Lou Bradford

Writes

Happy, sad, inspired, terrified…or the truth about post-graduate study.

· 2 Comments

It’s a Saturday and I am fresh off the back of what will come to punctuate my life for the next two years: College. Or University. Or what should I call it? Higher education? My Masters. That thing I am doing that causes people’s eyebrows to shoot up and then come down again in an abrupt effort to disguise their surprise. Writing? A Masters in Writing? ‘Ohhh.’ Gosh. I might toy with it and sometimes say I am doing a Masters in Molecular Physics. I don’t even know if there is such a thing as molecular physics…I could google it but my computer would probably recoil; how unlike me, normally my google searches are things like: winter leather boots, not too expensive. Or how to treat an aching shoulder. Or recipe made from just three ingredients, one of them kale (past its sell by date).

Logistically, this time it was tough, it’s half term and my gadding off to spend three days immersed in literature and writing was badly timed. Farming my children out to friends and family and doing the good old faithful ‘double drop-off’ before my working day even started brought back memories of my previous corporate life. Sickening memories actually; I did it for so many years, that treadmill of the working mother. Anyway, once everyone including the dog were dispatched, I went and got educated.

Day one of the three day sequential: oh so happy. Look at me, remembering stuff, being clever, having erudite conversations with academics about feminism and narrative structures and getting feedback on my work from real and proper tutors who Know About Writing. Carrying my satchel around feeling pleased with myself.

Day two: exhausted (already; brain hurts from effort of being clever), terrified, realising that, shit, I have to write a whole bloody book by May. MAY!! Yes, I know. wtf.

Day three: resigned, it’s nearly over, fond of my writing class mates, feeling goodwill towards all writers ever. Pushing negative thoughts away – mantra: banish self-doubt. Keen to get back to my normal life of being less clever and having clean laundry and something to eat in the house.

It’s a curious thing. It’s time and soul-sapping. My sister in law texted from Dubai me saying: Earth to Lou. Where are you?

And so I sit here thinking. And writing, and then deleting. And writing a bit more.

Meanwhile, life does go on. Post-grad study is all that I thought it would be. True to form: I want my tutors to be impressed with me, like I used to want my bosses to be impressed with me. I want to get good marks. I want to do well. But then I tell myself – at times when it’s feeling really hard and challenging – I am not doing this to be impressive, I am doing it for a multitude of other complex reasons.

My children ask me how school was in a strange reversal of roles. They still, despite themselves, get cross that the normal level of housewifely service has temporarily ceased.

And then in amongst this we shuttle back and forth to the nearly-built house and check progress, get excited. This was a big week; they started fitting the kitchen. It resembles an actual habitable place. I am, despite what anyone might think and however un-ready it is, planning to move back in next weekend. I literally can not wait any more. Quite aside from the ironic fact that after all this, we may end up destitute having spent all our money in the whole wide world on that house.

I figure there’s only one thing for it; comfort googling, mindless Pinterest-stalking, going for a run, walking the pup, eating recipes that don’t include kale, getting back to my life until the next time…

She writes

· 5 Comments

I am well into September now, it feels like life has taken on a different pace and the days of summer are over. It rains a lot and we Brits complain about the weather; I find myself wondering (again) what it must be like to live in a warm climate where you can wake up and it’s not grey. The weather never used to bother me – like so many things; I turned 40 and thought of a million things that had never occurred to me before – so I am amongst the hard core of weather complainers. Right now bad weather means less building work; roofers need good weather, brick-layers need good weather. I have had to step into the project management role for our house build and so I have learnt many new terms and have stood in many a muddy puddle (in the middle of what will be my kitchen) lamenting the damp proof course. I ask myself again: why did we renovate an old house? Shortly followed by: why didn’t we just knock it all down and start again? Working around and amongst an old house and adding the modernity that I long for (think: Scandinavian white) is a laborious process. I get the wobbles frequently and wonder whether I really trust my own taste. I know what I like but I also know that I have a slightly off-piste taste that may or may not translate. All I know is that I want it to be a bit different; I hate to be ordinary.

Meanwhile, I am writing every day. Not the blog – as my lack of posts can attest to – but the book. I have walked around with an idea of an idea of an idea in my head for years. Now I finally have to get on with it; the start of my Masters degree looming in two short weeks. The reading list for the course got me going actually, lots of affirming, calming, just-get-on-with-it words of wisdom that made me simply start. Type, type. And now I am off. God knows if it’s any good, but honestly at this stage, that is not the point. It’s fascinating to create another world in your head!

People ask me why I have opted to go back into education and I vary the response according to audience. To some degree I am not sure I even know the full reason myself, other than it became a compulsion to do something that would get me closer to producing a book. Whether it ever gets published or not. When will I start to call myself a writer? I am nearly there. Truly. But it feels foreign on my lips and like I am an impostor. I realise this pursuit is riddled with self-doubt but hey, that’s familiar territory for me 😉

I sit in our little house (not our real house) perched on a newly acquired Swiss ball (it’s all about core muscles after all, so I have abandoned chairs, for now). I fret about how my life will change when I am a student again. I, true to form, get waylaid on the Internet, shopping for clothes and start pressing ‘add to cart’ when I really shouldn’t and all the time, I dream of when my real house is finished and we can go home. Still displaced, it’s been over nine weeks now and I suspect another six to go. And even then we will be camping out if we go home; our house long from finished. Suddenly Christmas is seeming closer than ever.

So why a change of lifestyle – a shift into education again? I am going to be really honest; I could not have faced more time spent cleaning the house and having coffee mornings (and I don’t mean to say I don’t enjoy those two things or that they are not worthy or important). I found myself craving clever conversation, longing to solve a problem or ponder a truth or appreciate a beauty in something, but had no outlet. I was lonely and bored and so deep into an existential midlife crisis that it was almost comical. All of my friends grew weary of me saying: but what am I going to do with my life? It seems that after 15 years with my back up against the corporate wall I became institutionalised. I need to be thinking and assessing and furthering ideas, just like I did for all that time when I was working. It’s been two years since I left and despite dalliances along other avenues, I found I couldn’t do nothing. There’s only so much listening to ‘Women’s Hour’ that one can do. I want to be ON Women’s Hour, talking about my new novel! Haha.

So what else? The pup is traumatised still by the change of house location. We take him back to the real house and he freaks out every time he steps over the threshold as he realises it’s not what it was. I know how he feels. Children back to school; already tired at the very idea of winter. Early mornings and Saturday matches. Both have important years this year.

I think of things to blog about and then life overtakes me. I wonder whether many of my good blog friends have the same issue as I swear people post fewer times than they used to? Is this a blogging shift? Have blogs had their day? I read that people can’t cope with blogs now that Instagram is so prevalent; we need a quick ‘like’ and swipe on. It would be a shame if that were the case.

I shall carry on regardless!

Good Wednesday, Lou x

The quality of your thoughts

· 7 Comments

Struck by the immediacy of the web, I scour for the perfect Spring coat. I actually get frustrated when I can’t find what I want at the right price. I marvel at this, remembering how, pre-Internet, I used to actually go on shopping trips (invariably with my friend Dawn) and choose items in situ, in an actual shop, emerging with a real, live purchase. Now the postman is a trusty and long-suffering participant in my habit.

I am stuck halfway between a great book and a gripping book. The gripping one (The Girl on the Train) won over and I have read it cover to cover in less than 24 hours. I feel slightly dazed now; words swimming before my eyes. A satisfying read though. I will now revert to the great book (The Lives of Girls and Women) which is entirely more high-brow, but slower in pace.

It’s my birthday tomorrow. After all of the fanfare last year of turning 40, what can I say a year down the line?! It’s been a funny old year! The thing I wanted the most (freedom from working and space for myself) has turned out to be a challenge. Of all the times in my life, my 40th year saw me with more time on my hands than ever before and the reckoning that life had altogether shifted and changed. There were a few factors here; having a teenage child (which serves to remind you how long ago it was since you were 13) to noticing how many of my peers have returned to paid employment after years of housewifery. I did it all the other way round. The realisation that if I spend too much time alone, at home, I get this pervading feeling of stillness/frustration/boredom – even when there are a million things that need doing. The urgency seeped out of me month to month and instead I went from day to day; opening the blinds each morning and thinking: can another day have passed?? It’s a curious thing.

So not an unhappy year exactly, but a pensive one. And I now conclude that the time is up for all that thinking and instead it’s time for doing. I know, I know, I have said this before; bear with me.

I realise (and this could be my maturing years) that in fact the quality of your life DOES indeed depend on the quality of your thoughts. It’s all about how you look at things.

I move steps closer to securing a place doing a Master’s Degree in Writing; I had an interview yesterday, waiting to hear. I realise that of those million tasks that the housewife should complete; many can wait. I can steal a dog walk or a pub lunch with my husband when he works at home and feel grateful that we have that luxury. I covet things on line and then get over myself a day later; the beauty of the ‘add to cart’ option that never progresses to ‘checkout’. I ponder whether I am too old for boyfriend jeans (I’m saying I can wear them; just). I try not to think too much about how it’s all going to feel ten years from now. Or twenty.

I guess this year has been spent carving out a place I’m comfortable in. It feels as if before now, there were a series of choices (career, marriage, home, kids) that now, at the ripe of age of nearly 41, have come home to roost. Me? Mother of a teenager and a nine year old? Married for fifteen years? Washing my kitchen floor and hoovering most days? Seeing photos of myself and thinking – where did those laughter lines come from?! Furtively wishing I had once in my life been platinum blonde and wondering if I ever will be. Genuinely and actively deciding whether to age gracefully. Having a genuine interest in face creams that promise miracles. Being outraged by things that didn’t used to outrage me. This is all part of life’s rich tapestry…happy birthday me.

Educating Rita

· 5 Comments

The open day for the writing degree was last weekend; a wood-panelled room, me and three tutors well-versed in academia. I got to talk about writing. It felt like I had come home. I think this might be good for me. Now I have to apply and see if I can get a place…

I’ve spent a week being busy…with some lovely interludes, like meeting my good friend Amanda at The Pig and devouring gorgeous food and even better chat.

Then, there are the domestics. Ever present.

The not-buying-anything resolution was short-lived. As predicted by my readers.

There were morning walks, with the pup, on the beach and morning runs at the marina. And yoga and circuit training. I was meant to run a 10K race last weekend and I bailed. I keep doing this; entering and not doing. I have to conclude that competitive running is just not for me. Full stop.

I am preparing a portfolio of writing to submit for the degree course; absolutely daunting. But good.

I finished reading ‘Elizabeth is Missing‘ and worried about Dementia a little more than I did before.

Another parent’s evening (my daughter this time) and the clarity you get from good teachers who tell you like it is. She’s a good girl my daughter; she’ll do well, I hope. Turns out (in a comment from her philosophy teacher) that she can formulate an ethical argument that rocks. This pleases me. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

I saw 19 deer in the fields by my house today, in a herd. The leader has grown antlers now. I quite like that we rub along, the deer and I. They don’t scarper, they know as I approach that I don’t mean them harm.

It’s half term next week, thank goodness. The school run is killing me slowly.

I long for Spring and a semblance of good weather. The long winter is getting on my last nerve.

I watched four episodes of ‘Sex and the City’. For old time’s sake.

It’s Friday night, happy weekend!

On writing

· 4 Comments

I have always been in awe of writers. Making a profession from that which is already in your brain seems very special to me; a club that only few can join and one that you certainly can’t buy or train your way in to. My view: writers write because they have to, words spill out as there is no room for them inside. It’s a calling. And despite that impetus, it’s an overpopulated calling. My Mum, who is a voracious reader, often despairs at the poor quality of writing in so many books (although rarely in articles, which says a lot for the journalistic profession). There are books that seem lucky to have ever been published, with flimsy story lines and flimsier characters. The lesson: being able to construct a sentence does not a good writer make. Where is the editor?

Sylvia Plath, on whom I wrote my dissertation.

And I read the daily musings of what I call ‘real’ writers, I am so consistently impressed by the quality, the depth, the sheer human feeling of the writing. Sometimes, my readers comment and say they like how I write and that I am honest and that they see themselves in what they read. To me, this is what writing is all about. The ability to transport the reader to a place they recognise but that is not their own. And to do so convincingly.

So to report on the ‘book in me’ that I have referred to since I gave up working in the corporate world, yea, well…it’s coming along, but only in my mind’s eye! Writing is a solitary activity and one that requires countless hours in front of a screen. It also requires (at least for me) absolute concentration and an immersion that is not so compatible with the stop/start of family life. I think this is why my blog has been so enduring; it can take as little as twenty minutes for me to write and decorate a blog post and so is often done in the evening as dinners simmer or homework chats ensue. It’s a download rather than a formed discipline. Nevertheless these are excuses for the fact that if I wanted to write, I would.

I started writing short stories as a novel seemed even more elusive for my amateur self. A publisher friend suggested that my writing style was more observational/conversational (hence why the blog works) rather than fictional. But at the root of it all is my need to notice life and to record its meaning. And in every thing I read, the great empathy I feel when a writer has achieved that aim is what spurs me on to write. The more I read, the more I want to write.

But I know I am not alone in wanting to write and those voices in my head (everyone has those, right?) say it’s a saturated, cerebral market and maybe I am not good enough and honestly, as my English teacher always said to me: ‘Louise, you write in a convoluted way; you can not assume that the reader is with you in your thoughts!’

But again and again as I loop around the ‘what to do?’ question in life, I come back to writing as an anchor. So I take that to be a sign.

       

Theme by 17th Avenue · Powered by WordPress & Genesis