My first blog post of the New Year has been a long time coming. This has been because the whole family has been proper poorly on and off for four weeks or so, with a nasty virus that keeps ebbing and flowing. It was bad enough to lay Harry out for two full weeks and make him miss 10 out of 15 mocks (very bad timing).

We’re all on the mend now though so that’s good. Christmas and New was full-on as usual. The pic above is of the Bolton clan on Boxing Day. Paulina came this year, George’s gorgeous girlfriend. She’s really becoming one of the family and is a wonderful addition. She also came to my birthday meal on the 12th January at the pub though she was proper poorly with the yucky virus. Hopefully she’s feeling better today. Writing-wise am doing a piece of Creative Nonfiction, 2000 words long for Uni course and polishing my first TMA now its been commented on my the course leader.

Why was the course leader been commenting on your TMA I hear you ask – well – I was discombobulated by my tutor’s feedback and genuinely felt that her comments would make the story worse, not better, which was a bit of a blow because I’d deliberately submitted a story a couple of drafts away from completion, to get the benefit of her expert comments before final drafting. (This TMA didn’t need to get a fab mark as it doesn’t count towards the MA’s final grade.) When I asked her to re-comment she refused, so I had to ask the course leader to offer his opinion. He gave brill feedback – really close criticism – highlighting what I did well and what I could do better including plot opportunities missed, fining down of language and seeding outcomes in just the right places. Really feel like I’ve got my money’s worth now and am polishing said story in the light of these comments, but my tutor thinks I’m the spawn of Satan, which I suppose I’ll just have to live with. She thinks that wanting to discuss her feedback is being disrespectful and the sign of being a bad writer. I really think it’s more about becoming critically aware. Either way it will be interesting having a tutor who is a critical enemy rather that a critical friend. Should learn a lot!

On the ‘getting things published’ front, I’ve had my flash, ‘Staying Warm in the Winter’ accepted in Halo Magazine, my poem ‘Putting Your Face On,’ published on Strange Poetry and I’ve entered my short story Self-possession into the Henshaw short story comp.

 

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Have had to decamp to tiny house due to Wi-Fi failure at home and approaching deadline for MA course. The Wi-Fi was off all last night and I have to post a piece of writing between 500 and 2000 words into the course Workshop by 19/12/2016. The idea of the Workshop is to get detailed feedback for work in progress from your peers before submission. Ten percent of the TMA’s marks are awarded for this so it must be done. I’ve written nowt as the deadline for the finished TMA02 isn’t until February. Unfortunately the workshop draft has to be in weirdly early so must write like a dervish today and tomorrow to get something up. It needn’t be finished or anything, just posted and I needn’t use what I post for the final TMA so its not a disaster. Also I do have an idea that’s been percolating for days but nothing written yet. Its creative non-fiction so I need to do internet research as I go along so the Wi-Fi is crucial unfortunately also I obviously need to access the OU site to submit it, so decampment was a necessity. I upped sticks  at 7am when the Wi-Fi was still well and truly buggered. Will not return until all done or the deadline has passed and I’ve posted any old crap, so may be here for a night or two.

Loads of unsatisfactoriness has happened course-wise since I last blogged but I won’t write about it until its resolved. Instead here is a link to a weird poem I have published today on the Strange Poetry site https://strangepoetry.wordpress.com/2016/12/17/jan-kaneen-putting-my-face-on/

Oh yes and here’s the draft cover for the Molotov Cocktail Anthology. Feels so good to have my name here with all these fabulously strange small story  writers.

Right, enough of this procrastination. Let the speed writing commence!

 

Have wanted to blog for a couple of days but have been too busy. The ‘busy-ness’ came from:

Doing the pub quiz Thursday night  with  Hel, Al and Lozza and her new ‘not boyfriend’ Michael who’s a really good egg. (We came third)

Taking Kat to the airport on Friday. (She’s gone to see her mum in Hungary pre-Christmas). I had thought I was taking her to Stansted (no probs – straight down the M11) but it turned out to be Luton Airport (very congested A428, then A1, then A6, then through millions of tiny villages as my satnav avoided massive hold-ups.)  Coming back was worse. It was tipping down and the M1 was shut due to an accident so I had to take the A505 which was  chocker.

Rugby on Saturday, which was the most exciting match I’ve ever been to. Harry played really well. They won 32-30, so it was very close, then I had to take him to a party.

When I got back Bob was here to tell us about his new Polish girlfriend who lives somewhere near Gdansk and is coming for Christmas, then the Fishburnes came for dinner (takeaway curry cos there was no time to cook) then we all got sloshed.

The reason I’ve been wanting to blog, is that I’ve had a very good writing week. It’s funny good writing weeks sort of come from nowhere because there’s such a delay between writing stories and them being published/winning competitions. The good news is that I’m having a flash published in the Bath Flash Anthology, a story called Humbuggery that I wrote doing A215. Jude emailed me Wednesday so that was good, then Thursday morning, in between going to school and doing the chickens, I checked my e-mails to find out I’d been nominated for a Pushcart award (in 2018 so I won’t know for yonkers) but I’m soooo excited. Here’s the link to The Pushcarts http://www.pushcartprize.com/ which is very well-respected and really, really worth being nominated for. It was Molotov Cocktail who nominated me for ‘The London Umbrella Company’, which is linked here in the ‘Flash’ section. I’m particularly pleased to have been nominated amongst writers whose work I genuinely love, including that of FE Clarke for her simply brilliant flash,  ‘The Solstice Shade’ which you can read by following this link https://themolotovcocktail.com/vol-7/flash-icon/solstice-shade/

Right going to make myself  brew, but first here is my picture painted by the same FE Clarke, who is also an uber talented artist as mentioned previously here. The picture’s called ‘Where the Ideas Are’ and I love it. Every time you stare at it you see something new.

 

So here is a pic of No Bindings the gorgeously formatted brainchild of Lily Green in which I have a teeny story. Here is the link to the website http://www.nobindings.co.uk/ so you can see the full wonderfulness of the No Bindings concept and hear the last edition. Looking forward to having a mooch round the Arnolfini Centre is Bristol tomorrow at the launch and meeting the poets whose work is also featured. Its a lovely thing is No Bindings – you can read it like a book, put it on your wall like a poster and listen to it like a podcast via the website. This edition is all about celebrations and rituals. Will take some photos whilst I’m there and put them on here next week. Also looking forward to starting block 2 of the MA next week which is Creative Non Fiction or CNF for short.

So my first Tutor Marked Assessment went in yesterday and I have spent the last two days in a creative dearth. Must be knackered from all the creativity. Luckily I’ve had loads of driving to do so my mental torpor has been a boon rather than a drawback. It must stop tonight, though, because I’m going to start freewriting again and that always releases loads of ideas. I’m going to Bristol on Saturday for the launch of No Bindings in which I have a wee story. Harry has rugby in the morning so I’ve got to drop him off at 7.30am then set off. It will be a long drive but at least the weather is going to be good. I reckon I should get there 12ish with a fair wind.

The results of the TMA are out in ten working days from submission deadline. Deadline is actually tomorrow at 12pm so that means results should be back by 10th December. The next piece is creative non fiction, 2000 words so need to get my thinking cap on. Below is pic of fire all lit and toasty for tonight’s free-write. Maybe I’ll catch a story in the flames.

Feel like I’m blinking out into the sunlight after weeks by candlelight writing this. Reason for blog silence has been that the MA has been seriously intense and am nearing the deadline for the first Tutor Marked Assessment (TMA) so can pop out into the real world for a few minutes. The majority of the work is done on my first piece of MA writing. Just need to leave it alone for a couple of days and do corrections, thus have time for this.

Feels like a lifetime since I was here. My tutor group is so brilliant and I have spent more time in cyberspace with them than in reality over the last six weeks. Your tutor group is everything on this course, it seems. I have no idea who my tutor is as a person or a writer. I think we will get to know her better once she’s marked the first TMA but for now she’s an enigma, deliberately so I feel, whilst we all get to know each other in Forumland.

I’m quietly pleased with my draft TMA, and I have written another one too, its not polished but it nearly is, called The Morning After the Night Before. I have three stories almost ready for sending out into the word too, so when I’m done with this TMA on Monday, I’ll polish them up and get them out.

Last week I won Retreat West Flash Fiction Comp with a 500 word flash entitled ‘Flakes’ which I’ll put on here in a mo. I bought a picture painted by the uber-talented artist FE Clarke with my winnings. I’ll post a pic of the pic when it arrives. Its called  Where the Ideas Are and I can’t wait to get it on my wall.

I am at home at the moment because Harry has the flu, so am sitting in the hobbit house. I have taken two photos one inside, one out because one is cosy and one is gorgeously autumnal. Here they are.

Feeling knackered today due to being up late on a school night at the Bay City Rollers concert with Hel and Heather. It was soooo weird and nostalgic.

We got there and had civilised drinks at the bar, chatting surrounded by similar ladies (I choose the word deliberately) of, shall we say, a certain age, chatting about kids, knitting, husbands, work, holidays-just-taken – that sort of thing.

We are all a little exited but we take our seats in the provincial auditorium, nodding at the odd few who have dressed up in their bygone tartan and platforms, smiling at the many who’ve tied a tartan scarf round their wrist as was done back in the day when The Rollers surfed the world. The band comes on and we clap and cheer like an ordinary crowd. It’s not until they strike up the opening chord of Locomotion, their hit from 1971 and announce the arrival on stage of Les McKewan, the lead singer, that the atmosphere changes – just like that.

A wave of something sweeps the genteel, well-heeled ladies of St Ives and they (we) leap out of our seats, surge forwards and start screaming at the front of the stage, reaching up to the band to have our hands touched by our – sorry Les but it has to be said – red eyed, beer-bellied, jaded idol from yesteryear. The ladies are ladies no more, we have time-slipped and are girls again, teenage girls once more, screaming, dancing, chanting, singing along loudly because we’ve just remembered all the words.

In the interval I wondered what my ten-year-old self would have thought had she known that one day she’d meet an actual Roller. My sister (two years my senior) and I weren’t allowed to go to see them when we were wee but we had their posters on the wall of our shared bedroom (along with Alvin Shockermoller the show jumper) and learned all the words to Bye Bye Baby by playing the beloved record again and again on my Dad’s radiogram, lifting the stylus off the single (we couldn’t afford albums) again and again, line by crackling line until we had them by heart. (This was before even cassette recorders.)

Funny how things change perspective as you get older – what was once superlatively important becomes almost unremembered. But the echo of somethings must imprint  deeply and, remembered or not, when you trawl them back to the surface they are so fresh and real and vivid. Last night released such a memory.

Right enough of this – must embark on penultimate chapter of A363 as did nowt yesterday except final-edit a flash fiction about dead legends which I’d set aside but which I liked so much on re-visitation I decided to resurrect. There’s a linking theme to the Rollers concert in there somewhere, I know, but have no time to develop it as academia calls.

Flippin’ eventful evening and  morning then. The following has occurred:

• got a tutor at last
• been nominated for #bestonthenet for a story I wrote for Molotov Cocktail
• had a mahoosive leak in the wee house which has taken out all the overhead lights and the cooker and the heating.

I’m sitting in a dark corner therefore, quite warm because its a warm day, writing this before I go to buy a fan heater to dry the kitchen ceiling out.

Here’s what happened leak-wise: Harry hurt his wrist playing rugby last night and late on, at tennish, had a bath to soak his weary bones. He filled the rickerty- old-bath-that’s-been-there-these-forty-years, tip-top full of water and muscle soak, climbed his not unsubstantial self there-in and soaked for sixty seconds.

Remember this house is teeny weeny if not insey-winsey, so I heard the crackle and rush coming from the kitchen very clearly from the sitting room and shouted up to check he hadn’t left the tap running. He didn’t reply because he had his head under the water. All at once there was a huge swoosh and the water cascaded through the kitchen ceiling, right over the three gang of spotlights in the middle of the ceiling. As I looked up everything went dark.

After running round getting towels, emptying the bath, lighting candles etc. etc., we realised only half the lecky was out – all the lights, the cooker, the wifi but not the sockets upstairs or half in the kitchen – enough to boil a kettle and run the microwave and, blessing-of-blessings, run an extension cable to the wifi. (This was what the boys where most traumatised by the loss of.)

Been on the phone all morning to my Dad who’s coming to stay next Tuesday. He’s got loads of experience with flooding through light fittings as it turns out, and he reckons that the best course of action is to fan dry the ceiling with an electric heater then, when its dry, to try flicking the fuse that saved us, back on. Have no idea where the fuse box is. Suspect its in the loft – the place I never go due to decades of dust and asthma so that’s not happening any time soon. Off therefore to Tesco to buy a fan heater and a couple of clip on lamps.  Dad reckons the seal on the bath must have broken. I’ve had loads of baths but only run a few inches of water not several feet and there’s nothing showing upstairs so I reckon he’s right. That won’t be cheap I daresay because the bath has no removable panels and is tongue and grooved in, so all that’ll have to come off I expect to rectify/find the leak.

Back in the dry, I Googled my tutor to check her credentials which took a while because of her pen name, but luckily I’m quite skilled in on-line stalking and tracked her down.  She looks pretty good so am prematurely pleased whether or not I have a reason to be.

Super-pleased to be nominated for best on the net though. Don’t care if I win or not. Being nominated is a win in itself. (This is an obvious lie so please feel free to suspend your disbelief.)

Right have much to do – free-writing, the penultimate chapter in A363, house drying and all before 4.30pm because tonight me and the girls are going to revisit our youths watching the Bay City Rollers live (only just probably) in St Ives. Taxi coming at 6.45 so need to be home for then so this blogging must stop.

 

 

Up at the crack of sparrows to muck out tiny overgrown wilderness that is the courtyard at the wee house. For an incy-wincy garden it doesn’t half take some management. There’s a Virginia Creeper for a start which should be called a Virginia Bolt the way it sprints around the garden, then there’s another climber in the corner opposite. I don’t know what it is but it out-creeps/sprints the blasted creeper and isn’t even beautiful. It must have been there for years because the mass of stems are woody and inches thick – more tree stump that flower stem. Think I’ll dig it out in the winter which will be job of epic proportions but it will save work over years. I’m going to do a couple of green bags each day until the garden’s cleared out enough to be useful come the winter. The first two green bags are in the kitchen ready for the recycling centre and full of the thin ends of the Virginia Creeper which had climbed as far as the roof and next door’s guttering. Surprised they haven’t complained. It is gorgeous though – starting to turn a rich autumnal burgundy, the colour of really good claret and made me feel all ‘seasons of mist and mellow fruitfulness.’ A wee robin followed me round all the time I was cutting and bagging, a really chubbley little robin with a bright eye and sideways glance and the same coloured chest as the Virginia Creeper. Took a picture of him/her hopping about eating flies and other disturbed crawlies.

The reason for beginning the clearance is to make room for a mini coal bunker. It’s too expensive buying bags from Tesco and they run out it in two days if its cowd. Found a 5star bunker on Ebay for £79 with free deliver which I’ve measured up for and will (I hope) fit through the back door. Won’t buy it until the garden’s ready to receive it though – probs by the end of next week.

Writing-wise sent off the Kathy Fish stuff and wrote a wee bit of a story called ‘The Morning After The Night Before. But mostly studying – as today – the next chapter of A363 beckons.

The OU put a peculiar message on the Student Home page yesterday, saying there is a ‘delay with the allocations of Tutors’ – that would explain why I’ve not been allocated one then. Its a weird, unsatisfactory message that says not to worry and that the late allocation it ‘not in line with the OU’s expectations’ i.e. a sort of sorry and its not good enough with no remedy or guidance about what to do to allay any misgivings. They’re right though – its not in line with my expectations either. Maybe there will be more news today.