All posts by celia

Everyday stuff, Writing

Getting Sidetracked. It’s so easy when you’re de-cluttering.

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I got SO SIDETRACKED this morning.

sidetracked
wandering off track

We’re supposed to be getting ready for the car boot sale. Supposed to be sorting, clearing, feng- shuing, de-cluttering whatever you want to call it. I didn’t mean to get sidetracked. I thought I had my head in the right place. The determined place. The not susceptible to sidetracking place. The don’t get in Celia’s way mood. She’s determined.

too tidy
what does a cupboard like this say about its owner?

We’ve had boxes stored in the roof space since we moved to France. That’s coming up 6 years now. They say if you haven’t used something for two years, you don’t need it. People write and sell de-cluttering books all about throwing away what you don’t need. They’re full of before and after pictures and it’s true that a simple tidying up can make a room look much more inviting. But I don’t want to be extreme. I would be ashamed of a cupboard like this one. Yes, ashamed. I wouldn’t want to let anybody see it. I hope the person who did this for his/her book made a lot of money. Because they must be lonely. I couldn’t live with a person who kept cupboards like that one.

However, there comes a time when one’s lackadaisical non-system of stock rotation of belongings is crying out for attention. So, here I was, this morning, ready to get at it. Ready for the fray. Determined.

And the track forked in so many directions I didn’t know which way to run first. Oh, the lovely things I found in those dusty boxes. Inside a box, inside a box, inside another box, I found one of the joys of one of my former lives. Sheet music.

MyDearestDear
Novello – so 1930s!

I rushed straight to YouTube with it. Found recordings of it and sang along, remembering all those times I’d sung it before. What was more, it was the ideal choice for our upcoming social evening with other choir members. We’ve had Burns night as posted here in January. There’s always a celebration on St Patrick’s Day, too, but this year, for the first time, we’re having an English night on St George’s Day. A group has got together to give us a bit of Gilbert and Sullivan. I’m not a fan of G&S, but offered to find something else. And here it is! My Dearest Dear.

Now, I know Ivor Novello was born a Davies baby in Cardiff, but aren’t his songs the absolute epitome of English musical theatre of the 1930s? And isn’t the 1930s my absolute fave era? And haven’t I got just the thing to wear, darling? Because what did I find in another box while I was supposed to be throwing things away?

silkscarf
detail of handpainted silk scarf

I used to paint on silk scarves and sell them at craft outlets. I kept a few for myself. So, here I am now, singing My Dearest Dear, with a 1930s Clarice Cliff-ish design silk scarf around my neck and I haven’t thrown one thing away yet.

But wait. What’s this old briefcase? Was that thing ever mine? And what’s this poor scrap?

Ah! Celia, hold on to your sense of reality, girl. Stay with me. In the here and now.

Walsingham Matilda
my first draft outline of my first novel – page two

Walsingham Matilda, my first novel, lovingly unpublished and reclining on a memory stick with other unpublished gems. Walsingham Matilda, the 140,000 word family saga that starts in Yorkshire and comes all the way back again, seventy five years later via Norfolk and Sydney, Australia.

Awwww! Bless! A quick scan teaches me how much the story changed from that first outline and I wonder, afresh, whether I might have been better sticking with the original plan. My stories GROW so. Oh, they grow.

And now, here’s himself coming through the door, looking for lunch.

‘What you got there?’ he says.

‘Memories,’ I tell him.

‘Am I in them?’

‘No, darling. It’s before you and me.

”What’s for lunch?’

 It’s time to put the memories away. I’ll return to de-cluttering after lunch. Eventually, we will be ready to do a car boot sale, but It isn’t going to be the one this weekend.

France, Wicked stepmother

Clearing out the old stuff – Little Red Hen style

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There comes a time when only a thorough clearing out will hit the spot. Himself has a pile of Money Weekly type magazines that go back to before the banking apocalypse when you could still put your cash in a savings account and earn some interest on it. This dusty tower of old paper is spilling out from underneath a coffee table in our living room and there may well be spiders living in it.

I have books and papers, too, stuffed in old shoe boxes, cluttering drawers. There’s a box full of old musical films on Video Tape, for goodness’ sake. How did they escape the last thorough clearing out session?

Gollum Boy, remember him? Here’s a reminder: gollumTeenage Gollum

He’s still upstairs, growing greyer. He is surrounded, in his bachelor pad at the top of the house where he has more space for his belongings than his father and I in our own bedroom, by games and toys from his pre-online gaming era. Those days when he still looked like a boy. Remember them? Those days when he spoke a language you could understand?

He doesn’t have the inclination to offer any help toward this clearing out of old stuff. Not even his own old stuff. He doesn’t see it as his responsibility to sort and clear out his own old stuff. He thinks it should all be dumped in a bin bag and thrown away. Hang on a minute, we said. Some of this stuff is worth a bit of money.

I should point out at this juncture that himself and I manage on a limited budget. Very limited. That’s why we are very careful on Red Days.

It’s why we trawl the supermarkets for special offers on joints of meat and why we don’t eat out very often. So, chucking out hundreds of pounds’ worth of Lego and other young kids’ stuff was way beyond what we could allow to happen.

legopile1

 

Himself and I began to sort through the black bin bags Gollum Boy had deposited at the bottom of the stairs. All these Lego bricks, never put away properly, the empty boxes stuffed into other bin bags. Everything all mixed up.  legopile2

Aaaaargh! I think that’s what I cried out. It might have been something stronger than that.

This pile is supposed to be a Lego City Airport with planes and terminal buildings. There should be a sea port too with ferry boats and . .

But Gollum Boy is too grown up for all this stuff now. He hasn’t got time to put it all back into its boxes so we could flog it at a car boot sale. And he has made a HUGE mistake in not offering to help.

Father and I will do it for him – Little Red Hen style. Do you know that story? Little Red Hen needs help to plant the seeds, to grow the corn, to go to the mill, to bake the bread. Nobody wants to help, but when the loaf is baked they all want to eat some. No, says Little Red Hen, I shall eat it myself. And she did!

LittleRedHen
a favourite children’s story

 

 

Gollum Boy is not invited to the car boot sale day. Father and I will put in all the effort.

lego airportlego airplane

We’ll sort out the airport pieces and tape up the box.

legoferryWe’ll find the ferry. We’ll book our pitch at the car boot sale and eat a picnic under the trees with French bread and cheese, possibly a beer from the catering van.

And we will keep ALL the proceeds.

Networking

Unfollow a horrible word

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unfollow
No offence meant – just setting me free

I had to unfollow somebody. It’s a horrible word. I don’t think it even exists outside of social networking sites. It’s like unenjoy, or untaste. There isn’t an un for these words. You can’t un an action. No, that’s not true. You can undo. You can untie. You can unearth something. You can unlock. But, it’s a tricksy little un-thing once you start digging around it. Something can be unforgettable but you can’t unforget it. It might be undesirable but you can’t undesire it.

And unfollow? No, it isn’t in the dictionary. If you Google who first coined the word, you won’t get an answer. You’ll get advice about 5 great tools to help you monitor who’s following you etc. but it seems nobody is claiming ownership of first usage of this buzzword.

You can follow people you’re interested in on Twitter and Stumbleupon and Tumblr and Pinterest and Linkedin and all the rest of them. As a writer hoping to garner a following, a sort of fan-base, if you like, I’m happy to join discussions and place my comments and have a bit of banter from time to time. When all is said and tweeted, after all, I’m in the business of selling myself and eventually my books. I hope.

But I have unfollowed somebody who is doing just that. And the reason?

Too much tweeting. Too much of the same person showing up whenever I logged in. Too much of this in your face self-advertising is a right turn-off for me. I ain’t NEVER gonna buy that book now, lady ‘cos you’ve pissed me off.

unfollow2
Tell everybody, why don’t you?

But the 5 tools to help you monitor who has just dropped you from their list is shouting my name now, somewhere. So maybe now I’m known as an UNFOLLOWER. A turncoat. A traitor in the camp.

Will I have to hang my head in shame? Will I still be allowed to play?

Is it just a coincidence that since I unfollowed, I’ve had no new followers?

Could this be the beginning of a new condition? UNFOLLOWNOIA –  you read it here first!

France

Expat Living Is it what you thought?

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expat passport
passport to a different life for expats?

Himself is helping out the British expat network today. It’s expected. It’s what happens when you go to live in other people’s countries.  Whether you thought you wanted it or not.

I’ve heard some expats say that when they were looking for a home away from the UK, they wanted to immerse themselves in their chosen foreign way of life. They didn’t want to be part of some clique, some dreadful enclave of British, gin-swigging expats, meeting for golf or bridge every Tuesday afternoon and boring the pants off each other at endless summer barbecues. Besides, they would tell you, we speak the language. We don’t need to be surrounded by Brits all the time. Why move to France, Spain, wherever, if you don’t want to live the French, Spanish, whatever way of life?

And then they need a tap fixing. Or the computer’s gone down. So they get on the telephone and they make the appointment with appropriate technician and he tells them he can come a week on Thursday. Not before. He’s the only plumber, computer fixer on the island, Senora, the only one in the village, Madame. There’s another one lives near the city but he wouldn’t be able to come until Christmas.

That’s where the expat network comes in. It makes sense to skill-share and help each other out of a hole.

expat airport
the ‘sunny’ expats’ airport

Himself is on the airport run this morning. Beziers Cap d’Agde. They call it the sunny airport. Mr O’Leary brings tens of thousands of passengers from Luton, Bristol and Manchester and Stuttgart, Paris, Oslo. Flybe comes in from Southampton.

expat airline
One of many of Mr O’Leary’s flights

 

 

 

 

And, of course, all the people who have family in those catchment areas go back to visit and for weddings and christenings etc. Including me and himself. Why pay 50 euro for a taxi when the expat network can step in? You can’t have the same kind of reciprocal arrangement with your native neighbours. They and their families aren’t flying in and out all the time. We see a lot of cars with British plates in the airport car park. We know they haven’t lived here long enough yet to re-register the vehicle for French plates. Their numbers continue growing and the airport car park took over another field. They had to extend the runway, too and build a new terminal to accommodate all the extra passengers. When they sort out the access road, it will be better.

aerialviewbez
Beziers – a beautiful city

Beziers is a beautiful city in this, the fastest growing region in the whole of France. Even the French want to live here, it seems. The climate is, well, Mediterranean. It’s like Provence but not as expensive. Beziers is close to the coast. Here’s one of the nearest beaches.

 

LaMolebeach
Safe bathing on one of our many beaches

 

 

It’s good to know you’re going to get a proper summer each year. You can plan ahead. You know you’ll be warm enough on a summer evening. But a Mediterranean climate doesn’t mean it’s hot all year round. Winters are short but can be very sharp. We burn a lot of wood from December to March.

The log delivery man tips your winter heating into the road outside your gate. That’s when the expat community comes into its own again. Many helping hands barrow away the logs and build the stock pile for a few beers and a bacon sandwich. There’s a much bigger expat community offering help and advice at http://languedoc.angloinfo.com/

 

 

Celia's passions, France, Writing

What, no writing? Monday singing rehearsals.

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Capestangchurch
The Bishop of Narbonne was jealous.

I don’t get much serious writing done on Mondays. I don’t get much writing done at all. I might find a few minutes to write a short post on here, then it’s warming up the old vocal chords (and I do really mean old ) before it’s off toward the hills and rehearsals in Capestang.

The wind blows fit to knock you off your feet as you turn the corner around the church to walk to rehearsals. To the right of this picture, you can see where the building stops. Like the church was suddenly chopped. In fact, that’s exactly what happened in the 13th century. Some contributing factors may have been to do with the Plague and/or the change in the course of the river, but there’s also the story that says the Bishop in Narbonne sent out his spies to see what was happening in Capestang and when he discovered the completed church would have been bigger than his own seat, he used the money for something else.

musicnotes
the language of music

I love these old stories. Even the smallest villages here have stories to tell. I love to hear about them, read about them. Sometimes, I might be inspired to write a new story based on what I’ve discovered. But I can’t get into that today because it’s Monday. Monday is singing. There’s no serious writing today. Serious singing instead. We’re rehearsing Carmina Burana for performances in May. O, Fortuna, velut Luna statu variabilis . . .

Singing is so vital. I can’t imagine a life without music. When I take Mondays off, away from writing, I know I’m gonna come back Tuesdays all fired up and ready to go again.

no writing
Choir of Capestang
Writing

14 story Tweets on St Patrick’s Day

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4leafclover
The luck of the Irish

Today I tweeted a story. 14 Tweets and that was it. I thought maybe I could call on the luck of the Irish today and get my Tweets in without too many interruptions.

See, I’m still a bit of a newbie on Twitter. I’m still learning about hash tags and how to use them over there. Also, I have a tenuous claim to call upon said Irish phenomenon re: good luck. I have the Irish grandfather. Yes, really. I’ve banged on here on my website re: my maiden name Micklefield and some possible interesting South African connections with that name in the Capetown area, but I have neglected to mention the name of the other side of my family. So, here it is.

O'Driscollarms
O’Driscolls were born to travel
crockofgold
waiting for me at the end of a rainbow?

My mother’s maiden name was O’Driscoll. So, today, on St Patrick’s Day, I call upon my ancestors to bestow upon me and my little 14 Tweet story the legs to reach the world and bring me a crock of gold.

I wish!

If you didn’t catch the 14 Tweet story on Twitter – here it is

14 Tweet story

When he got up, he didn’t notice anything different. She looked as if she was still asleep.

He had work to do. First, the sink to bleach; he liked the smell of it and she never did it properly. Then, his phone calls.

He made coffee. Went outdoors. The day was set fine. He’d be able to get those seedlings planted out.

He smiled, having the day to himself with no interference. Retirement meant doing exactly as he pleased. He’d earned the right.

At twelve, he began to feel hungry. He wondered, briefly, what she was planning for lunch, but there was still no sign of her.

He looked in the fridge and grabbed a crabstick. It wouldn’t spoil his appetite for later. There was no sound from the bedroom.

His stomach rumbled as he opened the bedroom door. He called her name. Her face was pale and still. Grey and unattractive.

He thought about the greyness of her. There was no wonder he hadn’t wanted to kiss any of it for years.

He made tea and enjoyed rearranging the caddies and repositioning cups in better places in the cupboard on the wall.

He spent the afternoon lining up plant pots. He finished the crabsticks. He thought her selfish not making him refreshment.

At seven, when he wanted his dinner, he realized she was dead. Brain haemorrhage, the doctor said. Ah well, he thought.

How could he have known she was dead? Why would any man make it part of his morning ritual to check if his partner was alive?

She’d done it on purpose, of course. To make him look bad.

Ah, well. Now she’d got everything she wanted. She’d always told him she felt she was dying inside.

THE END

(If you enjoyed this – please click the Twitter button at the bottom of the page and Re-Tweet this page. Thank you. I’ll share the crock of gold. Yeah, right!)

 

 

France

24 hours without internet. The joys of living in France

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24hours
A whole day!

 

Twenty four hours without the internet. 24 whole hours!

The Gollum Boy (see earlier post ) began pacing as soon as he got home from school. What? No internet? How could anybody DO THIS TO HIM? Didn’t they know he had an appointment with Syndicate on YouTube?

He had to resort to the X-Box WITHOUT KiNECT. Saints preserve us! Saint Louise, actually on the fifteenth of March. Saint Louise of the Daughters of Charity, the ones who used to wear those huge starched cornettes on their heads that made them look like seagulls. Her saint’s day is the fifteenth of March. It says so on my calendar.

Not the Ides of March! Oh, Blimey, I’ve just realized. We lost our phone and internet connection on the Ides of March. It must have been an omen. Well, we live along the Via Domitia, don’cha know. Julius Caesar passed this way on his way to Spain. You can hear the ghostly legions tramping by in their skirts and sandals. No, that’s Gollum Boy, tramping by on his way to raid the fridge. He has a face like a wet weekend and his eyes are like slits. (He’s still very grey, by the way, but he has had a wash.)

So, what can one do when all the connections are down? One could go for a walk. One could read a few chapters. One could learn a new recipe. One could watch a movie on TV. One could go for a walk. One could read a few chapters. One could . . .

bitingnails
Oh, No!

I‘VE LOST MY INTERNET CONNECTION! WHAT AM I GOING TO DO?

The truth is, we’ve all got so used to having these connections at our fingertips, we take them for granted. And, I believe, we allow them too much say in our lives.

One of the joys of living in a small French village is that, from time to time, we are thrust into a past when such household commodities didn’t exist. In any case, what use would winegrowers and their fieldworkers have had for such things? Their days were already full of working to earn a living. Now, the winegrowers’ grandchildren have laptops and X boxes and Playstations and tablets and smartphones and none of them want to follow grandpa into viticulture. No. They want to be the next Syndicate. The next #1 Solo Gamer.

But they can’t all be number 1, can they? At some point, they’ll have to start paying their way. Give unto Caesar etc. We’ve let this internet stuff take over our lives. Its marching through our homes and families like the legions of the Roman Empire.

Well, we all know what happened to that, don’t we?

The trouble is, how will I keep up with Twitter and Facebook and Linkedin and my website when the Internet Empire collapses?

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!