Poetry In Store and Well Versed (by sarah)

Just a quick note to say that I am performing/reading at the Waterstones in Cheltenham on this Saturday (7th of September 2013) at around 1 o'clock in the afternoon - before me are a lovely bunch of poets reading. The even lasts from 11 till 2 and there is a Costa coffee in the shop too for the coffee fiends 🙂

Last night I went to Well Versed at the Muffin Man - I took some blurry pictures on my little touch pad but haven't worked out how to get them onto here yet! It was a fantastic night - the cafe was jam packed with audience! And there was a rich variety of poetry types there, the diversity of works being read gave the event a strong vibrancy and I discovered some poets I hadn't heard before.

The next one is in October which I shall be reading at 🙂

I've been a bit slack with my poetry recently having gotten the prose writing bug again but in the new year I should have a poetry collection coming out so watch this space (or my poetry and music blog). Also October will see the Launch Party of The Little Book of Spoogy Poetry but more on that later!

Both of the poetry events are run by The Cheltenham Poetry Festival 🙂

A Day of Pain and Gain (by sarah)

I woke up early yesterday as in 4:30 in the morning, it was tipping it down and I was in pain, arthritis/joint pain and I had to take pain killers, so I got up and did some writing. Dawn was miserable and grey and you could hardly tell it was daylight if I am honest and I was miserable. I had been planing on walking to the library with the girls.

However, the baby slept in and Jeany was happy to play mathletics so I went back to bed with more drugs and awoke a couple of hours later feeling just a bit achy and sore and the rain had stopped. I got dressed and retrieved an awake but happy MAry from her cott and set the girls up with a film whilst I awaited the boiler service men. They came, had tea, chatted with me about bands from the 80's , said the boiler was fine and went. I packed water and nappy changing stuff for Mary etc... and off we went to the library - walking - I managed this last week with Alaric but knew it was the edge of my endurance.

My pelvis was creaking by the time I got there but I managed it and the girls sat there happily reading the books . for about 45 minutes - all told we were there for about an hour. Jeany has finished the summer reading challenge as of last week but Mary has been getting her little passport stamped and it was her turn to get a certificate. I am hoping to take her to the Tuesday rhyme time there but it is quiet a walk for me still - it took me about an hour to walk each way though I do go rather slowly.

We left ladened with books and Jean navigated us home, I then remembered that I had planned for us to blackberry on the way home as I'd noticed some were looking ripe on the way to the library last week but I had completely forgotten and we had no tubs or bags or anything on us 🙁

Then Jeany had an idea and we drank the water from her water bottle and Mary's beaker and filled those up with them 🙂

It worked really well and there were soooooo many berries! I quiet want to make a black berry wine this year so need loads of the things!

Jean has requested crumble and Mary cake so we shall see, especially as several people have been asking about the hedgerow jam again as well and there are enough elderberries and rose hips and things along the way that I think it should be possible.

It was a hard day physically but I feel I achieved alot and I have at the very least I have gained some blackberries. I am sore today, but not too bad.

Running to Stand Still (by sarah)

So for the past 4 months I have basically not used my walking stick, I have been walking and lifting small amounts of stuff and generally getting on with things. Today I managed to sit on a rug on the ground for the animal service at the Cranham Feast and even jumped up to take some photos of donkeys and sheep (as you do), but it began to hurt so I didn't stand up for the songs but sat with Mary on the rug (Jean and Al were holding banners and flags and what not).

When I say hurt - it was nothing but a minor ache, I then walked up to the cricket field in the procession and even carried the baby for bits of it but that was beginning to be painful so I was slow but not as slow as last year and I felt proud I was walking much much much better even than last year when I was just happy to have walked it. But everyone was slowly passing me and I felt embarrassed(and sad) that I had to let my toddler cry instead of carrying her. People did offer to carry her but she refused to go to anyone other than me.

I made it to the cricket field and sat - for not very long - then I started setting up the childrens sports and I was happy, happy and exhilerated that I was managing to sort of run the routes and show the kids how to skip and so on. And I thought wow! What an improvement and then I looked at the cricketers and I thought - you know I've worked so hard to be able to do this, to be get the mobility back and to try and keep some level of fitness whilst it and the aneamia were bad. So much effort fighting the chronic fatigue and pain which will always be there and being careful about foods and the like, so much physio and effort. It's like my own mini olympic training... to be not quiet as fit as a normal person.

So though I feel proud and happy about what I have achieved and the improvements, I feel sad that it takes just so much energy and effort and to a certain extent there is always going to be something I am battling even on brilliant days - this is becoming less of an issue as I get older actually as my peers are increasingly coming up against illnesses and the like and I at least I have had a decade to adjust were as for them it is new. I also find myself feeling angry. I think, 'you know all that effort and people look at me and think lazy fat cow' and I am angry about that, I am jealous as well - the darkest moment with that was during Jean's pregnancy when I had been let out of the hospital to go to the pictures with Al, he was pushing my wheel chair and everything hurt. I had followed all the health advice and done everything right and there outside a pub we went past was a woman as pregnant as me in tottering heels, fag in one hand and bottle of something in the other talking about going clubbing. I can't express the hate I felt in that moment.

I've probably said most of this before but it just sort of hit home to me tonight as we watched AVATAR for the first time and the guy having to pull his legs about reminded me of the fact that there had been phases of my life when I've had to do that and bizarly that it is sometimes easier when you are in a wheelchair or on crutches as people can see you need help. When you are getting better (or worse) people see an apparently healthy young person and tutt about them not giving up a train seat etc...

As I tell Jean - you can never truly know how another is feeling, you do not know how hard or easy things are for them, you should not judge them as you can not judge them, you can not know.

Today Al was also worried that I was doing the main lifting and shifting for the sports stuff we did with the kids, I got it all out of the shed and lumped it across from the car etc but I was capable and he was doing the procession holding the banner and I didn't want him pushed to far with the way his legs have been and the antibiotics etc...

He was pleased to see I didn't flag as much as he was expecting - the odd sit down here and there was enough and I only started limping towards the end and it was a hard long day for me.

It feels to me like I am Running to Stand Still and I haven't even really managed to stand still, I have slipped backwards - I write adventure stories with caves and mountains and things in, I remember climbing, I take Jean to the climbing wall and look at the pictures of people climbing - I see moo cow fluffy chalk bags and I get excited and then I feel hollow as I explain to Jean why I am not buying it.

I think I also push myself for events as I can push myself through them and then take time to recover and it makes the more painful times tolerable by having something to look forward too. I have had a decade or so to adapt to my situation.

I got a thing through from college - the rearranged meeting about disabilities and stuff (I missed the first one due to Al's legs) - part of me wants to go 'no I'm fine now honest I don't need help.' This would be a stupid thing to do but it makes me feel so pathetic.

I know though that this is standard for those with long term / chronic conditions and on going health issues - hey I even stole the title of this blog post from a friends audio play about ME /Chronic Fatigue. The money from it's sales is going into research into the condition which can only be good - it wouldn't solve the separated pelvis but it would be something 🙂

Mainly though I am happy today - I walked and ran and tried to show people how to hula though I was not able to do much other than head and hand hula and I took video of Al trying to do foot hula and the kids loved everything and it was a nice day and I was pretty much a normal person - no stick or crutches nor lifts needed.

July’s to-do’s 2013 (by sarah)

July is another of what I term a FiMo (Finishing Month) for me and I am attempting to move ahead with projects that have been sitting there started but not completed. Mainly I am trying to push ahead on all the books I have at almost publication stage starting with a flash fiction collection called A Flash of Magenta. This will be a collection of the stories I've written for Friday Flash a community of writers who share a piece of fiction with each other and the world every Friday.

Issue being that though I have always written a story for Friday not all of them have made it onto the blog due to internet down time etc... so I am trying to type all of them up and edit them etc... for inclusion.

It is also Camp Nano this month - this is like a summer version of the November write a novel in a month challenge. I really don't think I will have time to write 50K words but do plan to try and sort out and finish of other already started noveling efforts.

I also have two lots of festival workshops to organise, a wedding to attend, a photo comp to enter and so on.

Neil Gaiman at the Royal Society of Literature (by sarah)

After an amazing weekend of being a panda on a fire engine (don't ask but there will eventually be photos!) I was abandoned in London by Alaric and the girls but this was so I could stay an extra day and see Neil Gaiman at the Royal Society of Literature. He was being interviewed by Claire Armistead. As his new book was being launched here in the UK the next day he did a reading.

Neil is really good at captivating an audience when he reads so it was a pleasure to listen too. The crowd was quiet a mix as would be expected from the variety and wealth of works he has produced. I tried to tweet from the theatre but alas my new touch pad couldn't get the wifi!

He spoke about the book and the memories and ideas that had gone into it and abit about being a writer, then they opened the floor to questions. I put my hand up (I always put my hand up1) and some how the microphone found me and I got to ask my question 🙂

I asked (after saying hello and umming), 'Did you set out to become a cross genre author, with novels, comics, kids books etc... or was it a happy accident?'

Asking questions has always been something out of my comfort zone but I am getting better at it and when he responded with that's a good question and that he hadn't been asked that before I was chuffed 🙂 I'd been pondering the question since I read this year Artists and Writers Yearbook which has an article from Neil himself but also sees him mentioned by others in the book. The gist being that you can't aspire to be a gross genre multi-market writer/artist, I got a bit incensed about this at the time and wrote about it here.

And as Alaric has said to me everytime I worry that I am too 'broad' - it is like putting all your eggs in one basket and if you can do more than one thing it is almost gambling which is going to be noticed and be the most popular!

So I listened to Neil's response avidly although I think I ended up with a fixed grin during it (I get very nervous but hey I'm going to be doing journalistic things in the autumn so I'd better get used to it!). He said he started as a journalist and was interviewing writers and they all had stories about the piece they couldn't get published and he thought - no way is that going to be me (I'm paraphrasing as I don't have a photographic memory in case you hadn't guessed!), he didn't have a career plan he had a wish list that he has been ticking off. He didn't want to turn out books that were formulaic and turned down a publishing deal after American Gods as they wanted him to just do more of the same. He wanted the scope to do new things without it being seen as him diverging from his established path.

He had known he'd wanted to be a writer and had assumed he was going to be a fantasy writer - the sort with maps in 😉 This made me laugh - Dad brought down a note book of a story I started when I was thirteen or rather an epic series and there at the beginning of the note book was a map I had drawn. My dad still lives in hope that I will write this particular story - I used to dictate chunks of it too him and we would talk about naming schemes and stuff like that - there were even warrior monks.

He said a lot more inspiring stuff and funny stuff and it was an interesting and fun outing for me. Through it I have discovered the Royal Literature Society which I didn't know existed before to be honest! As we were all leaving I head people talking about how they were going to get back to writing that story that had stagnated on etc....

I bought a copy of the pre-signed book before the event started and started reading it on the way home to my parents house and then the rest on the way home the next morning to Gloucestershire. The book swept me in, being written from a small boys point of view though it is not for children it plunged me into memories of my own childhood (something Neil had mentioned people kept telling him the book did).

I have been in a bit of a reading a writing rut recently but the weekend (which was actually last weekend and not the one just gone!) has shaken me out of this - for a start I was beta reading my friends epic novel and then read Neil's book and then I wanted more - I am in a book club but this is our first month so I am still trying to get hold of the book to read our local library didn't have a copy - I like my book club it has Good Omens on the list 🙂 I still need to decided what book I'm setting in October!

Anyway so I am now ploughing through books again and got two books out of the library one fact and one fic and am enjoying it especially as I ended up writing a couple of short stories as well - I just wish my body could keep up with what the mind wants to do!

I found Art in London too between Holborn Station and the Peacock Theatre were the event was held (3 times the capacity they normally go for but the tickets sold out!).

The next morning on the way to Paddington I found more fun stuff too by Aldgate Station 🙂

Of course I went the wrong way out of Fenchurch Street Station but hey I had plenty of time and found fun things to photograph - it was a wooden skeleton of a house except it looks newish and had stuff painted on it!

I'm ending this post with perception and preconceptions. Now I turned up early to find the theatre and wonder around taking photos of the area - but I'm having a mild pain flare up at the mo so was quiet tired and found a pub to sit in.

There are two completely true ways of writing about my waiting time but they paint completely different pictures and this interests me as it is generally assumed that the truth is a corner stone but a truth isn't always the whole truth the way information is presented can be misleading but in this case it isn't even that it is peoples preconceptions of what it cultured and what is not.

I could say 'I was in the Shakespeares Head working on my friends epic novel whilst waiting for an event at the Royal Literature Society' - which sounds very high brow and you can imagine the cut glass and what not or...

I could say 'I was chilling in a Weatherspoons pub (this is the chain of pubs I could be found in as a teen) reading about my friends space vampires whilst waiting to see the king of comic books' - I know people who would stare at me were I to say either of these to them but would find the other acceptable due to their own ideas of what is acceptable/fun.

Anyway I will stop wibblying now - basically I had a fantastic time.