I’ve always said that #PhotoMe booths do weird things to you! Just found this in the back of my notebook from last year… #weirdness

Now, some might think that I was seeing things again. There was the infamous ‘badger on a bicycle’ incident from years ago (rumoured to actually be one of those lie-down tricycles that was coming off the A34 of all places at the North Abingdon slip-road). There was also the jousting knight on a moped that I saw on a country road in Oxfordshire, and most recently of course, earlier this year the medieval blacksmith on the bus. In fairness, although I don’t know whether he was a blacksmith, he was unshaven, wild-haired, and wearing a medieval-like tunic who had made some of his own attire (because I heard him tell this to the 21st century girl he was sat next to).

However, if you see a man – albeit wearing high-vis jacket and riding a bike – flying the Jolly Roger from his “vessel” then the man is clearly a pirate. It seems immaterial to me that his vessel might be the more unconventional bicycle.

To understand exactly the nature of this morning’s anxious dreams we have to go back a few week’s to another dream that I don’t think I realised was a dream until now…

It was the weekend that my Mum and Dad came to stay to celebrate my birthday. I have this memory – a false memory as it turns out – that whilst on the way back from somewhere we stopped in Brill (maybe?) at a tumble-down little cottage on the hill, where an old lady was selling plants and crafts. Emma bought something – some crafts I think, and I remember her saying something about what her Dad told her never to do as she was getting money out her purse. Then later on she discovered her wedding ring was missing. The only thing that we could think was that she put her wedding ring in her purse whilst she tried on the ring that she was buying from the old lady (the crafty thing must have been jewellery?) and then paid for the gift jewellery with her wedding ring. I remember saying that we can just go back and see her, but Emma pointed out that the old lady had it now and wouldn’t give it back, and that can’t be what happened anyway, and that not to worry because it would turn up.

I really should have know that was a dream there and then then because that’s a very rational, considered – unbelievable response! But anyway I thought it was real even though nothing more was said about it.

So this morning I woke up really anxious and panicky about it, and thinking all the time that I must make sure to remember to ask/check with Emma if she had her ring still or if some old lady with a tumbledown cottage in Brill had taken it, before I left for work and really worrying in case I didn’t and then I would be worrying about it all day. Clearly, my anxiousness stayed with me after I ‘woke up’ properly. I even kept on going back trying to remember the details of what we did and where we went that weekend to try and remember where it was that it happened (was it Brill?) and why her Dad had warned her about something…

It really freaked me out.

Last night though, I was attending a writer’s conference with all my old university cohort. Jon Scotcher was there and was trying to talk to me about eBooks but could never quite get to talk to me because some really annoying lady (who seemed to know me, but I had never met before) kept on pestering about me about her own experiences of being published.

I went to college in the middle of a Cheshire field, but for some reason the Creative Arts Reunion Writers Conference (I have no idea if that’s what it was called but it describes it quite well) was being held up the Queen Elizabeth Lecture Theatre – a surprisingly auspicious name for a temporarily constructed room erected prior to major campus redevelopment – which post-dated our time at College, and was in fact located in a now demolished building in the old two-story bit of Darcy Building at Oxford Brookes University. It didn’t seem to matter that we were existing in the same time and space as the new pubic plaza at the front of the new entrance…

After the plenary we broke out into discussion groups which seemed to bring in people who worked in the National Trust volunteer office, and I was very excited to see the new working holiday brochures with some of Emma and my wedding photographs from Craflwyn Hall.

We had been booked into one, massive hotel somewhere but we were being switched and I got a taxi with some of my course-mates to the new hotel on Above Bar street in Southampton…

…only at this point did it occur to me that this was some crazy, mixed up writers’ conference. Still, if you’re going to have a crazy, mixed up conference then it might as well be for crazy, mixed up writers.

1. I love books and reading, probably more than is healthy. But I love writing more. Consequently there are so many books out there I haven’t read and wish I had. This year I’ve read 30 books to date, and that’s like, double my typical average yearly count. I’m not as well-read as I would like to.

2. I talk to myself. All the time. And not just talking, but full-blown conversations, arguments, or debates. And I don’t always agree with myself.

3. I remember the weirdest things; the kind of things that most people tend to forget or not even notice. At the same time I can be dreadfully unobservant of things that everyone else notices straightaway.

4. My first bit of writing was a theatre script for a Star Trek story which features an exploding washing machine. I had my toy theatre with its actors of Play People and I made a set which had real soap suds oosing out across the stage.

5. When I was young I couldn’t pronounce the word ‘vegetable’. Even now, I can remember being taught it: veg-e-table…

6. Most people say rant, r-aunt, but I have always favour r-ant. Makes sense to me.

7. I cry when I see trees fall down or get cut down.

8. I believe passionately in the importance of libraries. I remember Saturday mornings in Lowestoft Central Library and coming away from there with an armful of books every so fondly. I feel a bit hypocritical though that I don’t use them enough now and worry that I am partly responsible for their decline.

9. When I’m writing a new story, I often imagine listening to Front Row on the radio (or similar) and hearing critics review the finished book. It’s not all praise though, I hear the detracting comments too…

10. There are words that, as many times as I have to spell them, I can never spell them right. Effect and affect. Nope I still can’t get them the right way in my head. I can do its and it’s now, but boy did it take ages…

11. I worked for a decade in academic publishing and all that time I had a Post-It not stuck to my computer monitor reminding me the difference between Harvard and Vancouver references. I know one’s Author/Date and one’s Numbered. I still can’t remember for certainty which is which…

Wow, that’s some list of ephemera of things you probably didn’t want to know, and would have been too scared to ask… When I was given this challenge I really didn’t think I would get to eleven! Want a go yourself, comment here, and I’ll give your number of random things. 

After we got back from our walk, whilst the man’s car was gone, the woman’s was still there: clearly they must have met there and gone off somewhere else together with cat.

Now, this is where my brain seems to differ from  norm. Whilst Emma looks at it as a sweet take of boyfriend and girlfriend meeting up but no it having anyone to look after the cat. What I see is two people having an affair, and the stories that the cat could tell. Further to this I see a novel, told through the eyes of the cat of two people and their illicit relationship….

After we got back from our walk, whilst the man’s car was gone, the woman’s was still there: clearly they must have met there and gone off somewhere else together with cat.

Now, this is where my brain seems to differ from  norm. Whilst Emma looks at it as a sweet take of boyfriend and girlfriend meeting up but no it having anyone to look after the cat. What I see is two people having an affair, and the stories that the cat could tell. Further to this I see a novel, told through the eyes of the cat of two people and their illicit relationship….

Originally published at shepline: the journal. You can comment here or there.

Firstly, you might think that I know every twist and turn and nuance of the story, but there are a surprisingly (and I think, refreshingly) large amount of the story that comes as just as much as a surprise as if I am reading it.

Secondly, it’s weird, but those words that I have written look different when read on the printed, published page. Just sometimes, I read a phrase, and I can’t help think, did I write that? I hope that doesnߣ sound boastful or deceitful, I’m just finding it weird to read back words that I have written. Like I said, its just really, really weird…

You Were My Betty

Charlotte is a straight As student in the final year of university, distinctions with virtually her every essay – First Class Honours can only be all but a formality.

She is working on her final dissertation, a labour of love and hours of research in the making, with the pet name of ‘Betty’. When her supervisor is unexpectantly taken ill she has no on to talk through her ideas.

Then she meets a girl who is to become her closest of friends: Elizabeth. She seems to know everything about the subject – an invaluable and irreplaceable help to her – utterly clueless when it comes to real life. When the dissertation is finished, Charlotte realises how much she has come to depend on her, and finds it hard to accept that she must leave.

That’s when she realises the Elizabeth, now her closest of friends, is actually her own dear Betty, her dissertation in human form…

Yeah, that’s right. I have a weird brain.

Bob comes to lunch and sits on his own everyday, reads the New Scientist, wearing socks and sandles. As for Ugly Betty – I’ve not seen the Channel 4 show myself but I have seen the trailers – and she does appear to have every same mannerism and style of the character