I‘m delighted with the cover for Patterns of Our Lives.
So much so, I’ve decided to reveal the cover of my upcoming novel. Here’s a sneak preview:
Cover reveal
an epic family saga
Patterns of Our Lives
My first novel is a family saga from 1935 to 2010. Set in Yorkshire and Norfolk, the book follows widow Audrey Freeman’s search for the truth about her mother.
How could generations of one family keep so many secrets for so long?
Do you know the full story of all those people who feature in your old photograph albums? Those little square black and white pictures don’t tell the whole truth. Maybe none of us is ever meant to know.
Heartwarming, heartbreaking, Patterns of Our Lives is essentially a story about love and the sacrifices people make in its name.
coming soon . . .
I’ve borrowed heavily from knowledge of my birthplace but I’ve messed around with its geography. I ask the good people of Keighley, West Yorkshire and their neighbours in Bingley for their forgiveness. Kingsley is my fictitious town based on both my former haunts.
Similarly, I ask the people of Norfolk to forgive my messing with their geography, too.
Of Yorkshire and Norfolk in wartime I have no personal experience. Events in Patterns of Our Lives are authentic. Characters are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons either living or dead is entirely coincidental.
But then, I would say that, wouldn’t I?
Publication by Amazon as a paperback and for Kindle – only weeks away!
Would you like to be among the first to know when Patterns of Our Lives is available? Sign up to get an email or watch for Tweets or on my FaceBook author page.
(Edited June 8th) Publication date brought forward to June 14th. Get it for your summer read.
Poor Lady Penelope Strongbow. The twitches continue. Great shuddering nervous tics at the most inopportune moments, like when there are slippery peas on her fork or a mussel is half hanging out its shell. Worse, when the glass of Merlot is full. Correction: was full. You get my drift.
Full days at the CRPS clinic continue.
It’s coming up two months now – everyday, all day. Before that, I had February and March at the physiotherapist every day for two hours. Ouch. Four whole months now of therapies coming out my ears and my hand still looks like Lady Penelope’s. Double ouch!!
But I’m riding in style. My chauffeurs come to collect me each morning.
your carriage awaits, m’lady!
We rattle along in fine style to the clinic.
First therapy of the day is what they call Bains Écossés, but I don’t think the Scots ever had any say in that. Anyway, hot and cold treatments. Very hot and Very cold.
fill one with hot, one with cold
New thinking says don’t ever use ice for CRPS (Complex Regional Pain Syndrome), so it’s difficult to know who to believe.
Next is Physio.
50 Shades of ouch!
After all that bending and stretching, it’s time for the pool.
33 degrees . . . heaven.
After my hour in the pool it’s time for the next therapy which is a bit like Occupational Therapy in UK where focus is on small motor movements.
Needless to say, I drop things all the time, due to the fact that I have no grip and I can neither close my fist nor stretch my hand out flat.
There is a rest room at the clinic. But not for me. My days are full on. I squeeze another five minutes on the pulley wherever I can.
no time to rest!
Then it’s off to the Robot chairs.
Les Robot-Chaises is what I christened them and the name has amused some. Not all, but some.
you stick your arm in it.
Like this.
upwards and outwards . .
And after all this, it’s lunchtime. I’m hungry and thirsty by now. My breakfast yoghurt feels like a lifetime ago. So, the welcome sight of the lunch table is something of a highlight in my day.
we’re even allowed wine!
Then it’s back on the CRPS treadmill to repeat all the morning’s treatments and exercises. Is there any wonder all I want to do when I get home is fall asleep?
even here at the clinic. This is where I’m at 5 days a week, all day being bent and stretched, but that’s no excuse for not doing any writing.
even clinics harbour characters
There’s no shortage of characters in this place. It’s called ré-éducation this teaching your limbs how to work properly. It’s a bit like re-hab except most patients are over 50. Make that 60.
There are bad legs and bad arms, slings and crutches enough to make you wonder if there are any uninjured people left in this part of France.
On the residents’ wing patients are recovering from operations, strokes, heart attacks and nasty falls. In the day clinic where I’m an outpatient there are some young people and they are mostly ski-ing accidents.
Stories just waiting to be written
The Queen of Andorra is here with her fabulous jewellery and stunning outfits. Not for her the yoga pants, trainers and sloppy tees. Her shoes are handmade pumps to match her numerous ensembles. I expect she wore high Jimmy Choos before she bust her leg ski-ing in the Pyrenees so now she’s had a bunch of flatties made to fit her slim but extremely long feet. (Feet are the only thing I’ve got smaller than hers)
She drives to her physio sessions in her Porsche. On the front there’s a regal looking car badge.
I didn’t realise Andorra is a Principality!
It’s hard to tell where the guys are looking when she rolls up.
She’s got a fantastic figure (except for the feet) and is a natural beauty. Plus, she knows how much jewellery to wear.
CopyCat characters
When she first arrived she unwittingly started the ‘bling’ competition among the other women, yours truly excepted. I can’t get my hand round the back of my neck to fasten jewellery anyway. So, it was an experience for me to sit there with my notebook and watch and listen, and take my notes.
Another ski accident has recently arrived. Her eyes are sunken and dark-rimmed. She’s in a lot of pain. I haven’t seen the ghost of a smile on her face.
The other ski accidents are men. One is a leg; one is an arm; another is both legs and one arm. He is one of the most masculine types: square jaw, chiselled features, all that good stuff. He isn’t the best-looking though. That title goes to the 6ft 4″ proprietor of the local archery club who one day let fly an arrow with such velocity it pulled his shoulder out. He has a physique so tight you could play bongos on his buttocks. Actually, I’d like to.
beat the bongos
Then there’s Mister Bean. In the pool, where we have our Balneotherapy, he will not listen to our instructor’s advice. Mr Bean is a character who wants to do everything his own way. He’s all arms and legs going in every direction at once so I can’t tell which part of him was injured. He behaves like he’s fifteen. He’s 70 if he’s a day.
There’s a left shoulder who looks like Gaylord Focker and a right shoulder who looks like Spencer Tracy and then there’s two Spanish old boys who sound as if they’re speaking their mother tongue even when they’re speaking in French. I don’t understand a word so I nod and smile a lot at them.
The newest guy lives at the Naturist colony in Cap d’Agde and his name is Monsieur Le Coq.
The Lady in Black has left. Every item of clothing she wore, everyday was black: trousers, skirts, blouses, jackets, knitwear, socks, hairband, spectacle frames. Everything. But her shoes were white. Work that one out.
Mouse Lady and Bird Lady have also finished their treatments. They left on the same Friday and brought cakes and drinks and a whole feast of goodies to say goodbye to the rest of us. Then I felt mean for giving them such dismissive nicknames.
There’s Marie Louise who works for Air France. She’s always making coffee and asking if anybody wants one.
Air France logo
There’s Giselle with teeth like piano keys and Corinne who has a different car with a different man in it come to pick her up at the end of each day. Maybe they’re her clients waiting for her hip to get better.
Plenty of characters, you see? I could base my fictional characters on any of these. Stories are coming out of my pores as I sweat out the pain of having my elbow pushed, my shoulder hoisted, my wrist twisted and my fingers pulled.
But which of these characters do you think are real? I’ve changed names and embroidered a bit as writers do, but, go on, which ones are real? Have a go.
You can leave your comment at the top of the page. I’d love to know what you think.
Treatment for CRPS varies. I think I’ve been lucky here in France that my condition was recognised and diagnosed fairly early. It doesn’t make it hurt any less, but it gives me abetter chance of recovering some of the use of my left hand.
When the lower part of my cast was removed Dr B wrote Algodystrophieon a prescription for 20 sessions of physiotherapy.
CRPS had already set in
I’m going to call him Doctor BonnyBones because he’s the bone man and I like giving people nicknames.
By some strange quirk, all the doctors I have seen have surnames beginning with ‘B’.
Physiotherapy for CRPS
In my opinion, physiotherapy isn’t enough on its own. My therapist did a great job of desensitising my hand so I could bear someone touching it.
Non-sufferers find it hard to understand why something as simple as a change of temperature can cause the CRPS patient even more pain.
I had physio every day. I feel sorry for sufferers who get to see a therapist only once or twice a week. It isn’t enough. I had 20 sessions, but it wasn’t enough. It was a beginning and I’m grateful to M for pestering me to go back to my general practitoner for better pain relief. Without adequate pain relief, therapy sessions are unbearably painful.
Is there a cure for CRPS?
No.
Watch this brief video for an explanation.
So, all we sufferers can hope for is an improvement in mobility and a means of controlling the pain.
After my 20 sessions of physiotherapy showed only minor improvements, Dr BonnyBones referred me to to the nerve specialist. I’m going to call him Dr Bazooka. It unnerved (pun intended) me a little to see that Dr Bazooka operated out of an annexe tacked onto a geriatric hospital, but he lived up to the nickname I’ve given him. He blasted through French bureaucracy, picked up the phone and spoke to a colleague.
I was booked into a day hospital.
I arrived on April 1st. I didn’t know I was booked in for 8 weeks! Some April fool, huh?
To be continued. See how Lady Penelope Strongbow gets on at the clinic.
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Lady Penelope Strongbow has her very own CRPS mission.
It’s a personal mission. Things tend to be on a personal level when you suffer from this disease.
CRPS takes over your life.
Complex Regional Pain Syndrome changes your life. However, Lady Penelope Strongbow would like to think that somewhere along the line just maybe, perhaps, her story might help others, or at least give them a moment’s amusement when they read her story.
(You can read why I call myself Lady Penelope Strongbow in my previous CRPS post.)
It began last December. Just before Christmas and all the stores were full of pretty things. She had just returned her shopping trolley to the bay and was walking back toward her car when she heard a lot of shouting.
safe in the car park?
I wonder what people are shouting for? she wondered.
Then, blackout. Just like that. The lights went out and there was pain like you wouldn’t believe.
Someone had reversed his car into her making her fall and causing two breaks to her wrist and forearm and a very sore head where it had bounced on the concrete parking lot.
The cast was enormous.
trying to write a post for my website
CRPS began almost immediately. When the upper part of the cast was removed, the Lady Penelope fingers were already in evidence and the pain affected the whole arm, elbow and shoulder.
bent and twisted fingers already painful to touch
CRPS had already set in, but the diagnosis wasn’t given until the rest of the cast was removed.
Three painful CRPS months later
It took three whole months to work out pain relief that didn’t cause me to vomit or give me diarrhoea or space me out so far I didn’t know which way was up.
By this time , we had various test results. The echograph (like ultrasound) showed no serious tears in the soft tissue, but lots of inflammation.
The scintigraph (bone scan) came next. The bone scanner machine is as futuristic as Thunderbirds used to be.
Lady Penelope was suitably impressed.
Results of the hand/wrist scan show where CRPS is affecting the bones.
dark spots show CRPS activity
You can see how every part of my wrist and fingers is affected.
That’s why I have a Lady Penelope hand.
That’s why, like her, I can’t open doors.
no chance!
It’s why when I put my left hand on top of my head, it looks like this –
this is far as it goes!
And when you’ve got a CRPS Lady Penelope hand, you’d better forget about opening that pack of doughnuts.
even opening packets is too difficult
Squeezing the packet between my thumb and forefinger is all I can do with my Lady Penelope hand.
In my next post, I’ll have information about the treatment I’m receiving.
There’s a lot of treatment. Every day. As I’ve already said, CRPS takes over your life.
Please feel free to leave a comment, and do please Share if there’s someone you know who might like my posts.
Let me introduce Lady Penelope Strongbow. Her name is going to take some explaining. Bear with me.
Remember Thunderbirds? Of course you do and of course you’ll know who Lady Penelope is.
look at her hands!
Oh, but she was elegant, wasn’t she?
Not a hair out place.
Makeup perfect.
But hands as wooden as they could be. She might have that left hand on the door handle, but I can tell just by looking there was no way she was ever going to open it.
Now have a look at my left hand.
see the difference?
My left hand can’t open doors, either.
In fact, my left hand can’t do very much at all.
Lady Penelope Strongbow was conceived on December 14th 2013 when a car reversed into me and knocked me down. She was born six weeks later when the cast came off my broken wrist and arm and I learned I had developed a condition called Complex Regional Pain Syndrome.
I knew before the cast was removed that something was very wrong. My fingers were twisted and swollen and the pain in my arm was excruciating.
From time to time and without warning I get spasms that make me shudder. It feels as if I’ve been shot by an arrow. Himself recalled the Strongbow cider advert with arrows landing with a thwack.
Ouch!
Here in France, the condition is still called algodystrophie. It has other names too, but no matter what you choose to call it, it ranks among the most painful conditions a person can suffer.
I’d never heard of it. I had no idea how many people suffer with it and, once I began to research, I realised how little coverage CRPS is given.
I’ve seen a bunch of specialists and not one of them can give me a definite prognosis. The latest one has, at least, been more open. He took my good hand and looked me in the eye.
‘I’m the doctor,’ he said, ‘and I don’t know how this is going to go. We have a lot of work to do.’
I’m in this for the long haul. Dr Bruno is the first one to use years rather than months in his estimate for improvement of mobility in my hand, wrist and arm.
We have a lot of work to do?
It sounds like a lot of painful physiotherapy and other tortures.
Crusts are poisonous. They must be. Kids leave them. Who hasn’t seen a slice of bread like this in the picture below? Crusts are so poisonous kids leave them even if, really, to be perfectly honest, they really like the stuff they’ve left behind on their plates.
Why do kids leave crusts?
perfectly poisonous crust
They do it to get to you, you know. Kids leave crusts behind just so’s they can let you know who’s really in charge here.
In my last Wicked Stepmother post I showed you photos of the poisonous crusts making a regular appearance on my kitchen table each morning. Not to mention the half a jar of Nutella smeared on them. The Nutella saga requires a Chronicle post all of its very own, together with the tomato ketchup one, jars of which get flushed from where it’s been left on the plate down the plughole on a regular basis.
blobs left on plates
Now, we’re not talking little kids here. Not toddlers. Not primary schoolers. Not anybody who isn’t taller than me.
We’re talking nearly 16 years old, towering over the top of me and so sharp you’d prick your finger if you went to hug him.
I thought I had a cunning plan. Remember? The poisonous Brioche crust story?
brioche crusts with Nutella
Buy Brioche rolls, Wicked Stepmother! They haven’t got crusts, Wicked Stepmother. You can wipe the smile right off his face, Wicked Stepmother, when you present him with something so devilishly delicious he can’t bear to leave even the tiniest morsel.
I found Brioche rolls with added crème fraiche. My mouth watered just looking at them. The aroma from the packet was vanilla and buttery and eggy and crème fraichey.
Not even a saint on hunger strike could have resisted.
can you believe it?
No. I couldn’t believe it, either. Take a closer look at teenage kid getting one over on me.
I give up!!!
I pretended I hadn’t noticed.
Well, all you Wicked Stepmothers out there. You’ve got to keep face.
This week’s Wednesday Vine Report is full of surprises. When you see my photographs you won’t believe the difference when compared with last year.
I hope to bring you regular reports as before. Since I was hit by a car in December, I have developed a painful condition which I won’t bore you with here. Suffice it to say sometimes I won’t be able to get out into the vineyards.
Watching for first signs
Remember how last year I eagerly waited for first signs of growth on the vines?
how it looked last year
Dry sticks was all we had to look at last year at this time. I was looking to choose a particular vine so that I could follow its progress throughout the year. Mademoiselle Merlot became the choice and I’ve grown rather attached to her. Silly, I know, but I don’t want to be unfaithful. She’s going to feature in this year’s vine reports too.
Here’s the Merlot field this week after the mildest winter weather I’ve experienced since moving to France.
not pruned yet but already sprouting
Today we have welcome light rain. There hasn’t been much of it. Growers depend on the fourteen days of downpour we can normally expect spread throughout late March and April. It hasn’t happened yet. In my last Vine Report, I showed how the grower of the Chardonnay vines has recently installed a watering system
So here are those Chardonnay vines.
going crazy!!
This photograph was taken on March 20th after a neighbour had told me I had better get up there and have a look. She knew I’d been looking out for first signs of growth again this year and I think she was rather pleased with herself that she’d beaten me to it. However, judging by this amount of growth, we’d both missed the first sprouting by at least two weeks.
Is this year’s harvest already a whole month ahead of last year?
Maybe it’s too soon to say. Maybe we wouldn’t want to tempt fate by saying so. (Languedoc is full of superstitions)
But it looks that way to me. There’s very little danger of late frosts in this part of France. Besides, now that the rain has begun I think we’ll move right along into an early summer.
So, come along ladies. Do your stuff.
lovely ladies!
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The Languedoc Vine Report began last year on April 3rd. Here’s the first photo I posted. It shows the vineyards near my home where I selected the one particular vine I photographed throughout the year.
vineyards near my home
Mademoiselle Merlot turned out very nicely. We followed her growth right up to harvest and very tasty she is too.
This year spring arrived so early here in Languedoc we’ve all been taken by surprise.
We had a short cold spell before Christmas and it’s been mild ever since.
blue skies and pruned vines
Work is well under way in the vineyards across the village.
new irrigation system in the Chardonnay vineyard
The other vineyard we followed closely last year was the Chardonnay field. The other day, I saw this new irrigation channel being dug all around.
Do the growers know something we don’t?
Is this summer going to be one of those where we hit 40 degrees plus?
We’ve been very dry already through this early part of the year. Normally, as the weather warms, we go through what I call the transition period between cold and warm weather where we get a lot of rain. That hasn’t happened. We’ve gone straight into warm. We’re all wondering when the rain is going to come.
watering system
When I went back a few days later, the trough was filled in and the watering system already in place. Elsewhere in the vines, spring weather makes for pleasant work. I’m going to keep my eye on this newly ploughed area to see what is planted.
I wonder what’s going in here?
In another area they are replacing the wire supports.
Rolls of wire are trucked into the vineyards; those cute little tractors ferry the materials to where they’re needed. The guy in the cab has his coat on, but the temperature reached 25 degrees in the shade that day. I know because we had our lunch outdoors on our little terrace.
lunch outdoors in March
In the sun, of course, the temperature goes off the scale. Here’s what we recorded.
fantastic for early March
cute tractor, huh?gotta keep your vines supported.
As a rule, this post goes out on Wednesdays. It’s the Wednesday Vine Report. Regular readers will be aware I was knocked down by a car in December and I’m still recovering from injuries I sustained. So, the report is late. It won’t be every week until I’m better able to handle my camera.
Thank you for your kind messages on Facebook and Twitter.
I’m still hanging in there!
Even though the physiotherapy is agony!!!
At least, I can still lift a glass with my good arm.
Noilly Pratt made in Languedoc
Cheers!
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Anything with a crust on it must be dangerous. Isn’t that so? Isn’t that why so many kids don’t eat them?
Well, they come up with all kinds of reasons and excuses for leaving them on their plates. Crust tastes bad. it’s dry. It makes me choke. Etc. etc. You could list all the excuses kids come up with for not finishing off their crusts.
Dangerous crusts
Sandwich – designed to choke you.
Pie – no filling left in it so it’s not worth eating.
Pizza – covered in germs from where you’ve been holding it in your dirty mitts.
Toast – burnt to hell and just plain nasty. Actually, if it is burnt the kids do have a point. It IS dangerous. It’s carcinogenic.
burnt food is carcinogenic
But burnt food aside, why do kids insist on leaving crusts?
There’s an entertaining website called How To Be A Dad, but it’s just as entertaining for Mums. Andy has coined the phrase Crust Poisoning. I can’t claim any credit for that. (I wish I’d thought of it first!)
Here’s a link to Andy’s post about crusts on the How To Be A Dad website. Hilarious, isn’t it?
And here’s another link to the I Used to Believe website. The top story is brilliant.
from the I Used to Believe website
But, here’s the thing. These posts on other websites refer to LITTLE kids. What happens when your enormous 15 year old is still doing it?
Wicked Stepmother took some photographs to demonstrate. There are just the two pictures, but the rest of the week the same thing happens.
Monday’s breakfast leavingsTuesday’s leavings
What we’re looking at here is not burnt. It’s not dry. It isn’t hard or horrible in any way whatsoever. It’s Brioche. Here’s what Wikipedia says about it –
A loaf of Brioche is a joy to behold. It’s soft and sweet and buttery-eggy and you could easily suck it down if you didn’t have any teeth.
There is no reason on this earth why anyone would need to leave any of it.
Now then, Wicked Stepmother cannot abide wasting food. Her generation caught this from ancestors who had lived through rationing and hardships today’s kids couldn’t even begin to imagine. Wicked Stepmother’s generation has learned to be economical with resources and it can be quite an affront to see so much food going into the waste bin. On a whim.
But, as you might imagine, Wicked Stepmother has a cunning plan.
She will buy no more loaves of Brioche. Not a single one. Here’s the premise.
You know how there isn’t a crust on a muffin?
crustless muffin
Nobody ever leaves bits of muffin on their plate. They go round the plate, stabbing with their hungry fingers picking up every last crumb, don’t they? Dab, dab, dab till all the little crumbs are consumed. Till the plate is shiny and empty and there is no waste to go in the bin . . .
(I’m getting a bit excited now at the prospect of putting into operation this cunning plan of mine. Oops, cunning plan of the Wicked Stepmother.)
We shall purchase only Brioche Buns. Crustless Brioche Buns.
Eggy, buttery and flaky. The answer to this crust dilemma?
Leave me a comment. Go on, I’d love to hear your thoughts.
