So …Here’s The News!

Hi All

So …as promised in my last post, some exciting news to share with you all …and I want to share it here first because, in a way, it is all down to you guys. Why? Because you have read, supported, liked, and commented on this blog for the last (almost) 3 years and because of you lovely people making it ‘popular’ it has now been published (U P Publications) in eBook and paperback.

To be honest I am more than a little surprised that anyone ever wanted to read my ramblings. After all, what it so interesting about my little life? A life filled with shouting at Richard, picking up chicken pooh and rescuing frogs, baby birds, spiders, bumble bees and worms from Chea?

‘Two Chucks And A Tabby Cat – Book One’ starts at the beginning of the blog, in 2012, at the time when Chea arrived and, weirdly, I remember it like it was yesterday – my sudden inspiration to check out the local RSPCA on my way home from a bit of retail therapy. And finding that little tabby ball of innocent fluff, snoozing away, squashed beneath her two brothers.

It was the first time I’d been shopping and come home with a new bra, skinny jeans, a winter sweater, a towelling dressing gown and a tabby kitten. Though, in fairness, they didn’t let me have the tabby kitten until the following day because I had to return with Richard to let them see that he was worthy of dedicating the rest of his life to one of their feline inmates. Apparently, bouncing on the spot, singing his praises and assuring them that he was the softest, loveliest, kitten-cat-type-person-in-the-whole-wide-world wasn’t good enough. Unless it was my bouncing enthusiasm that they questioned? Possibly.

The bra didn’t fit, the towelling dressing gown too short, the skinny jeans too skinny, and the winter sweater made me look like a whale …so they were all returned at a later date. The tabby kitten, of course, wasn’t. As I say – I remember it all like it was yesterday…

Without wanting to come across as a sentimental pillock I do have to say that it will be really nice to have these memories captured in book form. Besides the ‘obvious’ niceness of it all it also means that I can free-up a bit of head space – a bit like saving the memories to a memory stick rather than having them all on the hard drive …if you know what I mean? You probably don’t. Not sure if I do?

So that’s it. My mucho exciting news. And I have the greatest pleasure in sharing it with you first because as I said – and you all know I’m a great one for repeating myself a dozen times or more –  it’s all down to you …the readers, the commentators, the ones who encourage, etc. etc.

I find it exciting and nerve-racking – in equal measures, so I’m off for a stress reducing stroke of my pussy. (I haven’t told her yet that she’s featured in a book) I suppose she’ll be expecting lightly grilled chicken, in a salmon mousse, and a sodding sparkly collar? I’m now going to have to live with an irritating, illogical man, two mental chucks and a prima donna puss!

The crosses we have to bear, hey?

Take care my lovelies x

*If you want to take a look at ‘our’ book just click the side bar cover*

A Summer Snow Storm?

Hi All

Do you think I’m a defeatist? Do you think I’m the first to throw my tatty hat into the ring and give up? I’m sure those of you who know me are manically shaking your heads and shouting no, no dear heart, not you …and you are right. Except…

I have been beaten. Thrashed. Flattened. And there is nothing I can do about it – apparently.

My garden has become the meeting place, and the laying-of-a-billion-eggs place, for every cabbage white butterfly in Leicestershire. No one else has a single, miserable caterpillar-creating-machine fluttering around their broccoli and Brussels plants. Just sodding me.

I walk through the gate, off the lawn, and into my veggie bit, and it’s like walking into a summer snow storm. There are dozens of the pesky little gits, flapping, lifting, dropping, fornicating, egg laying and just generally really peeing me off. Their progeny munch and chew, and burp and pooh, and hold little parties on the underside of the brassica leaves.

I have to admit to losing my cool and knocking a few off onto the ground. Then I had a good old spray around with an oil based (useless) spray to see if that might deter the mother ship, but alas, no. My plants cry and shout, ‘help me. Kill the little blighters.’ But I feel bad about it, even the ones I got really angry with and knocked off their perches and onto the ground.

I may have to give up. Such are the joys of ‘the gardener.’

I’ve also had a jolly nice swarm of baby wasps, sucking on the overripe gooseberries. This, of course, is great fun, this game of ‘dodge the wasp’ …not!

And Chea, the demented feline, has flattened and snapped the new cat mint that I planted this year. I made a new border, behind the pond for bee-loving plants, but she has inhaled so much cat mint and become so stoned that she has rolled around, rubbing in ecstasy, and flattened the lot. Why can’t she toddle off and pat off a few caterpillars? Do something useful?

Anyway, that’s that. The garden will take up less time now and I’m pleased really because I have another couple of projects on the go. I’m writing two children’s books. They are first drafted, but here’s the thing. I’m having one illustrated and the other I’m going to attempt to illustrate myself. Stop laughing!

OK, so I’m not an artist but that doesn’t mean I can’t try, does it? I’ve bought some paints, brushes, a nice little table easel box thingy and I’m off and trotting. The really weird thing is …I thought that I would find it massively stressful but I don’t. I find it really relaxing …and Chea seems to like drinking the water that I use to clean my brushes so it keeps her happy as well.

I will admit that one or two illustrations haven’t been that successful. Richard passed by and I asked for his opinion on a goldfish and he remarked that it looked like an alien and shuffled off chortling. Ignorant pig!

And try as I might I couldn’t get a ladybird to look less frightening and not to be the potential cause of sweaty nightmares, so I binned it. And besides, I painted it wrong …I painted the red bit black and ended up with a rain beetle. That might have been OK because I could have crossed my fingers behind my back and lied and said that was the intention all along, but it still looked half crazed and like it might jump from the page and attack the young reader.

I run all this past my grandson, Jake (8). He’s brilliant and, strangely, rather respectful too. He nods his heads and chatters away ten to the dozen, ‘Yes, that’s great Grandma. I really like it …are you sure you painted it?’

If the picture in question is doubtful he scowls a bit (like he’s attempting to come to terms with exactly what it is) then he grins. Then, he gently offers suggestions. I love his sensitivity. And his advice is pretty good too. ‘Out of the mouth of babes,’ and all that.

I figure that if the illustrations turn out to be total crap at least I can send them to a ‘proper’ illustrator and she/he will know exactly where I’m coming from. At least this is the plan. It could all change. I may take it no further. I may have been influenced by those cabbage whites and I too may flit and fly with my butterfly brain, dipping here, landing there, moving on …whatever.

Hoping to have some really exciting news shortly. News that I will simply have to share with you all because …well …you’ll see why.

Take care my lovelies x