Being Me

Just a reminder that, on my new blog, once a week or maybe twice I'm posting up ideas, tips and exercises - along with a few laughs - for anyone who loves to write. There are a few posts up there now. Today's is about using a variety of sentence types to lift your writing style. Go and have a look or recommend to any writer friends. And follow to get regular updates.  Here's the link. Writing with the use of a duck-billed platypus

I have some things to tell you. I'll attempt to link them all together, but I don't yet know how. Let's wait and see. 1. Near my house, an alleyway leads under a railway bridge. On the wall of the bridge, some kid who has a GSOH but won't get a GCSE in English has sprayed, in enormous white painted letters, this message: 'Call the Graffiti Removeral Hotline.com!' 2. I noticed, yesterday morning while making my packed lunch of home-made cheese coleslaw, that when you grate cheese, it behaves itself, but when you grate carrot, it goes everywhere but into its assigned container. The cheese obediently grated into the sandwich box, yet only three shreds of carrot landed in there. The rest was a) on my cardigan; b) on the walls; c) on the work surface; d) still on the carrot. Retrieving shreds of carrot from various surfaces is not the way to start a working day. 3. When I log in to my computer, it asks for a password. When I mistype the password, it says to m...

Short story entitled ' Why people shouldn't go to the Internet for medical help .' 'What's that strange lump on my leg? Surely that wasn't there before,' thought the woman. She Googled it. 'Strange lump on leg,' she typed. Website 1 said, You have a lump on your leg. It will go soon. Do not worry. Website 2 said, You have probably bumped yourself without realising. It will go soon. Do not worry. Website 3 said, This is probably a fatty lump or a benign cyst. It will go soon. Do not worry. Website 4 said, You have a fast-growing incurable malignant fibrous histiocytoma. See a doctor immediately and check that you have no diaries lying around. She felt the lump again. Surely, since she started Googling, it had grown thirteen times bigger? The End. Googling the lump had given it an ego and a personality of its own Medics seem to hate it when you turn up at the surgery and say, 'Doctor, I've googled this, and apparently ...

SATURDAY UPDATE ON SLIPPER SITUATION: Mourn with me, brothers and sisters. I went to M & S to fetch my new slippers and put them on at home only to find my heels hung over the edge.  Size 7s, my foot!  I am slipperless once again, as the nice but harassed lady on the counter tells me that there are no size 8s in stock. Fear not. I did buy an alternative to make me feel better. Here they are. Not quite a pair, but good enough.  Thornton's Special Toffees. Yum. One in fruit and nut, and one in Brazil nut flavour.  They won't keep my feet warm, but they still provide a kind of comfort that's very welcome in my distressed, sans-slipper state. 

I'm unreasonably excited about getting my new pair of slippers. This is what they look like. I never used to wear slippers. I'd always schlupped around in socks, going 'oof, oof' on the cold kitchen tiles in the winter. My husband would urge, 'Get yourself some slippers and stop oofing' and I'd look at him and say, 'I may have some parts of my body which have gone south in search of new adventures, and maybe I do watch 'Flog It' on my days off, but I am not yet old enough to wear slippers.' Why did I think they were a sign that the End was Nigh? I don't know. Two Christmases ago, not long after I became a Grandma and it seemed futile to hang on to my youth, in the same way it's futile for someone to cling hopefully on to a cliff edge who's got honey on their fingers, I decided it was time. I was in Marks & Spencer, thinking, 'But these all look like care home slippers' when, there they were: my destiny. Exactly...

I found this snippet of writing in a notebook. I don't remember where I was when I wrote it or when. A writing class? It intrigued me, though, just playing on one word like this. The word 'abandon'. Three syllables. Oh, if only it were that simple. And yet, within the word, there is the thing itself. Ah yes, it begins with the vowel, hanging there in the air as though it were benign and could do no damage.  But then the 'b' - the 'ban' - the plosive threat of violence, of a door shutting, of isolation and the colour black.  And the fall. The 'don'. It is all finished. The decision to leave you behind has been made.  The last part of the word can be whispered by the guilty as a victory hiss, by those who depart, as they slide the bolts on all the doors, or turn the silver key in a lock. They take the 'don' with them.  It is the centre of the word that remains, the part that hurts the most. A bit depressing, though. Perhaps I was on ...

Hey, for those of you who like to write, I've started a new blog on which I'll share writing tips, hints, exercises and the like, mixed in with the usual selection of (what I call) humour. What inspired me to start the blog was finding a heap of papers and files, all to do with my years of English teaching and running creative writing classes, as well as all the notes from previous writing classes I used to attend years ago. What to do with all these? Paper a room? Make a whole fleet of paper aeroplanes? Send them to recycling and take up an entire landfill site with metaphors and character descriptions? Ergo - the new blog.  It's here.  Write with Fran Come and take a look. And let any writing friends know. They're welcome aboard.