Lou Bradford

Writes

Quiet Ambition

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When I told her I wasn’t ambitious, my best and wise friend Dawn said I was lying. She said I had wild ambition but harboured it in a quiet, almost covert way. ‘You don’t shout about it’ she said, ‘but it’s definitely there.’ Like many moments in our twenty-five year friendship, she summed things up in a sentence, and I stopped talking, mute in the knowledge she was right. There is something grubby about ambition in women, a facet of our society discussed with abandon of late. Commonly, my generation don’t allow ourselves to say we want something as blatantly as we should. Whether this is habit or lack of confidence or conditioning I don’t know, but the result has produced a guarded conflict in me between naked ambition and the kind of gentle, motherly humility I hope to exhibit.

The trajectory of my younger life had this tone:

I want that. Can I do that? No. God, no. Oh, actually maybe, yes. OK yes. *Completes education*.

Now I want that. Can I do that? No. God no. Oh, actually maybe, yes. OK yes. Yes! *Goes after the challenge of a corporate career, like a woman possessed*.

When I left my first profession a little over three years ago, I badgered my friends about what I should do next. Many advised me to do nothing, which was in itself the greatest challenge. To not work, I concluded, was bad for me. My brain whirred, the covert ambition did not go away, but spiralled inanely in the background like an inflated balloon that has been let go, the air escaping. What ensued was a year of miserable inner dialogues and lengthy, circular conversations with others, where I tried to figure out my new place in the world. I was unhappy. After all that. It seemed like a cruel trick; wasn’t I meant to be content? I had given up work!

My early retirement lasted until I signed up for a Masters degree in Creative Writing, and started on an academic path. In an underestimation of what it would mean to be a student again, I launched in with my usual tenacity, getting it done whilst the rest of my life continued around me, raising our children, wiping surfaces, driving, cleaning, walking the dog. Only on a couple of occasions did I take myself off to write my assignments, but on the whole, the impact of my second education was minimal to those around me. Intently, I absorbed and relished being back amongst academics, talking books, words, metaphors and conceits. I’ve written before about the merits of doing a Masters and I would say it was the best decision I made at the time. It enabled that pesky ambition to take a back seat, until it came time for my finals, and there it was again. I so wanted to ace the test, to be the best, as I had before. But this time, the nebulous nature of what I was studying made that near-on impossible. I did well, for sure, but compared to my professional life, where an established meritocracy applied (work hard; get paid), this was fundamentally different. A Masters education is about a critical analysis of oneself. Of one’s own motivations and capabilities. It’s about how effectively you can apply all that knowledge.

I returned to my college last week to lecture the undergraduate students on the relationship between writing and blogging. It was a twist of fate, as this activity of blogging has formed part of my identity for over eight years. I sat across the table from the students, the opposite side to where I had been only a year ago, and thought how life can reformulate itself. For all the words that have been written about blogging, there remains a taint of frippery to it, as a medium it lacks seriousness and is often considered as supplemental to other, more immediately gratifying online places like Instagram. Micro-Blogging has overtaken all. Micro-influencing is de rigueur. For the serious writer, this presents a challenge; we like quality and quantity. The craft of writing is an art, it can’t be done as an Instagram post. A blog remains the only medium through which the power of words can be explored. Where consciousness can flow, as it would in a personal diary, but then is published for the internet to read. Such a curious phenomenon.

Writing a blog has been about taking control and doing something. About channeling my thoughts and writing, writing, writing, even when I thought there was little to say. It’s been an enabler in so many ways and I heard myself, during my lecture, sounding almost evangelical about the benefits. There are downsides of course, as I have alluded to, it is a medium which solicits judgement (the ‘comment here’ mentality), and one must become comfortable with brutal honesty and openness. Blogs steeped in privacy are generally hard to accept. But there are limits; I write less about my family, as my children are older and it’s not their decision to feature here. I respect that and turn instead to commentary about other elements of my life and of course, the book, the words, the struggle to move forward when you have quiet ambition and you’ve entered your second profession.

Shhhhhh…

The Education of Adults

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It’s a curious thing, being nearly 44 years old. The shenanigans of middle age continue to bring new and exciting dimensions to life. I find myself noting the behaviour of my elders and wondering, as I’ve alluded to before; why the grump? Why the know-it-all? Why the backward-looking attitude? I heard a British social commentator say – in reference to the demographic of Americans who voted for Trump – that they were looking to restore the past. Rather than looking forward, the impetus was to go back, to make it like it was. They rue the day when the future encroached. But, as all humans (and most animals) know, there is no stopping the future, it’s going to come whether we like it or not. I notice too the passing of time – another Christmas, another new year’s eve, another cold and gloomy January. Time tick-tocks, and I see I am straddled between two places; what was and what will be. There may be an esoteric truth to this which can only be understood by the over-40’s. Am I the only one whom until my mid-thirties, had no thoughts on this topic? Sentimentality and nostalgia were not my constant companions then, as they are now.

I also notice the behaviour of the young, my children, their friends, the cohorts of youth, where everything is ahead of them and not behind. My children look back on their younger childhood and regard it fondly. I can isolate each event in memory and recall the effort involved in making it lovely. This activity is grossly exaggerated now I ‘don’t work’. I use that term reluctantly, as I feel like I work every damn minute of the day, until I fall into bed exhausted, but it assists me in making my point. Motherhood can be distilled into a series of efforts, some minuscule and some Herculean, all of them combining, we hope, to make up the whole: to raise a happy child. In amongst it, there are efforts that are misguided or just plain wrong. The times when not enough effort is made, or there’s too much and it overflows in an ugly spill.

I then look to my peers, the beleaguered 40-somethings! I regard my friends with insatiable interest; how are they doing it? Do they feel the same as I do? Is this what we signed up for? Why are we so guarded? Decisions of others are dissected and turned over in my hands, trying to see the angle.

I conclude it’s all a whopping, great big overthink.

Meanwhile, I am lecturing next week at the college where I did my MA. I am returning to spend time with the under-graduates to talk about writing and blogging. I’ve written a blog for eight years this month. Eight years!! Blogging has become almost unrecognisable to itself in that time, so much has changed.

I get asked, pretty much on a daily basis, ‘how’s the book?’ as if it’s a living, breathing thing, like ‘how’s the garden?’ or ‘how’s your mum?’. I pause, and reply that it’s going slowly. For all the momentum of an educational qualification and a publisher’s meeting, the fact remains that work still needs to be done to refine the book. What I produced was a first draft, and what I need it to be is a final draft. There can be fifty iterations between those two points. I notice this statement makes me feel like a fraud. Writers write; they might write every day, but the end result may not change that much. It feels like that now. I persevere. And fret about how hard the perseverance feels. Did I mention that writing, much like motherhood can be distilled into a series of efforts, some minuscule and some Herculean, all of them, we hope, combining to make up the whole: to create a book. The irony of my choice of pursuits is not lost on me.

January always was the pensive month, for all the talk about Blue Monday (to me; a perennial favourite of the 1980’s by New Order), the weather, the post-Christmas slump, the crazy, short-lived bursts of healthy eating and exercise regime, it remains a sullen, after-party sort of month. A time to endure whilst we wait for something better. Roll on the future.

Solstice

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Forgive my addled mind; I blame it on my three-week enforced quarantine, as both of my children have systematically exchanged cold and flu viruses, and I have resembled a Florence Nightingale figure, day and night, ministering to them. Nothing like a sick child to halt proceedings. It happens this time of year as we face the shortest day and the sky darkens in mid afternoon and slides into night by 4pm. I curse it, and wonder how I spent so many years of my life not noticing, not caring about this frankly antisocial, anti-happy, antithesis of summer! We all muddle through in darkness and cold, waiting for respite: ‘it makes me grumpy’ I retort to my children, when they ask if I am alright, (and I clear the next round of soggy, used tissues to a soundtrack of coughing, and wash my hands for the millionth time). Find the joy, find the joy, find the joy!

In a looping, multi-faceted WhatsApp chat between myself and a dear friend, we comment on ‘noticing’, on how we now so aware of everything. The small things and the large. Poverty, crime, the environment, nature, weather, how everyone looks so damn old. We wonder if this is a 40-something trait, something that comes home to roost after our years of self-centredness? Were our twenties the same, or our thirties? I couldn’t tell you one major news story from my thirties; I was knee-deep in nappies, my ‘career’ and my own self-regard. Me, me, me. I consider that career now, which seemed so vital then, and wonder what it would have been like to have held on. Kept my toehold in the corporate cliff-face? Three weeks of sick children would have posed a Herculean challenge and I would be bathed in mother’s guilt by now, struggling. Isn’t this why I gave up? I gave up for many reasons, some of which I can’t even recall now, but wasn’t it to be able to respond to the demands of my family, when they arose? And to write…

Another good friend, who sensed my isolation, made an impromptu visit this week, and we shared glasses of wine. When we met, our children were four and now her son is seventeen and my daughter is sixteen. The preoccupations of the past no longer occupy us, and we have new ones; wild and varied ones that relate to the life of the modern teen and how to parent them. It’s something I’ve written about before in articles here and here. To break it down, it’s along the lines of parties, illegal substances and our abject fear of them somehow infiltrating our teenager’s well-briefed sphere of reality, university places, extracurricular activities, whether they should earn money (and where’s the time amidst studying?), are they OK? Is it all going to be OK? If I contrast this to ten years ago, the preoccupations would have been Phonics, dexterity, reading Jane and John books, learning their spellings, head lice outbreaks and was their friend mean to them at playtime? All said and done, and bed by 7pm.

Oh how things change! And that is what I notice now. Experience is a peculiar thing. The recognition of something similar to something you’ve seen before. What I find interesting is that even things from a year ago seem facile now. As your child accelerates towards adulthood, there are a litany of milestones that make the last milestone seems less significant. Where does it end?

Meanwhile, Netflix has been my best friend as I watched Alias Grace (absolutely spellbinding). And then, with my twelve-year-old son, who is bored with his kid’s TV after days of bedrest, watched ‘Anne with an E’, a revisiting of the classic ‘Anne of Green Gables’. I made chicken soup. I plumped pillows. I escaped to the hairdresser for the afternoon and in an act of rebellion, had my hair cut short and now feel slightly traumatised, but in a good way. I cleaned and sorted and did what the housebound do! I haven’t written a word of the novel for weeks and weeks and this weighs a little heavy. Can I get you a drink? Something to eat? But this is how it goes; the ups and downs. The light and the dark. Happy solstice…

Painting by my favourite, Jessica Cooper, ‘Red Apple’

The minimal

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The festivities are about to set in, and I for one, am trying to keep hold of my Christmas spirit. Scanning through TV channels, there’s Dickens’ Christmas Carol and I relate more to Scrooge than Cratchit; I am miserly and grumpy! At my son’s carol service last night, a church priory packed full, we watched as three members of the chapel choir (the singing elite) were assisted off to be sick. Pale, peaky and eventually led home in an embarrassed hush. At no point were proceedings stopped, we all just carried on singing ‘Good King Wenceslas’ and pretended that we weren’t observing the spread of end-of-term norovirus happen before our eyes. The children are over tired, over exerted, over excited. It’s all too much. This midwinter business is not for the faint-hearted! Our house has been a hotbed of illness over the last two weeks, I have been glugging elderflower immunity syrup and Manuka honey as if my life depends on it. Does anyone know if Manuka honey actually works?

It gets dark at four and we spend long, long evenings, wondering when the spring will come. It’s a way to go.

Meanwhile the shopping and ‘preparations’ continue in earnest.

Isn’t the mantra less is more? Doesn’t every self-help book and blog suggest to declutter, to jettison belongings, reduce, reuse, recycle? Don’t we know that for our own sanity and wellbeing, we need to stop acquiring and start appreciating? Why then, has Christmas become such a monstrosity? Don’t get me wrong, I love the twinkly trees and the build up to Santa and the re-runs of Home Alone and Elf (which I maintain are two works of genius). But it’s gone too far, surely?

Where’s the hygge? Where’s the stillness?

I find myself wondering if I have become my own enemy? Christmas used to be my favourite time of the year. Since I was a child, I planned it out, agonised over which gift to buy with my pocket-money, I even hand-printed brown wrapping paper (seriously, how did I find the time?) and tied presents with velvet ribbons. Is there anything better than velvet ribbons? There’s something so elementally lovely about velvet, it’s like the fabric equivalent of a warm hug. But I digress…

I search in myself for the source of my mood. A couple of years ago we went to Florida just before Christmas and it made me gloriously happy to see palm trees and boats decked in lights, and garlands festooned with candy canes. It seemed breezy and ironic and kitsch. Like the Coca Cola commercial. Maybe us Brits just take it all too seriously? Maybe it’s something to do with the cold and the darkness? Maybe I need to just get a grip and get onboard.

I like little Christmas trees – the old-fashioned kind that drop their needles and smell like pine – decorated sparsely. I like the rustle of paper against the stocking. I like my mum’s Danish family recipe carmelised potatoes on Christmas Eve. I like candles and red wine. I’d like it to just be slightly less amped up. Turn down the dial! Happy Friday.

Image via my scandinavian home

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Getting dressed

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Along the South coast of England, if Portsmouth is the spotty little brother, Brighton is the cool older one. We went there, my daughter and I, in an attempt to buy Christmas presents, but were met with such a mass of people that we didn’t achieve the aim. We returned more or less empty-handed, too overwhelmed by the real, live shopping experience. It made me think I have become conditioned to buy online, ordering up and waiting for the delivery man. The process of touching and choosing; paying and carrying a bag, having the item at that moment, is now rare. I instead conduct a strange, logic-based inner dialogue when deliveries arrive: should I keep it? If I were in a shop, would I choose it? Do I love it? Is there that buzz of desire?

I observed a man on the train on the way to Brighton. Aged and wizened, with whiskers, smelling faintly of sour and clothes that hadn’t been washed. An unsavoury smell. The cuffs and collar of his tweed jacket were worn-through, his skinny wrists jutting out, his hands jittery. People averted their eyes, but really there was nothing untoward about him. He just looked unkempt. I wondered about that tweed jacket. Had he worn it every day for fifty years? Where was is bought? Does he like it? Was it his fathers before him? Or his brothers? My mind reels. In a fresh bourgeois preoccupation, I now worry about the mountain of cheap synthetic clothes that are discarded after one wear – unlike the man’s thread-worn tweed – and will fester now in refuse tips. It’s the on-land equivalent to plastic bottles which amalgamate together in our oceans, a shameful swathe, an eerie layer over the water.

I normally drive everywhere, and rarely spend time sat faced with the Great British Public on a train. I have become unaccustomed to them, close up. I counsel myself – who am I to judge? But it’s not so much that, it’s the noticing. It’s got worse since I threw myself into this writing profession. I was always observant, have a memory of an elephant, especially when it comes to people, and their clothes. I recall with absolute clarity the touch of my mother’s fur collars and angora jumpers from my childhood. But now, I notice everything. Very little I see doesn’t have some relevance, some possibility, when it comes to furnishing my writing with detail. Although, when planning my novel I made a deliberate decision not to write about what people wore. I didn’t want that element to date to narrative; I didn’t want the present day-ness of it to overwhelm everything else. But I realised this left gaps. So many of our impressions of others are based on what they are wearing.

Those adverse to the frippery of fashion will dispute this, and say that clothes are not important. I disagree. Look at ‘The Handmaid’s Tale‘. The outfit Margaret Atwood designed in her mind is the visual equivalent of oppression. In the book ‘Women in Clothes‘ – one of my all time favourites – a contributor describes in aching detail how she coveted the dress of another, then bought it in a frenzy of lust afterwards, then horror-of-horrors, bumped into the women whose dress she’d copied! The shame of how much we long to be like the people we see. How childlike and fundamentally human it is to want what others have. This is why I assign so much success to internet shopping; it’s the photography! The perfectly curated ‘lookbooks’. This is why Pinterest is a booming festival for the covetous.

Everybody gets dressed so everyone must choose what to wear. Getting dressed every day is a moment of expression. Some lessen its importance, whilst others embrace it with a jaunty coat or a tangerine hat or red shoes. I thought to myself, when disappointed with the sartorial offerings of Brighton, maybe it’s the weather? Being British, everything reverts to a weather-based analysis. A stylist named Pernille Teisbæk wrote a book called ‘Dress Scandinavian‘ in which she explains how the Danes (my countrymen) layer up, man up and look fabulous even when the weather is bitterly cold. There’s no such thing as bad weather; just bad clothes. And of course there is Iris Apfel who puts everyone to shame with the sheer awesomeness of what she wears and most importantly, what it says about her. As she remarks in the documentary ‘Iris‘: why be dull?

In subscribing to her view I scout around for inspiration. I find fashion bloggers with bare ankles and cotton jackets, photographed against pretty London Mews cobbles or Kensington white facades. There is no Sussex mud in their world, as there is in mine! Celebrities on red carpets with umbrellas being held over their heads by film-studio runners. Money helps, and a dose of fantasy; what they present is not real. Maybe the train or the high street is the ‘real’ I should find beauty in? It seems to me though, that so many people don’t care. Don’t try. We should value the sartorial more. Years ago I wrote about this and a commenter, who went on to become a good friend of mine, said that maybe people don’t care how they dress because they’ve lost their way; maybe they don’t even know where to start. This always stuck with me, an insightful truth.

The train pulled in and the man in tweed got off and went about his day.

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The smallness of life

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A battle of wills between wanting to and not wanting to – to write or not to write. My college alumni WhatsApp group periodically share when the writing muse has arrived, and conversely when it has gone. It’s ridiculously elusive and I grow tired of chasing it. The discipline required to do creative work every day is huge and then when the urge does not arrive, the self-doubt nestles in, and we think to ourselves: does this mean we are not real writers? Oh, who or what is the real writer?

At my son’s parents evening this week I found myself sitting opposite his English teacher as she regaled how well he’d done in his mock exams; Common Entrance is looming next summer. He can write. Who knew? A flush of pride started and I found myself wanting to tell her that I’m a writer, so that we could speak more freely about the Robert Frost poem she was referring to. But in my mind, the pretension accompanied with saying out loud; ‘I’m a writer’ was too much for me and the moment passed. Unlike so many other more mainstream professions, to describe oneself as a writer carries with it an assumption of capability – an A* in English – that should validate the job title. Unless you’re a best-selling author, it remains a strange and closed-off world to most. In fact any creative profession supports the same contention; if you pursue it, you must think you’re good enough. And to be good enough, to have a strong and acknowledged body of work (by critics; not just your family and friends), to define yourself professionally in a creative calling is, I am learning, a gutsy move. Yet I persist.

Inside my head I finish the novel and it’s a roaring success and this time next year I am well into writing another. I keep my powder dry, as much as is possible when everyone I meet says: ‘how’s the book?’ I concentrate on articles, like this one I wrote about feminism, and take each day as it comes. I can tell you, it’s a far cry from my corporate days! There was a total lack of doubt then; I knew my job, I did my job and that was that.

I live in a place where there are a lot of people who are older than me. It’s suburban, not a metropolis, rurally located. This didn’t used to bother me, it wasn’t something I recognised or worried about. But I notice now that the world shrinks as you age, isn’t that why the mid-life crisis takes hold with such vigour in my generation? We’re not ready for the shrinkage. If anything we want expansion. Women who’ve devoted time to family want to break free now, to reassert and to take back some of the ground that has been occupied by their children. I wonder if this instinct diminishes as you pass 50, 60 or 70? I notice the elderly people around me and consider again how they can appear beaten, accepting of the banality of life. With that comes a banality of thinking. Stuff that doesn’t really matter; the small shit, takes on Herculean proportions. Traffic, weather, the news and so on. I try to protect myself against this, and wonder why old men shakes their fists from their cars at junctions, or why old women huff and puff in queues in shops. I generalise, but part of writing for a living is to force the issue. To say ‘no’ to the smallness. To stay cheerful and open and most of all, kind. To age happily. Where does the happiness go? Can it be banished by keeping busy, seeking fun, seeing the broader picture? I do hope so…

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Generational feminism: a mother’s view of her daughter

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I notice the preoccupations of my daughter and her friends. They’re sixteen. They like the Kardashians and vintage clothes. Outfits that reek of 1990’s throwback, but do so ironically, as if the 1990’s were a long-lost age, not the one their parents have so recently emerged from, blinking into the light, murmuring ‘Wonderwall’. They consider themselves to be equal counterparts to their male friends, yet they regard much of what teenage boys do as alien, to be excused, dumb. I think: still? Boys, it seems, have no filter, no pause button, no method through which to edit their behaviour. Like puppy dogs. Teenage girls meanwhile, are clever, sassy, smart but also vulnerable, insecure and foolish. There’s a quagmire between the sexes, but it’s one they’re happy to wade through. For girls, the focus is on hair and even more on eyebrows; the application of eyebrows being the most important component of the day. Without them, there is a possibility that Instagram photos will be somewhat off; under-dressed. There are acrylic nails and lacy bralettes and beds that don’t get made. Dirty plates and smeary, two-day-old banana milkshakes, and crumpled Maccy D’s wrappers.

I notice the mothers of said teens, in contrast. Forty-something, sometimes fifty-something. Those who had late babies face the teenage reality as they simultaneously contemplate menopause. We like ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ and ‘Big Little Lies’ and shop online as if the world depends on it. We wear outfits curated in the hope we don’t look dowdy, curmudgeonly, old. The dichotomous striving between too little and too much: is this too much? I ask my daughter. She replies ‘no’ and I am grateful for her tacit solidarity. We worry and fret and try to bridge the gap between the many prongs of our lives; husbands, in-laws, teens, pre-teens, parents in their 70’s, friends we haven’t seen for a year, but whom we email with fervour. There’s focus on grey roots and how to disguise them, on a slippery slope to becoming platinum blonde, we dye our once-healthy, lustrous hair until it’s straw-like in the onslaught. There are houses and cars and Nutri-bullets and electric toothbrushes. We own stuff. And we clean stuff up. We work and then we fantasise about not working. But mostly we try to decipher the future and observe in our daughters the next generation of women we’re raising; we are the planets and they are satellites entering our orbit. We intuit their behaviour, staving off the next demand, we try to respond appropriately and assuredly. Yet despite years of life experience, we feel as if we are winging it. Every. Damn. Day.

I refuse to see the downside. This is the way it goes. No matter how evolved I thought I was – dammit I was an early adopter of Snapchat; I am down with the kids – there is now weighty evidence that I am an entirely different generation to that of my children. Even though I thought I’d strap that baby girl to my back and carry-the-hell-on with my fabulous life, parenthood did eventually dig its heels in. Now I am a beleaguered veteran; I’ve done some time. I have a sixteen year old! And the road is not even at an end. It stretches ahead over the brow of a hill I haven’t even started to climb.

I remember the summer I graduated like it was last week, I am Generation X. I grew up with John Hughes movies and later, tried to gather the gall to cut my hair like Winona Ryder in ‘Reality Bites’ (I never did). My daughter does not even qualify for Generation Snowflake, but will morph into some as-yet-undefined grouping with worrying social traits, to be reported by the media. I ask her if she is a feminist, which is, on my part, a covert exercise to establish if the doctrines underpinning my own have rubbed off. She looks at me quizzically: is this a trick question? When I was a teenager, circa 1989, I recall feminism in my corner of rural England as synonymous with trouble-making, women who complained, left their husbands, messed up the status quo. Joined CND and camped out in Greenham Common. The status quo was fine and dandy, why change? My daughter regards the status quo but the drum-beat of societal change has been deafening during her life.

Is a feminist innate or is she (or he) made? Can you opt in or out? I feel like my generation opted in. For years, the ground on which feminism stood seemed steady. Sure-fast. It was simply a matter of building it up, adding to it, making it stronger. Now it feels different; a shift in perception. Gender fluidity means all accepted standards can and should be challenged in the name of equality, to enable those who feel marginal to feel less so. I sense threat when writing about this topic, I acknowledge the ease with which I could offend, how I may appear misinformed, blinkered, and note the misjudgments of others who inadvertently stray into the dangerous territory of gender politics. There’s a temptation to remain anodyne. It leads me to question how easily and seriously my daughter might form her views in such a volatile environment. Attitudes previously deemed to be acceptable by society have become the opposite.

I am not sure she knows what all the fuss is about; should women and men have equality? Errr, yea? Dummy. Her generation doesn’t really get the distinction; the glass ceiling is something which, at 16, they haven’t tapped a tentative finger on. Constructs are in place to ensure that, at least in her school experience, she does not perceive disadvantage. Can girls excel at Science and Maths? Of course. Can they play rugby and cricket? If they so wish. On the one hand they are empowered – absolutely so. They don’t consider they are segregated; the world is for the taking. Yet simultaneously, my daughter witnesses modern politics and seems to regard it as not directly relevant to her. Brexit. Trump. A woman Prime Minister in our country. A quiet rage might ignite in the face of injustice, but on the whole, I don’t see her demographic exercise activism. They haven’t worked out what they need to fight for. Yet.

Amongst her contemporaries, there is the perpetual invitation to comment, to ‘like’, to pass judgement, in a way that did not exist in my teenage years. Any attitude I might have fostered had time to grow strength and validity, to form part of an inner dialogue, stress-tested in my mind. Whereas in her connected, social-media enabled age, one false move can lead to a trolling on Twitter or a comment-fest on Instagram. When driving in the car, after the news has aired, I explain the Weinstein allegations to her, what happened and what women had been subjected to in his industry. I explain to her the righteous outcry, the abuse of power, the sexually motivated harassment that existed. I expand on the #Metoo concept; there is solidarity in knowing there are others and there is freedom and strength derived from exposing one’s oppressor.

But where does it all lead? What happens next? Will she be exempt when she takes her first job and someone in a position more senior to her abuses his power? Following decades of this systemic behaviour, do we now face a Brave New World? I consider: do men in 2017 feel brave? Do women? There’s the clear and obvious good that has come from recent events. Emma Thompson spoke eloquently about ‘the crisis in masculinity’ and how we must address that first, and she’s right. Like all newly identified and frightening facets of society, once they are exposed, we reel from the exposure – the rapid and unexpected pulling back of the curtain – but it takes time, humility and intelligence to define how to use that exposure for good. In this instance, it will take a whole generation, years and years of subtle (and not so subtle) change to alter the way a man perceives a woman as she enters the room. This must start with our sons as well as our daughters. It is mothers like myself who have the work to do now.

There will be those who may secretly wish things wouldn’t change. There will be men who overnight have become relics, dinosaurs, defined by their inability to recognise they belong to another era. The world has moved on. How should they behave now and must we acknowledge the fall-out of deriding a generation of men as inappropriate? They are fathers, husbands, brothers, colleagues, friends. As a seismic change takes place underfoot, the tectonic plates of gender are on the move and now a new landscape is discernible, complete with gaping crevasses between what was and what will be. And what of the accused? There’s instant judgement and castigation. Weinstein flashes across our screens. We imagine the manifestation of the sexual predator; the middle-aged, paunchy, powerful man. But it surely must apply to younger men, boys even, who are now navigating these waters? What of the accused teenage boy who thought he had consent but, it turns out, his perception differs to hers? So treacherous is it that my head spins at the prospect of guiding my daughter and my son through it and I, like every generation before me, think back with whimsy to my teenage years when we bought ‘Boys Don’t Cry’ by ‘The Cure’ on 7 inch vinyl and didn’t really question things. I see that era is gone. As it ever was, the older generation – my generation – will define the route forward, but it will be her generation who take the journey.

November rain*

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This is how it is right now.

Yesterday was a glorious, crisp, sunny day; the heart-full kind, and then there was a swollen autumn moon that rose in true spooky fashion, between swathes of cloud, as we ate dinner last night. The benefit of having a glass wall; you see the moon come up as you eat your cauliflower cheese. Today it’s raining. I went for a run this morning and it felt heavy-footed and hard, I was wishing every moment would pass as I followed my usual track. I logged my route on Strava and then lamented at how all of my peers are running faster than me. Story of my life?! I am a slow runner. Slow and steady wins the race. I was always on the side of the tortoise.

My blog gets about 100 spam comments per night, which each morning I diligently go through and delete. They muddy the water and I wonder what is the point? It’s all about viagra. There’s one particularly persistent one named ‘Benny Nasty’. I wish Benny would give it up.

‘Nanowrimo’ is a week in and I’m keeping to my word count each day which pleases me greatly. This morning I woke at 5am and was full of words and concepts I wanted to capture; this is a good sign. The direction I was given last week like gold dust, I hang on to it and try to shape and mould this book into something that someone will like.

I think about shopping too much and covet obscure Danish brands who make clothes that are different to those British people wear. I calculate the Euro conversion rate (which incidentally is shit; thanks Brexit) and press ‘add to cart’ a lot; rarely checkout.

My daughter was away for the weekend and the house felt empty without her. I want to galvanise myself for when she goes for real, a time way off in the future when she will travel or go to Uni and I feel my heart constrict. My ambition for her knows no bounds, but the reality of its result will be hard to bear.

I wrote an article about generational feminism, as in my perception vs. my daughter’s and punted it around; I’m waiting for responses from blogzines. Wouldn’t be it be lovely if someone wanted to publish it?

I try to avoid any mention of Christmas and physically recoiled when I heard on the radio that someone had put their tree up already. Wtaf?!

It’s well into rugby season as I had to stand and watch, as my son got a sideways, rhino-stampede-style-tackle that floored him on Sunday. I kept my poker face. Brownie points for the rugby Mum; don’t react, it’s all a game.

Do what you have to do!

*I just rewatched the video of Guns N Roses ‘November Rain‘ with which I was obsessed, circa 1992; Stephanie Seymour in that wedding dress, Slash and his guitar solo in the desert, the tragedy, the hair. Rock and Roll.

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Going to the city to see a man about a book

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One night in the city of London, hobnobbing with writers and a certain influential publisher, with whom I’d won a 15 minute pitch, and I returned to the coast exhausted but full of energy for my novel. Isn’t there a school of thought that says to refer to something as real, a bone fide thing, is a surefire way to make it happen? Visualisation. I talked my novel up, the amplifier set to ‘high’ in the hope that what I’ve done is enough to secure interest, a nugget of direction, sponsorship, the belief that it could become real. Writing a book is such a strange exercise. Unlike any venture I have embarked on before, the product is a nebulous thing. Yes, there is a manuscript, but that is a changeable feast, there is always another iteration, a chance to make it into something the same, but different. Then there is me: the author. I must front it and bring it to life and speak authoritatively about a bunch of characters I fabricated. Then there’s the subtext; the not-so-quiet manifesto that is threaded throughout, about women and their role in the world. So all in all, my brain ached but I was smiling when I returned home on the train, a glimpse of London glitter fading behind me in the distance. It went well.

It’s the first of November and for novelists that can mean ‘nanowrimo‘, the curious, slightly frenzied activity of writing a novel in the month of November. A 50,000 word objective in thirty shortening, winter days. I am going to start today and use the impetus to whip my novel into shape, to reinvigorate its tired bits. See you in a month 😉

It’s the discipline required to work that I occasionally lack. I downloaded an app called ‘Forest‘ which is designed to stop you looking at your phone for, say, 30 minutes. If you do that, a tree will grow (I, characteristically, chose a palm tree) and if you fail and access your phone, the tree dies. If you succeed with your thirty minutes, the tree lives! What is the world coming to that I am actually describing what – pre-smart phones – was called a normal attention span? The fact remains, distraction rates are high when you work for yourself, when your daily output is a set of fresh, made-up words, when you don’t have a boss or an appraisal. So I am building my own forest of palm trees and maybe, just maybe, I will get this novel finished and published because of it!

Meanwhile, the clocks have gone back, winter is setting in and I started the day with a run by the water, which was as flat as a pond today, and I could see my breath. Time seems be to gearing up to pass me by, the days slip and I find myself at night thinking: where did that go? The winter uniform is on; dog walking attire that can withstand splats of mud. I thought as I was whisked through London in a black cab; Londoners don’t have this problem. They have pavements, mud and its management does not feature in their daily wardrobe decisions. Living the country dream is flawed…but then as I looked out to the fields around my house this morning I saw a group of deer grazing on the left-over sweetcorn that was harvested last month. They stand still, heads cocked, antlers glistening and I could just make out their decision to flee. They wait a second, then go, noiselessly, the group in motion, simultaneously catching the instinct to run away. It’s glimpses like these, in the distance, that secure my presence in the country, by the sea, away from the city lights.

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My muse

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I counsel my son on the need to master a skill before one can become great at it. To truly excel. We discuss the relationship between talent and effort. This is a perennial issue when you are twelve, and play sport. Effort in rugby is not the same as effort in maths. Even with talent, work is required. He strives for things to be effortless. I lecture and he listens and not much changes, because when you are twelve, you just want to do what you want to do. He attends a school where most, almost without exception, are super-competitive. Children and parents alike. It was the experience of going there that led me to the concept of my novel; without witnessing the behaviour at that school, there’s no way I would have conceived of a book about the veneer of the school mothers.

But back to effort. I can relate; writing a novel is an effort. The ability to write is a talent, for sure, but being able to write something meaningful and good requires an effort of the purest kind. And tenacity. And a muse.

My muse up and left in about May 2016. I handed in the first draft of my novel for my Masters and felt like I had run a literary marathon. The process resembled nothing I’d worked on before, no previous work experience in my other, corporate life. Even when we had wrapped an enormous business project, one that had sapped time and energy over months, even years, nothing took the effort that writing a novel took. I handed it in and waited for my grade to be given. The feedback. Terrifying. Luckily I had lovely but rigorous tutors who, I can now see, made me the writer I am today. I got a distinction for that submission and honestly I felt so pleased with myself, I think my muse might have left because of my self-satisfied grin.

To start with, I didn’t miss my muse because hell, I’d written that damn draft and that was all that mattered, right? I found myself talking about it like a done deal; my book, yea I’ve written a book. But that was really only the start, and in my naivety, I didn’t know how gruelling the next phase would be. Reflecting on what you’ve written is a crucial part of the creative process; this is why writing books takes so very long. If you have the type of talent that enables you to spew out a masterpiece first go, then brilliant. Thumbs up emoji. But for most writers that is not the case. For me there was a long and slow realisation that I had a load more work to do, and a Masters degree to complete, and an entire career to build as a professional author.

I looked for my muse everywhere. But she was so elusive, like some kind of willow-the-wisp nymph. I’d glimpse her, start thinking about writing again, only to find she’d gone. My life, I decided, did not lend itself to keeping hold of her. I was too distracted with other matters like running a home and being a mother and doing all of the million little things that women like me do. I made excuses and wondered if I might never recapture her. Finishing my degree was the focus and that required the visualisation of publishing a novel, but very little actual writing of said novel. The summer came and went. Leaves fell from the trees. I thought maybe it was a sign; I was a fair-weathered writer. More suited to articles and blog posts. Sort bursts of creativity that would get immediate attention (like! comment! agree!) and then become part of the internet ether. My yearning for a hardback copy of my own novel to be in a bookshop started to seem outrageous. How could I expect that? I’d only written a draft and a stinking great big academic dissertation on how I did it.

Another life lesson: when you are in education, you can lose sight of the benefit of your education. It becomes opaque. I found myself grappling for the meaning.

Now I’ve done it, I can see that education is an amazing gift. Those two letters: ‘MA’. Masters. I revert back; you need to master a skill before you can become great at it.

So my muse. She arrived abruptly. Just last week. My writing colleague gave me a talking to. She sent me some reworkings of my own plot – sometimes you can’t see the wood for your own trees. An outsider can. A better ending, the right tone, a fresh view. The possibilities reared up! This could be good again. And just like that the muse was back. The need to write. The compulsion. Sufficient headspace to work on the novel with openness and glee. And as the words started to emerge again, I noted what I’d learnt. Errors made in the first draft didn’t recur so easily. Grammatically speaking, there was flow and order. Parameters leapt up and settled in early; the writing was easier because I’d developed my skills. Oh the relief!

Now of course, I know how much I still have to do and how long I seem to have been banging on about this bloody book!

If anyone wants me, I’ll be at my desk…

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