M.T. McGuire's Blog

Well, it’s September, getting towards the end, and I had thought I’d have my book finished by this time FFS! Or at least off to the beta readers.

As if.

In July I reckoned I had about two chapters to go. I still have about two chapters to go. I do not know what the fuck is going on. Seriously where in the name of Pete did that all that time bloody well go? I have run round like a blue-arsed fly this month. I’ve done digs, we’ve been away for weekends, I’ve done events, I’ve been to the theatre, indeed I’m going to two comedy gigs this week because heaven forefend they should come along neatly spaced out. I have Lived with a capital chuffing L. But two years out from Mum’s death I have also achieved a princely zero percent of the tasks I put off while my parents were ill. OK it’s 10 years’ worth of stuff. That is a LOT but you’d have thought I’d have managed some.

Oh no, hang on.

There’s been one success.

Fuck let’s celebrate that then! Yeh! I’ve managed to get my son’s ADHD diagnosed. I had promised him that. It’s only taken me six months of on-and-off effort but I’ve finally got there. I now have to sort some time for him to see the lovely education woman who will help him with techniques to get through the school day, hopefully with slightly less regular amounts of panicked last minute shit!-I-haven’t-done-this! shennanagins than his mother. Woot.

Go me! Winning at life, clearly.

If you’re wondering why I would bother to get a diagnosis for him, it’s obvious you don’t have ADHD. Put simply, a diagnosis explains the madness, the dysfunction and why it takes 900% more capacity for him to fill in a form and deal with government bodies than the normals. And also you can get medication that helps you concentrate. I do not have a diagnosis, but having been through one with my son, let’s just say it’s pretty blindingly obvious where he got it from. I cannot stress how much self-hatred and frustration fell away just being handed an explanation for my complete inability to organise my time, life, diary etc through learning about his.

How much better it made me feel about having a fucking genius intelligence level (well OK one point off) that is of absolutely fuck all use (welcome to the world of C grades with the odd A thrown in for encouragement. No Bs you notice)! If it was that bloody marvellous for me, God knows what a relief it must have been for him, because he’s way, way brighter than I am. How awesome to officially know IT’S NOT HIM, IT’S THEM, I suspect it’s bloody wonderful. I would have killed for that at his age.

Here’s an example of what it’s like. McSon had his driving theory test the other morning. The night before he looked out his driving license, ready (he’d had a lesson that day and has to have it with him for those so it was in his school trousers). He took it upstairs to put back in his wallet along with some bits of his drum kit that he’d used at a gig this weekend. He reassembled his drums, had a quick practise and then after doing some homework and a bit of this and that he had a quick chat with me and went to bed.

This morning I went off to parents’ swim at the school leaving the McOthers to get to the test centre.

‘Do you need your license?’ asked McOther, just as they were leaving.

‘I don’t think so, but I might,’ says McSon.

He goes upstairs, goes to his wallet where it lives and where he knows he put it last night and … it’s not there. He panics, they go anyway, but without his license he’s not allowed to sit the test (even though he had to submit a chuffing picture of it to book a test anyway so it’s not like they haven’t seen it). I come back to discover McSon in the dearth of despair.

‘How could I be so dumb?’ he asks me. Not to my face, obviously, but by text message to me, in the kitchen, from his bedroom upstairs, because … teenager.

How indeed?  This is a question I felt keenly, having asked it of myself pretty much on loop growing up, and repeatedly over the years. This is why I always tell my child that charm will get you everywhere because sometimes, when you forget to do something that you should have done, and you have to throw yourself on the mercy of others involved in the task to help you to get it in the bag, they may help you. If you have treated them appropriately, they will go the extra mile and do it because they like you. So not only is being polite and respectful to people the right thing to do, but it gets you further, in the long run, than shouting and jumping up and down … unless you’re doing the shouting and jumping up and down for humorous purposes, and in a funny way.

So I went on to tell him about his rellies, about his grandfather who managed to arrive at the port to go to France, twice, before he hit the age of 30, with a passport that had expired. A man who was universally loved, whose ability to forget stuff was legendary, as a teacher at his school. Indeed, when Dad was head of the common room he had to organise the dinner, there was some doubt which night it was on, Friday 12th December, or Saturday 13th December. Dad soon cleared that up by sending a memo round to confirm the day. Trouble was it said,

‘I gather there is some confusion as to the date of the Commonroom Dinner. It will be on Friday 13th December this year.’

Then there was his great uncle, who managed, with some friends, to organise a trip to drive a jeep to Afghanistan one summer holidays while he was at university, to deliver a letter from the mayor of Brighton to the mayor of Kabhul … except after the ornate letter-handing-over ceremony in Brighton between him and his friends and the mayor, which was conducted in front of the press, they left the letter on the mayor’s desk, realised too late to go back and get it and had to have it sent on to Tehran or somewhere so he and his friends could pick it up along the way. I told him about his Uncle, who left his hired wedding suit on the train on the way down to the venue and then had to get the lovely people at British Rail to take it off the train at Pulborough and hare over there in a borrowed car to pick it up.

Clinging on by a thread, this is how we live, my son and I. Welcome to our world.

I told him about the time I booked tickets to take him to a comedy show about ADHD … and then forgot to go. I confessed how one term, I started my essays at uni a ruthlessley efficient 3 weeks out from the end of term, wondering why it was so easy to borrow all the books I required from the reference library, only to discover I’d got the date wrong and term ended in four days. I explained how I arrived at the start of the next term a week late because … numbers … and I’d got the date wrong and nobody batted an eyelid.

I told him how I managed to fly home from Norway a day early by mistake. Yes, even when the plane came down in Bergen for half an hour while they tried to work out what the fuck was going on, I still didn’t compute that the date on my ticket was wrong (coz … numbers). On the up side, neither did they, so that was lucky. I told him the story of how I went to France on an organised tour for six weeks, managed to miss the hovercraft and spent the first week trying to catch them up. Also had a lovely night in the waiting room at Gare D’Orley during that one (I’ve done that twice now; one star on trip advisor, NOT recommended). I should probably tell him about the time I called Dirk Bogarde by mistake or the time I answered the phone and said, ‘Fuck off Giles! That’s a crap Welsh accent!’ to someone who, I fear, may have been the leader of the opposition at the time.

And so on …

On the upside, ADHD does train certain useful things into a person. For example, I remember as a kid that something usually went wrong on our family holidays. I suspect this was more about the kinds of holidays my family booked than my father’s legendary forgetful nature, although I’m sure his vagueness helped, examples incoming…

There was the time we turned up in Crete for my second ever holiday abroad. There was no water so we had to spend the first two nights in the hotel owner’s flat. I remember wondering what the fuck we were doing there, but then I had a swim in the sea and suddenly everything was alright.

I remember another Greek holiday the following year when we had to spend the first week in a hotel up the road which wasn’t finished because they’d double booked our room by mistake. We got our revenge, my brother broke the bathroom mirror trying to swat a fruit fly with the flat end of a full bog roll. Or the next holiday on Lesbos, there was the fiesta we hired that we had to bump start every day until the embarrassed car hire man gave us his own ride, an elderly peugot 504 with a bench front seat and  gearshift on the steering column that only Dad could manage to work.

Then there was the time when the French fishermen were blockading the ports so we sped along the cost, reaching each port as it was closed, until finally we managed to overtake the fishing boats leaving from Calais to block Dunkirk and get away from there. We arrived at 3 am and had to sleep in the car on the port because Mum and Dad had run out of money and had spent their last 10 francs on the petrol we’d used to get there … at one of the last garages that still had some and was open.

The company honoured our Dieppe – Newhaven ticket at Dunkirk and we got the last berth on the 6 am ferry, just in time for me to do the whole sorry thing backwards two days later for a school trip. We were supposed to be going Portsmouth StMalo for that one but had to go from Dover to Calais, which opened briefly, and then get a train to Paris, that was the first night in the waiting room at Gare D’Orley by the way. In those days, you had to buy currency in advance, or use traveller’s cheques. The only reason Mum and Dad had that 10 francs  left was becase it was my pocket money for the 2 week school trip. Nobody panicked and after a few years I grew to like the chaos. Looking back on it, it was kind of fun.

Likewise, I’ve noticed my son is very calm and able to think laterally in a crisis, even when he’s panicking inside. As a kid, when there was trouble in the park or he and his friends saw someone being beaten up, it he who quietly called the police or shephered everyone to the nearest parent’s house, and safety. It’s always he who steps in and mediates between angry friends, often successfully. I’m incredibly proud of him for this.

Blowing my own trumpet here but I defy many people to be as calm as I am in a crisis. This, my friends, is because, if you have ADHD, your whole fucking life is a crisis because things drop off the mental grid and do not reappear until you are about to be supposed to be fucking doing them. If your entire existence is spent dropping what you are meant to be doing and sorting out shit that you’ve forgotten to do you soon become very adapatble.

Most of the time, you can learn make it work. Sometimes,  yes, you have to apologise and confess that you’ve fucked up. It’s not great. I mean, lurching from one organisational crisis to the next is pretty exhausting but never let it be said that it’s dull. Oh no, people like us, we live an exciting life. And of course, you soon  learn that fucking up and having to admit it isn’t so humiliating, because you are way, waaaay more used to it than other people, which means you have no pride and learn to give absolutely no fucks and just do the few things you are capable of organising without waiting for permission. That’s a win.

Frankly, if you have ADHD and you give any fucks about anything (other than not hurting others or being a cockwomble) your personality and general mode of existence means you will die of shame. The fucks are bludgeoned out of you early on in life because it’s the only way to survive. OK so weeing in your pants in the tack room after a riding lesson because you are too embarrassed to ask to use the loo also helps in that respect. Not my finest hour that one but definitely cured me of my fear of asking the dumb question and speaking up because even though nobody said a thing, they must have known and no way was I ever going through the embarrassment of that ever, EVER again.

Woah! LONG tangent there. But now you understand ADHD a little more perhaps? Although that last bit was probably autism. Anyway… onwards.

There’s another thing! Oh yes! And I’ve managed to sort it so that Mc(no longer)Mini is insured to drive a car to practice on outside his lessons … trouble is … it’s this car.

Obvs in real life it has a numberplate rather than teeth.

Yeh, I know. But the main car is an automatic SUV and the tic-tac with a boot we bought as a run-around, (a fiat 500 Abarth) is considered a hot hatch, so insuring McSon, McOther was given a guide quote of  £900 to insure a learner driver on it for 6 months while they investigated whether they could even do it … and when they had researched it further, they came back and said they couldn’t actually insure him. So instead of the 1.4 Fiat 500 Abarth, he’s going to be doing his driving practise on the 1.6 Lotus Elise with the close ratio gearbox … because it’s only going to cost £150 to put him on there as a learner driver for a year. Because it’s not a hot-hatch.

What the fucking fuck, Insurance Land?

Seriously, you couldn’t make this shit up. So there we are. It now has L plates on it. He’s doing commendably well so far and more to the point, driving extremely sensibly. Much more sensibly than I do. So there’s that.

Other news: Events …

Last but not least, I am doing an event this weekend that ever is. Indeed as this goes out, today and tomorrow. If anyone is at Norcon, I am opposite the signing tables. Do feel free to come and say hello. I will be dressed as The Pan of Hamgee, as usual, in a cloak and hat. I have no new books to sell. I’ve written about 400,000 words since the last one, they’re just not on any one project unfortunately. I am just hanging in there for the year when I get all of this shit I’m working on actually finished at the same time. There’s something to be said for jumping from project to project every time you get stuck but it’s not exactly a short cut to a steady and predictable rate of production. Never mind. At some point there will be 12 books, probably coming out within weeks of one another.

Anyway, if you’d like to, do come along and say hi to me at Norcon, because all the other authors will be selling books hand over fist while I will be sitting there making people laugh and conspicuously not selling any books to them before they go on and buy a book from each of the authors next to me. Because this is how I roll. But I have fun so I’m OK with that.

 

The best of times …Yeh I know, steady on! Two blogs in a row. It had to happen sometime I guess. I mean, for starters, you have to learn the name of the trolley, right?Yeh. I’m sure you are all agog.That wasn’t the reason it was one of the best weeks ever though. More on that story … later.The Trolley is named!Oh yes he is. Literally tens of people from my enormous crowd of superfans—sorry that’s a lie, there are about 100 and usually only 45 are ever active at any given time—voted to name the trolley. Indeed this time, it broke all records as a princely 47 people voted. Initially, precisely no respondants to the off piste option picked K’Barthan names, until I changed it from ‘Wait! I have a better idea’ to ‘Hang on the character name I choose isn’t listed’ or some such. Then one did.The vote came down to Humbert, Psycho Dave or Trev with Gladys a short distance behind these three but the winner was … drum roll please… PSYCHO DAVE.So Psycho Dave and I went to the Foreward Festival yesterday. It was quiet but good fun and I did make back the price of the pitch and the petrol, so that’s grand.

Fiddler on the roofAs I may have mentioned, Gareth Davies, who is the ludicrously talented geezer who voices all the K’Barthan audiobooks, is in Fiddler on the Roof which is touring all over the UK until mid January 2026. I am not a big musical theatre person on the whole, I dunno why because I do enjoy opera, but I wanted to go support Gareth doing his thing so I grabbed a matinee ticket for Wednesday and my mate Jill and I made a day of it and went to Norwich. Jill and I trained it the entire way which takes an hour and involves the most ridiculously enormous flights of stairs to cross any railway, anywhere, that I think I’ve seen.Jill and I are a bit crook. She has two shit knees and I have one so we are, kind of, the halt and the lame. The allocated time to change trains is 6 minutes but you have to get out go into the car park and follow a winding route between two big metal fences go over the footbridge and then follow a similarly circuitous winding route round the carpark and back into the station the other side. It was touch and go as I’m not great on stairs but I do have one functioning knee while Jill doesn’t.

The stairs of doom

By managing to position ourselves in the carriage opposite the exit we were able to avoid walking any distance along the platform, which, due to our dot and carry one status, would have rendered the change impossible.Having contended with this, we wandered round Norwich shopping, grabbed salads from M&S which we ate sitting in a church yard and then off we went.Now, Fiddler on the roof is about pogroms, so I was worried it would be incredibly depressing. I remembered watching it as a kid on film and pretty much wanting to top myself afterwards. This production is very well reviewed so I hoped it wouldn’t have quite the same effect but, holy shit, I was not prepared for how excellent it was. I was blown away.One of the cleverest touches was that they made the fiddler a character and put him on stage, which was genius. For all those long and rather lovely rambling instrumental bits. As someone who was, at one point, not too shabby at the violin, I was gobsmacked as he played all sorts of mad up and down stuff in 5th position, while in character, moving about the stage and at one notable point while lying on a table pretending to be drunk. The clarinettest also appeared on stage and kind of duelled with him at some points.The singing was epic, the dancing and the choreography clever and original.All I remembered from seeing it on telly as a nipper was the song ‘If I Were a Rich Man’ but I’d not realised how witty the script is or how many gorgeous melodies are involved. In one song, ‘They Grow Up So Fast,’ I found myself getting a bit teary.It stands or falls on the main character, Tevye, who is on stage throughout pretty much. The second act is where it all starts to go a bit horribly wrong, but at the end, what was in many respects an incredibly sad outcome somehow became uplifting as you imagined everyone going on to make a new life in countries where they were able to do other jobs than peasant labour. I came out feeling uplifted rather than flat and if you feel like giving it a go would hugely recommend it.Afterwards we met Gareth for a drink and did this selfie, obvs. He’s second understudy for Tevye but the first only joined the cast recently and hasn’t rehearsed it yet. We discovered that the guy who plays Tevye had the day off the next day and Gareth was doing it. I was a bit gutted to miss that but was still chuffed to see he had plenty of bits to say and sing anyway in the part of Avram. So yeh, that was grand.

All in all a bloody good day. It was lovely to meet Gareth who was, surprisingly, exactly the way I expected him to be. And at least the reason I couldn’t make Thursday’s show was a good one.One of the best days ever.The next day, we went on a family trip to Duxford. McOther was a star during the whole looking after parents thing. Both the McOther’s were, but especially the husband-shaped one. So I decided he deserved a treat. I’ve always had to borrow the money from him to buy him anything nice for his birthday or Christmas, and since I’ve inherited half the price of the house and I’ve never had money before—and probably won’t again at this rate—I decided to buy him a really ritzy present.A flight in a WW2 plane.Having seen on TV that you could buy spitfire flights at Biggin Hill I had a look to see how much they cost. It was quite a lot for 20 minutes but would be worth it, I decided.

However, ever cautious (polite speak for a bit miserly) I decided to google flights and see how much they cost. Also, if Duxford did them, it was only 40 minutes down the A11 so it seemed a much better plan to go there.When I started investigating prices, I discovered that Duxford was half the price of the others and that, for the same price the others charged, they would actually involve another aeroplane and do a fake dog fight—or formation flight, depending on the stomach strength of the passenger. The opposing aeroplane was the main fighter of Germany, an ME109 or at least the nearest thing there is left, a Spanish one, but it had seen action in the Battle of Britain.Originally, I decided I wouldn’t tell McOther but then I realised he’s on beta blockers and that I might need to. I dropped a few hints and he told me he wouldn’t, under any circumstances, do a skydive. So then I thought I’d better check if he was on for a Spitfire flight, there being no option to fly in a Mosquito or a ME109.

Further thought about his hectic schedule—he is retired but the board positions he took which he hoped would be straightforward and just keep the cash coming in are actually not, and he’s been doing far to much real work for his liking—I had to ask him what day he could go and ended up having to tell him.So we went to Duxford and enjoyed a pootle round the museum with free entry. Then we went to Duxford Flying Experiences to check in. McOther went for his briefing and McMini and I were escorted to a garden, with a small air conditioned summerhouse. It was right on the apron and the double bubble spitfire was parked about 3 metres from the fence one side, with the world’s only double hurricane 3 metres or so from the fence the other. Just behind the hurricane was the Bouchon/ME109.Woah. History nerd 101.We sat in the warm sun, ate free cake and strawberries and watched the planes. It was busy and to my joy my favourite plane ever, the Catalina PBY5A flying boat, was doing shareholder flights; loads of them. So I got a specialtastic little present from the fates; to see my favourite plane up close too. It’s the only one flying in Europe, I believe, so extra cool points. It’s also the ship in the next non-K’Barthan thing I’m writing.

There was one other family doing a flight that day and they were lovely, which made the experience all the better. They were booked at 2.00 so we got to see what was involved, which was good. Afterwards the pilot came out and had a chat with us. We were also introduced to the guy flying the ME109. They were both very amusing, with very dry pilot senses of humour.Then it was McOther’s go. They strapped him in. I took loads of video and photos and off they went. They provided us with two videos, one of McOther’s face throughout the flight and one from the tail of the plane. We were also shown a tracking site for planes so we were able to trace the journey in real time. It looked like a tangle of coloured wool.

One of the most amusing things was the reaction of the pilots when they returned. The one flying the spitfire got out and I asked him how it had gone.‘He was amazing!’ he said. ‘He let me do everything.’McOther confirmed that yes, there had been realistic rolls, some time spent upside down etc. We took pictures of the planes, pictures of ourselves by the planes, and also the hurricane because … well … you have to.The chap flying the ME109 also appeared to have enjoyed himself enormously. Although he possibly had a bit of an itch left to scratch because, as we left the musum at six o’clock to go home, someone was throwing the ME109 round the sky in spectacular loops, turns and barrel rolls. He also had very amusing ME109 socks with yellow bits.

All in all it was a fabulous day, not just because McOther enjoyed his present, but also because as massive history nerds, merely sitting in our special garden on the apron watching the planes all afternoon was absolutely brilliant for Mc(not so)Mini and I. So we all had a fantastic time. One of the best days ever.

Well peps, it’s been a mighty long time but today I decided it’s high time I blugged a blog, so here I am.

Where have I been? Well, on holiday, trying to do some of the stuff I promised I’d do after I’d finished looking after Mum and Dad and … stuff.

However, I’ve been trying to use the time I have available to devote to my ‘author career’ to do writing. I think I tend to blog more when there’s nothing coming writing-wise because blogging is fun and keeps my hand in, but if the books are going well I tend to put all my writing energy into producing those. That said, despite the fact the writing is going pretty well this week, I really and truly thought it was high chuffing time I said something.

What’s happening then?

Well I’m preparing to do a stall at the fabulous Forward Festival next Saturday (16th). There is a book fair, I’m not going to that, but I will be at the Young Adult tent in the family friendly market. The whole festival is taking place from yesterday through to Sunday 17th. The thing runs for a whole week although there are no events tomorrow so everyone can recover from the weekend before they start the rest of it! Wise, I feel.

There is have a wide and varied selection of authors doing talks, a record fair and all sorts of events. Sorry this is sounding like a commercial isn’t it? Mwahahargh! Well since I’m doing a stall I guess it is but it’s also because it looks fab. I will definitely aim to go to some of the events as they look interesting. Case in point, the book fair, the vynal fair and probably one of the talks if I can manage it.

Talking of vynal and then obliquely, music. A brilliant thing happened this week. McMini was going to a re-enactment in Market Harborough and so when McOther and I dropped him off we decided to visit the town for the day. We visited the museum, which is free, and in the library, and has some cracking stuff in it including some stupendous finds bequeathed by a local metal detectorist. If he found that lot and got to keep it, heaven knows what wonderful things went through the treasure process and ended up in museums. Anyway, MTM verdict on the museum, small but perfectly formed. MTM verdict on Market Harborough, very pretty, a bit down at heel in places but containing all sorts of interesting shops, including a real cobbler etc.

There was also a decent number of charity shops there too and it was in one of these that McOther spotted an electrical item and, thinking it might be an amplifier, which McMini currently wants to source for his sound system, he went and had a look. I joined him and we discovered that it wasn’t an amp but was actually a CD/DVD player made by a company called Cambridge Audio, bearing the hefty price tag of £10.

Since McMini’s current interest is buying broken walkmans and fixing them, it seemed a good idea to buy it, since, even if it didn’t work, I reckoned we could probably get £20 for it on Ebay if we sold it for spares. And of course, there was every chance that McMini could fix it, or possibly, McMini’s extremely helpful mentor in this endeavour, a bloke up the road called Alan, who fixes extremely high-end stereo for people, and also adds things to make them more compatible with modern tech so their owners can plug them into their computers and similar.

Can we just take a moment, here, to give a big shout out to Alan? He has spent endless time and patience helping McMini fix one of the early Sanyo walkmans—which is admittedly, very cool—and taught him lots about fixing electronics, soldering etc in the process. I owe Alan a LOT of beer for his kindness.

Right on we go. Cambridge Audio are high end. The current CD thing they offer retails at £500. The one in the shop was older, obviously. I discovered, later, that it retailed at £300 in 2004. It was extremely popular as the picure quality was excellent apparently. I’m a big cynical sometimes about CD/DVD players in that they all do the same thing, essentially, so there shouldn’t really be a gap in quality, added to which, my own CD player is not too shabby. I reckoned there shouldn’t be too much difference but when I plugged it in to my stereo system and had a listen I was amazed to discover that there was a definite gap in quality. The Cambridge Audio one had more depth. It was more like listening to headphones than listening out loud. And it works. Woot.

Extra bonus points, I discovered it had a remote and because it was a popular model, there were several available to buy on ebay. I plumped for one that cost £8.99 with £3.99 postage. I have, therefore procured a very good CD player for £23! Hoorah.

Other stuff …

Weirdness continues. I have a polytunnel/greenhouse in the garden. It’s on the path from the gate, so I pass it on my way in every time I’ve been out. Often I pop in there on the way to the back door and just check that everyone has enough water and water the things that need some. Usually I am wearing a small rucksack on my back, which doubles as my handbag, when I do this. Sometimes, if I’m a bit clumsy, I turn the wrong way and knock an unripe fruit off the tomatoes with the bag. This is annoying.

It seems that I dislogdged a tomato this way at some point last week, which fell into the open pocket at the front of my bag. There it stayed until Saturday, when I was in Market Harborough and found it there. By this time, it had ripened, so I was able to have a very small bite of lunch. It was delicious so if this year’s crop all taste like that, we’re onto a winner.

Stuff like this, with the tomato, happens to me regularly.

A tomato, yesterday

Last exciting thing …

… Which, as you’ll have gathered from the previous exciting things, is really not that exciting at all. I decided it might be good to get one of those festival trollies to transport my books around at events. Right now I’m using a sack barrow that has a box integrated into it. It’s excellent but when I start adding the banner, or heaven forefend, a table, it all gets a bit dodgy. If I put the banner on it wrong I also end up getting stuck in every single doorway I go through, as well, which is not helpful.

However, it’s one thing deciding that enough is enough and quite another trying to find a festival trolly which will fit in the boot of a Lotus Elise. Not the early ones which had a nice big boot, this is the diddy one with the souped-up 1.6 toyota yaris engine. There are only about five of them on the road (and I really don’t need ‘howmanyleft dot com’ to tell me this, the availability of spare parts is eloquent enough on its own. I have the ‘last in the uk’ of several bits). It also has the exhaust pipes in the middle and that means there is a giant lump in the boot floor to accommodate the catalytic converter underneath. What that means is it’s not always easy to fit things in. Then you have the added problem that the standard plastic boxes used for storage, which I could, sensibly, use for books, don’t fit in there, or my box sack barrow thing, or on the front seat/in the footwell.

At a book fair a while ago, I was admiring the festival trolley being wielded by my author mate Julia Blake (check out her books by the way, they’re excellent). Julia writes multi-genre so often has a LOT of books to carry. I’ve been toying with the idea of buying a festival trolley but thus far have been put off by the fact that a) I wasn’t sure any of them would fit in my car and b) they seemed to retail for about the same amount as a kidney on the black market. Yes. They were expensive.

However, Julia showed me hers (phnarr phnarr) demonstrating how it folded up, and how the wheels came off so it would fit in a very small space. More importantly, for my running-on-an-elastic-band-and-a-shoestring author business, it retailed at a price I could afford. I was impressed enough that we decided to see if we could jemmy it into the boot of my car once folded. Lo! And behold! It fitted. Yeh. Blimey. So Julia kindly sent me a link to buy one for myself.

I decided I’d buy one at once!

Spool forward a few months—because as we know, I am always incredibly swift to put any of my plans into action (not) and ‘right away’ in Mary world can be anything from ‘within the next five minutes’ to ‘sometime before I die of old age … probably’—I finally got round to it. I discovered that the makers of Julia’s original trolley had superceded it with new version, with wider wheels. It also had a wheel at each corner, whereas the original had the front wheels a little closer togther, in the middle. This had me worried —probably needlessly—about stability.

The only fly in the ointment still was the car. The car is non-negotiable. If I have to drive sodding miles I want to do it in a vehicle that is fun and diverting enough to drive to keep my attention. Otherwise my mind will wander and I will die. Would the new trolley fit? Well I read the measurements and it appeared to fold up slightly smaller than its predecessor. I knew that fitted so I reckoned I’d stick my neck out and buy it.

I bought one that promised to arrive next week. It arrived two day’s later. Which was nice, but a bit of a surprise, especially as I wasn’t in. We found it on the doorstep when we got home. The box was tiny box. See picture.

The tiny, tiny, box

Seriously, my cat couldn’t fit into this thing. See picture.

My enormous cat

OK so my cat is huge see picture, note loo roll for scale, but even so, you get the idea. What I’m saying is it’s a small box. When I say small, bearing in mind that the boxes I use for books are all small but I have put them in the passenger seat beside me because only one will fit in the boot, this box would fit in the boot. AND, there’d be room to shoehorn in another box … possibly. That’s how infinitesimally small it was.

Have I said enough about how small the box is? Hmm, yes, I think I probably have. Onward.

It was quite difficult to get the trolly out of the box, but once I had, I discovered that it folded up a ridiculously small size. We are talking small enough to fit in one of those re-usable bags you can get from Savers. Yeh. Miniscule.

I haven’t used it yet. I’ve no idea if it travels over rough terrain and sand the way the sales pitch promises, or whether, like rollerblades, it stops dead when it hits a slightly raised paving slab (or stone) although at least it won’t pitch me forward onto my face the way rollerblades do in this situation. So there’s that.

The trolley will be having its first outing next week as I suspect it will be a long walk from the car to the venue for the Forward Festival.

Where you come in

I need a name for this trolley. OK bear with me, if you reckon you have my train of thought here and feel like jumping ahead, you’re probably right. But please, please, please, read this bit first..

Just for larks, I decided to set up a poll to allow my fans to pick a suitably K’Barthan name for the trolley. So far, almost both my fans have kindly joined in with the name poll—hoorah—and we have a clear leader.

Foolishly I gave voters the option to go off piste and suggest a name of their own, so long as they chose a K’Barthan related name from the books. About 20% of the respondents chose to choose and of those, a massive none of them kept it K’Barthan, mwahahahrgh!

This proves, beyond all doubt, no fucker will ever read the fecking question if they can possibly avoid it.

Likewise, if you give people more than one piece of information at a time and they will take absolutely NO fucking notice of the second piece. Indeed, if you are foolish enough to warn them NOT to do something, they will go out of their way to do that exact thing.

Perhaps this explains why, when you contact a support site for help and ask two questions—because they take 48 hours to respond and you haven’t got all day—they will only answer the first question you ask, forcing you to re-ask the second question and wait another 48 hours because asking more then one thing fries their heads.

Having said all that, the poll is still open, so if you want to help me choose a name for the Trolley it would be wonderful. All you have to do is follow this somewhat unwieldy link. Oh and if you do decide to suggest your own name, please keep it to a character name from my books. Ta.

Name the trolley

The trolley to be named …

Writing.

The latest K’Barthan thing is so nearly finished it hurts, although I may write quite a lot of the next one before I publish it. This being the plan, I do need to get my finger out of my arse pronto as I have an editing slot provisionally booked for September/October. Shit! That’s only a month away. Fuck!

Sorry where was I? Oh yes, the K’Barthan thing. I really don’t have much to write before it’s finished. It will need polishing though. Hmm.

The memoir. I’m reading a lot of other memoirs at the moment to see which ones I enjoy and respond to and which ones not so much. So far, all I’ve really discovered is that I like things that feel genuine. I like the characterisation to be good, even if it’s someone describing their loved ones or people they know. I also enjoy depth, although it’s surprising the memoires where this depth occurrs.

I’ve just finished Father Joe by Stephen Hendra. As a description of one person’s profound effect on another, it’s fabulous. Also I love the way he writes (bitchy but honest). He was clearly an absolute dick for a big part of his life, but his memoir is so honest and up front, and coupled with the irreverent style of his writing you can’t help liking him. I feel that I am closer to getting a handle on the kind of memoir I want to attempt but it’s still hard to look it in the face. I’m definitely getting a feel for how I want to write it though. The up-front honest style is definitely the way to go.

So there we are, I’ll leave you with a quick bit of info about the Forward Festival.

The Foreword Festival (9th August – 17th August, 2025)

The Foreword Festival, which I hope I have spelled correctly in this post—bloody auto-correct will keep changing it—is the first independent book festival in the UK. It is running in Stowmarket and it’s running … NOW.

The festival is taking place in Stowmarket, in Suffolk. There is a  LOT going on suffice it to say they’ve thought of absolutely everything. Yes, it even has its own beer! How cool is that?

Foreword Festival beer!

If you are in striking distance of Stowmarket and fancy giving the festival a whirl, I can highly recommend it. Clearly the organisers have taste because they let me join in but seriously, it’s going to be fun. For comprehensive information as to what’s on when, go here:/https://forewordfestival.uk/

Hello there, yes, still alive. Things are busy though and I have books to write. I’m determined to publish a bloody book this year if it’s the last chuffing thing I do (and at this rate, it probably will be).

As a result I am working on two at once, the dementia memoir the first of the two sequels to Too Good To Be True. Yes, there are going to be two and Lord Vernon is in them as well. The first of those is so close to completion it hurts and is quite easy to write at the moment although I suspect that is merely because the dementia one is really hard and my brain’s Centre of Procrastination has turned to the only thing to hand.

As part of this, I’ve been working with a lovely blogging friend on this one, because I think I need to do it as part of the healing process. I’ve been trying to pin down what I want it to be about and I’m beginning to think that the only way I’m going to do that is to write a lot of it. BUT I’m also thinking that I may have hit on a way to write it that would give me scope to plait the three different strands of memoir stuff together coherently; funny stories, family history and Dad and Mum’s respective journey’s so … woot.

Garden Wildlife

No seriously, in a town, but yes, there is. For a couple of years now, we’ve had a hedgehog in the garden, who I have privately christened spiny Norma. Norma is fucking enormous, seriously, I shit you not. When I realised she had hoglets, I started feeding her. We use dry cat food, not hedgehog food because hedgehog food production is unregulated and they put things like mealworms in which are actually extremely bad for hedgehogs and make them ill. Kitten food is the best thing to use apparently, because the kibbles are nice and small.

This year, when I realised she was back again, I decided to buy a wildlife cam. I researched cameras and prices and found that one type seemed to get recommended somewhere on most of the top 10 lists so I decided that would be a good one.

 

The retail price was £99 which is quite a massive wad to stump up for a trail cam so I shelved the idea until, doing more research to find a cheaper alternative, I discovered one that most of the top ten camera articles had a link to for less than £50 on Amazon. Much as I dislike buying from Amazon, it was a market place person rather than the company, itself, so I bought it.

It looks the business but needed an SD card. I have two 32gb SD cards which I used to use in a bullet cam I transferred between my car and on my bike. It was brilliant but unfortunately, after about 6 months, it started randomly turning itself off so I’ve stopped using it. I found the spare SD card I had for it only last week but this week when my new camera arrived could I find that spare SD? Could I bollocks? Could I even find the bullet cam to take the one out of there? Not on your fucking nelly.

Wank!

Never mind, I thought, I’ll have others. Indeed, I did have another one but I had to sort though the stuff on it and clear it before I could reformat it for the wildlife cam thingy. It took a chuffing eternity. I’m a dunderhead.

Anyway, net result. I’ve discovered that there are more hedgehogs bimbling around in our garden than I thought. I think it may be five, as my naked eye observations over the past week or so have been seeing three arriving early and then noticing another two had turned up later but I haven’t confirmed that.

However, I can confirm that there are four, by dint’ of the fact they have all appeared in camera shot at the same time. Also the vid has captured some courting behaviour which I’d seen with the naked eye from the kitchen window a couple of times, including a memorable moment when I discovered they were at it when I went to put out the food. I felt very bad for disturbing them. Luckily, since the breeding season lasts from April to September there’s plenty of time.

That said, while I know there’s hanky-panky going on, I’m not 100% certain between whom. I can’t quite work out if it’s one particularly randy male snuffing round and round in circles with two separate females or two separate males and one, or two, female(s). When the four turned up they arrived as two pairs so it could be two couples. I did see some light argy-bargy with the threesome who had been eating together happily for a week or so. One of them turned out to be Mr Randy and shoved another hog away from the food. It went limp and half curled up so he looked as if he was disposing of a body. Then she just lay there, inert, in the middle of the patio, while he huffed and puffed at the other one next to the food bowl.

There are two bowls now, which seems to have alleviated this.

Also, despite seeing a hog which was very definitely the original Spiny Norma doing courtship stuff with Mr Randy a couple of nights before I got the cam (they’re the ones I disturbed while I was putting the food out) I can’t now work out which one, in my films of courting, is the original Spiny Norma, or indeed if she’s there at all. This is mainly because with the best will in the world, night vision cameras are a bit shit. To be honest, I also can’t quite work out if there is only one Mr Randy trying to poink two females or if there are, indeed, two Mr Randys.

It’s a mystery. Hopefully it’s a mystery which will be solved with the aid of the camera. Fingers and toes crossed. Obviously, I have no definitive answers yet because I’ve only had it running for a few nights. I’ll keep you posted.

Other news: Helios at Ickworth

You what Mary?

Art, sweetie, art.

There’s this artist I follow called Luke Jerram. I happened upon him because some of his first pieces were these amazing models of bacteria made in glass. These things are stunning, although sadly, I haven’t photographed one myself, so I’m not sure if I’m allowed to post a photo. The fact I’m discussing it means that I can post one of his images under fair use. However, this is not the way copyright trolls see it, and having been caught out before—a process which involved about a year of negotiation over what was clearly a bullshit claim culminating in my paying for a photograph I’d used to illustrate a point (fair use) despite knowing their assertions were actually a load of old cock and bull, in order to to make them just fuck off already—I’d rather not.

Earlier this month Helios, an art installation by Luke Jerram was visiting Ickworth. I missed his Moon and Gaia earth installations, even though they came to a venue a few hundred yards up the road, because I’m a disorganised melt. As a result, I was determined that I would NOT be missing this one. It took a while to see it because it was installed outside and could only be on display when it wasn’t too windy. Naturally it was too windy for a lot of the week but I finally managed to see it on a gorgeous hot Sunday. Photos attached.

I’m not sure it was as lovely as the other two but at the same time, it was outside, in daylight and because these things are lit, I suspect it would have worked better indoors or after dark. On the other hand, by standing with it between me and the sun, I got some lovely pictures of it looking glowy and orange against an azure sky.

Naturally because I’m smutty, I noticed at once that it had an anus.

Phnark. This amused me.

Yet more Other news: I went to a marvellous party*.

*Divine Comedy fans might get that reference, no-one else will.

A friend of mine had a birthday party this week which involved a bookshop lock-in. Yeh, I know. Genius. As a result I have bought three books; one of which, the Grimoire Grammar School series (Parent Teacher Association) I’m already half way through. Although I’m reading Monument Men at the same time which is non-fiction and also excellent.

Anyway, off we went in a taxi to Clare where there is a fantastic bookshop. We arrived early so we went to the pub next door. I was offered a drink and asked for half a pint but got a whole one. It seemed churlish not to drink it so…

Then, slightly unsteadily on to the bookshop (I’m a cheap drunk). It was fab and I bought three books which I thought was fairly reserved of me. I am liking some of the ideas in cosy fantasy it’s not the horrifically clean, Ned Flanders style upstanding awfulness I feared. The one I’m reading is a genius idea; about a normal couple whose daughter has been bitten by a werewolf. The daughter is at magic school and they are feeling their way with the other parents (selkies, mages, vampires etc)..

My book purchases were oiled by the interesting gins I had which were all made by the lady who runs the book shop. It was particularly cool the way she opened a special cupboard behind the till and there were all the bottles lined up. Then she would pour a shot and ask us not to put the glass sticky down anywhere near the books. Mwahahahrgh! I had rhubarb and then damson which were fabulous. Next, I was tempted to try the rhubarb and ginger vodka but I was conscious that I might get a bit pissed and ebullient if I did that, and since I didn’t know everyone who was there, I decided it was best to call it a day at those two. Harris Books in Clare. Definitely worth a look.

We were also very generously provided with a £10 voucher by the Birthday Girl for more books from the store, so I was off to a good start. I bought three books. I could have bought more books. I could have bought a lot more books although I’m glad I didn’t because it meant I was able to buy four more at the Maker’s Market in Bury today! Mwahahargh!

Next, on to a fabulous brewery where they served up a very fine beer and baked or roast potatoes with various toppings to go with to absorb it all. This involved sitting outside, which was perfect, as it was a gorgeous evening.

Knowing I was buying books ahead of time, I’d bought a small rucksack to put them in because sometimes I’m surprisingly sensible (don’t get excited, it doesn’t happen often). I had elected to wear clothes that would be warm enough outside at night in a British early summer but at the same time, cool if it was warmer outside at night than … you know … British early summer.

This meant I’d packed a polo shirt in my bag and a scarf/shawl that was large enough to double up as a warm thing if the wind got up or temperatures plummeted. I appear to be permanently cold unless the temperature is over 24 (which is approaching 80 degrees in old/American money). On the bottom I was wearing voluminous pantaloons. I think they’re called ‘Harem Pants’ these days, but voluminous cotton trousers gathered in at the ankles, anyway. Think Ali-Baba and the 40 thieves.

The author clad in a pair of said pantaloons, although, not the original ones. Naturally. I have many.

Yeh. So I’m sitting there dressed as Aladdin and some other kind soul buys me a beer. I have not paid for a drink yet and I am distinctly half cut (being, as I am, a cheap drunk).

Anyhoo the table we were sat at was those bench table things that are ubiquitous to pubs everywhere; a slatted table with a bench stuck on either side. They were a bit shuggly, as they always are, and of course, you have to kind of climb into them to sit down. I put my beer carefully on the middle plank of the surface to avoid spillages and sat down.

However, then someone got up, or possibly sat down, the other side and … abracadabra! The plank shifted upwards suddenly, the glass tipped over and the entire fucking pint went down my front and on my trousers. Obviously it went between the planks as well as over them to ensure maximum coverage.

Do you know how much liquid a pint of beer is?

No? Well I can tell you.

It’s an absolute fuck-tonne of liquid.

There was only one thing uppermost in my mind when this disaster happened, well OK two things. First, naturally, was:

Shit! That’s a terrible waste of some really good beer.

The second thing—more of an instinct—which happened at the same time, was to leap up before any of the beer soaked through to my actual knickers.

Then as I stood, holding my sopping trousers away from my thighs—(my knickers don’t come down that low, I promise, but we are talking really soaking trousers here so … you know … seepage upwards was perfectly possible)—I had to decide what to do. The trousers needed to be wrung out, for certain, and possibly dried. Did the brewery have a ladies loo with a hand drying machine?

Did it fuck?

Arse.

Obviously, continuing the evening looking, and seeping, like someone who’d just had a bucket of water thrown over them wasn’t really an option. Then I remembered that I had a polo top and a scarf in my bag and, to whit, that if I’d been sitting about in a vest top and pasha pants, it was unlikely anyone would think it strange if that suddenly morphed into a polo shirt and a knee length ‘sarong’ because I looked that fucking weird already.

Except, could I get to the lav to change in private without a) getting slubbery beer-soaked trousers too close to my (currently) dry scarf and top to avoid soaking them too or b) getting slubbery beer-soaked trousers too close to my (currently) dry pants and then having to endure the entire evening with an unpleasantly damp mimsey?**

No.

**(That might just be the longest sentence in the world right there never mind, where was I? Ah yes onwards…)

What to do? The only thing I could do. I told everyone to look the other way, took off my top and put the polo shirt on. Then I took off the trousers, grabbed the scarf and wrapped it around me like some kind of shit sarong. On reflection I realised it was too long to tie like a sarong and also it would end up too short. Unsure as I was as to the tidiness of the topiary situation downstairs in the lady garden short seemed unwise. I didn’t want the world to see ‘spider legs’, giant black knickers, or indeed, the hairy thighs which I hadn’t bothered to shave. Hmm, would I have to hold the stupid sarong closed all night?

Yes.

But no!

Wait!

I had an idea!

Removing my ‘Kindness is as punk as fuck’ mum-badge off my bag I was able to use it, like a safety pin, to keep my modesty together. Then, just to be sure, I took the ‘I’m a little teapot’ badge off my jacket and fastened that the other side to keep both the ends I’d wound round me in situ.

This happened in front of everyone.

There was laughing.

But nobody gave a shit.

And someone bought me another beer.

Which was nice.

Even better my knickers stayed dry and having spread them out, my clothes dried enough to wear the pantaloons home so there was no worrying about losing my ‘skirt’ in the taxi.

Hoorah!

That’s me right there people, living the dream and winning at life.

Er hem … Sort of.

Fancy a change?

Fancy something a little bit weird? Why not read one of my books? A surprising number of people think they’re good and some are free. Woot. You can find those if you wend your way down the following linky-link: https://www.hamgee.co.uk/cmot-3https://www.hamgee.co.uk/cmot-3

It’s Mothering Sunday today, which is British Mother’s day, which is a church holiday, which is why Mother’s day is in May in every other English-speaking country. Mothering Sunday was originally the day when people went back to their ‘mother church’ or in other words, it was the one day a year posh people’s servants were allowed to go home and visit their families.

I went to church, because I’m a fully paid up God botherer and I’m in the choir and I came home with three rather lovely polyanthuses, which I shall plant in the garden.

This Sunday also has another name, ‘Refreshment Sunday’ which was a give-us-a-break-from-the-sackcloth-and-ashes day in the middle of lent. At my church, it also happened to be the 50th wedding anniversary of a lovely couple so the refreshments in question were cake and prosecco (om-nom-nom). All very jolly.

Mum.

This is the second Mothering Sunday without my mother and the first without McOther’s. I was thinking about how I felt which was alright, actually. I am still perennially knackered but I have a lot more energy these days, and most of the knackeredness is because I’m eating the wrong things I suspect. I need to take a bit of a pull at myself as I’ve slightly fallen off the healthy eating wagon this week.

Mentally, that’s alright too. I still think about Mum, well, both my parents a lot. It was kind of reassuring after she died to discover how turgid all the admin and paperwork was without Mum at the centre. I’m glad I realised, while she was alive, that her gentle presence in the middle of it all is what made it worthwhile. I’m glad I could see that at the time and I’m especially glad that I clocked it enough to relax in the moment with her on my visits and just enjoy being with her. She was, as she would have said, ‘a darling’.

It also got me thinking, I have a particular memory early on in the whole dementia business, when I was going to see Mum and Dad often but hadn’t settled into the routine of every Wednesday. Or perhaps it was a family thing and we were all down to stay at the house. I’m not sure. It’s not really the point here, I was dispatched to the vegetable garden to pick runner beans. I lost myself, moving backwards and forward along the row—frequently changing position to ensure I searched the climbing tent of bean plants from all angles, the better to spot the tasty treasures hanging within.

As I worked I forgot about everything else. A massive bee droned by and I paused to enjoy its progress as it trundled past, heading haphazardly towards the cabbages. Utterly in the moment, I forgot to be sad. A sense of uncomplicated happiness wrapped itself around me like a well-worn coat before I remembered that actually, things weren’t so great and I wasn’t like that now. I’d caught a glimpse of something through a forest, a tiny snapshot from a forgotten time that I could hardly recall, when happiness like that was my default state. A time when life was uncomplicated and the web of other people’s love which upheld me was solid and true, and unmarked by anything.

It was a sliver of something I hankered to return to, in the middle of a situation when I could never have it. Caught up in a world of sadness and concern that felt as if it was going to go on forever, it shocked me to realise it was lost. It was the most potent feeling. In some respects it made me sadder but I tried to see it as the gift of momentary respite it was and carry it with me.

Over ten years later, this morning, in church, I felt a mix of emotions as I sat and thought about things. And then, along with those thoughts came another weird glimpse of a life in reverse. Sure I miss my parents. When I look around the world as it is today, it still feels as if the light has died. But at the same time, I don’t miss watching them suffer. I don’t miss the heart-breaking sadness, or the life spent on tenterhooks, waiting for the disaster to fall and the call to come, waiting to drop everything and drive 150 miles in the middle of the night to pick up the pieces.

As I thought about it all, I realised that I am a lot closer to the cheerful happy person I was before this all blew up. There are a few things I regret, I had looked out a stack of books I thought I might bring home and never went back for them. I meant to grab some of my mother’s paintings and I forgot to do it on my last trip down there. I found a beautiful vellum document which was my great grandfather’s certificate of ordination. That was Dad’s grandfather. I decided to leave it for now, think on it and maybe collect it later. I never got back there so that’s gone too.

Finally, on the book shelves, I remember finding two leather bound bibles, both in a terrible state of disrepair with pages falling out, the spines hanging off and chunks of pages. One had a maroon leather cover, the New Standard Version, that had been my father’s. The second had a black leather cover and was similarly in pieces. That had belonged to my grandfather (my mother’s father). I think that was the 1600s original translation, which is mind-blowingly well written. Bizarrely, now I’ve had time to think about it, if you asked me what I would have rescued from the house if it was on fire, those two bibles would be one of the first things I’d have picked. And I left them? Why the fuck did I do that?

Two items that were precious to and venerated by people I loved and admired. Knobhead. Then again, I did manage to get almost all of the other inconsequential things that had stories; including the plants and they’ve survived the winter. So there’s that.

Also on the upside, I have the lodestar; my Mum’s engagement ring. I wear it all the time and in it is wrapped up everything about the people my parents were and the person I believe I should try and be. It was picked with love by Dad and worn daily by Mum. It reminds me of the light; their laughter their sense of mischief, the way they took the piss out of one another. It tells of their open-hearted acceptance of others, their kindness, their empathy. It reminds me that they are OK and that I now carry the light and that I will just have to voraciously read (and destroy the binding) on my own bloody bible. It shouldn’t be that hard to read it more often and I have copies of both editions for fuck’s sake.

And these days, instead of feeling as if the light has gone out and there’s a void where my parents should be, it’s as if I stand on solid ground and they, and the light, are there round me.

It’s alright.

Last Monday was an interesting day. The kind of day that makes me wonder what the fuck is going on. Well, no, I mean, I end up thinking that most days—at the moment, I think that every time I watch the news for starters—but I digress, I am talking about on a personal level. I do wonder if other people’s lives are a bit less chaos-tastic.

This is probably no big surprise to you, bearing in mind the constant adventures I manage to have, laminating bacon or getting bitten by one of the soppiest, tamest dogs on earth, for example and then, when asked if I had an up-to-date tetanus shot having to explain that yes, I have, because I got bitten by a mouse in 2020–I got bitten by a rat in 2022 as well but, as usual, I digress again. Come on MTM get with the programme.

Yeh… go figure.

Let me share the story of my day last Monday and at least demonstrate why I get absolutely fuck all done. Do feel free to tell me if this is the kind of stuff you’d expect to see regularly in your life.

Monday morning, I was booked in at the gym and headed off on my trusty bicycle. I got there pretty much without incident, except for thinking, as I parked my bike, that it would be a bad place to get a flat tyre, two and a half miles from home and all.

It’s strange how you can be prescient about stuff like that. After training quite hard and walking jelly-legged out of my session I was looking forward to cycling feebly for about half a mile and then, basically, sitting on it as it rolled downhill all the way home.

As you can imagine, I was a bit peeved to discover that this was not to be because my front tyre had gone down. I got out the pump and pumped it up but it simply made the type of loud hissing noise that suggested the air was going out almost as fast as it was going in. Sure enough, when I checked, it was.

Wanketty-wank.

A succession of inner tubes has sprung a leak; same tyre, the same place, where the valve joins the tube. Knowing the symptoms, I was pretty sure this was what had happened.

Again.

For fuck’s sake.

I’d already wheeled it home once (from half way to the gym) so unless I could pump it up enough to stay vaguely inflated, wheeling it anywhere now meant the tyre would be toast. I gave it another go. Nope. Nothing doing.

Arse hats!

Never mind, there was a motor spares shop in the next industrial estate over, it was also on one of the many routes home. At least if I got the tube I might be able to fix it …

Except I wouldn’t. The original front tyre of the bike had levers that allowed you to undo it without needing a spanner. However, I bought an electronic assist for it three years ago and that comes with a new front wheel, with an electric motor in the centre, which you have to use instead. This wheel has nuts you have to tighten. This also meant that without the prerequisite spanner I wouldn’t be able to fix it anyway. I decided that if I could walk it there I might be able to get a new tube for the bloody thing so at least when I finally got home I wouldn’t have to go back out to the local cycle shop.

I flirted with the idea of leaving the bike where it was, walking to the motor spares shop and buying the right spanner as well as a new tube, but to do that, I needed to know what sized spanner to buy and naturally, it’s a sodding number, and as we all know, thicky-Mc-Thicko here couldn’t remember the simplest number even if it was tattoed onto my actual fucking hand.

The spares store was about half a mile away so wheeling the bike down there would mean the tyre would be toast anyway, so even if I fixed it to ride home, I’d just have to take it off again when I got there. On the upside, I had a new tyre at home which I bought the previous time this happened.

To my joy, the motor spares store did, indeed, have some spares for bicycles. I paid the princely sum pf £6.50 for a new inner tube. They sold tyres too, so I thought about buying one, plus spanner, and fixing it there but was thwarted by the fact that, though they had knobbly mountain bike tyres, they didn’t have one that would fit my wheel.

Arse. Kind of.

Never mind. Can’t win ’em all. I supposed and it did save me the cost of a new tyre—when I already had one at home—plus the cost of the right spanner to change the wheel on top (also something I had at home). Accepting my fate, I popped the inner tube in my bag and paused to take stock.

Having started bright-but-cold it was turning into a lovely warm day and I was sweating, so I stuffed my coat and sweatshirt into my bag with the tube and set off.

The gym is at the top of a hill, the motor-spares place half way down. There are many routes home but none of them is direct so I usually choose the one with the least number of uphill climbs on the way there—it is not the most direct but I will go a long way out of my way on a bike if it avoids unnecessary hills—and a slightly longer route that’s downhill all the way on the return journey.

Since I was walking, and half way down one hill by this time, anyway, I chose a different route, which was also the shortest in miles; the cycle route. This is by far the hilliest with uphill stretches both there and back so I seldom use it on an actual bike because it’s far too fucking tiring, it takes a sodding eternity to get up all the bloody hills and I have better things to do with my time.

Half way down the first long hill I discovered a shortcut across a field that took off a huge corner AND the longest up hill stretch, suddenly turning this into the quickest option, at least on foot and possibly even on a bike, too. Huzzah! The path also goes straight across the field and I do like riding an off road cycle off road from time-to-time so I will definitely be trying it again for other return journeys.

This is the field in question …

Despite being the shortest route, it took for fucking ever to walk home. On the upside, at least I had water and a lark followed me across the field path, singing its heart out, which was wonderful. But it took me every bit of 45 minutes and what with another half an hour or so faffing about buying the inner tube on top I didn’t get home until half past eleven. I was knackered and all I wanted to do was relax but oh no, no chance. Now I had to fix my effing bike.

It’d be nice to relax but … no time.

Once I’d removed the wheel I could see the problem, the tape round the inside of the wheel (that stops the inner tube from rubbing on the fastenings holding the spokes in place) had shifted round, digging into the stalky bit of the valve and rubbing a hole in it. I went and got a modelling knife from the house, dumping all my stuff on the kitchen side as I did so.

Back outside at the bike I greatly increased the hole in the tape where the valve pokes through using the knife. Hopefully it’ll now stop the bloody thing from puncturing every fucking inner tube I put in. Unless it’s the metal of the wheel where the valve goes though, in which case I’ll have to file it down, fingers crossed it’s the tape and nothing else.

Next I checked the tyre which was full of little balls of rubber, proving it was, indeed, comprehensively bollocksed. Bin that then.

The tyre came off easily, the new one went on eventually, but there were several moments where I rather wished I was an octopus. A lot of tyres come folded up which is great but means they need a bit of coercion to assume their proper shape.

It also took ages to pump the stupid thing up because I couldn’t get the pump on far enough to release the valve and let any air in. Finally, after about an hour of sweary effort, I had fixed the puncture. I put everything away, locked my car and went back to the house. At which point I discovered that one of the things I’d dumped in the kitchen was my house keys and I’d locked myself out.

Bollocks.

So then I had to break into my own bastard house, which is something I have to do once every couple of months, on average. By this time, I was ready to eat my own arm off so before taking a shower I had a quick bite of lunch. I finally had my shower at about 2.00 pm … instead of the usual time of about half ten. I’d left in a hurry so I had to do the washing up and tidying up from breakfast, at which point, it was time to collect Mc(not so)Mini from school. Then it was tea, family time and that was that.

This is what I do with my time. This is why I never get anything done.

Ho hum. Onwards and upwards.

Never mind if you have more time than me why not read a book.

Yes, you can read a selection of my books for free to see what they’re like, including this one. To dip your toe in the world of K’Barth, check out www.hamgee.co.uk/cmot3.

It’s been a while since I contacted anyone, I didn’t do any Christmas cards and things have been a bit higgledy-piggledy this Christmas and New Year. There are reasons but I can’t really talk about them. Suffice it to say there was a death in the family, so this Christmas was pretty much a rinse and repeat of last year. When stuff like this happens, I tend to write about it on my blog. There are two reasons for this.

ONE:

As an externaliser, sharing my thoughts helps me get them in order. In theory, as someone who sells stuff and writes books, sharing something this personal might be considered over sharing. Indeed last year, when I mentioned my mother’s death in a mailing, someone unsubscribed and left me a very unpleasant message. Hence, I only share stuff about people who I know wouldn’t or won’t mind. This death was someone who would mind, ergo, no externalising. But my WYSIWYG nature being what it is, I was unable to write a post without mentioning it. That meant no blog.

TWO:

The world political climate is grim and I know I should do something to stand against the bile and hatred that seems to be spewed everywhere at the moment in the name of ‘free speech’ which some folk seem to think means, license to bully people, lie and spread misery.

Sadly, I’ve no clue what to write and nothing will do any good. Apart from writing extensively about why this new strain of (We’re Not Allowed To Call It) Fascism is wank. Clearly many people can no longer imagine what a police state would be like since the USA’s descent into (We’re Not Allowed To Call It) Fascism and the apparent unconcern among a huge chunk of right wing voters there is a tad chilling and yes, I should comment. However, it’s also difficult to write about it until I get my thoughts in order; and they aren’t. At the same time, it’s difficult to ignore it when I attempt to write about anything else.

Yes you you miserable fuckers. You’re doing my tits.

Bizarrely, this week, I am finally writing a blog at a point when it’s actually physically painful to do so, because at last, I have a genuinely, ‘interesting’—well yeh, it’s all relative—story that I can share which will stop me straying into ground where my thoughts are not yet cohesive enough. Woot. Probably. Right, on we go.

Ouch

Yep. Muggins here managed to get bitten by a dog; a rottweiler, no less. Copious bleeding and stitches given, or at least, steri-strips and glue because apparently they don’t do stitches much these days. Let me tell you the entire sorry story.

I was booked to go on a dig on Saturday and McOther was off to Twickenham to watch England V Scotland in the Five Nations. McMini is now competent enough to be left at home although I’d booked him a haircut, left the money and promised to ring him in time to get out of bed and be ready. Luckily the hair cutter comes to us!

Anyway, off I went, parked up, got my kit ready for the briefing and hung around waiting. My detector was on so it and the spade were over my shoulder but my right hand was free. There was this big soppy old Rottweiler trundling about on an extended lead, people were patting him and he was trotting over to people and sniffing them. He came my way so I wandered over to have a chat.

He had lovely light brown eyebrows and his brow was wrinkled, friendly-dog style, his expression and demeanour open and friendly. Now, I’m a country girl. Animals, even the best of them, are unpredictable, especially if they don’t know you and a Rottweiler is a formidable dog and absolutely not one to get on the wrong side of. I usually make a point of asking people if I can touch their dogs before just striding in there for a pat.

However, this dog was greeting lots of people and was clearly a much loved part of the group. Indeed, I think I’ve seen him at a couple of digs myself. He’s well-behaved and properly trained.

So I made eye contact and then held my hand out spoke to him. I have since learned that it is not always a good idea to maintain eye contact with dogs as they can see this as aggression. I knew cats do but I didn’t realise dogs were the same in this. Anyway, he had a sniff and seemed alright with it so I stroked the top of his head. He was OK with that, too, but I didn’t think he was 100% comfortable so I decided to move back. I withdrew my hand and broke off eye contact as I made to step away. When I did so, he suddenly went for my hand. The noise alerted me before I saw him move.

Obviously, I did the natural thing, withdrew the hand pronto. This was kind of sensible, I mean as I understand it, and I may be wrong here but as far as I know, Rotweilers can lock their jaws closed and if they are spooked or panicked they’re more likely to do this. It might be arthritic but I do find my thumb useful, although I guess my instincts decided for me anyway.

Luckily I was wearing two pairs of gloves. I realised I’d been bitten because I felt the pressure and also the glove went with the dog. He shook it twice and dropped it on the ground, thumb completely severed.

’Ah!’ I said.

There’s some previous on this. I once cut my other thumb peeling vegetables because I thought there was a slug in the potato I was working on and threw the knife away, slashing my thumb in the process #NotAMelt. This also bled copiously, well, hands and heads do (feet too I should imagine) and I was ripped for some time because when it happened I just said, ‘ooh’ followed by silence.

On that occasion, my husband was beside me in seconds and I avoided casualty by din’t of the fact we had a doctor staying with us who always carried steri-strips in her car.

I still get the piss ripped out of me about the fact I will yell the place down if I stub my toe but that the McOthers know that if I say something calm and quiet like, ‘oh dear’ I’ve probably severed a limb.

In this case, the ‘Ah’ had a similar reaction.

A lot of people gathered round very quickly. Although the noise the dog made must have alerted them too I’m guessing.

My first thought was, ‘Bollocks! It’s bitten me! This had better not be bad!’ because I haven’t been out detecting in fucking ages and there wasn’t a doctor with steri-strips (and even if there was, it needed washed properly etc).

I checked the damage. The bit that hurt was the base of my thumb on the back of my hand. Yes, there were a couple of punctures just between the two knuckle joints. They were bleeding a fair bit and I could see the bruising coming up round them. Not too bad. The longest was only about a centimetre/half an inch. I reckoned I could get away with that if the organisers had a plaster I could stick on it. But the meaty bit at the base of my hand was also a bit stingy, as if I’d grazed it, so I thought I’d better check that too. Turning my hand over revealed a lovely gash about an inch and a half long. It looked like a slashed cushion with the stuffing spilling out. Strings of yellow fat and strawberry jam. Nice. It was also bleeding.

Copiously.

Everywhere.

Wank.

‘Ah,’ I said again. True to form.

If  you want to see that that looked like, click on this link: I’ve given you the option in case  you’re squeamish.

With a sinking heart, I explained that I’d had similar cut before and knew it needed stitches. Nobody disagreed. The various stewards cleaned it as best they could, applied dressings and bound it up tight to slow the bleeding.

Various kind others helped me pack my detector up, put it in back in the car and lock it. The guy who owned the dog was mortified but it so obviously wasn’t that kind of dog and I told him not to worry, no harm done.

The dig group is run very professionally by a husband and wife team and, usually three or four other stewards. There is always someone there who’s not digging for just this kind of eventuality, but also so there is someone back at the farmyard if anyone needs them and to view the finds.

The wife, Joanne, drove me to Colchester Hospital in their truck. Luckily she is very good company so we just chatted away as she drove. Google took us via Will’s mother’s, as usual, but we got there in reasonably good time, it was about half nine when we arrived.

Casualty was pretty full lots of people who’d injured themselves, left it overnight to see if they felt better and discovered they hadn’t. We joined the queue and I had to fill in a form which Joanne did for me, bless her. Colchester hospital is being refurbished so there were that many building works going on there it felt more like Heathrow but luckily there didn’t seem to be much work going on (it was Saturday) so it was reasonably quiet.

Joanne was sent off to the cafe because there weren’t enough seats for anyone other than the folks nursing injuries. Luckily she had a book with her. I joined another queue, to hand my form to some ladies behind glass and got told off for going to the nearest free lady before I was called forward so I had to scuttle back to the wait here sign. These ladies were both very stern, and slightly terrifying. I suspect they get a lot of shit.

Stern …

Form handed in I sat and waited with my fellow victims. By just after ten it occurred to me that although all my fingers and thumb appeared to still be moving as required, I ought to tell the McOthers in case they had to fix something and I was kept in for surgery. I didn’t imagine it would take long but I’d had breakfast, so it’d be a while before I could be anaesthetised and I might not make it home until very late. McMini was at home alone, McOther having gone to London to watch Scotland play England in the five nations, so I’d need to tip him off or transfer him some cash for a takeaway supper. I put a message on our family group chat explaining what had happened.

Bless him, McOther replied at once asking if I could drive. I said I didn’t know as I hadn’t seen the doc but that I thought I’d be fine and if not I Joanne had already said that someone fully comprehensively insured from the dig crew would drive me. Lovely McOther said he would much rather see me home safe, that he was just about to meet the lads and that he’d explain what had happened, head straight round to Liverpool Street and get the next train to Colchester so he could drive me home.

I asked Joanne if we could pick him up from the station when I was done and she said yes, so it was all fixed.

At about half eleven, I was shown in to see a lovely doctor called Camilla. She was an absolute poppet. Apparently Colchester A&E has at least one dog bite every day, which I thought was a bit of an eye-opener. She had a look, washed it carefully, stuck steri-strips and glue over the long cut on the heel of my hand and the shorter one on my thumb. I asked if yanking my hand away had been unwise and the gist of her reply was, ‘not if you like having two thumbs’.

Number 1 cut with steri-strip applied.

That done she dressed it, bandaged me up and gave me a precautionary 3 day course of penicillin.  This has to be taken as equally distant apart as possible, with food, so the diet’s going a bit badly as I have to have an extra bite to eat at 4pm and 10pm. The first dose is taken with breakfast so that’s a win and I can drink with it. Also a win.

The final article, before bandaging.

The last thing the doctor did was hand me another pair of dressings and bandage to change the dressing on day three, which is probably today. Next Joanne drove me to Colchester Station to wait for McOther who would have got there in perfect time but the first train was cancelled so he had to catch the next one. We passed a very pleasant hour in the truck putting the world to rights. Then McOther’s train arrived so we picked him up, drove back to the farm and he drove me home. I’m not sure he enjoyed driving the Lotus, I’m also not sure the gearbox will ever be the same again, bless him. Shhh don’t tell him I said that.

We got back shortly after my hairdressing friend arrived to do McMini’s hair and while she was there, I got her to tidy up my hair as well … which was nice!

Aftermath

So there we are. It’s now day three and it’s stiffened up a lot, which is excruciating. BUT … I have discovered two things that really help, get your hands moving when it’s too painful to do it alone. Start with a heat pack to loosen it initially, or if you have a vibro massager use that in the general area (but not on the stitches, obviously). Both those are wonderful for reducing the pain and allowing freer movement. Then, once everything is more relaxed, touch typing seems to be brilliant for this kind of stiffness as it’s low impact but enough movement to keep things supple. Also after an injury like this you do need to keep things moving.

On the downside, after about half an hour it all stiffens up again. It maybe that I’ve been typing too much and overdone it perhaps, I dunno, but I’ve left The Pan of Hamgee standing on a roof disguised as half of a drag duo, with the other half at his side and a party of hostile members of the Grongolian Security Forces about to join them very soon, so I reckon I’m excused as I need to know what happens next. Flying car chase, obvs but I need to work out how it goes.

If you’re bored …

Or need to escape, why not check out one of my books. I give some away for free, because I’m kind like that, so you won’t even have to pay to be distracted from the absolute fucking car crash that is the world right now.

Lose yourself in some books here.

Well this is the week that was and was it a bit of a week? Oh yes it was. Also you’ll notice it’s not the weekend. I’m not sure how much I should say about some of this stuff so this one’s going under the radar. Bit of a mix of news this week. Good, bad, funny and sad. Such is life. Right. On we go.

Stall at the ready, I was about to do a three day stint selling books at the St Edmundsbury Cathedral Christmas Market. I was really lucky to get in and was excited as there are usually a fair few people. However the market wasn’t my main adventure this week. Oh no.

First up, McOther got a call on the Saturday to say his mum was ill and that he should go to see her. He had a visit scheduled and in the end Mum rallied a bit and so he went on Thursday, a week early. The day the Christmas Market began.

However, on Tuesday, he went for a walk and brought back a dead pheasant. Road kill. Still in rigor mortis. I have eaten road kill before but the car in front of us hit it, but since this one was still as stiff as a board then, in theory, that meant it could only be a maximum of 86 hours old according to Monsieur Google. Which is about the right amount of time to hang a pheasant.

It did mean that it had to be plucked and cooked (or put in the freezer) as soon as it um (how shall I put this) relaxed. Except that it was the Christmas Market and though it runs from 10 until 4.30 I had to be there by 9.30 am and had the school run to do each end, supper to cook and shopping to do and it lasted three days.

You can see where this is going can’t you?

Yep. McMini has Saturday school in the morning and he found a friend who was getting a taxi home and offered him a seat so that was dandy, in fact, in the end, he had a splitting headache and I let him stay home.

However, what with organising everything that McOther and I usually do as a team, coupled with the fact that my back was absolutely bollocksed from standing all day (I’ve bought a shooting stick for the next fair) the pheasant went un-plucked until, er hem, Monday. Not only was this too long but I hung it the wrong way up which was a Bad Thing.

 

I hung him the wrong way up.

Having been as cold as charity, meaning that our conservatory was the same temperature as a fridge, it suddenly got warm on Saturday and Sunday. This was also a Bad Thing, from the pheasant’s point of view, I suspect. Especially as I discovered there was a massive fuck off blowfly in there.

Oh dear. The augars were looking  a bit piss poor for our future supper now.

So on Monday afternoon, I started plucking the pheasant, all well and good. I am a country girl so I have plucked and drawn a pheasant before but not one that was quite this old. Close up, pheasants are beautiful, this one, a boy, was particularly lustrous in the plumage department. I was torn between being sad that it had died and happy that at least it hadn’t died in vain and someone was going to eat it. Because its origins were somewhat sketchy, I was prepared for it being too ‘over’ to eat and wore disposable gloves in case there were maggots.

Once I’d got enough feathers off I could see that it was a lovely plump bird, the legs were in tact but it had been smacked in the back and one side of it was smashed to the point where it felt more like a liquid.

Hmm. There might be maggots in its digestive tract, I wasn’t sure. The breasts and legs looked fine, but I should probably proceed with extreme caution. I began to pluck more carefully.

After about 15 minutes, it was mostly bald but I realised that it was time for the school run. So I laid it out on the chopping board, in the conservatory—away from any hungry tabby household members who might eat it while I was gone—and went to get the lad.

Upon my return, I realised a bit of blood had leaked from its mouth. I hung it head down, but have since discovered I should have hung it head up. Close up, I noticed that, swimming cheerfully around in the pool of blood, were some very, very tiny maggots. Just-hatched-sized maggots. Bollocks. I’d missed my window, probably by not much more than a few hours.

Boake incoming.

There is a saying that you’re supposed to wait until your game is hooching with maggots before you eat it.  It’s not a viewpoint I subscribe to. In addition, there was the thorny issue of how I would eviscerate it to rescue any edible bits without getting the mini-maggots in its digestive tract absolutely every-fucking-where. I decided I would have to chalk this one up to experience. Note to self; next time, pluck the bird before you hang it, while it’s still fresh. Oh! And hang it the right bloody way up.

I told the pheasant I was sorry and binned him.

I still feel bad.

The first day of the Christmas Market, Thursday, Mc(NotSo)Mini had his parent teachers evening. This is done by 10 minute slots on a zoom call. Now that he’s in the 6th form there are less pupils so the latest times I could talk to his teachers were 5.30 until 6.00. I was picking him up at 5.00 and the traffic was crap so I was 10 minutes late. He was just finishing something off and it was 20 past before he was done and I thought about the rush hour traffic in town and decided I’d have to camp on the school’s wi-fi and do the calls there. Luckily the music department was open and as the music teacher was the last scheduled call (at 6.00) I talked to him at 5.20 so he got to leave 10 minutes earlier and then I sat in a practise room and did the other calls before texting McMini that I was done and we headed home.

Meanwhile the Christmas Market, itself was great fun. I am so glad I got in. I was next to a local historian who’d written a book so we watched each others’ stalls when we needed to nip off for a loo break or wanted a quick scout round the other stalls, mostly for cake in my case, although I completely missed the Cathedral Cake stall until the last day and then couldn’t get away to go buy some, which was a bummer.

It was lovely to be on home turf and meet so many friends. It also meant I was able to nip home for more books on Saturday morning when I realised that the pile of book 2 in my series was a pile of book 1 with a single book 2 on top. The joy of living a 10 minute walk up the road was that at least I could nip home for another one. I was back in position by half ten and while I suspect I may have lost a sale or two I doubt it made much difference in the grand scheme of things. And I sold two copies of that book that day,  so it was worth going home for more.

My stall in all its … er hem … glory!

It felt as if I’d only sold half as much as last year but when I came to examine the takings, I discovered that while there were fewer customers, they had bought more books. Nearly every sale was multiples, two small books for £7 or all four big ones. Several people bought cards and I even sold a couple of copies of Eyebomb, Therefore I Am.

The result was takings about 20% down on last year but still a decent profit, easily covering costs with a bit left for me. So hoorah for that! I had way more books than I needed but I dislike running out as I always fret about the lost earnings. As a result I order small parcels of books at regular intervals over the year so I have enough by the time any big events come round.

McOther is only just back from Mum and Dad’s as I gather things are improving with Mum. However, his Dad hasn’t been too good either and is on antibiotics with a throat infection. He slept for a solid two days so he clearly needed a break. Doing the single parent thing is hectic but it was fine, although I did miss McOther keenly because he’s my best mate, even though Mc(NotSo)Mini is very amusing company and has made a point of spending some time with me each evening, rather than in his room chatting to his girlfriend or playing on line games with his mates.

McOther will be going back to Scotland again soon. We were going for Christmas but Dad isn’t sure Mum will be here. She has lost a lot of weight and is very weak and thin because one of the things her type of COPD does is cause her to cough until she throws up. This means eating is a challenge. It’s also sore, and she has difficulty breathing unless she is lying down, which is horrid for her. As usual, she’s putting  others first and she doesn’t want anyone’s last memory of her to be an image that she is concerned they would find harrowing. So while she is OK with McOther seeing her, and Dad too, she wants McMini and I to remember her the way she was and has asked us not to come. Instead we will have Christmas at home, quietly, and the week before, McMini and I will go see my brother as we’d always planned, but now McOther will go and see his Mum and Dad instead of coming with us. The upshot of this is that it’s unlikely I will see Mum again in this world, which is sad. There have been teary moments for everyone in our little family unit.

Mum has been a wonderful Mum in-law and friend to me, so I will write to thank her and tell her that she is loved and that the nipper and I are thinking about her. I lit a candle for her in church today, although I probably won’t tell her that. But I do know that when people are dying the advice you are always given is to keep reassuring them how much they are loved. Writing to do that is the obvious thing to do.

On other stuff … Oh lordy I have not been organised this week. Not at all. One morning I woke with appalling vertigo (no biggie, it’s a side effect of the standing-knackers-my-back thing and it wears off but it’s annoying). I binned the gym session I’d booked and went for a walk after dropping Mc(NotSo)Mini off at school. Sure enough, the vertigo soon blew off, but I realised, as I drove home and the world seemed to be a bit fuzzy round the edges, that this was because I’d forgotten to put my glasses on.

Everything has been a bit like that this week.

Have I done any writing? Not much. Only today.

Never mind. There’s always next week. Onwards and upwards.

 

 

For a long time now, I’ve wanted talk about Kickstarter. This is slightly more a marketing post than an MTM update kind of post but … I just thought the information might be useful. I have only done one Kickstarter because it takes a lot of organising and as you know I am about as much use in an organisational capacity as a chocolate teapot.

However, many of the ‘how I did’ articles I see about Kickstarter are written by people who already have a huge following (so funding is a bit more of a sure thing) or they are romantasy jugganaughts publishing something that is more akin to a work of art than a book that has cost them tens of thousands up front but with thousands of hungry fans ready to get it funded in the first minute.

This is not the profile that fits most of us, so I thought writing a wee thing about how my kickstarter campaign went would be useful. I do have an established fan base but there are less than a hundred of them and I am very much small fry. This was my first campaign and was a very small one. It was also starting completely from scratch. My existing fan base love my photos but they are there because they read my novels.

If you are starting from pretty much nothing, this post is for you. I hope the intel is helpful.

Details:

Book: Eyebomb, Therefore I Am
Genre: Publishing/Art book and Photography/Photobook
I switched the two around from time to time but usually had photography/photobook as my first choice.
Running time: Two weeks
Time in preview ‘coming soon’: about 3 months, November 2023 – February 2024.
Campaign dates: 6th – 22nd February, 2024
Funding target: £100 (about four copies).
Funding achieved: £1,015; £985 in pledges and the rest in add ons afterwards via pledgebox.

Eyebomb, Therefore I Am

Yes, I did have everything ready by October, 2023 but I actually ran my campaign in February, 2024, and because of the nature of my life (everything happens in slow motion) I’m only telling you about it now. Probate, clearing out a house, doing life laundry, sorting through family papers etc takes a loooooooong time in every sense of the word.

The book:

Eyebomb, Therefore I Am is a book my readers and social media buddies have been requesting for some time (I use my eyebombing pictures to illustrate my social media posts). Until recently it was too expensive. Then came Bookvault and suddenly it was possible.

Sniff test passed.

Woot!

Unfortunately, because I’m an idiot, I chose to do a square book so they could only print in the UK. Two thirds of the people pledging for your kickstarter will be American, even if you’re British like I am, so it’s worth bearing that in mind. Also size and paper weight appear to make no difference to printing costs, although they do effect postage. As a result my 21cmx21cm book cost the same to print as if it ws 12cmx12cm. The bulk of what my backers paid was to cover postage so it may be that it’s worth printing a smaller book that is lighter and costs less to post.

Investigating the postage costs for the size I’d chosen (21cm x 21cm) I discovered it was cheaper to have it shipped to me and send the books out myself, surface mail, than send via Bookvault so that’s what I did. Only one went astray.

This was a complete departure from my usual books but it was a good test and something I could do myself for eff all cash so if it didn’t fund I wasn’t out of pocket. My novels would have involved expensive artwork and drawings that I couldn’t afford, or I would have had to use AI to do drawings, with all the controvosy that entails.

Conversely, the eyebombing book involved my own photographs. I have over 4,000 and so I decided that this would be a good place to learn how to use affinity design to make a book, learn about producing print, and additionally, start my learning journey on Kickstarter.

Work on the project started in March 2023, I work slightly more slowly than the speed of continental drift, and I set myself a year to get the learning done, the book made and the campaign ready for launch.

Everything was finally ready to go in October 2023. After taking advice on the Kickstarter Accelerator and Kickstarter for Authors Facebook groups I decided not to launch in November ‘in time for Christmas’ but just keep it in preview and launch in February. This was a remarkably lucky decision as in early December, my lovely Mum died and there was rather a lot to do with organising funeral etc 3 hours away in Sussex while at the same time making sure we got to see my McOther half’s folks (one of whom is too ill to travel) 5 hours away in the opposite direction.

Postage:

Was a nightmare! I included postage to most places in the cost of the price of the book which meant the book that cost £9 or thereabouts to print sold for £30. I was going for 100% profit plus postage to the USA on each book because that was where I suspected the bulk of my orders would originate. This meant I’d make money on UK postage and lose money on postage to Australasia/NZ and the far east.

The book cost about £10 to post to the USA and £12 – £15 to post pretty much anywhere in the world except the UK (£5) and Australasia/New Zealand and the Far East (£18 surface mail). I made £3 on the Australian books I sold. Bearing in mind that what I was actually selling was some incredibly expensive postage with a book attached, I was justifiably nervous and decided that a realistic target would be selling five copies of the book at £30 a pop with various other options. I didn’t factor in a cost for my time and was extremely glad I hadn’t produced the kind of book where I’d have to recoup design fees on top.

For add ons, I did an ebook version in PDF format, up to 17 post cards in various combinations and sets, and produced a googly-eye themed piece of electronic art. I kept it simple because I am a bear of very little brain and had to fit in a lot of family stuff. So all I had was:

The Kickstarter £1 tier.
A warm fuzzy feeling £3+ a give what you want tier, basically.
Signed Card   5 Backers  Signed post card plus mystery gift (another signed card)
Digital Sketch  £.7.50
Digital copy of the book £10.00 (I think) 6 Backer
Digital copy of book and digital sketch £15.00  1 Backer, he wanted a bespoke sketch so I did one for him.
Paperback and ebook copy bundle. £20 4 Backers
Hardback copy of the book. £30 13 Backers
Signed hardback. £40 5 Backers
Signed hardback + card bundle £50 (I think) 2 Backers
Signed hardback + go forth & eyebomb kit £50 1 Backers
Double Trouble: £60 Signed Hardback Bundle of two: 0 Backers
The Lot : set of signed cards, hardbacks, entry into a competition to get their eyebomb in the next book

Add ons:

For add ons, I did an ebook version in PDF format, up to 17 post cards in various combinations and sets, and produced a googly-eye themed piece of electronic art. I kept it simple because I am a bear of very little brain and had to fit in a lot of family stuff.

I also set up the cards at: £5 for a set of 4 and £15 for a set of 16 or £18 for a signed set of 16. I would have loved if I could have just put them on and people could have bundled them and a discount would be applied but it was too complicated for Kicksatarter at the time (it may still be now) so I made them into sets. These are high profit items so if people added them on I earned back the a bit more on Australasian postage, for example. Quite a few peps ordered these so they were worth doing but I didn’t need to print more than 20 of each.

Video:

Yes! I did a video. This was scary but I managed to record a not too weird vid of myself saying, ‘hello, I’m here to tell you about my kickstarter!’ After that I used a phone editing suite to add photos and did the rest of my speaky bit as a series of sound files which I added over the slide show. I’ve no idea if it made a difference but I was really glad to have posted something, and it really didn’t look that bad by the time I’d finished it.

Story:

I think my pitch section was quite long but it did help that there was a good story behind how the eyebombing started and why I do it. The aim was to get people to empathise, enjoy the photos and want more, and to prepare them for the fact this was quite a weird book. I also wanted it to be amusing. All my books are humorous so my usual marketing technique is to try and be relentlessly funny at people until they cave and buy one of my books.

If you’re interested, you can still read what I said here

Publicity:

Mailing list: I included news on the campaign build in my mailing list in the months running up to the campaign, indeed right from the moment I decided I was going to have a go at Kickstarter, a year before. When it went live, I mailed them and explained that if they didn’t like the idea of buying from Kickstarter but wanted to help me it would be wonderful if they shared on social media. I gave them links and I posted these on my page and in my fan group too, asking for help (I’m not proud! Mwahahargh!). I also gave them a choice of opting out of further mailings about Kickstarter in the initial email after which I sent two more emails about it. A few did opt out but a lot told their friends and a couple even signed up to the platform and used it for the first time so they could buy the book.

My mailing list peps are lovely but there are very few active ones. I’d say I have about 75 active ‘super fans’ and the list holds at about 2k on a rolling basis as there are usually about as many people leaving as there are coming in.

I wanted backers to be able to purchase add ons afterwards so I used Pledgebox to manage my pledges. It was terrifying because until the campaign had finished I had no clue what it was going to look like or how it was going to work, or indeed, if I could learn it. It was alright but it wasn’t very intuitive, the help files were worse than useless and I got in a hot mess with a couple of bits and ended up charging two people postage somehow (although luckily, not much and as I hadn’t a clue how to process a refund I was able to get round it by sending them extra sets of post cards). Forgetting to add a second book one backer had bought as an add on also turned out to be a disaster, mainly because as an add on to a tier where postage was already factored in, it made sense, but ending it singly the add on pledge didn’t cover the cost of the postage. Naturally, that extra paperback, already sent at a £5 loss was the one that didn’t get there (I paid two lots of postage on it at £11 a go and £9.40 to print it twice, for a £10 add on to a £30 pledge). I did manage to sort it out though so at least the backer got their book in the end, and using Pledgebox did get me over the line from £985 to £1013.

Social media:

I managed a few posts at the start of the preview period and folks in my fan group were really great about sharing, as well as sundry friends and the lovely bloke who reads my audio books for me. To be honest though, I didn’t do much because family stuff slightly erupted as I was gearing up to do the campaign.

Results:

The campaign funded in the first hour, which was a bit of a surprise.

However the preview and campaign period included a LOT of family stuff, as I mentioned earlier.  This started with a bit of a crisis in our care for Mum, who had dementia, ergo; realising the last of her liquid assets weren’t going to outlast her and working out a plan with my brother (ie choosing a home, planning moving her there and taking the first steps to put the family house where she was living on the market). Then in early December Mum went into a hospital with a chest infection and died just over a week later, on the day she was supposed to have moved to the home. After her funeral, we had to interr her ashes, get a stone laid etc. After Dad’s funeral and memorial service Mum couldn’t really face another service to interr his ashes and told me. ‘Batch us, darling, bury us together after I’ve gone. Neither of us will mind.’ So that’s what we did. Dad’s ashes sat on Mum’s desk in a box for four years after he died and then we buried them both, together at the school where my Dad taught and we grew up.

Soggy middle while I was staying in a wi-fi free deadspot interring Mum and Dad

My brother was a teacher so we had to have the ceremony in the middle of his school’s half term which was also right in the middle of the Kickstarter campaign. It also involved taking our son out of school but they were great about it. It was actually a rather lovely experience, so I can thoroughly recommend interring relatives if you want to avoid any concerns about the soggy middle of your campaign. I missed mine completely, had no access to the internet and on the graph, above, you can see from the flat line exactly how long I was in Sussex concentrating on other things.

Fulfilment:

Fullfilment went alright. It does take a long time, but then, I did quite a carefully worked drawing in each of the signed books and I’m pretty sure no two were the same. It is possible to have large amounts of mail picked up from your house but I took them to the post office in batches. Only one book went astray and because I’d posted everything myself I had proof of postage and Royal Mail refunded me the money on the lost edition, so at least I was only £15.70 down on that particular transaction at the end of it, instead of £25.70.

Did I make a profit?

Yes. My rationale was to aim for 50% of the funds received to be profit in order to give myself a cushion for processing fees, currency conversion and stuff I hadn’t factored in. My reasoning was that if anything went wrong on top I’d probably get about 30% if I set it up that way. I had already bought the books and cards before the campaign started so once the money appeared in my account it was, kind of, all gravy. Anyway, the bulk of the costs were postage.

Future campaigns will probably still include postage, because I’m still fairly certain that nobody will pay £10-£20 ($14 – $25) for postage on a book that has to cost £20 to make a profit so I’m pretty sure that when the time comes to try kickstarter on a novel I will have to make it pretty chuffing deluxe. Either that or just charge a flat £5 or £10 rate and only factor some of the postage into the price. Other options are casebound hard back with sprayed edges and very little else so the artwork can still be done by me. We shall see.

What I learned?

It’s definitely worth planning it and taking your time. Keep the tiers simple. Use digital tiers too. In future I think I will not do a pledge manager either but will just do it all on Kickstarter because the whole Pledgebox thing was pretty scary and Backerkit looks even more complicated. Also both of them spam you afterwards and presumably your backers as well. Set your target small, £100 is about $130 at the moment so it’s worth remembering that. I will probably always set my targets small and use POD because I’d much rather the campaign fund and I send out 5 books to people who want them than try to pitch for selling 25 books and then disappoint readers who do want them by not achieving the funds I need to produce them. Digital rewards are good, and great for eating into the massive hit any UK author is going to take on postage. Also, I thoroughly recommend adding things like post cards or book marks, which can be slipped into a book and aren’t going to contravene any regulations if you’re doing printed packet rates, but will still be really appreciated by the folks who receive them as an extra.

Avoid dust jackets unless you’re printing them separately. I had to have 12 of 20 books reprinted because they were damaged. The boxes are oblong and wider and longer than they are tall. Therefore, the courier always turns them on their side to stand the box safely on our nice dry porch steps when they knock on the door. The books all slide down to the bottom and get dented and the covers torn or foxed. I think casebound would have been fine, it would have been £1 cheaper to print, too and look just as good.

Will I do it again?

Absolutely. It was a very enjoyable process and more to the point, it was a great way  of reaching new readers who are interested in following me and my work. Kickstarter peps are friendly and talkative. They contacted me, asked things, we had chats and it was lovely. It also, kind of, plays to my strengths as chatting to readers and developing a relationship with them is one of the things I do reasonably well.

The plan for next year is to learn how to do the artwork for sprayed edges and find someone who is willing to do illustrations for the campaign for not much, or I’ll have to learn to draw proper comic-book style artwork for my campaign, myself, or I may do a mix of both. But if I use Kickstarter as a release strategy, I can batch the Kickstarter edition cover specs into the specs for all the other covers I order from my designer. Batching this way is always cheaper then doing them at different times.

That would mean a gap next year, so in the interim, there may be another eyebombing book. Smaller this time, perhaps.

Would I recommend it?

Yes. Wholeheartedly. It’s a great way to find people who want to support authors and are not squeamish about the price they pay for their books. Word is they also become firmer fans, if they like your work, which is good news. As I understand it, Kickstarter is also a different type of not-for-profit company and therefore is less likely to start gouging money from any creators make, through stuff like increased commission rates, exclusivety deals that punish people who raise funds elsewhere, or make creators pay for advertising in order to achieve visibility, etc, so it’s less likely to go the way Audible and Amazon have.

Take your time, plan and get lots of feedback, then have your campaign upcoming for a couple of months, so people can follow and be emailed when it goes live, before you start. Otherwise, thoroughly recommended.

It would be my Mum’s 91st Birthday tomorrow and it feels surprisingly weird. For starters, I had a horrific dream that the ongoing stomach thing went comprehensively wrong while I was out with friends. I dreamt I had stomach cramps and thought nothing much about them, little realising that I was actually bleeding to death at a wine tasting. The final death scene, where I keeled over and hit the deck in front of all the horrified wine tasters, threw me a bit, especially as it was what I called a deja-vu dream, which is difficult to explain but is just my slang for dreams that mean something.

Thinking about it, I suppose I tend to dream about death when I’m processing a change in life. I suspect it’s pretty standard for most people, fear of the unknown, fear of new because what is death, after all, if it isn’t a step into the unknown?

Mum.

In a few weeks, it will also be the first anniversary of her death. I miss her terribly. Even demented Mum although it’s undemented Mum I yearn for; the lovely mercurial, funny, lively lady who gave ZERO fucks about making a tit of herself if that’s what doing the right thing entailed. The fabulous cook. Her boundless hospitality and her kindness and good humour and her unerring instinct as to what The Right Thing To Do was at all times.

And weirdly, I miss my Dad. It really felt as if he was there over those last months, when the money ran out and I accepted that we were going to have to move Mum. I know The Pan of Hamgee has virtual parents (cause, write what you know, hey? And I definitely did there). I kept hearing little snippets of ‘Dadspeak’ in my head. It felt as if he was with us most of the time as Mum got ill and also after she died.

Dad

I think, because of that, I miss undemented Dad too in the same way. The joyous fun-filled bon-viveur. The patrician rebel. The very dapper man who looked so establishment yet had a wicked sene of humour and loved to prick the bubble of the pompous, and of course, ditto with the right kind of no fucks attitude to making a prick of himself. It’s not so hard apologising, it really isn’t. I find it really hard to understand people who are unable to admit they are wrong or back down. Dad and Mum would just say, ‘oh dear, have I made a boo-boo?’ or something similar, apologise and move on.

I miss the seemingly boundless capacity for love and kindness towards their fellow humans in both of them, their sense of duty. They were giants of people. It’s a lot to live up to.

All that about love and doing the right thing makes them sound terribly serious. They weren’t, they were just unbelievably open and accepting. There were two kinds of people in their world, people who were twats and everyone else. I think my parents were in their 80s before I met anyone as unshockable and accepting as they were, although I’ve since been lucky enough to find more of them.

There were gargantuan meals, a lot of my family life was about eating—they took the agape thing seriously—there were huge Sunday lunches, or small ones, depending on how many people they found who ‘weren’t doing anything’ on Sunday. Their dedication, at Lancing, to giving a slap-up Sunday lunch to any stray younger members of staff or boys left in the house on exeat weekends, and failing that, my or my brother’s friends. There was laughter, the silly stories and Dad’s impressions. The stories they told against themselves because they were funny. The humour, warmth and laughter. Their home was a sanctuary; not just to me but to many others.

Love is in short supply at the moment so I miss the pair of them more keenly. I miss the way they lived their faith, their principles, their strength of character and their courage. My parents; my guiding light in how to behave, my moral compass in many respects. The light has gone out. Now I have to be the light and I’m a long way behind them.

For some time, I have been thinking, that I should write a memoir about Mum and Dad. The rationale behind it was to paint a picture of what it’s like walking the dementia journey. Taking the hand of someone you love and walking beside them, into the dark. The things to look out for and be prepared for. The things which will hurt and maybe, ways to deal with that pain that helped me and might help other folks.

But I’m having trouble starting. Maybe I should just write. Barf it all up onto my computer and sort it when I’m done. I dunno. I find myself writing two memoirs. The dementia one and one about them and the ridiculous stories they used to tell. And their ridiculous peccadillos. Dad was pretty much a walking compendium of the Guide Michelin, if you mentioned a place he’d be able to tell you about a ‘red underlining’ or a ‘knife and fork’ etc. His holiday reminiscences comprised lists of the glorious meals he’d had and where followed by a mention of a visit to his very long-suffering French cousin, Marianne, to be ill. He underpinned a lot of his experiences with food, setting life against the background of meals. Mum, I think, was more interested in the random people she met and their stories. She would spend hours talking to everyone and remember who we met and what their story was. I appear to have inherited this.

The second memoir, the one about them, probably isn’t going to work as anything other than a family document.

The dementia one is harder because it flies in the face of a lot of what was true and good about who they were. Especially Dad, because he was one of the most empathetic of people, and it took that from him.

However, putting myself in the shoes of us at the beginning of it all again, all we knew was that people who were diagnosed with dementia tended to become a bit forgetful, then they would disappear and three years later you’d hear they’d died.

None of us knew what happened in those three years. Well, OK, maybe Mum and Dad did, I don’t know. I’m guessing they would have talked about the future when they realised something was happening to Dad’s brain in 2004. They did their power of attorney then had a big 40 year wedding anniversary party because they didn’t think they would make 50. They did make 50 in the end, but it was a struggle and in many respects the photos were better than actually being there.

Even so, I guess what I want is to write something uplifting and at the same time, true, honest and informative so people knew what to expect. I wanted to hold their hands and guide them through it. Because it’s less about managing the demented person to be honest and more about managing yourself.

There was no guidance for us; nothing and in Mum and Dad’s area, one of the excellent charities that might have helped and guided us didn’t operate in Sussex. There is still no other guidance than charities in most places and for us that was simply a string of being told ‘we don’t but x might’.

So yes, I guess I’d like to help other people taking their first steps on the road. Shine a little light onto the path ahead, or the shapes that might be coming out of the dark. At the same time, I also want to send a message to the powers that be. Look at this you utter bastards. This is what you’re doing. To tell them the whole truth and not hold back.

However, there are points where it feels a bit disloyal, to Dad especially, because his dementia affected his personality more. When Dad started to show signs of dementia we didn’t know what to expect. I owe it to others to tell them, but I owe it to Dad to do it the right way.

The explosions of unexpected, hurtful anger would have mortified pre-Alzheimer’s Dad. Maybe I should just stick at no-one will tell you, no-one will commit to anything, there are organisations who will help but no-one will tell you who they are or how to contact them. Because they really won’t. Even in 2015, a mere four years before the Alzheimer’s ran its course, we were like lambs to the slaughter. We hadn’t a fucking clue what was coming.

‘What will happen to Dad, how will the disease progress?’ I used to ask the professionals.

‘We can’t tell you because no two people are the same. Each person’s journey is different.’ They always replied.

This is true in some respects, I mean, clearly no two people’s journeys are the same. But in others it’s complete bullshit. Indeed, what it really means is, ‘We can’t tell you what you’re in for. It’s too horrific. If we’re too honest with you, you’ll never stay the course. You’ll run or worse, we might have to offer you some meaningful help.’

At the time I was angry in the face of what felt, to us, like a conspiracy of silence. But now that I’ve reached the other side and I come to talk about what it was like I too feel reticent.

I want people to know but in some ways, it’s easier to talk about Mum, because the dementia was kinder to her and it never took away who she was. While at the same time, it’s more difficult in other ways because her loss of cognition hit me harder. I’d been trying to get her through Dad’s journey alive and well so she would have time to mourn, regroup and relax in her last years. I wanted her to have just a few years without a care in the world, where we could just be friends.

Well, actually, I suppose that even with the dementia, that is pretty much what we did for her but not entirely. She was going to downsize and possibly move into the retirement flats just up my street, if I could find her one, or near my brother, or if she couldn’t decide, somewhere smaller in her village. Instead she insisted she stay in the house which, though lovely, was bleeding her dry almost as fast as her care costs.

The same milestones came and went on the descent; the day she forgot where ‘home’ was, the day she asked if her parents had died, the day she said she thought I was her sister … but she was always kind and never lost her sense of the ridiculous or her sense of humour. She could laugh at herself until the very end. It was easy to align myself in the moment with her. (With the exception of when I looked after her one Christmas and she was knackered, way more demented than usual and I got 4 hours sleep in 3 days. That was the one where I burst into tears and begged her to go back to sleep at 2. am. She was very irritated with me but did, at least, do as I asked.)

Even though her brain was ravaged with dementia, she still had the same startling amounts of intelligence.

With Dad, I feel disloyal describing some of the things he said and did under the influence of Alzheimer’s because it wasn’t who he was and I don’t want him remembered that way. But also because I realise now, as I encounter more and more people who are treading the carer’s path, that despite Dad saying and doing some truly horrible things, he actually fought it with everything he had and I don’t want to do anything that might underplay that, like describing times he was awful in too much detail, for example.

It’s left me unsure how to explain what happened to us, how to paint the distress and the horror Alzheimer’s causes enough for any readers in authority to take notice, without demeaning the people at the centre of it or terrifying readers who are carers at the start of it. Because yes, it is bleak, and fucking relentless, but there are moments of lightness. Dementia care is a model lesson in the maxim that you only get out what you put in. But the ever-present grinding reality of it makes it hard to find the mental bandwidth to make that commitment sometimes.

You have to learn to look for the moments of joy among the disconnected brain fuzz. You have to learn to pivot to stay alongside your person with dementia. You have to make it all about them because they are incapable of thinking about you and that, in itself, is a horrible thing to come to terms with. It can be done. At a very high cost to the carer, for sure, but in the long run, it comes at a cost that’s slightly less high than not doing it.

Then there’s the political side. The righteous anger I still feel at the injustice of a system that asset strips the most vulnerable people because it knows they are too exhausted to fight back. The fact that care provision is a postcode lottery and there’s no information, no help, no guidance. If you’re in Sussex, they offset the value of care costs against the value of your house up to 100%. In other counties, they very magnanimously allow you to keep £250,000 worth of the house if it’s worth more than that.

Nuclear powered sheep

There’s a lot of ‘signposting’ and most of it takes you a very long time to be signposted to another body, round in circles, via many hours on the phone on hold. Everything is stacked against you, benefits, the care system, social services, all of it.

Carer’s allowance, for example. You have to be spending 35 hours a week on care for your relative. But if you have small children, you don’t have 35 hours a week, you probably have about 15 or 25, tops. You might be looking at a part time job, except if you’re a carer, even at a distance, you’ll be spending all that time running someone else’s house, paying wages, bills etc. Oh and sorting out an endless stream of small domestic disasters.

’Darling a man rang, and I’ve given him my bank card details.’

’Don’t worry Mum, I’ll stop the card.’

So that’s 4o minutes wrangling the India based call centre. Then sorting out who needs paying what and paying them and not forgetting to take £200 cash down with you next time you visit to tide them over until the new one arrives. Heaven forefend that there’d be a branch of a bank you could go into or that your non-standard problem will be comprehensible to the help bot AI.

In my own experience, as my lad got to school age, I wondered about part-time jobs but the day a week I did visiting, the emergencies, wages, banking, wrangling with government bodies, utilities, their ISP and all the other bits and bobs, plus the fact that I could only work during the school day, put paid to it.

I spent all my free time sorting out Mum and Dad but the non-mum time I was doing it in didn’t amount to 35 hours a week so despite my activities meeting the criteria for carers allowance I was ineligible. I am guessing a lot of people with kids who are carers at a distance are in that situation, which is probably why carers allowance is set at 35 hours a week and not a lower amount.

Or maybe everyone else just lies on the form. I dunno.

Lastly, the relentless sadness. Being sad makes you unproductive, unable to concentrate, listless and lacking in energy. It makes aches and pains worse, it does pretty horrendous things combined with the menopause. When it all began, in 2012, I had a course of cognitive behavioural therapy on the NHS which was a godsend but I was still sad and being really sad for 10 years does take it out of you a bit. It’s only now I am beginning to realise how much it took.

As I understand it, this side of it is a bit more hands on and ongoing now. At the time, all they could offer me, after I’d done the CBT, was depression meds. But a regular side effect of depression meds is brain fog and as that’s a very marked side effect of dementia care, too, it was the last thing I needed. And that’s the thing. A lot of dementia carers aren’t depressed, they’re sad. Depression is ill. Sad is a response to outside stimulus. It’s not the same thing.

So … in a nutshell writing a dementia carers memoir is hard (no shit, Sherlock):

It’s hard to outline the difficulties without sounding graceless about time I actually gave willingly or sounding like I’m bitter and twisted, and railing angrily against everything.I still can’t talk about what people should expect from the NHS and other bodies—asset stripping the vulnerable anyone?—without actually being bitter and twisted, and railing angrily against it.I probably need to let some stuff go. For example, I hold the care system responsible for my mother’s vascular dementia as I’m pretty bloody certain it was brought on by the stress of navigating the care system while looking after Dad, with his dementia. It was her choice, and I can only marvel at her courage because I’ll bet she knew what it meant. She did what she believed was right for Dad, and in the absence of any help from social or NHS care, she did what she believed she had to do if she wanted to be able to look at herself in the mirror every morning. It killed her brain.It’s hard to outline what happens over the years as dementia progresses without devaluing the worth of your loved ones who suffered it.It’s hard to be truthful about some forms of dementia and to shed light on what to expect from the journey without terrifying others.

That’s my conundrum.

With two outstanding exceptions, most of the memoirs I’ve read about this have felt falsely upbeat. Oh there is an up, there are fabulous moments, but the darkness is greater. It wasn’t an upbeat experience, even if there were times of joy or happiness, times of beautiful and heart moving poignancy, and times that were funny. Dementia is a lot of things but it isn’t fun, and while there are dapples of sunlight on the shady path, the secret is managing your levels of acceptance and surrendering all semblance of controlling your life. The dementia controls a lot of your loved one and by association, it controls you. It feels never-ending, it’s exhausting, there is fuck all help, and it lasts years. The only way to survive it is to accept that truth and adapt accordingly.

It’s hard, it’s sad and it’s relentless.

How do I try to help someone prepare for that? I can’t even research it and give them answers, or organisations to turn to, because they are not the same in any area. Sod it! They vary from town-to-town. No! It’s worse than that, they vary from doctors’ surgery-to-doctors’ surgery, let alone county to county, or health authority to health authority.

I set out with all these grand ideas but there seems to be a bit of a gap between intention and delivery. Maybe I just lack the skill to write this yet. Or maybe if I just keep writing about it, my scattered thoughts will crystallise and clarify. Who knows.

Onwards and upwards I guess.

And now for something completely different …

That was a bit grim. Sorry. Let’s lighten the mood. If you need cheering up there’s always a bit of K’Barthan invective. Yes, I have made a K’Barthan Swearing and insults Generator. It has taken me a long time because I take to coding about as well as the average cat would take to obedience classes but finally it is done.

If you’d like to see it you can find it here

K’Barthan Swearing and Insults Generator … Click Here.

Until next time then, toodle pip.