I am no gardener. It’s green, it grows, good for it. So far in my life I’ve killed heather, cactus, tulips, ferns, heck, I’ve even killed bog plants. Yes, really, dead as anything.  The only thing I haven’t killed is the orchid I inherited in my last flat, and a big part of that is the fact that I’ve moved out.

But anyways.  In our home is a garden. And I put the call out on Facebook for advice on what to do with the following;

Our untouched wilderness

‘Cut it back’ seems to be the main advice, due to the fact that the major component is wilderness. But did our heroine go down that route? Stay tuned for another blog what I write when I am not falling down with exhaustion….

Right. So I’m fobbing around with this writing malarkey long enough, so here is a stated goal. Have my novel under review with a literary agent or publisher by Christmas 2017. And yes, I can do that, and yes, I will do that.

In the meantime, I aim to make this blog a shining beacon of wonder and high stats because, firstly, it would help my writing career and secondly, I very much need the validation and attention.

What, that was a surprise?

So, to do that I will need to write more regularly, and to do so at least once a week. Blog posts up every Thursday from now on.

Have a good one, all of ye. Night night.

So I’ve made lists, made threats, made bribes, made prompts, made further plans and… nothing. Not a thing done. I went to the International Literary Festival in Dublin last week and was too scared to speak to any of the agents, (“they might HEAR me!”) and walked away truly discouraged, as I can only imagine would be to the relief of some of them. A few seemed so jaded and unhappy it was unattractive. It did put to rest any idea I would have of writing as a full time thing. Only the very lucky are rewarded with that and I hate that it won’t be me. I hate lots of things these days.

In any case, I have gotten home each day and sat at this and done NOTHING. Let’s put that shame up there again shall we, NOTHING. I’ve broken my diet over and over again, let the house get sloppy and internally screamed at myself at work. Not worried. I despise people like me most of the time but I find I just can’t make whatever model I’ve concocted in my head sit comfortably. I might be insisting on perfection, but I’m never ever going to get it. All I’ve ever accomplished is failing comfortably; I’ve been the brown bread with the broken crust straight out of the oven, or the curve on a warped window sill that is all the more pleasant for it.  I have never achieved a bloody thing in my life, and something inside won’t let me start now.

All I want to do is to sit and enjoy the sun. Wish I could do that.

So. I have a 100k novel to tidy up and make presentable. I’ve done little to none of it, and the honest reason for that is I believe it is beyond me. I am stupid. Yes, stupid, like lose-a-winning-lottery-ticket stupid. Like pull-my-own-finger stupid. Like stick the pen in my eye stupid. I routinely handle heavy goods when it should be outlawed, and I’ve even become a Mum, when I honestly should be parented myself.

So. Stupid. And so this task which should be given over to Atwood, or Alberto Manguel, or Umberto Eco, or Neil Gaiman, these people who have books and libraries and time and effervesce and ability and jesus just the talent for it. The pitying looks from colleagues and the thud-thud-thud of my own brain makes the suggestion of it falling to me as nonsense. The book should be crafted into baroque plaster work, something intricate and smart and new each time you read. Instead I’ll make it into a holiday read with oversimple English because no one understands me anyway and a metaphor that is LIKE THIS IN CASE YOU MISS IT and a subplot that no one will see because see paragraph one, I’m an idiot.

Something like this that you can take with you as you go, unadorned by attachment.

So yeah. Idiot. But if I leave this to languish, no one else will care about them. No one is going to hurt when they do, or fight for them to keep going, or even think about them after I’m gone. No one will give a damn. So yeah, I’m an idiot. But I’m the only idiot attached to this thing.

Jaysus, this is what it must have been like with Frodo, a minnow in the face of overwhelming odds. And we have similar feet, so there’s that…

Right, have to get dinner on. Gwan with ye.

What?

I find myself less and less able to review and comment on sad events on social media. I noticed it with the dead of the pilots of 116. No words would even come close to matching that tragedy, and why should it? Who am I? The appalling nature of it in my minds eye, the spinning and crashing and violence of it all, followed by their pain and their deaths; a like on facebook? A heart on twitter? This is my landscape? No.

Right. You lot get ten minutes of my skilled and unique view of life. And that is by the clock people, I’m timing this.

To start with, I have been sick. As in, med cert for two weeks sick. My sinuses got infected, and then my inner ear, so I’ve been fatigued and exhausted in ways that moved from casual to formal. Bed rest, soup, weary eyes looking up at the ceiling once and then going back to sleep, the whole nine yards.

All recovered, I returned to work. My will for life was not quite there yet, but that was out of my hands. Barring lotto wins, life had to happen anyways. Then, on Friday, giving little man a bath, I noticed the most delightful blotches. All over him. Chicken pox, alright, right on time. He was the last person in his room at creche to get it, but he saved the best for last. And the creche obviously would not accept him until he was no longer contagious.

The interweb said that it would take ten days to get over it. Shooooot. Calamine lotion and Calpol. No Nurofen, as that can make the blotches much worse for some children. I recall enduring the worst possible experience with them; red pepper nights of burning skin while the rest of the family slept, lanolin cream doing nothing to ease it. But the kid seemed in rude good health; the major problem was keeping an energetic kid entertained without leaving the house for a week. By Saturday he was fine, all good. Which was just as well, because…

[Dramatic pause] The other half now has a bacterial infection in his chest and lungs. He is on seventy-five pills a day to keep him going, and even though he rarely gets sick, it is still a surprise for him how ill he feels. So that is all three of us, in the same period, getting sick. Perfect.

We are a sit-com, and the writers are getting desperate. Will keep you posted.