My space - no not that space, My Space

Apparently Beryl Bainbridge only writes with a certain kind of pen, in a particular kind of book (with lines - eek!). I have never thought of myself with obsessions but when I think about my writing I realise that I have some serious control issues. Yep, I'm up there with Beryl B, the pen does matter and so does where it lives.

Gone are the cleaner lines of the rest of the house, replaced by something that would not look out of place in Dumbledore's office.

A hundred books, that can't possibly be out of sight, fight for dominance on a shelf that was designed for one modest ornament. The lower shelf (never really shared this with anyone before and have unusual embarrassment) holds the talismans for my writing. They range from a gonk that I had when I was ten, a laughing Buddha and a tin of my children's teeth (I know!!).
Peruvian Worry Dolls, that were purchased from a little know Peruvian town in Dorset, sit in a glowering line. Alongside them is a brass Shiva, who is holding out her hands waiting for the literary miracles that are one day going to come tripping from my fingers!

Then there is my gallery of poems and art work, and my 'all is not lost' candle that I light before sending anything off. I have a pair of nursery bookends that have long since been dispensed with by the owners of the tinned teeth and they also donated the chipped Bart Simpson mug that now holds my Beryls!

I make no excuses, these are my 'inspirements' (not a word but I like it!). I NEED these things around me in order to, hah, write.
Thank you for letting me get this off my chest, I feel much better out than in. Don't be embarrassed to share your own weird habits...you have got some haven't you?

Musing myself

It was there all around me, a coast of front row seats. I sat poised, pen in hand.

In the gaps between the wrack, a shoal of mackeral swam as one. No waves today for the surf boys, just an elephant skin of isis blue. Clear enough to watch the fish swim, clear enough to watch a comerant dive below.
A fly smacked me in the head like a sudden windscreen, unexpected, for both of us. He came off worse, flying into the cuckoo spit that covers the gorse at this time of year. Beyond the gorse the burr of new heather mottles the cliffs all the way to the cheese shaped headland. The cows stop their cudding to gaze out to sea, as a ship passes on the horizon. It stays away, it knows this piratical coastline. The cows resume and the sea inches further in to take Gul Rock a temporary prisoner.
My eye travels the coastline for an hour, pen poised, ready.

No good, no good at all.
Today the muse was too big.

Sleepless thoughts

2.50am

Can I remember a time when I thought that trees were just green?
Do I know of a sunrise, or sunset, that doesn't make my soul ache?
Is there always this fire in my gut?
Have these burning fingers always belonged to me?
Was there ever a second when there was not a word for something?
Can I remember a day when I did not write?
Should I hold this moment now to cry at the stars?

(The print is by Gedeon Peteri - Summer Solstice)

And here are your best bits

Got bored today and wrote a 'play' using your best comments, not that there were many of them!!


Maxine - "I am biphasically confident"

Susan - "I'm Batman"

Skint - "Apparently I'm a nymph"

Pundy - " Oh dear Minx, oh dear, oh dear, oh dear"

Verilion - "I also quite enjoyed The Lighthouse Keepers Lunch"

Cheesm - "Made by people secretly yearning to have their heads pounded against a table until they are the consistency of Tesco's lean mince"

jta -"As to Pundy, maybe if you hadn't called him Liversausage"

Maxine - "Viggo definitely (including beard)

Pundy - "Please tell me you don't have a moustache"

jta - "MOM!!"

SharonJ - "D'ya think there's any money to be made from blogflogging?"

Shameless - "This soft one of my soft spots"

Pundy - "Oh dear, oh dear"

Cheesm - "I can run but I wouldn't want people to call me a runner"

Debi - "But you're an Amazonian warrior poet with a nice line in cups"

Lynne W Scanlon - "Sword raised, I say"

James Long - "Huzzah"

Marie - "Blogging is better than any writing course"

Lee - "Can I bill you for a keyboard?"

Pundy - "Oh dear Minx, oh dear"

Maxine - "He doesn't seem to realise that v*****'s rule and life is much easier for everyone when they realise that"




The Minx exits, stage right.
It was no wonder her blog had ended up like this!!

Twas on a wiggy night with the Gin Co-Op

Blue rinse anyone!
Now hurry up and take a gawp so I can take it down again and stop all this embarassing nonsense!

This is......

....umm, weirdly, fascinatingly, err, strangely, compulsively...oh I dunno, go have a geek at Think of it like and see what you think!

Riding in cars with boys

I love driving and on certain nights I feel I could drive to the end of the earth.
Last week the boss booked me in to hear a speaker in Bristol.
Oooh good a whole two and a half hours driving on my own. Yes, I am that person sat at the traffic lights singing at the top of her voice with a front seat full of empty drinks cartons, assorted CD's for every mood and a range of chocolate wear.

"You wouldn't mind if you took someone up with you, would you?" the boss said on Friday "He's newly qualified and his car is in the garage, he would really like to go".

"No, fine" I said through gritted teeth "don't mind, not at all".

First he moaned about the leg room in my more than speedy, microbe on wheels. I admit there was some resemblence on his part to 'Noddy', but I bit my lip as he was only young.
Then he asked if there was anything else on CD rather than my beautiful Madeleine Peyroux.
He then proceeded to tell me where I was going wrong in my job and ate my toblerone without even asking!

Twonk!

After a stop at the services, where I lost him for about 30 minutes (nearly went without the little git) he made up for it by telling me that he thought I looked younger than my age by about eight years. I liked him again for about ten miles.

When we got to the conference the dread of the return journey started to itch at the back of my head. I love driving and this spotty oik had ruined my chances of that rare time spent completely on my own.

I found him at the end of the conference talking to one of the esteemed speakers.

"Oh by the way" he said as I tried to stop his mouth from ruining the reputation of every education establishment in the southwest, "I'm staying at my aunty's in Bristol tonight"

I would have kissed him but the acne on his cheeks looked a bit dodgy, so I jumped in the car, turned up Jeff Buckley (Hallelujah) and drove off for 2 hours and 47 minutes of pure bliss

This cup

This cup has served me well
Its cheeky countenance embraces a life
where chips and knocks add character,
never losing the essence that makes it....
my cup

My cup is strong,
forged from the earth to withstand the
hot and cold of my temper
It has seen me through disaster
The grief, flood and famine of my years
A cup for all seasons

You may think this a funny cup
a humorous cup
a cup bereft of feeling
but this old cup is fragile,
sometimes it requires soft cloths
and gentle hands

But here,
take a sip
not a gulp
just a taste......


.....Do you see?

Is it safe to come out now?

Tasteless emails and stupid comments made me start to believe I was more of a mouse than a Minx.

The cavalry rode in last night and all is right in the world once more.

I was overwhelmed by the support and kind words, really overwhelmed, and once again I am gobsmacked by the strength of fellow bloggers (and non-bloggers) in this weird virtual world.

Oh dear, you really don't know what you've done, do you??

(Why does blogger spellcheck want to call me Mince?)

All in the valley of death, rode the six hundred

Thanks guys, more than you could know!

Wandering off?

It appears that Wandering Scribe has wandered off into the distance.
Were we duped?

I'm a little teapot

Today disaster struck.
The spout of my favourite teapot dropped off.

Je suis desolee.

There I was minding my own business, waiting for the kettle to boil, when 'plop', there it was gone. Don't get me wrong, I have a hundred back-up teapots (well four actually) but my brown Windsor was my favourite. It is my 'morning' teapot that goes with my 'morning' cup.

Now what am I supposed to do?

'Little Brownie' was just big enough for the required two cups before starting the day. The antique GWR one is so stained that I can't bear the strong taste until 11am and the blue 'Mad Hatter' is for when a large brew is needed, usually when the Gin Co-operative come to call.
I am a modern woman, but teabags don't do the jobby, I need leaves, Assam leaves, from a pot and drunk from a china cup!

Tea, funny thing really, is it still an English thing or have we infected the world with our love of tannic acid.
Tea is a cure-all, the first-aid in an English home. We love a cuppa in the morning, a brew at eleven, we take tea in the afternoon and there can be no other possible accompaniment to fish and chips! Tea without a piece of dry cake or a 'dunked' biscuit would be unthinkable.
tea comes to the rescue when our partner has run off with the trollop down the road and we make tea when we have inadvertently killed the neighbour's guinea pig with rat poison.

So, if anyone has a little brown teapot, with a chip on the lid and a drippy spout, please let me know because I shall be dying of the thirst come the morning!!

Litha

Today is a very special day for me for a number of reasons. I don't want to go into my beliefs as they are deeply personal and probably of no interest to anyone. Suffice to say that it is not only Midsummers Day (yes already) but I have been also been blogging for the dreaded three months.
I could say that it has been a ball and fade off into the sunset - it was only an experiment in the beginning - but something happened in between.

You lot!

Debi recently posted a 'thankyou' and I would like to do the same. You have put up with my weird meanderings, my rude comments and my uninteligible, late night, drunken, ramblings. You have overlooked my refusal to 'get serious', but I would like to assure you that there is a deeply serious person underneath all the tat! (Minx just pushes her aside!).
I have found so much more than I bargained for, learnt so much and 'met' people that I am now proud to call 'friends' - well, most of you.
My writing has taken a new turn - slower - but I am always one to go with the moment and this particular moment is beautiful!

I am probably rambling again, but I got run over by a unicycle outside Tesco's on the way home from work - yes really, large boy on one wheel = a gash on the leg and a cartoon lump on the head.
See, life is never dull in blogworld, just wondering when I'm going to wake up.



The picture above is by St Ives artist Annieb - Mother Earth 2

Gardening

What me!

A new story up on Little Minx.

It was inspired by a post I made a little while ago about the burials in our front garden. It won first prize in local competition with the theme of 'Gardening' but I suspect they were hoping for stories about petunias (that is a flower right?) .

The lightbulb theory

Once again, yesterday afternoon, I escaped the madding crowds to survey Lyonesse from atop Godrevy headland. After reading some amazing poetry my thoughts turned to the various posts that I've read this week and in particular a piece by Debi concerning female bloggers. Are women bloggers only there to fem-up the blog world with our titivating commentary on handbags. Oh please!
So why do I like certain blogs - I don't stick to one theme, sex, religion, taste etc. What is it that has drawn me to these people?
A while ago I had a conversation with Maxine at Petrona about my lightbulb theory. I believe that we all have one. We can all walk into a room of strangers and quickly establish who we would like to talk to and I would even go as far as saying that sometimes there is a feeling of instant dislike (and it's not usually wrong).
So in essence I think that we all walk around with an invisible lightbulb above our heads. Some glow dimly, and others shine in colours that appeal to our inner radar system. Some give off 'fuck off' vibes and others draw us in and make us feel at home.
Apparently, for me, it still works through the power of the written word. Wow!



I would just like to say that just for today I would like to be an honourary American. I know that I said that I wouldn't mention football - but did you see the match last night? Puts a whole different light on the expression 'up your bum' and the Italians are just about due another tomato-ing!

Sixteen candles

(well, only two actually, I was in a bit of a rush)

I have just dropped Big Fecker off at the beach for the Party of the Century.
I tried to ignore the crates of beer that were being loaded into the back of the truck and I opened the windows as the 'great unwashed' piled in. I switched to selective deafness as my car music was hi-jacked and I refused to understand the hooded comments as to whether someone had remembered their stash! Oh God, is it sixteen years since I brought this child into the world!

Where, oh where, did I go wrong?

We arrived at the chosen spot and a hundred oiks pounced on the birthday boy dragging him, and the booty, off to somewhere I probably don't want to go.
I looked over the three miles of golden sand and wallowed in my misery of lost motherhood.
As I went to pull out of the carpark Big Fecker tapped on the window.

'Forgot to say thanks mum, you're so cool.'

Then I remembered that I hadn't gone wrong at all.

I quite like pink though!

Never mind the super hero stuff, bollocks to which romantic heroine I might be! The truth of the matter is that deep down somewhere inside there is in fact a girly girl aching to be let out.

I am an enigma of controversy

I love shoes but I hate shopping
I love soft words but I swear like a trooper
I love perfume but I smoke like a train (when I'm writing)
I love skirts but I hate having a wax
I love romance but I hate soppy women
I love being the only woman in my house but I hate doing all the girly jobs
I love to be wooed but you can stick your woo up your ass if I think you're a slimeball

I am therefore, Audrey Hepburn with a moustache!

No biting

'His Highness the Earl of Education is coming today Minx, be nice.'
'I am nice' I said.
'You know what I mean' the boss said.
Oh dear, cut off my tongue with a blunt and rusty knife, I'm going to have to behave all day.

I managed, until lunchtime, to keep my lips pure and clean and only let slip one minor indiscretion concerning a cucumber. I avoided His Highness like the plague lest I should let slip the words of a trooper and I didn't let out one snipey comment to a soul. I was gooder than good and was feeling quite righteous by the end of the afternoon. A clean mouth is really rather pleasant. I am nice, I'm really nice.
After a staff a meeting tonight the boss asked:
'Are you all right Minx? You seem a little off colour today, not quite yourself.'

Grrrrr. Tommorrow I bite!

Always knew there was a bit of a pirate in me!

But I don't want to be him. Think I'm far more suited to be his rather attractive, devilishly clever sidekick!
What Super Hero are you?
Find out at Bourgeois Nerd but don't expect too many girly heroes, a bloke obviously put this one together!!

Somewhere in the world there is a love story unfurling itself like the petals of an exquisite orchid.

Majnun and Laila


Laila's thoughts to shun such love
handed from the lap of God
that shook the very roots of life
to rent her soul, a wounding knife
of doubt

Majnun in tempest, fire lit
within a soul of restless torment
to serve poor Laila's vibrant need
a gift to another, another's gift
in vain

Majnun and Laila, lovers knot
tied by ink and the lies of others in
whose ignorance denial rots
the core of blessings not forgot
just mistaken but
troth was pledged upon these hearts
A charm let loose by nameless Gods
turns spirit free
to fly this earth without want or need
lest they deny the truth
and finality
of constant love



('Majnun and Laila' is a Persian story akin to Romeo and Juliet)

Okay, okay, I'll watch the football!

Cornish for beginners

I was just wondering how to explain the inticacies of the Cornish dialect when the MD handed me his 'Touring Team Language Guide'.
Big Fecker has played rugby since he was six and touring sides have often had trouble with the terms used by supporters on the line. The MD cleverly made this guide to aid understanding of our rich and varied idiolect (maybe idiot-lec!).
Please remember that the best way to insult a Cornishman is to associate the Cornish accent with anything south of Bristol - not so!
Please note that to speak properly the following words and phrases must be spoken at the speed of light.

Gottunavee........Are you in possession of the ball?

Getthebuggerowt.......that chap is offside, kindly remove him from the ruck.

Knawimdoee.....Do you know who that fellow is?

Passenowt...Please pass the ball

Givusunere......May I have the ball please?

Givunasmack/smackgotoee.....It is time to inflict retribution for a previous transgression.

Avimboy...Inflict a hard challenge on that fellow

Bringundown......Tackle that chap to the ground

Gettunlow...It may be prudent to tackle that fellow around the legs

Whatthehellareeedoinof.....I fear you are not playing to your full potential

Blindaree.....It would appear that you were unable to see that incident referee.


The club motto is in the Cornish Language, which about five people speak.
An Gwary Ha Tra Nahen .....The Game and Nothing Else

The language barrier - a grey/gray area?

Bored with the lettuce nibblers at lunchtime I stuck my head in a box of education mags that no one ever looks at. After nearly giving up on the infernal, whining drivel I came across an article that nearly dislocated my eyebrows.
'Phhwhaaat?'
Apparently the American children are having trouble understanding English!
No, no, let me explain. Kids in the States are having trouble with English-English (so good they named it twice!) but Australian kids understand English-English because their language, Australian-English is closer to it. Are you with me?
Have I just slipped off the edge and unbeknown to me the Americans are now speaking a different language?
Just because one of our illiterate English emigrants failed to put the 'e' in gray and missed out the 'u' in colour, does this mean that we are not communicating properly?
Oh, I know you lot like to refer to your trousers as 'pants' and you call your biscuits 'cookies' but I am quite at home with these terms and don't have much difficulty with translation. There are far worse things creeping into our beautiful language.
At a meeting the other day a powerfully dressed woman introduced me to her 'cosiate' (her colleague and associate!). Call me a cloth eared bint, who's dafter than a bag of spanners, but isn't this taking it just a little too far.
Still that's English-English for you!!

Inner Peace

A friend sent me an email yesterday.

'Try this,' she said, 'it worked for me and I've been trying to find inner peace for years. Aparently Dr Phil recommends that you finish all those things that you have started.
So I looked around the house and found all those things that I have started and never finished. Before I left for work I finished off a bottle of chianti that I had left the night before. Then I finished the merlot and then the bottle of Kahlua that we had opened at the party last Saturday. After that I finished the remainder of a packet of prozac and the half eaten cheesecake. Then I finished the bottle of Baileys, a packets of Doritos and the box of chocolates.
Fuck, do I feel peaceful!!'
Please pass this on to anyone who you feel is stuggling to find their inner peace, it works!

Blogger.....

I am a one blog woman but if you continue to piss me off like this then I'm going to pack my bag and leave you for one of those nice typepad thingies.
You are a lying git, intent on ruining my carefully laid evening plans and cutting me off from my own fucking comments!!
Bet you can't even publish this post, go on I dare you, it's taken me four hours just to get in here...bastard!!

Heat cure.....

.....drink plenty of water!

666

Must be true, been cursed, and cursing, all day.
It started with the car this morning. The Twat Magnet was blaring and attracting all sorts of undesirables one of which only missed my bumper thing by a matter of milli-inches.
Once at work I found that some twonk had spilt coffee all over my profiles that had taken me three weeks and my early morning blog check was thwarted by the builders putting a drill through the connection. Not happy and it's only 8pm!

Hearing aids blighted the rest of my morning and the only bright spot was this:

Minx - 'I'm taking out your aids, they need cleaning.'
A (aged 4) - 'What say?'
M - 'Your aids need cleaning, I'm taking them out.'
A - 'Eh, what say?'
M - 'YOUR AIDS, CLEANING.'
A - 'What? Can't hear you, you've taken off my aids.'

Then someone sat on my sandwich at lunchtime - not funny, I like my food and had to eat a 'bummed' egg and tomato pancake.
This afternoon we discovered that the heating was still on (that's county policy for you, melt them in summer, freeze their balls off in winter) and the room hit about 99 degrees, kids were dropping like flies! Terrible mess.

Got home to find that the dog had pooed in the kitchen (old age), there was no milk, blogger had just died with no warning and I couldn't write a bean on the novel because I'd lost the will to live.
A dose of Big Brother made me feel so normal and I think that I shall just have to write into the night because I dare not go to sleep!!

A little word in your ear

Words: enough to move mountains, start wars, make peace and irritate the pants off me. I love them all.


Words I love the sound of:
quixotic
juniper
absinthe
quiver
poot
suede
imbibe
twat

Lovely meanings:
love
light
dawn
blessings
hug
peace

Words I love, but try not to use (too much)
wanker
fucker
bint
spit
bugger

Words I hate
no
pantypad
grist
large
bestial
semen
nice
tights

Words that the kids made (that we kept)
mockapockahooter (computer)
helipopter
parcark

This list will change tomorrow, but that's words for you!
What's your word of the day?

A beauty spot

Please go and visit Majnuun at 'Ecoute Moi'. His gorgeous words are enough to bring me to my knees. Frank Wilson has the eyes of a hawk!!

For all us rejects

Go and have a look at this at The Tart of Fiction (post - 'Haven't we all nearly', June 1st - click on 'clip'). Thanks to Petrona for this one.

Night of the ancestor

Football do's are notoriously tedious, bad food, awful music and small talk with strangers. Last night proved the exception with an indepth discussion about families and ancestors.

My own family has been traced back to 1497, but the period that has always interested me most was the Cornish mining migration in the middles 1800's. As tin mining waned in Cornwall there was a mass exodus to find work and among our group last night we found that each of us had ancestors that had supplied Austrailia, South Africa and America with new citizens.

Four brothers from my own lot emigrated to Ballarat, Austrailia and the other four went to Ishpeming, Michigan, in the US, branching out to Dakota and beyond. Their mother, Martha was left at home in Greensplat with four girls who eventually joined their brothers.
I have a photograph of Martha at the time of her husband Thomas' death, unfortunately I can't seem to scan the photo and blog it otherwise you could see the pain that is etched on her face.

I wrote about it instead:


Bones

The veil holds the years
forever locked in sepia
where my weeping heart cannot speak
of new mines in pristine lands
or the song of gold in the black hills

Twelve children borne
now scattered to the winds of change
I am orphaned
lured by the shiny dollar from our dying earth
they lined their nests
at the end of the Hudson

Until I fade
the rustle of my tidy taffeta
is hushed
remembering the day
that loneliness was mine
silence will follow down the years
whilst the bones hold the pose of his death.

Age appropriate

In a discussion about envy on Skint Writer's blog, I sat in the garden this morning and mulled over my comments. Do I have 'writer envy', honestly, and if not, then why not?

Envy is a strong word, a sin according the 'seven deadlies'. Should I have some, will it make me a better writer? Have I set my goals too low, should envy be a motivator? Help, I'm going round in circles.

I think age has something to do with this conundrum. I already have a career that I am (mostly) sucessful at. Writing came late. Like a lot of people, after personal tragedies, I looked for ways to express myself and the keyboard came looking for me. I never thought that I would just keep going and I was delighted when I had written 90,000 words and realised that it was novel length. It was crap, but I had fallen in love with my own words.

Age has given me a confidence that I didn't have in my twenties, nor possibly in my thirties. Life experiences have brought me screaming into my forties and given me a gift that I realise that many will never be given. I can admire other writers and appreciate their writing gifts. I feel only warmth when I hear that someone has made it.
I am, in short, at peace with myself and at peace with my writing. I have ambition, but it is only for me, myself and I!

Gone out to play

It's 80 degrees in the back garden.....whoooooopeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!

Back when it's cooler!

Not fair!!

Googlemail will not let me play - sorry if I've missed anything important that I should have replied to - don't think it's me. Anyone else had trouble?

While you were sleeping...

...the Minx has been setting up a new school. It is going to be called:

'The Minx School for budding Agents and Publishers'.

If you are interested in sending your offspring to this exclusive establishment then please read the following prospectus.

The school, established in 2006, will take all genre of children with a special interest in Young Males, Chicks and Fantasy children.
The school, on acceptance, will take over all rights to your children and contact will be limited to a once yearly inquiry that we will have no intention of answering.
The Minx (already a legend in her own lifetime) has a reputation of complete and utter professionalism and will ensure that all submitted children will be looked at, studied and sent home again at the appropriate time.
Please remember that all applications must contain a brief synopsis of the child and an account of their family history. The Minx points out that at this stage a bodily part would be useful in her decision.
The submission of children by email or disk (the backdoor method), will not be considered.

Once through the acceptance phase parents must realise that their children will be isolated until further notice and left to gather dust in the caretakers room in the bowels of the school.
Reports will be sent out if, and when, it is deemed neccessary and will take the form of a smaller than average postcard that will be signed by Mrs Qwerty who is not employed by the school.

We hope that you will consider this school for your offspring and have every faith that the Minx will turn out well rounded students to join the beautiful and wonderful world of Agents and Publishers!