I have actually seen him for all of half an hour. If we do meet for coffee we are walking into Costa's at 6.05 and we then stay there till around 7 - almost an hour! So you see there is a method to our Morning Madness! Plus we both like Costa's coffee.

After he'd head off home and I was making my way to the office, I suddenly asked myself the real Crunch Question. What happens when the third and final book is complete? Then came the even bigger question. What happens with the rest of my Life? I need a plan, I told myself. I need to set myself a goal. So here it is - the goal. To be able to give up work and write full time within one year of today.

And now I think I need a strong black coffee.......again.

SLUGGING IT OUT

On my way into the office this morning (okay - so I am not a full-time writer as much as I'd like to be), a guy on the pavement in front of me bent down to do up his shoe-lace. When he stood up again he only just avoided walking into a lamp-post, ducking sideways and letting out a yelp of terror as his hair brushed against the metal. He shot me a filthy look when I laughed out loud but I couldn't help it. It was so ... so Norman Wisdom! He jogged to catch up with his mate, who was none the wiser, and stole one final look of sheer dislike over his shoulder at me before they turned the corner. He couldn't have known I wasn't actually laughing at the fact he had almost brained himself on a lamp-post he had failed to see despite its size. I was just so relieved that it isn't just Ladies of Mature Years that do such things. A few months ago I actually winded myself walking into a set of railings outside the local park - railings I have walked past hundreds, even thousands, of times and never had a problem with. That night though, they caught me squarely in the solar plexus and I literally reeled as if I'd been hit by a sledge-hammer at the very least. It isn't just me then, I thought and continued to giggle all the way to work.

When I was thinking about what to write in my blog today, I found myself recalling how, only yesterday, I took it upon myself to feed a couple of slugs in my back garden. Hubby thinks I am quite odd because I talk with our cat, apologise to spiders and refuse to kill anything that flies into our home be it a wasp, damsel fly, dragon fly, moth or bumble bee. I can't help it. I have a healthy respect for everything living. But I am not sure I will tell him about the slugs. I think even he, for all the fact he loves and indulges me, would question my motives. It is simple really. We have a proper feeding station installed in our garden because we see so many species of birds there and have both become closet Twitchers. We also have a squirrel I have nicknamed Houdini because of the way he contorts himself to get into squirrel-proof bird-feeders in order to secure his breakfast.

Yesterday morning, I noticed as I went into the garden (or should that be out to the garden?), that there were two slugs on the patio attacking the little weeds that have spung up between the paving slabs. Do they know what a favour they are doing us on that patio? It will save Hubby or I having to get out the strimmer - at least for a little while. Anyway, I was amazed out how one of the slugs was standing upright (yes you read that right, it was standing upright) in order to reach the top of the weed it was attacking. It reminded me of a giraffe and I thought that it must take some doing to stand upright like that when you have no backbone to help you! That must one hungry slug! So I went into the kitchen, pulled out a little grape from the bunch on the shelf, cut into bits and put them down near the slugs. Then, with a writer's curiosity, I watched to see how they'd react. At first their little antennae withdrew whenever they touched these cold wet objects suddenly blocking their path. It did not take them long to realise, however, that the objects were sweet manna from Heaven (well from me anyway, though they'd never know of course) and I actually felt quite satsified as they chomped their way through (surprisingly quickly) before attacking the weeds with renewed relish. I make no apologies for my nurturing nature - after all they didn't ask to be born slugs! Still, maybe I shouldn't mention it to Hubby; he indulges me in most of my whims (bless him) but I think even he would draw the line at my tendency to Adopt-A-Mollusc...........

STORM IN A COFFEE CUP? PART TWO

At five past six, we came out of Green Park tube. Youngest Sister looked around. "We'd better get a cab because we don't know how close it is,"she said decisively. "It's there!" exclaimed Middle Sister pointing to a big glitzy sign which proclaimed The Ritz. And there it was. Right next door! I have only lived near London for my whole life! Surely I should have known where The Ritz is in relation to Green Park tube station? I felt a flush of shame at not knowing my capital city better but excused myself by conceding how rarely I actually venture there. "Okay, forget the cab." said Youngest Sister. "We're over an hour early," I said. "Shall we find a coffee shop or something?" We walked past The Ritz and stood on the corner. "There's a Caffe Nero over there," I said. We crossed the road to the island and waited for some time for the traffic to clear so that we could get to Nero's. "There's a Pret A Manger over there," I said in a bored voice as another stream of vehicles streamed by, so we turned full circle, crossed back and went into Pret. "Two teas and two coffees, please, one black, one white," I said at the counter as I fished around in my purse for my Loyalty Card. "That's five pounds, please," said the server. I handed him the money and the loyalty card. He took the money but looked at the Loyalty card with suspicion. Oh yeah, I thought to myself, we're right next to the Ritz. Maybe they don't do loyalty cards here? "Don't you stamp the loyalty cards here?" I asked. He handed it back. "Not if they're Nero's, no," he replied. Damn! In the space of two minutes I had forgotten we'd abandoned Nero's and invaded Pret. "Of course you don't!" I said pleasantly as if he must get scatter-brains like me coming into Pret and offering a Nero loyalty card every day. He made a noise. I think it was a chuckle disguised as a cough and I picked up the tray and walked nonchalantly over to the table where Mother and Two Sisters were waiting.



We spent the next hour talking about nothing in particular (as us girls can!) and at quarter past seven we upped sticks and went to The Ritz. This was it! Our two hours as Ladies of Gentility were about to begin. We were shown in and swallowed whole by the cathedral-like foyer, all gilt walls, arches and spotless carpets. We made a bee-line for the Ladies. This was really living! Proper little individual hand-towels (none of your paper rubbish for this place!), wall to wall mirrors and a little sofa. Mother came out of her cubicle and washed and dried her hands. "There's hand-lotion in there,! I told her, indicating a bottle with a squeezy top. "I thought that was the was the soap," she said, towelling her hands even more vigorously.

We went back up to the main foyer and were approached by a man in a dinner jacket. "Name please?" he asked. Youngest Sister told him. "Do you have your voucher?" She handed him the pink slip that had been paid for by our sixteen to twenty-three year olds and he showed us to a table. It was SO nice! Very calm and relaxed with a grand-piano tinkling gently in the background and the little sandwiches, warm scones and itty-bitty pastries were wonderful. Mother dropped her table napkin on the floor and there was a moment of panic when we were asked to pay, but this was soon sorted out and we were each given another £15.00 glass of complimentary champagne by way of an apology. "It could only happen to us," Youngest Sister mused as the waiter bowed us out and I reached for my trusty portable fan.