Unusual jobs for boys

Is university the right or only answer? The debt is bad enough, but the job prospects after graduating are bleak, too. If your children aren't going to be lawyers or medics or academics, what is the point? I'm pretty sure my boys are intelligent but I'm not sure they have the bite and drive that will get them to the top of the class. Plus they have their own individual gifts which are still fledgling. Early days, I know. Who can say how they will have developed come year 9 when they have to make their choices? To date Ed hasn't thought about a career, though I'm sowing the seed of a paper round for starters. Or running a babysitting cartel. He could make a killing on a New Year's Eve..Dom wants to be a saxophonist, but resents the practice that that entails. I think he can start off busking in the town centre when he's old enough, and see what response he gets.
    As for the jobs I would like to see them doingas adults, well, I've raised eyebrows by saying it would be fun to have a hairdresser in the family, and definitely a chef. Whatever they do, it needs to be training while earning. Everyone mocked the McDonalds degree, but why? The hospitality trade seems to boom even as we are all cutting culinary corners at home (see later blog about feeding six people on half what a London couple I know lives on), so surely that is one area to explore? Hard graft, but restaurants bars or hotels seem to be the way forward in these hard times. The Hotel du Vin, my favourite chain, do training courses I believe.  Being a baker, or cheesemaker seems pretty cool.  Another idea is graphic interior design, if that were possible without the architectural/mathematical side of things. Designing people's interiors on the computer. Ed would like to have a Saturday job stacking shelves or working in a furniture emporium, so he can arrange the goods himself.  Taking words from the wise eldest son who is doing well as a graphic designer, Gabes reckons that everyone should be computer savvy and particularly in web design because everyone and every business needs a website now and that is not going to change.
   What about erotic writing, I hear you ask? Er, no. It's a hobby that barely pays, although watch this space for Primula's new offering later in the year..
  
   

Lego Lady

So, hair. At my age it's probably the single most important aspect of grooming. Get it wrong and the rest of you looks wrong, too, either in the mutton sense or in the old hag sense. Get it right and you can shave years off with no invasiveness whatsoever.
    As a child I dreamed of having long flowing locks, in line with my general princess fantasy, but was repeatedly subject to the pudding bowl treatment either from my mother's visiting hairdresser or my older sister's scissorial experiments, which included an unintentional Vidal Sassoon assymetrical chop which caused hilarity when I returned to boarding school after the holidays.
    When I was about 14 I discovered henna, and started growing it, and lo, it looked fab. Pre-raphaelite, in line with my angular face, and it grew right down to my bra strap. My mates and I used to plait each other's hair to make it kinky and frizzy - again, how to fill the long winter nights at boarding school. So apart from a disastrous perm in my third year at university, and it falling out when I had my first son, my look was long auburn hair. At last I was a princess. I made a secret vow to myself that I would keep it long until I got married, so that I could wear it down, and what did I do? Wait until I was 38 to get married, and allowed the hairdressers to put it up. Why do they always make you look like Princess Margaret on your wedding day? Why did I let them? I pulled some tendrils out, but looking back at the pictures I wish I'd had the nerve to let it all hang out.
   But I was, at last, a princess.
   So what now, at 51? Well, it won't do now to keep it long. There are some quite funky stripes of grey there which I might keep, though not 50 shades of it, but it is getting thinner and since also losing 3 stone last year it makes my face look even thinner. For my 50th birthday party I had it cut into a just below chin length bob, and got the hairdresser to tong it for the party. Cute, and cool. But it grows quickly, and I decided to give it one last blast until last week, when he cut it off again to a bob. So long as I keep it tousled, I think that'll do.
     Now it's the colour. I also decided to grow out the red colour, which inevitably turns rusty orange if I don't take care of it, and see what it's like au naturel. And emerging from the roots is the dirty mouse colour of my childhood, but highlighted with grey. When it all grows out, if it isn't too witchy, I think I'll get them to put silver highlights in. If you can't beat it, join it.  But how exactly would that look?
    And then Dommie, my 9 year old, gave me a Lego lady to look after. 'This is you, Mummy,' he said. And she was! She had kind of Veronica Lake hair with a side parting and a lovely wave down her cheeks to her neck, but it was russet with two glorious grey streaks on either side of her face. Cool, funky, age-appropriate.
    What will my hairdresser say when I go in with my Lego lady and ask him 'I want that one?' Watch this space to find out his reaction!

 

Writing Dialogue

Dialogue is the hardest aspect of fiction to get right, realistic and relevant. Yet it's the pivotal mechanism that gives life to characters and drives along the narrative and plot. It's essential in a compelling, attention-grabbing novel to avoid producing wooden, pompous or dull conversations which jar on the reader, argue with the character's personality, and contribute nothing to the development of the tale.

One key task for any aspiring writer is to read how other writers successfully reproduce dialogue in their novels. I would add a second task. I find, as a TV and movie buff, that listening to dialogue particularly in soap operas is incredibly enlightening. I have no truck with critics who claim that soaps are trash. They are a tremendeous, fun example both of great acting and of great script writing, and the spring board for some very successful TV and movie writers.

In a soap the action is brought to us entirely through the reactions and words of a cast of characters. The drama, arguments, fights, accidents, love affairs, tragedies, comedic moments, have all come through those characters' personae and through their mouths. If you listen carefully there are rare occasions when the script writers don't get it entirely right and you are entitled to criticise and to learn from that. One example that always strikes me is how many dramatised mothers call their children by their name, instead of say 'darling' or 'honey'. I'm not talking about soppiness. I'm talking about natural affection. It's rare in my life to hear kids addressed without some kind of endearment. My own kids have all manner of names, some of which I'm trying to shed now that they're pushing teenage-hood. My sisters and I were only addressed by our full names when our parents were angry. The rest of the time we were known as The Buns or The Pickles which in itself is a long story..

Ditto couples and lovers. Watch how they address each other on screen, and ask yourself if that's realistic. ~Why not be an armchair critic!

Sometimes after watching a film or programme I have been particularly moved by I find myself writing dialogue like charactersI have just been watching. If I was teaching a creative writing course, I would perhaps get my students to write a scene in the manner of say EastEnders or Silent Witness or Mad Men, or Downton Abbey.

So, back to the writing. The fourth exercise I recommend to writers is to read out loud the dialogue they've written - or with a very patient friend - so as to see if it's realistic. But the final exercise for writing dialogue came to me today as a brain wave after my nine year old son described his English test. It occurred to me that it would be a brilliant exercise to give aspiring writers in a workshop scenario, where there's a classroom feeling and also the opportunity to see how others achieve it and what they think of your efforts.

Basically take the outline of a story or a play, a film, perhaps a newspaper article. It doesn't have to be particularly dramatic or interesting or creative or artistic. In fact the challenge would lie in taking one that wasn't obviously fascinating, such as a financial report or a scientific discovery. Because the exercise is then to bring that piece of writing, that chunk of information, to life. Using only dialogue. This could be done as an interview, say a radio interview, but that risks coming across as too stilted or formal. Nevertheless, it would be a good vehicle for regurgitating the information in a different format. Another way would be to have two or three characters talking about the incident/contents of the report/scientific discovery, telling each other what it involves, what they think of it, what it might mean. They could be personally involved, or they could be observers.

Either way the challenge is to take a story or factual report written as prose, and turn it into a conversation.

See my own short stories 'Stabbing the Rain' on Amazon. Short stories are often thought of as more musing, introspective prose pieces, but perhaps because of my love of televised drama, I tend to use dialogue a lot because I can hear the characters. I can also see them on screen, perhaps in a Hollywood version of my work. With Julianne Moore playing me!

Well, we can always dream! Here is the link to my stories:

http://tiny.cc/rkqaow

New Year Resolutions Part Deux

To make it onto supermarket shelves firstly with my latest erotic work which I won't name until it's accepted and paid for by Harper Collins. Then to finish the literary novel I started last year and persuade my agent to read it and submit it. To see my short stories 'Stabbing the Rain' do well on Amazon or even in America.
  Not to shout, especially at the kids. Maybe at the telly occasionally, like a Grumpy Old Woman.
  To get to France.
  To sort out my hair. Am growing out the colour to see how grey it is. I haven't seen my natural colour all over since I started henna'ing it (is that a verb) when I was about 14. To remain grey if elegant and cool in the manner of that French woman who runs the IMF - Christiane Lagarde? Otherwise to dye it again, brazen harlot colour or claret colour, or silver streaks. Work out if I want it long enough to wear up or cut it in bob, again in maner of Christiane Lagarde.
  To keep the weight off and remain around 9 stone 8 ish.
  But to eat out more.
  To have more interesting resolutions next year.
  To write my blog more regularly.

New Year Resolutions

A great idea in one of the newspapers for the New Year. When packing away your Xmas decorations, put in a note to yourself to be opened next year when you get them all out again. I guess the note should be more than just a billet doux. It should say what your resolutions are, and you can then see how well you did.
    Last year I vowed to lose weight and write an Anastasia novel. Well, as of Jan 1st 2012 I have lost nearly 3 stone. I have put on 5 pounds over the Xmas period, so call it 2.5 stone. I've gone from a tight squeeze into size 16s to a fairly easy size 10. My diet tips will follow.
     However I only made a start on my  Anastasia novel. I developed an addiction to This Morning, Food Network, and other daytime fripperies which whiled away the time and whiled away my motivation, too. Then in the summer, my Primula Bond editor told me and his stable of respected authors that the powers that be at Harper Collins were looking to jump on the 50 Shades bandwagon (which I prefer to read as knocking that bloody book into a cocked hat) and totally overhaul the way we've been writing erotica. Actually, it's all to the good. They want less graphic, full on and explicit language and more focus on relationships a la Christian Grey/Anastasia (yes, I know!) but with better writing basically. Now, that I can do, but it wasn't quite as easy as I thought throwing off the shackles of Primula Bond's previous style. So the autumn has seen me writing and then re-writing my 50 Shades competitor and it is, as we speak, with the editors for final approval - or rejection.
  What I haven't told my editor is that if Avon reject it, I have an agent over in the States who is keen to see any Primula work that hasn't been sold over here, so I reckon doors are opening.
  And this has gone on long enough, so I will tell you my New Year Resolutions when I wake up tomorrow morning.  For now, the last day of 2012 is going to be spent watching THE SOUND OF MUSIC and then after various other plans went awry I am going out to dinner with my family to our favourite pub The Old Forge.

Wacky Races

Not a lot of people know you can borrow a wheelchair from the Red Cross for free if you find yourself incapacitated with a broken toe or worse. So my first driving trip last week after ye accident was to Red Cross and thank goodness I did. I can move very slowly round the house on crutches, but am not safe outside. Too slow, terrified someone will stand on my toe, and not very stable. 
   And so to Tesco, with Richard pushing the chair and Edward refusing to do that (though he loves whizzing round the house in it) and on trolley duty. I felt a little like Boadacea urging on her troops as we whizzed round the aisles and gondolas (did you know that's what the lines of shelving are called? My sister Min, who used to manage a supermarket in Jersey and now runs a flying school near Perth, Australia, told me that), avoiding other people's children and ankles. I know my way round, which neither R nor E do, so it was a pretty brisk trot around the supermarket but how funny is it the way people react to someone in a chair.
    I'd put red lippie and a jaunty scarf on especially not to look, you know, properly disabled, but still people glanced, once they'd been jabbed sharply in the shins, with a strange kind of glazed pity when they saw what/who had attacked them. Maybe it was the red lippy, come to think of it.  Did I look like a kind of deranged Hollywood ex-starlet who doesn't know it's not 1943? I tried staring back at them with assumed confidence, or waving my arms around to show I'm not totally disabled, even talking loudly and intelligently, but the more I think about it the more that would have confirmed their first impressions.  A crazy, arm waving, opinionated has-been. Helped along by my son's refusal to come anywhere near me in the chair, and R's breaking of the speed limit as we charged for the tills, indicating that he wanted to get me out of polite society as soon as possible.
    Next challenge: negotiating the posh shop of Hambledon in The Square, and Winchester's world famous Christmas market.
 

Broken Toe

No, not the name of a mountain, or a Cherokee Chief, but a broken digit at the end of my foot, and it's no joke. I am writing this from a prone position on the sofa where I am trying to enforce rest on myself and elevate my foot and get the other end of me, my head, round how much has to be done and thought about when you're a wife and mother. Stereotyped, but true. What they have to take to school each day. What they must do when they come back. Jobs they have to undertake around the house. Making sure they come upstairs to give me a kiss before they go. Trying not to get at the husband, who is fantastic bless him and a natural at dishwasher emptying, washing hanging, children dragooning.  I am still in charge of cooking, though.    
   Viz work, thank the Lord I covered several days last month, and don't have a rigid full time job commuting to London or something, because hopefully I can get away without going to the office until after Xmas.
  So, how did it happen? With a wobbly left leg already, I managed to get my big toe tangled in Ed's draw string PE bag, dragged it halfway across the hall, felt a huge wrench, and when I landed on the bottom step of the stairs I felt no actual pain because of the numbness in my foot, but there was my big toe sticking out sideways at 90 degrees like something out of the Exorcist.
   Long story short, my father took me to A&E as I felt too peculiar to drive myself to Winchester (spots before eyes, nausea etc) and Richard had unavoidable commitments at work. The A&E at Andover, nearer my parents, is very small, new, neat and quiet.  Even so we were there for 3 hours. I have never broken a bone before, despite plunging off horses when I was young, playing hockey, slipping on ice rinks, increasingly falling over in streets, and being chucked off the back of a motorbike on Shepherds Bush roundabout in 1987. But  the X ray showed that now I have a dislocated and broken big toe. So two very nice nurses lay me down on a couch and 're-aligned' the dislocated joint like they do in 'Casualty' and boy did the feeling come back to my foot then. It was shocking, sickening pain, and horrible, but I eschewed gas and air although I loved it when having my babies because it meant staying longer in the hospital.
   So.A follow up visit to the fracture clinic where Iwas shown my own Xray and the wide crack running down my toe, and was told no weight on it for 2 weeks, and probably won't be fully mobile for 4-6 weeks. Apparently a stick glue will form, forming a callus to heal it. Meanwhile, enforced rest. Elevated foot. Lady Muck barking orders from bed or sofa. Crutches to hobble round the house, and I borrowed a wheelchair from the Red Cross for Richard to take me round Tesco. Not a lot of people know that you can do that. It's free! No reason to be housebound, which can also make you agoraphobic. Wheelchairs. There's another story. How people react differently to you, even if you're wearing lipstick. Will talk about that in my next post.  For now, I have no excuse not to get on with writing projects including this blog. More anon!