Category Archives: Blogging

Narcissism, Psychopathy, WordPress Daily Post

Is a fairy tale your life script?

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Bedtime Stories

fairy tale
the fairy tale I remember above all others

Have I been living out a fairy tale all these years? It’s possible. There’s more to these old stories than you might imagine.  You think you’re just reading an innocent, traditional tale to your youngsters? Think again. You might be inadvertently setting them on their life’s path.

The fairy tale that made me angry

I wasn’t interested in the princess in the tower, or the downtrodden kitchen girl who went to the ball.

fairy tale
wannabee princess
rapunzel fairy tale
so pretty

 

 

 

 

I wasn’t motivated by the one with seven little people or three bears or three pigs or magic porridge pots.

snow white fairy tale
someday my prince will come?

 

goldilocks fairy tale
watch out!

 

 

Not for me the fairy tale about a brother and a sister and a nasty witch in the woods, or the one about the sky falling down, or a gingerbread man, a girl only as big as your thumb or magic shoes or spinning straw into gold.

I had no hankering to be a princess. Wasn’t interested in hanging around for some prince to turn up and save me from a life of . . .whatever. Come on, I was a working class girl who had about as much chance of meeting a prince as  a Yorkshire heatwave in January. (Yorkshire girls tell it like it is. January girls know it before it happens. I’m both.)

So, the fairy tale that made me angry was Red Riding Hood.

A lesson in life kind of fairy tale

I mean, what a dirty trick! There she is, with her little basket of goodies for grandma setting off on her own through the wood. This is a good lesson in life, I suppose. After all, when it comes down to it we’re all on our own following our paths. The journey can be a bit dark and scary in places.

There doesn’t seem to be a father present in this story. It’s just the girl and her mother and mother obviously sees nothing wrong in sending the child off to grandma’s house. I can’t remember whether there’s a warning about not going into the woods, but, anyway, little Red Riding Hood is a good girl. She’s doing grandma a good turn by bringing the things in the basket. What a caring little soul she is.

A wolf in sheep’s clothing

Well, actually in this fairy tale, it’s grandma’s clothing. Now, see, this is a great lesson in life. And don’t I know it. This stuff really happens. The person you are doing your best to help isn’t the person you thought they were.

You get that?

The person you are doing your best to help is a FAKE.

Pretending to be sweet and charming. FAKE. Pretending to be needy and helpless. FAKE. Pretending to be harmless. FAKE.

Pretending to be human.

The wolf has only one thing on his mind and doesn’t care what happens to anybody else in the story. So what is little Red Hiding Hood going to do? She’s in danger. She notices that things are not quite right about grandma and tries to find out. She asks questions. The wolf deflects the child’s doubts by a stream of psychopathic word salad, all the while drawing the victim closer and closer, until . .

The Woodcutter

shows up. OH NO!

woodcutter fairy tale
to the rescue

Not a prince this time. But still, a reliable, strong male figure.

And now I’m really angry. I wanted Little Red Hiding Hood to outwit the wolf herself. Couldn’t she have choked it with the ribbons on grandma’s bonnet? Couldn’t she have smothered it with grandma’s pillow?

No. Because she is a good girl and good girls don’t do things like that. Anyway, she’s a small female and wouldn’t be strong enough. And the wolf knows this. He knows he has an easy target. Little Red Hiding Hood has to be rescued.

woodcutter fairy tale
safe at last
Applying the fairy tale to real life

Fake people exist. There are more of them than you know. Empathetic people care about other’s feelings. Fakes don’t. I believe we need these lessons in life but where do we teach them? Unless you’ve come across one of these people yourself how would you know how to recognise one? Should we have to wait until it happens before we learn what to do about it?

The sad truth is there isn’t a woodcutter out there waiting to rescue you. You have to be your own saviour.

woodcuttergirl
be your own woodcutter

Hand me my axe!

 

(This post is in response to the WordPress daily challenge)

Which fairy tale is your life story? Don’t be shy. Leave a comment.

Don’t forget to FOLLOW CELIA. You’ll get an email telling you when there’s another new post. Your email address remains private.)

Blogging, Novels, Patterns of Our Lives, Writing

Meet My Main Character. Blog tour

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A writer friend of mine invited me to take part in a blog tour. Would I be interested in answering a few questions about the main character in my Work in Progress?

Patterns of Our Lives

Meet my main character
how many secrets?

Oh, I said. I haven’t got a work in Progress. It’s finished. I’m taking a break before starting the next one.

It didn’t matter. I could use Patterns of Our Lives for the blog tour questions. So, it’s thanks to Siobhan Daiko that I’m bringing you the results.  She is currently working on her novel The Orchid Tree, set in Honk Kong 1941-1945 and 1948-1949.  We’ve both chosen to have events of World War Two feature strongly in our first novels.  We’ve also both been inspired by old photographs.

Siobhan is an accomplished writer whose work is very highly rated by readers and by other authors. I’ve read the opening to The Orchid Tree and it sounds exactly the kind of read I enjoy.

Here’s a link to Siobhan’s blog, where you can find out more information about Siobhan and her work.

I think blog tours are a great way for writers to share news and help each other. This one was started here and I thank Teagan for getting this thing rolling.

Here goes.

What is the name of your character? Is he/she fictional or historic person?

My present day character is widow, Audrey Freeman, returned to England from Australia to search for the truth about her mother. The real main character is Jean Thompson who lived through World War Two. They are fictional characters. Any resemblance to real people is for me to know and for my readers to wonder.

When and where is the story set?

The novel has two settings. First there’s Kingsley, Yorkshire, 1935 to 1965, a fictitious town based on my birthplace of Keighley and its neighbour Bingley. My second setting is Walsingham, in Norfolk 2009-2010.

The dual narrative treatment allows the reader to discover more about Audrey Freeman’s ancestry than she knows herself.

What should we know about him/her?

You don’t need to know anything in advance about Audrey. She’s chatty and tells you all about herself right from the off. We learn straight away how she cherishes old family photographs.

Readers see Jean’s life in the sections of ‘snapshots’ from the past. We get to see events Audrey has no access to. The snapshots she cherishes don’t tell her the whole story. In Jean’s era, when they left school at fourteen, young people moved straight from childhood to become an adult with adult responsibilities. There was no in between stage. Teenagers hadn’t been invented.

What is the main conflict? What messes up his/her life?

The main and obvious conflict is World War Two and how it affects my characters in a north of England industrial town where munition factories worked round the clock.

What messes up both Jean’s and Audrey’s lives are the secrets passed on from one generation to the next.

What is the personal goal of the character?

Audrey wants to find out the truth about her mother’s past. Jean wants to find love.

Is there a working title and can we read more about it?

My working title was Walsingham Matilda. It wasn’t until I wrote a scene where Audrey uses the phrase ‘patterns of our lives’ that the lightbulb moment arrived and I realised all I needed to do was add capital letters and I had my new and more appropriate title. It sums up the theme of the book perfectly.

When is publication?

Patterns of Our Lives is available from June 14th 2014. It’s just gone live on Amazon as a paperback. I haven’t yet finished formatting for Kindle.

Many thanks to Siobhan for the invitation. Don’t forget to visit her blog. Just click on her name to go straight to more information about The Orchid Tree.

WordPress Daily Post

50 Shades of Chocolate love. Falling into it again.

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Chocolate history
the history of chocolate

Since around 2,000BC people have been falling in love with chocolate. That is some long history and today, I’m part of it.

I’m at the chocolate fair in Béziers. There’s a queue outside the exhibition hall and it isn’t full of kids either. Or all females as you might expect. No, there’s grandfathers and bikers in their Harley jackets. There are young families with babes in push chairs. There are teenagers and young lovers with their arms wrapped around one another.

And there’s me. With himself and a house guest from England who is as much into chocolate as she is into wine which makes for a very pleasant time whenever she comes to stay.

The chocolate fête in Béziers now attracts visitors from far and wide. Each year this festival of chocolate temptation grows bigger. Visitors come in their tens of thousands to the two day event. No wonder. As soon as you step inside the magic begins.

It’s the aroma first. Unmistakeable. It hits your senses with all the power of its four thousand year hold over us. I know I’m going to be eating a lot of chocolate today. I might even swoon.

Chocolate dainties
let me at them!

Oh, help! Will I survive this afternoon with so much temptation at arm’s length? I turn aside, but there’s no escape.

chocolate cones
I’ll take all of them, please!

When the Spaniards first brought chocolate to Europe in the 1500s, did they know that today in 2013 there’d be a queue of people eager to take their seats and watch professionals molding it, shaping it, colouring it, making dainties and delights enough to make your eyes water and your mouth drool?

chocolate makers
50 shades of chocolate?

On the upper floor of the exhibition halls another demonstration is taking place on the main stage.

chocolate maker
artisan at work

Wonder if he’s married? What a lucky girl the wife of a chocolatier must be, huh?

I might have to go and lie down in a darkened room.

But, I survive and the three of us buy enough chocolate to keep us quiet and very happy as we join  an ancient lineage: Mayans and Aztecs, the Spaniards who first mixed cocoa beans with vanilla, nutmeg, cloves, allspice and cinnamon, and brought it to Europe; the Dutch and Brazilians and Germans and Venezuelans and on and on all around the world.

Political movements come and go. In the history of humankind, chocolate is a constant. I’m delighted to take my place in its history.

I pop some in. The sensations begin . . .melting . . warming . . coating the tongue . . reaching the back of the throat. . .

 

Blogging

Spammers are hitting my website again. And this time they’re DANGEROUS.

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Lowlife spammers are bugging me again.

spammers are lowlife
the lowlife ranking of a spammer

Each day I’m spending my time trashing their messages. I open my dashboard and there they are again with their generic messages.

Fifty messages per day, sometimes.

Last time I got hit, the messages were about shoes and sunglasses etc. See previous post. Hand-held magnifiers and the like are fairly innocuous. Targetted spamming might well make me a likely prospect for showing interest in wanting to buy one of those. It’s ageism, of course, but pretty harmless.

BUT,

These spammer guys are DANGEROUS.

Here’s a list of what I’m being offered by the latest rash of spammers:

tramadol, lorazepam, xanax, ativan, ambien, klonopin, hydrocodone cough syrup, zolpidem and viagra.

I hadn’t heard of some of these. I did some research.

What is lorazepam?

Lorazepam is in a group of drugs called benzodiazepines (ben-zoe-dye-AZE-eh-peens). It affects chemicals in the brain that may become unbalanced and cause anxiety.

Lorazepam is used to treat anxiety disorders.

Important information about lorazepam

Do not use this medication if you are allergic to lorazepam or to other benzodiazepines, such as alprazolam (Xanax), chlordiazepoxide (Librium), clorazepate (Tranxene), diazepam (Valium), or oxazepam (Serax). This medication can cause birth defects in an unborn baby. Do not use lorazepam if you are pregnant.

Before taking lorazepam, tell your doctor if you have any breathing problems, glaucoma, kidney or liver disease, or a history of depression, suicidal thoughts, or addiction to drugs or alcohol.

Do not drink alcohol while taking lorazepam. This medication can increase the effects of alcohol.

Avoid using other medicines that make you sleepy. They can add to sleepiness caused by lorazepam.

Lorazepam may be habit-forming and should be used only by the person it was prescribed for. Lorazepam should never be shared with another person, especially someone who has a history of drug abuse or addiction. Keep the medication in a secure place where others cannot get to it.

How can we allow this?

So, it’s okay, is it, to offer these dangerous drugs online? Habit-forming antidepressants like lorazepam, xanax and ativan? Sedatives like ambien, which can also cause serious side effects. Klonopin is a sleeping pill. Zolpidem is a trade name for ambien.

This is one extremely dangerous cocktail of drugs available online. They are habit-forming. They can cause birth defects.

Who are these low-lifes who take payment for sending out all this spam? Here’s a diagram showing how spammers get paid.

viagra spammer
how spammers get paid

There must be a way to stop this. There has to be a way to interrupt the supply chain. After all, legitimate pharmaceutical companies manufacture these drugs. You might question why they don’t know who they’re supplying.

The problem is, as the diagram explains, the patent has expired on many of these medications. This means seedy laboratories out to make a quick buck can make their own versions. That isn’t illegal. It is illegal to use another company’s registered trade name and copy their packaging. That’s piracy.

But the biggest crime in all of this, it seems to me, is being part of a system that allows people to buy online as much as they want of dangerous drugs that should be strictly controlled.

I’d like to grab these spammers and shove a packet of their own sedatives where the sun don’t shine. It’s dirty money you’re taking, people.

Surely, whenever money is changing hands like this, there’s a way to track these nasty businesses and close them down.

Click the Tweet button to pass this message to your Twitter groups.

Blogging, Writing

I’m on iCloud 9. Lovin’ my Mac. Am I an iAngel now?

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loveclouds
Lovin’ the cloud

Writer in Languedoc has got herself on the iCloud with a shining, brand new Apple ID and email address. Does that make her an iAngel? No, iAngel is the Trade name of a certain body sling for carrying babies. Weird, that.

iangel

Never mind, Writer in Languedoc will be able to access her documents from anywhere in the world on her iPhone or iPad. She’ll be able to edit her drafts from far flung corners of the planet. All her Apple products will be talking to each other to share what they know and make it available, anywhere, any place, any time. Oh, that phrase has already been used too. Anybody remember Martini? I’m showing my age now.

Martini by iCloud?
any time, any place, anywhere

But anyway, back to the magic of Apple and the amazing iCloud. What else will I be able to do with it? I’ll be able to take pictures on my iPhone, for example and they’ll be automatically sent to my computer and iPad.

This would be a very useful feature for writer in Languedoc’s weekly Vinewatch reports. Images would be ready to incorporate into text without having to upload them manually.

So, now I’ve a new logo in my repertoire. A shiny, new button to press. Oh, I’m leaving my old self behind now that I’m bang up to date with my sparkling new iMac.

iCloudlogo
my new button

Wow, Grandma! What next?

Best get yourself an iPhone and an iPad then, so you can use all these extra gizmos.

Here’s a cunning plan. First, sell more short stories to pay for the new gizmos.

No, first, WRITE more stories for selling. It’s all well and good having followers on your blog and on Twitter et al, but all these new gadgets are going to cost. Right?

Okay, then. Open up Pages. Start writing. What, no Word for Mac on this shiny new iMac?

No Madam, that doesn’t come as part of the package. However, Pages can do everything you will require. Uh-oh! There’s another big learning curve ahead.

Thank goodness for people like Alexander Anichkin. What he can’t do in Pages isn’t worth knowing. Follow the link to visit his blog. Be careful, you could spend hours on there marvelling at the man and never get anything done at all.

Oh, so much to learn, so much to learn . . .

icloudcontrol
iCloud at the centre of my new world
Blogging, Everyday stuff, Networking, Writing

The Dog’s Doodahs. New Mac on order.

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iMac
My new baby

My new computer will soon be on its way.

Isn’t he going to be the dog’s doodahs?

Why have I chosen a desktop?

I like to have a fixed workplace. When I sit in my workroom, I know I’m at work. I’m not going to get distracted by that pile of ironing or the view of the garden that needs weeding, or get up to put the kettle on. I don’t need to be able to pick up my machine and take it somewhere else.

The people at the other end of the Apple helpline in Ireland were really helpful. They wanted to make sure I was making the right choice for me and the way I prefer to work. They also talked me through other requirements and answered my questions about guarantees. Because my home address is in France, my purchase had to go through Apple France. That’s the way it works.

Ah but, says I, I want a qwerty key board please, not a French one with all those extra letter ‘e’s and everything else in a different place. No problem says the delightful Irish Ray, we can do that for you. So, I tell him how I first fell in love with the iMac on a pre-Christmas shopping trip with my sister and niece in Bristol. They were busy looking at clothes and cosmetics but the sexiest thing I saw that day was the iMac in the Apple store. He was standing there looking so beautiful I just had to go in the store and play with him.

At the moment I’m using my old Eee PC – a cute very girly white pearl shell thingummy bob with a tiny screen and miniscule keyboard. But, it’s doing the job okay so far.

My old machine died a protracted death. It was sad to witness. Much choking and switching itself off and me getting very annoyed and frustrated.

But I’m sad at his demise. It’s like saying goodbye to an old friend. Worse, before he goes, I’m going to rip his guts out.

Apologies to my followers. My posts are likely to be fewer and further between until I get my new setup organized.

Blogging, Networking, Writing

Writing, Celia. Get on with it. A dialogue with myself.

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Celia’s Head :  Writing must come first. I have to be blunt. You won’t listen otherwise. You’re spending far too long every morning doing other things: clicking a few likes on Stumbleupon, Re-Tweeting your faves, catching up with discussions on LinkedIn, sharing on Facebook etc. etc. You should be writing.

stumbling isn't writing
Stumbling takes time

Celia’s Heart : But social networking is important. Everybody says so.

Head: Who’s everybody?

Heart: Everybody on Twitter. If you don’t follow etiquette, something terrible will happen. And if you don’t Stumble regularly . .

retweet
spreading the message

 

Head: Don’t be ridiculous.

Heart: It’s true. You could get yourself black-balled or even ex-communicated. You’d be a pariah, a sinner, an undesirable.

Head: You’re being silly.

Heart: They are jealous gods, Head. You must pay homage. Worship every day. It’s a bit like writing, only different.

Head: I think you need a rest, Heart. You don’t sound yourself. Jealous gods, indeed.

Heart: They are. You must make regular sacrifices or they will bring down the wrath of the virtual heavens.  They know where you are. They know everything about you. Erich Schmidt said so just the other day. They know where you’ve been, what films you like. Everything.

handcloud
coming to get you . . .

Head: That’s because you’ve told them. You’ve Stumbled and Tweeted and Shared. You’ve spilled your guts, Heart. Of course they know everything about you. But this hand of God thing is going a bit far. Excommunicated? Grow up.

Heart: But it’s part of my life now, Head. What would I do without it?

Head: You know who you sound like, don’t you?

Heart: Who?

Head: Gollum Boy. You’re just the same, Heart. You’re addicted. You’ve turned into Gollum Woman.

Heart: But, it’s the way of the world now, Head. There’s no getting away from it. We can’t un-invent all these communication channels. You have to be in them. You must take part. You’re either with me or against me, Head. We’ll stand a better chance together – strength in unity and all that. You have to keep up. You can’t risk being dis-favoured with a thumbs down on Stumble or worse, Unfollowed on Twitter. Don’t you want to influence discussions on LinkedIn? You want to be known as a writer as much as I do, don’t you? You won’t stand a chance unless you’re being seen. Your name has got to be out there. You can’t risk excommunication. You’d be in the wilderness . . .

Head: Have you heard yourself?

erich schmidt
Google boss gazing into the future

Heart: . . . and your writing would be buried forever under a pile of essays about horizontal deadbolts. Buried alive you’d be, dead to the world, and all the while you’d be screaming to be heard, hammering against your prison walls to be let out into the Googlesphere and into the alms of our benefactor, the noble Erich.

But nobody would want to hear you.

Head: Would you like me to make you a nice cup of tea, dear?

Heart: It’s coming, you know. The new Trinity. The noble Erich and King Mike of Walmart will be joined by the god of Amazon. And if I knew how to do smart things with images in WordPress, I’d have these three photos conjoined like a triptych, you know, the sort of thing you see on an altar.

mikeduke
the boss of Walmart rubbing his hands at the future
jeffbezos
boss of Amazon smiling at the future

Head: What? Walmart, Amazon and Google? WAG?

Heart: You heard it here first.

Head: I’ll go and put the kettle on.

Blogging

Not so cabbage-looking this morning! New widget appears

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Languedoc cross
Languedoc cross

 

 

Ahem! Is that a new widget in your sidebar, Celia?

What, that old thing?

Well, it wasn’t there yesterday.

Oh, it’s just something I found lying around.

Exactly where did you find it lying around?

On Google, darling.

You mean, not actually on WordPress?

Not at first. I did try to find a new widget on the ‘search for new plug-ins’ thingummy, but it didn’t matter how I worded my query, I couldn’t find what I was looking for.

You just wanted to add pictures to the sidebar I take it?

That’s right. I tried writing ‘add pictures to the sidebar’, and ‘sidebar photo widget’ and any number of combinations of all manner of prompts, but it took Google to understand what I was asking for. And do you know what happened next?

No. Go on!

Google redirected me back to WordPress and found me this page. http://en.support.wordpress.com/widgets/image-widget/ It’s called IMAGE WIDGET support.

No!

Languedoc
The five regions of Languedoc

Yes. Oh, yes. After I’d done it once, I liked it so much I had to do it again.

You’ve got a strange look in your eyes, Celia.

Widget-lust, darling. I think I’ve got it bad.

Blogging

Blogging? Blogging? Give me a break

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This is me.cabbageGreen as. Thought I’d got it sorted, did I? Knew all about blogging, did I? Getting all smug over the SEO stuff and plug-ins and talking like I know what I’m talking about? Wake up, girl. Sorry, that should be: Wake up, GRANDMA! You don’t know the half of it. There are people out there who’ve known this stuff since they were in primary school. There are kids could laugh you into the middle of next week. There are TODDLERS, dammit, who know more computer-speak than you do.  Kids who were blogging before they’d learned how to help with the washing up. There are generations of whizz-kids out there who have known this stuff since they were in nappies. ( Are they still called whizz-kids? Probably not)

See how out of touch I am? See what a numpty? Here’s another picture of me looking green.

cabbageface
green as grass AND cabbage-looking

 

That’s me told, then. That’s me wrung out and hung out to dry. So, while you’re up there, Grandma, remember this: there is ALWAYS something new to learn.

If you joined an evening class and went to learn how to, let’s say, build a rabbit hutch, you’d expect to come across unfamiliar terminology, never having built anything in your life before. Never having held a saw or a hammer or bashed in a nail with one end of it. But at least you’d know what a hammer was. You’d know what all the relevant tools were called and what they looked like as well as the job you were expected to do with them.

I’ve heard of chicken wire – I think I’d know where to go buy some.  I don’t know how to chicletize my website. WTF? I thought chicklets were what you gave the kids to eat when you were too tired to cook. I don’t KNOW what a feedburner is, so what’s the point in telling me to use one? I wouldn’t know one if it was hanging out my arse. I know what a log burner is. Will that help?

But, as I already said, there are people out there who’ve been au fait with all this stuff since before the dawn of the century. How did I ever think I’d be able to get up to speed with it in a matter of weeks? It’s true what they say about ignorance. It’s bliss!

Blogging

Blogging for life?

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Two months I’ve been at it now. Two months I’ve been blogging and learning what I should be blogging about. Two months’ worth of discovering there’s a whole new language out there that I never knew existed.

codebehind
the code behind the image

Hiding behind all our embedded pictures and behind all our carefully planned text, there’s a parallel world of symbols and things that look like runes. They know what they’re supposed to be doing. I still don’t. I’ve learned some rudimentary tricks to put borders around my pictures. Then I learned how to change the colour of said borders. And I was thrilled! I was so thrilled I made myself a crib sheet with the hash numbers of colours I’d probably use most often. And, get this, I didn’t know where my hash sign was. (I’m on a second-hand Mac) I had to Google to find out. Then I had to write it down on a post-it and stick that up where I could see it until the information lodged in my memory.

forsterquote1
how much time would Forster have spent blogging?

This is how utterly green I was when I started out. Two months ago. Just two months ago. I’ve added plug-ins to my site. I’ve learned something about Search Engine Optimization and H tags. As well as all of this, I’ve got myself on Twitter and Linkedin and I’m learning how to Stumbleupon with the best of them. Did I mention it was only two months ago?

It isn’t the life I planned.