I’ve got it!

I have been thinking long and hard to find it.

Today I got it

Today I decided on a working title for my book.

From today my book will be known as

The secrets of No 15

In other news I had a lovely visit from Statto and his girlfriend over the weekend. They arrived late on Saturday evening. In the morning I took them to the station so they could travel to Portsmouth. Statto was taking part in The Great South Run.  He did it in  78 minutes.  Later we went for a meal with my mother, my husband and my youngest son..

I also made my Christmas cake on Saturday.  For those of you non Brits this is what I mean. Traditional Christmas Cake

Next week I shall be having a minor surgical procedure at our local Super Hospital. Unfortunately my husband is unlikely to be able to take me, so some of my colleagues  have kindly volunteered to take me and pick me up. Thank you ladies.

Howzat

This morning on the local radio they have been doing their usual ‘what’s the year?’ feature where they play a variety of songs and mention various news items from the featured year, over the course of about 45 minutes. Listeners then phone in their guesses for the year.

I hadn’t been paying attention as we were having a chat, when I heard Howzat by Sherbet. I couldn’t resist singing along. After the song ended I commented that the song must be nearly 40 years old. By my reckoning it must have been mid 70s. A little later I found myself singing along to Barry White ‘Let the music play‘ .  The song played before the year was revealed to be 1976 was Chicago ‘ If you leave me now‘.

What amazes me is that I can sing along to songs from 1976 with no problem but anything recent is more difficult even though I hear them regularly yet these old songs I only hear on rare occasions.

Singing is something I enjoy a great deal, it lifts my spirits even if nobody else enjoys my singing. Nothing will stop me if I feel like joining in with the radio.

I have these songs on vinyl, maybe I shall dig them and a few others out and play some of my old records whilst I write the next instalment of ‘my book’ which I am yet to find a title for.

Sometimes

Sometimes I just feel I want to find somewhere to curl up and hide from everything.

Just when things begin to get back to normal something happens to slap me back down.

I have been very lucky to have a job that I enjoy. Currently it is becoming depressing. I am sure it is only temporary.

After 12 years in remission I am now back to hospital visits and examinations.

After spending a year without a driving license, my husband has decided to foolishly throw it away. He goes to court next week.

After months of being unwell and beginning to get back to normal we are back to short term memory loss issues coupled with falling over problems.

 

But hey tomorrow is another day.  🙂

Making progress

 

Here goes, my first attempt at writing a post on my ibook, if this works bearing in mind that I am using an old version of safari on a wired connection, there will be no stopping me.

 

So here is the latest news from this crazy part of my world.

 

I am really looking forward to seeing Statto next weekend. He is staying with us on Saturday night in preparation  for taking part in The Great South run on Sunday morning before joining us for Sunday lunch. Not only am I looking forward to seeing my boy (who will be 23 this week) but he is bringing his girlfriend with him. It will be the first time we have met her so I am a little nervous, for all of us.

 

On the garden front I have been getting my daily fix of bird warching, sparrows, tits, starlings a plenty and my little Christopher Robin has been hopping around. He was investigating the garden at length which got me thinking maybe I should put up a Robin nest box. 

I have been making progress with my writing. I am thinking about persuading one of my characters to take up keeping tropical fish. To this end I have been researching the topic. I took my husband and my son to a local aquarium to see what is on offer. I am astounded by the amount of enthusiasm shown by both. They both think it could be a good idea but they are less than nonchelante about it.

Whilst out I picked up a Robin nest box which is now in situ.

The scene I am currently writing is now 3000+ words and developing a mind of its own. The characters are developing nicely and I am no long scared of writing conversation.

 

 

 

 

October Weekend

 I have finally managed to email this  post from my ibook using an ethernet connection.

 

This weekend has seen some bird watching, including a few visits from Christopher Robin, mostly on Saturday which was a dry day whereas Sunday has been wet wet wet. Owl blames me for all the rain, after he caught me singing and dancing in the kitchen last night wearing a new top which he says has an Indian pattern, I think it is more Aztec. He recons I was doing a rain dance.

 

The top was an impulse buy when I was in town with Skater sorting out his faulty phone, which isn’t covered by the warranty. I ended up getting him a new relatively cheap pay as you go phone, that he can put his SIM card into, his contract still has 14 months to go. Anyway when we had parked and begun to walk towards the shopping centre, we realised that it was colder than we had expected. I was wearing my zip up hoodie from San Francisco, which I never zip up. I tried to do it up only the zip broke, but when I tried to unzip the broken zip my red top got caught in the zip. By the time I had finished fiddling with it I had a 2” hole in my top around about where my belly button is. I just couldn’t face walking around town like that so headed for a shop that I thought had the best chance of selling cheap clothes big enough for my ample figure.

 

Skater now has a new Huawei Ascend, we had never heard of this make but were told they have been making phones for other companies for years before deciding to make their own. A couple of hours later Skater told me that he loves it, it has great apps. He is now in my debt for the rest of the month and probably beyond.

 

Once home I got stuck into my writing, I have given some of my characters more substance. I now have 8 character profiles, then I put my mind to working out exactly what I want my story line to be. I have written out a 116 word outline which I will try to stick to.

 

Once I had got this done I set to writing my third scene. I am now 1500 words into this, Skater has been reading it for me to and says that he would want to keep reading, from a 17 year old boy (almost 18) I take that as a huge compliment. None of my sons are known for reading fiction.

 

I am very pleased with progress so far.

Frustration

I am getting ever frustrated with my inability to write as much as I would like.

I have this pc which although working and connected to the internet still has this jumping cursor problem. It takes forever to write the shortest piece of text.

I also now have a second hand ibook which is not connected to internet. I have  an airport card for it but even with the correct tools cannot undo the screw holding the keyboard down. Hence I cannot fit the airport card.

I have been developing my book, characters and scenes on the ibook. I want to copy the documents onto my pc. I tried using a memory stick, but the ibook didn’t find it even though it was merrily flashing away in one of the usb ports. Next I plugged in my external hard drive. This it could find, hurray 🙂  However when I tried to copy files onto the external hard drive (EHD) it couldn’t. I received a message saying EHD cannot be modified.

We tried everything we could think of.

I have now been advised to wipe all the files from my EHD then plug into ibook and format it for ibook then it should work with both computers.

Now I am going to copy one of the above paragraphs without correcting it so that you can see what I am dealing with.

 

I have been developing my book, characters and scenes on the ibook. I want to  copy e documents onto my pc. I tried using a memeory stick, but the ibook didn’t  find it even thing away in one of the usb ports. ugh it was merrily flasho. rD)fileds onto the external owever when I tried to copye. This it could find, hard drivext I plugged in my external h it couldn’t. I  modified.bee sayig EHD cannotreceived a messag.

Strangely that  wasn’t as bad as it can be.

Satisfying Saturday

Birds watched

Skater’s new phone bought

Storyline organised

characters shaping up

850 words written

Strictly watched

 

 

On her last legs

It has been a funny old day.

Last night I noticed that  our elderly cat was having trouble walking. Her back left leg was splayed out to the side and her front paw was folding under.

She didn’t seem to be in pain or distress but I couldn’t watch her struggle to walk and not do anything.

I went to work as usual but  on the dot of 9 am I was on the phone to the local vets. (the website said that they open at 9 am). I made an appointment for my little black and white fur ball.

At 10.30 I raced home to collect our family pet, she was very good going into the basket, it has never been easier.  Why could she not be so well behaved before?

I had taken a tablet (antihistamine) before picking her up. Can you believe that I have been allergic to her for about 10 of her 16.5 years.

Owl started up the Chevrolet Blazer whilst I sat with Nipper on my lap (in her basket), talking to her stroking her little black face. It didn’t take long to get there.

Once in the consulting room we let Nipper out, she came out of the basket willingly if slowly. The young vet was very good with her, examining and explaining as she went along. No complaints from us or our pet who continued to purr at all this attention. The diagnosis was either a stroke which is what I had suspected due to the speed of the change in her, or a tumour on her brain. Either way it was neurological.

It was with tears in my eyes that I gave my decision to accept the offer of euthanasia.  I would rather that this little cat of ours should breath her last  whilst being pain free and not distressed.

The deed was done and I paid for the privilege with my cat in my arms.

Text messages and phone calls to family and friends meant that my phone was quite busy almost running out of charge. Interestingly I noted that certain family members whilst sad for Nipper were also concerned about Skater. For Skater has grown up with NIpper, since he was a toddler she has been his baby.

Among the facebook messages there was a post that I was tagged on. It was a fellow writer who I met online through blogging quite a few years ago, alerting me to this. Richard and Judy search for Best Seller. Thanks Sweetie 🙂

I have looked at what this entails and it is certainly a tall order. It could possibly be do able but what to write. I have the basic idea for my first book. I have my main characters  and some side characters. I have a basic idea of a setting. If I am to get the first 10,000 words written I shall have to shape up pretty quickly. The first thing I need to do is build some structure into my story.

I better go and get started ………

All in Dortmund

Last night my family were all in Dortmund (Germany)

That is not strictly true, Statto was somewhere in London, Pug was in Oxford. Skater was at home with me and Owl and my mum was at her home. But all of us were online watching a live stream from Dortmund. My eldest son Prodigal and his band New Desert Blues were playing the last date of their mini European tour.

Here are a few photos from their trip.

Hamburg

        Brussels and finally Dortmund He tells me this was the best one yet.

They also played Paris and Berlin.

I am very proud of my son and his friends to have pulled this off. I just hope that something comes of all this.

I find it amazing that all of us at home were  able to watch their performance simultaneously all in our different places.

to find out more here is their facebook page

Oh wow

Yesterday morning when I came down for my breakfast (which Owl proudly makes for me most mornings) there was little Christopher Robin perched on my bird feeder.

Owl mentioned that when he came down our cat was out on the decking trying to out stare a fox.

My reaction was ……….Oh wow a fox in this garden

His reaction was……horrid thing.

I know if he still had a shot gun he would have shot it, to him they are vermin. To me they are part of the tapestry of wild life in our world.