Freedom
30 Apr 2010 2 Comments
I am about to embark on a mini adventure. I am cutting loose for three days. I am popping back to Yorkshire, the motherland and the heading over to Cumbria. I am going sans famille – no husband, no children. Just me, my Mini Cooper, and the Moulin Rouge soundtrack.
I can’t wait to cut loose. Throw away the shackles of wifedom and motherdom. I can’t wait to roam. I am taking a snack free handbag. I am not packing a wipe. I am loading up my overnight bags for three days, and I will return to being solely responsible for myself.
I can smell the freedom. I can’t wait. I am off to pack now and then I am going to get back on the road and roam again, even if it’s only for a brief encounter, I am going to savour every delicious second. How I miss my freedom, as much as I love my husband and children, I am traveler at heart and some days I feel like a caged bird. To stretch my wings again, for three days of liberation and soar – blissful.
Have a fabulous bank holiday weekend – what are your plans? I can’t wait to get back and hear all about. Ta Ta For Now.
Appealing to both sexes? Is it possible?
28 Apr 2010 4 Comments
Please will you help me. I have just had a non fiction book proposal rejected by a publisher and this is what they said:
“I think your pitch was really great and the stories luridly fascinating, but
the bottom line is I don’t think it has an audience. As a feature article
both men and women would give it 5 mins and love it. But as a book it has to
be primarily for either men or women and I think it falls down between the
two. It is about the lives of the ultra rich but it is quite dark and
misogynistic. We recently came a cropper with a similar book called Divorce
Confidential which was a brilliant read, but was not finally for men or
women.”
Divorce Confidential – Amazon link
I would like to understand this better. If books are for men or women – what ingredients do I need to make the book appeal to both? Or is it simply not possible?
It would be great if you would be willing to read the book and then feedback, via the comments, why you think this book hasn’t been a success. Apparently, it’s a great read. I am going to get a copy too.
I would welcome your help in this matter. Of course, if you can’t be arsed then that’s fine too.
To Vote Tory Or Not – that is the question?
26 Apr 2010 4 Comments
in Blogging, Opinion, Politics Mummy Military Tags: Vote Tory or Not Cameron Blair Brown
I am one of Thatcher’s children. When I was at school, and because of Margaret Thatcher’s meteoric rise to power, I believed that I could do whatever I wanted. She showed me that women could be anything that they wanted to be when they grew up. This was before I was old enough to vote, but in my heart, I was a militant Tory. I left school and Thatcher was eventually overthrown. I learnt that to achieve her ‘Iron Lady ‘status she was really a man without a penis, and really she didn’t do anything for women, other than show us to be truly powerful you need to act like men.
I hit my teens, left school and went walkabout; physically, socially and geo-politcially. I abandoned politics and dedicated myself to hedonism with vigour. I was at University for the Blair landslide victory. I knew we were f*cked a long time before he won. I read an article in Cosmopolitan with him and John Major. Blair talked about kittens and cashmere. Major talked about economic policy. I thought at the time, I don’t want some fella who talks about shoes and handbags running UK plc. I want someone who talks about economic policy and business. I didn’t care that John Major was dull. He had his head in the right space, so that I could think about kittens and crochet instead. I watched the Labour landslide all night, until the last vote wast counted. I wanted to savour the history. I knew that I was experiencing ‘live history’ and that my great-great- grandchildren would learn about Blair, like I had learnt about Gladstone.
In each election I voted, not for the parties, but for the suffragettes who had died to enable me to do so. My first ever election vote was Lib Dem, and at the last election I voted for The Green Party. I felt betrayed by politics. I felt that politics had let me down. But now I feel I have no choice but to vote Conservative. Jeff Randall on Sky News tonight was talking to an Economic specialist, who said that non of the parties’ electoral policies go anywhere near addressing the seriousness of the economic pallor that UK plc is suffering.
Personally, I think the Tories are avoiding policy for this very reason. They want to get into power and examine the detritus. The legacy of female friendly, Blair and backstabbing, bullying Brown. The prognosis is going to be very bad, and the cuts the nation faces in order to recover from the deficit, will leave the nation with a body and head if we are lucky, but maybe just head. This level of spending is simply unsustainable, and everything will be cut to such an extent that each individual, who has a job will be thanking their lucky stars just to keep it. People who still have jobs will be working more hours for considerably less pay, paying higher taxes and that is under any of the parties that get into power. The size of the debt is meteoric.
How I feel right now is this – not do I just want to vote Conservatives but I want to join them. I want to become a card carrying member. I want change. I want growth and I want recovery. Maybe they are the best of a heinous bunch but I believe the City is behind them and so I think realistically they are our best bet. I know the city put us here but after famine there can be feast. To repay debt you need to generate wealth.
What should I do? What are you going to do? What do you think? Do you think it’s not that bad? Are you burying your head in the sand? To vote Tory, or not – that is the question?
Wealth Creation
25 Apr 2010 6 Comments
in Blogging, Opinion, Rambling nonsense Tags: Telling them how it is move over Darling
The only way to pay off debt is to create wealth. The only way to create enough wealth to get out of debt is to be enterprising, work hard and make more money then you are spending. Labour are about debt creation. It’s all very well sharing the wealth in prosperous times but if there is no wealth to share all you are doing is making the debt larger.
People with money, make money. It’s easier to make money when you have money. You want the country to get back on its feet then those with money, who know how to make money need to run it. There is nothing idealist about this situation. It’s time to move over Darling.
(Boo hoo for poor people – well quite frankly you should have worked harder at school instead of playing traunt, shoplifting and smoking behind the bike sheds! By the way, I went to a comprehensive so you can put that in your pipe and smoke it! Look I am not a fat cat Banker type at all. And yes, poor people I am over simplifying it. I am pushing the financial boundaries every day but I have earnt money since I was 13 years old. I have no plans to retire. I will have to work forever – partly because my pension plans are non-existant but also because work defines me and drives me. Work hard, play hard! That’s my motto and don’t stop believin’ ….cue Glee cast!)
To Err Is Human
25 Apr 2010 12 Comments
in Blogging, Rambling nonsense Tags: Forgive me my typos loaded with spelling mistakes
I write this post in haste. Mainly to apologise to my email subscribers, and to ask, please forgive my typos and blogging mistakes. It drives Hagar mad and when he reads my blog, he heckles my errors. It’s a time thing to be frank. Do you mind if I am frank? Let us all be frank. Time. I don’t have enough of it at the moment. Not enough to feed my ambition, to feed my dreams or to feed my writing habit. I blog when I can and often in haste. When I re-read it, I become word blind so I don’t proof it properly. Invariably, when I send it out into the ether, and I receive an email notification I realise my mistakes and then have to amend the typos retrospectively.
Yes, it’s a bit sloppy but I am juggling many balls at the moment and so I simply ask for forgiveness. I ask that you bear with me and I hope that it doesn’t marr your enjoyment so much that you don’t read them anymore. In return for your support, I will try harder to improve and make fewer mistakes.
Can you forgive me my typos? Or does it put you off my blog?
Dick Turpin For Prime Minister – a modern day Churchill
23 Apr 2010 Leave a Comment
in Blogging, Opinion, Rambling nonsense Tags: Dick Turpin for Prime Minister Churchill
This is election is a washout. It’s a complete disaster. The belligerent, socialist autocratic oppressor Gordon Brown is going to retain power because Nick Clegg has quite frankly f*cked it all up. Gordon Brown believes he is the best man for the job because he wants it to be so, not because it is so.
The country is on it’s knees and we need a troubleshooter. A strong leader. Someone, who knows how to run a successful business, the business of UK plc. It’s time for in-experienced political idealists, who haven’t so much as run a bath, to step aside and let the big guns in. People who know how to manage large sums of money efficiently and effectively. People who know how to make money grow and people who know the value of hard work.
If you want more, then work harder. Get educated, fight for more, earn more. Be self made. Work out how to do it and show us how it’s done. All the information is out there – you just need to look for the answers. Why should anyone give you the answers. Be independent. Be self sufficient. Manage your own life. Try it – it’s empowering!!
All I hear, ‘it’s not fair, they have more than me’. ‘What are you 6 years old? It sounds like my son berating me because his sister getting something he doesn’t. Life’s not fair – get used to it.’
If so society was meant to be equal, then we would have all been born exactly same. The laws of nature, the laws of the jungle dictate that species need leadership. Power corrupts and it enables those with it to gain more than those who have less of it. In very basic terms this is the law of the jungle.
MPs work f*cking hard. You think they are doing a sh*t job then get off your arse, become an MP and do it differently. You can become an MP. There is nothing stopping you other than solvency and criminal record. Don’t sit at home and grumble about the state of British politics. At least they are doing something! It’s better than nothing!
I want Dick Turpin, Managing Director of Artemis Investment Management to be Prime Minister. He is the man for the job.
He is everything this country needs. He is British and proud to be so. He is brilliant, successful, strong and powerful. He is not afraid of the truth and he holds his course in turbulent times. He understands the business of economics as he is the Managing Director of an Investment Bank. And he is kind, loyal, decent, upright, reliable, re-assuring, honourable, stoical, strong, dependable and philanthropic. He is exactly the leader this country needs to drive us out of recession and get Britain back on it’s feet. He is the Winston Churchill of our times. Like Kitchener asked of the British people, I say it now ‘Dick Turpin, Your Country Needs You!’
I asked him last night, and he said he’d do it. The Conservative Party need to find him, recruit him and use this brilliant British ambassador to steer them through the turbulent seas of this election and guarantee that they will take back power at the next! Dick Turpin is our best chance. In the immortal words of the Bob Builder theme tune – ‘Can he fix it?! Yes he can.”
Turkeys Don’t Vote For Christmas
21 Apr 2010 2 Comments
in Blogging, Opinion, Rambling nonsense Tags: The General election Prison Gordon Brown Get A Grip!!!!
Did you know that there are 5 generations of British citizens that have lived their entire life on welfare? I mean, 5 generations of one family who have never earnt an honest penny in their life. 5 generations whose lifestyle have been paid for entirely by the taxman.
I believe in the welfare state. I believe in the NHS. They are a gift and until you have lived in a country without these fabulous systems you never appreciate what a gift they are. But they are being exploited and abused.
Gordon ‘the jailer’ Brown wants a nanny state. He is slowly eroding our freedom of choice and repressing our individuality. He is using fear tactic to retain his autocratic position. He is saying;
‘Don’t risk it. Stick with me and you’ll keep your benefits. Get rid of optimism, get rid of ambition, dissolve competition, keep me in charge and stagnate, get fat, don’t move, stay as you are.’
Take charge of your life. Make your own choices. Fight for what you want. Don’t be frightened of the unknown. Is that what Britain has become a nation of lazy, apathetic, resolute people who will just do as we are told. At this rate, I don’t think we should stop immigration because Britain’s don’t want to work. If we stop immigration who will do all the jobs? Are you too proud to scrub a loo? Are you too proud to get your hands dirty?
Take charge of your own life. Any work is better than no work. There is no shame in cleaning toilets. There should be shame in not working but there is more kudos for being on benefit then there is for cleaning toilets. People would rather be on benefit than clean toilets. Let’s celebrate the toilet cleaners!
We need to learn to look after ourselves. If an apocalypse came, there would be those more hardy then the fat, sedentry, do-as-we-told dwellers of Barely Holding Our Head Up Britain that would survive. Then we would be losers and it would matter more than some poxy World Cup because we will all die!!!!!!!
In York there are young girls, who get pregnant on purpose so that they will be housed by the council.
On the news last night, there was a woman on the news bleating that it was the Govt’s responsibility to repatriate her back to Britain because the volcano exploded. Why is it? You chose to leave the country – make your own way back. Walk if necessary. Get a grip.
We are pathetic and that’s just the way Gordon ‘the jailer’ Brown likes it, because it means he has complete control. Britain take back control and don’t be a pushover. I feel like Norman Tebbit – ‘Get on your bike!’ Please don’t give up, roll over and say I can’t be bothered. Work out what you want and fight for it!
Right that said, I am off to collect my benefit cheque and followed by a chat with the GP to negotiate some botox.
PS: What I love about blogging is that you can have crazy, unstructured rants. Get it off your chest, then go and have a nice cup of tea. I was only joking about the botox and the benefits, by the way.
PPS: When Gordon Brown does that thing with his lower jaw when he is speaking. It makes me physically wretch. Does it not make you feel a snipsy bit queasy?
Theme Park Britain
20 Apr 2010 4 Comments
in Blogging, Opinion Tags: Theme Park Britain So Proud Rude Lard Fat Fest China Man
England, England by Julian Barnes, when it was released over a decade ago was received with mix reviews. Barnes lived in a golden age of writing when it wasn’t about brand and writers were still allowed to follow their creative muse, experiment with text, style and content. Barnes is a dexterous writer, with an eclectic collection of novels, which are never the same but always interesting to explore and a pleasure read. Hagar likes to order the same meal at every restaurant. If he strays away from his forumula for success – breaded mushrooms or calamari, steak and chips, sticky toffee pudding; (Don’t worry he’s insured! Apparently, you don’t make friends with salad.) then he is often disappointed with his repas, which ruins both our evening. But I don’t have a formula. I like to try a bit of this and a bit of that in the mezze of life. I feel the same about fiction. This is why I have always loved Julian Barnes, as a writer because he is unpredictable in his literary creations and I can handle it. I don’t expect everything to be an exquisite recreation of what I have enjoyed before.
Anyway, I digress. Barnes’ book England, England is about…….
Sir Jack Pitman creates a theme park on the Isle of Wight that duplicates the tourist spots of England. Within easy walking distance are replicas of Big Ben (half size), Princess Di’s grave, Harrods, Stonehenge, and the white cliffs of Dover. Martha Cochrane is hired by Sir Jack as his official cynic. The novel follows her development from childhood to retirement as a nation struggles to retain its cultural identity. One of Barnes’s finest and funniest novels, England, England calls into question the idea of replicas, truth vs. fiction, reality vs. art, nationhood, myth-making, and self-exploration.
http://www.julianbarnes.com/bib/england.html
This book has always resonated with me, as truly visionary. Most recently, I was working with a client dedicated to rejuvenating tourism in the less obvious tourism spots of Blighty and it dawned on me. British farming is on it’s knees. It is cost prohibitive to manufacture in our green and pleasant land. The stock market economic Las Vegas of London town nearly sunk our battleship.
I hail from York but now am firmly ensconced in middle England. I am a chameleon. I haven’t revealed myself because I adapt my language, my manner, my behaviour to suit the audience. York is one of Britain’s cities that can be posh, or poor, which suits my chameleon status perfectly depending on with position on the British social scale I am conversing. On my last visit to the motherland of Yorkshire, I ventured into to York town centre to find a veritable mecca of tourism, predominantly dominated by those of Oriental origins. In the pub that evening I was discussing the very obvious tourism in a city, which had manufacturing and industrial roots to discover that the working class folk of the vale of York weren’t so enamoured with bowing and scraping to the wants and needs of the mass influx of tourists from wherever they hail. In fact it just simply riled the already miserable.
I have traveled enough to know that the indigenous people of Britain do not embrace the service culture. Our finest comedy export Fawlty Towers, or Flowery Twats, is a celebration of terrible service and rudeness. Talking to my destination client, it suddenly dawned on me, soon if the nation doesn’t rise to the challenge and take charge of it’s own destiny, we will be relegated to a nation sized theme park of historical monuments, and reputation for poor service, terrible manners and miserable servers. We are going to end up branding this rudeness as a weird USP (unique selling point), to be celebrated by tourists. Tourists like the emerging generation of filthy rich Chinese, who will holiday annually in Barely Holding Our Head Up Britain, formerly Great Britain, to eat saturated fat, washed down with lard and ale, whilst being ignored and insulted by resentful workers, who believe they were meant for better things but not enough to actually get off their arse and fight for their own future.
Filthy rich China man arrives back from two week fat fest in Fawlty Britain and is asked by a colleague,
“Did you have a good holiday chum?”[ bow, bow, obviously in finest Mandarin-ese]
” Yes, I gained 20lbs and everyone was weally wude. The best bit was when the bloated inn keeper actually told me to f*ck off. It was hilarious.” [bow, bow, full of Chinese enthusiasm]
Spare A thought For Those Stuck At The Afghan Beach
18 Apr 2010 8 Comments
in Blogging, Defence Tags: Ash filled sadness Iceland Volcano disruption
Hagar and I have no plans to fly anywhere anytime soon. We feel smug that we don’t care about the ash filled air, and at the moment, our lives are barely impacted. Back at Hagar’s HQ, it’s disruption central. The Chinooks are grounded too, and even worse there are folk trapped in Afghanistan that thought they were short finals to getting out of hell-manned, and this Icelandic ash fest is keeping them there as they can’t get back into the UK.
It’s been a while since Hagar’s been deployed but it’s coming again. I can only speak about how we deal with it, so I can’t speak for others. But I have a coping strategy, which starts with no big goodbyes. Then I break the deployment in half timewise. I then count up to the middle and then down again so I have certain time milestones that help me cope with the prolonged absence. In the final week the countdown becomes intense because you need to re-unite, each day, each step, each minute, each second becomes an agony. Sometimes by the last week my sanity is hanging by thread. The big challenge is a change to my expectation, which often happens at the 11th hour and it’s torture, agony as we are kept apart. It’s makes me feel sick and incomplete, anxious and strained.
With all this Icelandic ash disrupting everyone’s lives at the moment my heart goes out to the wives, girlfriends, mum and families of those serving personnel that are trapped in hell-manned and can’t reunite with their loved ones. It will be agony. For them the most I hope the torture is over soon.
Excerpt from Broken – my fiction novel:
He door closed behind him as he left the house. He was excited about the next few weeks. He was one of the few that hadn’t been to Afghanistan yet and he was eager to see what was going on over there. It was his first detachment with his new squadron and so he would be roughing it for a few weeks but it would be a real opportunity to do some flying and bond with his new squadron buddies. It was first his trip away with many more to come over the next five years. Alice was going to have to get used to it. She knew what she was taking on when she married him – this is what he wanted more than anything. It was the best flying he was ever going to get and this is what was going to make him happy so she should be thrilled for him. He felt the tug of love in his stomach but he forced it aside. It had always been hard to leave her but it was only eight weeks and this is what he had always wanted.
He closed the door behind him as he left. Alice heard the latch click and his feet stomp away. The gate opened and he neglected to shut it properly. She knew that it would tap gently in the wind, like chinese water torture, forcing her to rouse out of her bed and skip barefooted down the path to close it. The coldness of the concrete burning her feet and turning them into blocks of ice.
Alice lay snug in the duvet, tasting the shadows of his kisses on her lips, delaying the moment of execution. She heard the car door slam. She could visualise him settling into his seat, pulling the seat belt across his broad shoulders, placing his key in the ignition, his strong fingers turning it to start the engine. The engine fired and she heard the gentle throb of the motor as his car pulled away – taking Mr Rabbit to war, or to whatever. Taking him away again – for eight weeks – it’s not that long. It was different this time – no contact, no phone calls, no emails, he was going undercover, underground, into isolation, or something else, something military, a language she didn’t talk. A language she didn’t want to talk – it wasn’t her name on the commission.
Tap, tap, tap, tap – the gate constantly reminded her of his absence, echoing around the garden, round the bedroom. The house felt like a cold, dank empty cave and she felt warm and safe under the covers, protected from the grim reality of being alone. Married, single and celibate.
Poltergeist-writer – a noisy ghostwriter. Utterly indiscreet.
10 Apr 2010 15 Comments
in Blogging, Opinion Tags: a noisy ghost indiscreet and discontented
Like a surrogate mother who can’t give up her child, I struggled to hand over to the Subject the memoir I had crafted. It was my first ever manuscript. It was my dream fulfilled to write a book, and then unceremoniously, without emotion, I had agreed to hand over it over to a Subject who wouldn’t cherish it, and who had no concept of the labours I had invested to bring his tale to life.
Ghost-writing is very topical at the moment. Roman Polanksi, has just directed a film called The Ghost.
“An unremarkable ghost-writer has landed a lucrative contract to redact the memoirs of Adam Lang, the former UK Prime Minister. After dominating British politics for years, Lang has retired with his wife to the USA. He lives on an island, in luxurious, isolated premises complete with a security detail and a secretarial staff. Soon, Adam Lang gets embroiled in a major scandal with international ramifications that reveals how far he was ready to go in order to nurture UK’s “special relationship” with the USA. But before this controversy has started, before even he has closed the deal with the publisher, the ghost-writer gets unmistakable signs that the turgid draft he is tasked to put into shape inexplicably constitutes highly sensitive material. Written by Eduardo Casais “
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1139328/plotsummary
The Author magazine also ran article about the art of being a good ghost. Highlighting that discretion is the better part of valour. It would appear that I am a noisy ghost. A terrible, unhappy ghost because I struggled to give up my baby. Maybe it was because I invested all of my emotional and creative energy into making it the best that it could be. The mistake was all mine. I misunderstood the rules of engagement. I thought if I gave it my best shot that my dexterity as a writer would shine through. The publishing trade would say ‘sign that writer up immediately’. I thought publishing was about writing. Alas, the bitter truth. Publishing is not about writing and writers. Publishing is about celebrities, heroes and brands.
At a party I met Tom Watts (aka Lofty, Eastenders circa the 1980s), who ghosted David Beckham’s autobiography. He loved being a ghost and he loved working with David Beckham. He said that David Beckham, cherished his work and did the tome justice. He was a joy to work with. He was proud and honoured to hand over his words to David Beckham. Tom felt that he had found his niche. He loved listening to other people’s stories and anonymously crafting them into written tales. He was a happy, contented ghost.
I am not alone in my ghostly misery. According to an article in The Wall Street Journal, Dody Sandford, who ghost-wrote the autobiographies of Judy Garland and Bette Davis was a discontented spectre. The article stated ‘he found the work spiritually destructive. “After all,” he wrote, “how does one become a ghost without dying a little?” The article went onto say that ‘as a ghostwriter, Mr. Dody was expected to suppress his personality and channel the voice of the credited author. Yet often his own writing style crept in.’
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124881878743688051.html
I empathise with Dody Sandford and his sold soul. The subject I worked with did not do the lionshare of the workload. He did of course, 100% commit the act and the story is truly his, but the crafting and construction of the tome is mainly mine.
I have dreamed of writing a book since I was 8 years old. I sold my soul to become a ghost-writer because when a major publisher said to me, an ambitious writer, you can write a novel and we’ll publish it but you will be the ghost, I said, ‘how many words and when do you want it by?’. I didn’t understand how I would feel about the manuscript once I had finished it and had to hand it over. It was only then I realised that I didn’t want to be a ghostwriter, and in fact, I wanted to be an author.
Onwards and upwards. I learnt a lot of lessons. I made many mistakes. I didn’t do as I was told. I broke the unspoken rules but more importantly I realised that my written words are mine. I am a talented writer. The tome debuted in The Sunday Times top ten, making it officially a bestseller. My dreams and ambitions are realistic goals. I won’t compromise again. I will ensure that I get the credit where credit is due. I don’t want to die like Dody Sandford, with a ‘disdain for his subjects shrouded a dissatisfaction with his own achievements. ‘
