Belated Season's Greetings

Happy New Year !

I’ve made a decision. I’m going to to concentrate more on this blog this year. No, I really am. I don’t understand how I have got out of the habit of writing, posting and then reading what everyone else is up to.

There are plenty of things I have wanted to say and have often formulated what I was going to write while I have been out running or walking. See, I resolved to exercise more this year and I have stuck to that, so hopefully this will be the start of another successful resolution.

Here’s hoping….

Stop Press !!

Rushing to get Christmas sorted ( I haven't even written all my Christmas cards yet) but had to stop to tell you all that......Kyle has been offered a place at Oxford !!

We're all so excited and proud. He keeps reminding us that he has to get 3 As but I'm confident he will do that if he works hard.

We went out to celebrate yesterday and I had far too much champagne but I don't think it was the fizz that was/is responsible for this incredible high !

Update

It has taken me weeks to get round to my poor neglected blog and I think Twitter is to blame. I’m completely addicted and I still don’t really see the point of it. I need to take a step back and stop looking at it at every opportunity and posting inane comments. I need to find the balance ….

Meanwhile, and far more importantly, Kyle has been called for interviews at Oxford University this week. He will be there for three days, which sounds like some interview process. I’m so proud of him and incredibly excited but he seems remarkably calm. It doesn’t matter what happens now, I just think he has done amazingly well to get to this stage

Picture me now with a beaming smile …..

Twittering Away

Wait for it! You’re not going to believe this … but I am now on…. Twitter !!

It was a struggle.

Until now, I’ve left all this social networking to the younger people in my team at work who seem to be on Facebook all the time. It has just never appealed to me although I have increasingly noticed that at events, people I meet often invite me to find them on Facebook or LinkedIn! Why do that? Why not just give me a good, old-fashioned business card ?

Anyway, recently I have noticed that my colleagues have been keeping abreast of news and events by following Twitter and so when I expressed a vague interest in how it works, one of them took me aside and showed me, with great delight, just how useful it is, as a PR tool.

So, I have become a convert and now I tweet away. Initially, I just stalked a few people and companies and then I started putting out a few tweets about events we were involved with and now I regularly treat the world to my personal insights and I seem to have amassed quite a few followers.

I’m a bit disappointed that I enjoy it so much as I wanted to maintain my curmudgeonly attitude to it all. But it’s OK as I can still do that with Facebook ! Thing is, I totally get Twitter as a work aide but I don’t really understand the pleasure I get in announcing that I’m about to watch #Jamie Oliver. Who cares?

Also, I follow a few celebrities (some of whom I have actually met) but I keep falling into the trap of thinking when they tweet, somehow they are interested in my response …amongst the thousands of others they get ! And then I feel stupid that I did it, and that everyone can see what I sent, even though I’m not doing it as a pathetic fan desperate for attention but as someone who has interacted with them in the past ….even if only for a few minutes. I must stop doing that, but it’s still a learning process.

I’m afraid you probably won’t find me, if you look, as I’m there under my @realname but if you are on Twitter and notice an unfamiliar follower reading your tweets, you may find you do know her after all !

Tweet-tweet !!

Pride And Joy

Warning: severe gushing about to be unleashed. Read on with care!

I do love my children. They make me so proud.

In August, Kyle found out he got an A in all his AS-level subjects and an A* in the A-level he took a year early. We are very proud of him and for the first time, he has started to believe that actually he is capable of great things. His school have been telling him for some time that he’s a potential Oxbridge student but I don’t think it was until he got these latest results that he started to believe it. And so he agreed to apply to Oxford to study law! It’s all so exciting.

We went at the end of September to one of the open days and it’s such a beautiful place. It would be such a privilege to study there. Obviously I’d be the proudest mother in the world if he got in but I’m trying really hard not to allow my thinking to influence him. After that trip though, I can see he’s keen l Their sporting facilities are second to none and he’s even talking about taking up rowing !!

Anyway, he re-wrote his personal statement and last month, he had to take the LNAT (Law National Admission Test) which forms part of his application and he thinks it went OK…. though he has moments of anxiety that maybe he completely misunderstood the essay question. Anyway, we’re all waiting now to see if he gets selected for interview.

And it’s not just my son who is causing my pride-ometer to rise….

Sasha is now writing her second musical for the youngsters at the youth centre where she helps out. After attending a residential composers’ course in the summer, she came back full of ideas and spends all her time at the piano. I’m so impressed with her. She’s turned into such a beautiful, compassionate young woman. She is now part of the management team for the soup kitchen where she has also been helping out for about a year and she has done some serious fund-raising and found them some local sponsorship.

Her relationship with young Freddie seems to be going from strength to strength and he is so proud and supportive of her. I hope she hangs on to him – he is lovely and they are a really handsome couple. He took her to his university ball last term and the photos were amazing. I bought three !

I must keep my dreams in check though. As much as I can see myself saying things in a very posh voice, like “My son? Oh yes he’s a student. Where? Oh, at Oxford. Oxford University” !! …..or, picturing myself in tears as I watch Freddie’s reaction to my beautiful Sasha coming up the aisle on her father’s arm in the most amazing wedding dress….. I must stop myself from getting too carried away or I’ll end up being disappointed and worse, I’ll subconsciously pile on the pressure for the two people I love most in the world.

I don’t need to look ahead though because whatever happens they have made me so proud already.

I’m a very lucky mum.

Decision Made

Thank you for all your lovely comments and emails.

I thought about it long and hard and I have decided not to publish here. Not yet anyway ! I’ve found a writers group that offers feedback and advice for each other at whatever point they are with their writing. I thought I would give that a go and will go along to their next meeting in a couple of weeks

Meanwhile, I’m still writing my short stories and have now amassed quite a collection. I may well just drop one into the blog every so often when I can’t think of anything else to write.

But for now, this will stay as a record of my life…..although I may, just may, have to change the title, very soon !!

The Urge To Write

In the last few months, as I’ve been travelling from one end of the country to the other, I’ve started writing. I’ve had a book in my head for some time but I’m always pushing it away as I want to write it when I have time to sit down and just do it, rather than trying to fit it in between so many other things.

One day, when I was on one of my long train journeys, I suddenly thought of JK Rowling and how she apparently formulated Harry Potter on the train to Manchester. I also happened to be on the train to Manchester !!

So, I started to put down on paper the elements of my story and the characters …..and it felt really good. The words were just flowing from my pen with hardly any effort and I got very excited at the thought of writing it. I was planning to start it on the journey back but I was so tired that I slept all the way. And since then, I haven’t been able to get back into it. It’s as if something is physically stopping me.

I’m guessing it’s fear. All the time that the book was in my head, it was a bit of a fantasy that I could dismiss fairly easily as something to be done in the future. After putting down my thoughts on paper though, it has become much more real and I could end up writing this and it could be rubbish. I don’t have a clue how to write a book. I don’t even know if I have style that would or could engage readers. So I have not gone back to it at all. I’m such a coward.

However, whenever I travel by train now, I have an irrational desire to write. I probably should just write the book and then put it away and look at it again next year, or something. But like I said, I can’t. So instead, I have found that by watching people on the train, ideas suddenly pop into my head and I have now written a number of short stories.

I don’t know if they’re any good but I have just read the first one, which I wrote a couple of months ago and I think I like it but I really want to get some honest opinions. I don’t know if I have the guts to publish it here and I may never be able to do it……..

…..but, if I were to put it on this blog, would you be willing to read it and give me your brutally frank, critical opinions ???