Currently reading May 2023

I am currently reading quite a few book according to my Goodreads.com list, but I would say I am only really active in four of them for the past week now, despite there actually being 22 books on the list, a handful have been slowly slogged through for the past year!

But never mind – it’s just the result of an ever increasing chaotic and information starved mind!

The four I am currently reading are from the library so I have to whip myself to read them before the 21 days is up!

They are;

The High Five Habit by Mel Robbins

Grow your own poem by Kate Clanchy

A nature poem for every day of the year Edited by Jane McMorland Hunter

Eating to extinction by Dan Saladino

“The high five habit” by Mel Robbins is being read the fastest because I am trying to get my act together basically!  I finished a free Mel Robbins course a couple of weeks back and I wanted to learn more about this “high five habit” I’ve heard about and although I have been doing it for a few days now I have forgot on two days, so it’s not ingrained to do that yet for me. 

But I have noticed a difference with me approaching mirrors nonetheless, I have a faint smile these days, which is something – because I was a pretty miserable person whenever I look in mirrors before this thing.

I’m really trying to motivate myself to fight for a life and I tell you it is hard, it is a battle and I have virtually no support in doing this – I am on my own!

So I have to haul my own ass to change, as Mel Robbins says time and time again “nobody is going to save you, only you can save you”.

So that’s what I am trying to do.  Save myself.

“Grow your own poem” by Kate Clanchy has been borrowed and reordered to borrow from the library with small breaks in between since November!  Why?  Because there are a lot of small tasks in them and I would like to do them spread out, so I could learn better that way – it will stick better.  If I read the whole book then go back to do the essay one after the other I am more likely to forget what I am learning.

So I am doing it my way and it works!

I have noticed an improvement in the quality of my work and so has Paul and I thank this book for it!

“Eating to extinction” by Dan Saladino, is a gripping read about how humanities social progress and diet is actually going to eventually starve out humanity because it is unsustainable and not very diverse; monocultures and picky farmers are literally making extinct thousands of alternate food sources around the world yearly, in order to condense our diets down to a few of our favourites.

Which by and large is not healthy for us and not a wise thing to do in the long run because of climate change, but also our microbiota is starving which is causing all kinds of auto-immunity problems and other health risks.

And if you know me, from reading things about me in the dim and distant past, not only am I a huge advocate for sustainability and paleo thinking, but I am also incredibly geeky about microbiomes!

“A nature poem for every day of the year” by Jane McMorland Hunter – again I am reading this to kind of study poetry but also because of Ray Bradbury’s idea of reading a poem, an essay and a short story every day. 

I read a lot of non-fiction daily anyway, it’s a habit I’ve always had, I don’t read much fiction to be honest but when I do I tend to like picking up short story anthologies and I virtually never read poetry until recently, so I felt like a kindred spirit of Ray Bradbury when I read this quote the other week!

I used to read fiction a lot when I was younger but I got out of the habit of it because I started to panic that my ideas were like this and that and this too!  So it made me worry constantly about plagiarism.

Again, if you know me, you’d know by now I am an incessant worry wart!

So to ensure I don’t give up my current words in progress (WIP) I got out of the habit of reading too much fiction.

Which is kind of stupid, but there you go.

Thanks for reading!

Creative journal stored

I am creating a writer’s journal that is private and sending it to my cloud.  It is all about my thought processes throughout all my creative ventures and things that occur because of it.

I do want to be a writer and get published and I know that doesn’t seem like a reality right now in my life, due to the fact that since September I have probably written towards my novels no more than perhaps six times due to extreme depression.

But the dream is still there, to be a writer that is published.

I am trying to focus my thoughts and ignore the crap going on in my life so I can get on with it, because not writing my stories is like someone putting a chisel to my temples… its torture basically.

I thought, all the best creatives in the world keep a diary don’t they?  Well, why don’t I?  But this one with the intention of keeping it for future historians is that conceited of me?  Is that really a bad thing?

I like to think that it’s appreciated rather than judged as a form of egotism.

There are things in the diary that won’t be published until I am dead, because it will reveal problems I have undergone to maintain my individuality and it will talk about people who have literally stolen ideas from me because I talked too much in my earlier years as a writer because of the advice of “how to write” books.

It won’t just focus on my writing though, it will focus on my whole being as a creative; stories, poems, art, music, everything that inspired creation in me and had a part in the works I’ve done.  I will talk about all my projects, even those that might never get published.  Those that might never get published will always be stored away somewhere, so that in the future, perhaps someone will publish them because they want them, because they want more of me.

Again, not to be conceited, but I have to think about how much people want these things and they will and they do this thing with other posthumous authors and creatives, so why should I be any different?  It’s just forward thinking that’s all.  We often get pent up with all the process of just being ourselves we forget the larger picture, we presume we are not good enough to get to that stage where we become historical, but who are we to judge in the end?

Nobody thinks highly of themselves enough to assist historians do they?  Some do, but not many and it is a frustrating thing for historians.  I have a love for history and I have a love for certain authors of which I wanted to know more on a deeper level but they felt that they were being conceited if they spoke about themselves a lot – humble creatures really.  I am too, but I understand people and the things they yearn as I am a person too.

So that is what I am doing.  I am, from today, creating a creative diary about my writing, its processes, where I got inspiration from, my rivals, my thieves, everything about my creations is going to be documented.  If nothing else it will make me write more than I do, because it could be used as a warm up to writing instead of playing online games or ranting in my 750words.com

I will enjoy it.

Thanks for reading…

Some Words

Words come and go

I write them down as they flow

Alike to the wet river

Words come streaming, sometimes slither

Some words are good and others bad

Others make me happy and others make me sad

But words flow through me like a breeze

You will see me write with ease

But sometimes I throw those words away

Because I didn’t like how they played

I sit and whittle away the hours

I fill the page with wordy showers

Some words are nice and some are evil

Some are alone and some in sequels

Some makes books and others don’t

Some words I will publish and others I won’t

Some words will play with your mind

Others are hard to understand I find

Some words are long and others short

Some are loose and others taut

Some are fine and some are not

Some words come out like a blot

Some are written by the hand

Some are typed on a computer, grand

But mostly words just sit with me

In my mind and won’t be free

Those words they have a hold on me

Clogging my chakra aggressively

Because I will not share those words with you

For all sorts of reasons both old and new

For some words are good and some are bad

And some words make me happy and others make me sad

And all the while I sit with words

And some fly out of me like birds

Getting fast again

I have written 1600 words towards my AD project since last night, I am now onto the second draft and I have also done 1400 words towards a screenplay and about 400 words towards plans.

Not doing bad and I did all of these in two short hours between midnight and 2:30am last night – I hope today to do more.

Project AD is really coming along now, so proud, a lot more new and fuller ideas which work better than before in my opinion and a lot of questions have been answered and gaps filled.

I strongly feel if I continue how I have done last night this first book of the series will be done before Henry’s birthday, because I am more or less working at the same speed and way I used to, when I lived with my mum.  If I continue like this, it would be more than plausible for me to finish this project before March and that wouldn’t be over optimistic.  I used to write fast back then.

When I lived with my mum a slow book took six to ten weeks, an average one a month.

You can definitely see that writing fast is in my genes when you consider that I am reputed to be a fifth or so generation cousin to Dame Barbara Cartland and she wasn’t the only author I am related to either – but she was definitely renown to be the fastest!  Another author I am related to as a many times cousin is Samuel Taylor Coleridge, I forget the approximate generation unfortunately.  But he was cousin to I believe my 7x great grandfather, but unsure.

Tragically I have read nothing from either of them.

I really ought to get around to it.

Thanks for reading! 

A silly dream

One thing I didn’t realise or remember about having an Alexa Echo Dot thingy, is that I can get to hear my kindle books on it, spoken aloud by Alexa herself!  I am excited about that because my Kindle stopped working around two years ago I had loads of books on it, downloaded a load of free classic literature.

Today I sat through and heard the first three chapters of The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole, for the first time – it’s quite a good read actually.  I have wanted to read that story for years!

I can totally understand why so many classic horror novelists have owed their inspiration to it!

Because of the book and because of the music, I have found myself daydreaming about my vampires again – yes I know there are no vampires in the story, but still, the thought is there.

The music I have been listening today have been my vampire playlist, but I have started to create a new vampire playlist now, one that concentrates mostly on classical music because of the time period I am thinking about.

My music tastes are more than just a little bit eclectic; I do in fact listen to classical music about half the time actually and my paternal family has always been into classical music and that side of the family has always been musical and involved with entertainment in some manner of speaking.

I for example, was classically trained in opera as a young child, until my mum got fed up forking out the money for something she didn’t find productive, my dad and his family were very distressed at her stopping this.

I love a lot of different types of musical interests, Jazz, soul, rock and alternative with classical or classical fusion and world music.  I have never been to a music concert before, unless you include local classical orchestra that is and nobody really wants to hear that I have gone to those, because they expect you to say some cooler like a rock band or something.

But I have always been a huge fan of Vivaldi, George Gershwin, Beethoven, Vaughn Williams and Tchaikovsky to name but a few.  I even like modern classical from John Williams, Alan Silvestre and Brad Fiedel which are movie composers.

I am one of these strange people that when she watches a movie, she lets the whole thing consume her – the visuals, the acting, the audio – background music, it is all taken in by me.  I am not happy to just watch a movie and enjoy it; I like to know where that music came from in scene whatever and well that’s just me, I am a geek, what can I say?

Since I was very small I had loads of dreams about being some kind of composer myself, lyricist, but also a director or something along those lines.  But the thing is I could never narrow down what I wanted to focus on, because I like the whole caboodle. 

I want to be an artist, I want to do the music, I want to design the costumes, I want to help the props, I want to write songs, I want to write the stories and for a good few years as a child I used to roleplay being a radio DJ too!

But because I can’t focus which one, I never threw myself into it, because I would literally run around trying to do the whole thing!

I have so many interests and I let a project consume me, I remember when I was in college I was part of an amateur dramatics group and I couldn’t choose my focus and my friends loved me, but found my lack of focus on one or two aspects very frustrating and distracting!

They loved my dedication but would often cry into their hands about “Tina, please just focus”!

Most of them pushed me into the acting, writing or prop making as they felt those things were my best strengths.  But I wasn’t keen on the acting, though they kept trying to steer me into it as they believed I was amazing.  But I didn’t want that, I knew that, I knew that I didn’t want that part of it, but I wanted everything else, lol.

In the last few weeks of being in that group, I was primarily writer and they enjoyed it – but then they started to try and shift my genre focus.   “You do better horror and psychological thrillers than anything else” they said.

By that time I knew my time was up, because my mum didn’t like me doing this in my spare time after college, she wanted me home in the evenings and didn’t like how many friends I was making and didn’t like me leaving the college to go into London with my friends to do things like street miming.

I love mime artists.

Recently I have new desires and I am not taking myself seriously over it, because I am starting way too late.

This new desire is one of the reasons why I am losing weight and trying to get good fitness levels back.  I want to join an adult beginner’s gymnastics class, as silly as that sounds.

Because my whole life I have wanted to do something and I had never confessed it to anyone because of how stupid it is!

I am one of these people who want to run away with the circus, kind of – but not quite!

Since I was a child I would often find myself listening to classical music and imagining myself as a circus acrobat, primarily trapeze, trampolines or tight rope walking.  I often saw myself in the circus glamour and doing my stuff – but more recently, as silly as it sounds, I have thought of myself doing this in a comedy sketch form.  A clown in fact, but I am not interested in any circus.  I am inspired by the Cirque Du Soleil.

I know it will take me around fifteen years to get to the standard they would hire, so this is why I am not taking myself seriously.

It’s just a stupid big dream of mine.

I have even thought about the clown design I would have for myself.

I don’t want it as a long term career, I just want to do my show on tour for a year and then give up, because it is something I would have worked hard to do and ticked off my bucket list – one of the BIG dream tick offs!

But as I said, I don’t think it will ever happen and it is just a silly dream after all, I can barely walk two miles without coming to my knees right now – still recovering from eight years of bedbound sickness, this is why I am not taking it seriously.

But I am totally in love with The Cirque Du Soleil.

I sent an email to a local disabled adult beginners gymnastics tutor today, she said twenty hours a week for ten to fifteen years and I could do my dream and no, forty years old is not too old to be accomplished in that!

There are many silly dreams I don’t share.

Thanks for reading!

Romance with death

So many things are taking up space in my mind over the past few days; I am finding it hard to concentrate on anything but emotional presence, which is strange because I usually try to avoid acknowledging my emotions as much as possible, or at least as minimal as possible.

I don’t really know much about meditation other than what I have learned in books and on YouTube.

I have never had a guided meditation – so I don’t really know if the meditation I did a few days ago called “Who am I”? Has anything to do with it, but it’s a strange coincidence if it hasn’t.

When I am not drifting off into trance-like stupors losing twenty minutes a time, I try to sit and focus on writing something for my blog or towards my stories or reading a book, only for me to be absorbed yet again in my emotions.

There is a voice at the back of my head telling me that I need to go through this process as it is healing me in preparation for something big coming into my life.

If I want to cry, do it – but I still try to hold back.

I never did get into the crying yoga I said I was interested in – I kind of know deep down it is something I need… but I still hold back.

I often try not to be emotionally present so it is all new to me.  I try to shut away my emotions into a coffin, put it into a wardrobe and throw the wardrobe into a lake tied up with ropes and rocks so I don’t remember them… until a drought comes at least.

Not that I fly tip or anything, I am being metaphorical – some people can take things too seriously!

I think there are some readers out there that takes me too seriously too – sometimes when my depression kicks in and I make all these creative works of poetry, I sometimes sit back and laugh at how tragic I was for those moments and I feel stupid and slightly embarrassed by yet another emotional outburst. 

I think it is good for you to know that sometimes when I have got it all out creatively, I do laugh at myself – because of how pathetic I come across.  Some days though, I am quite serious and often think about death very seriously after writing such things… but a good third to near half of the time I find humour in my tragedy, like some kind of sad clown story.

I do see myself as a pitiful sad clown a lot of the time.  The kind of clown that will sit in the grey in dirty dusty clown clothes, with a black cone hat and grey pom poms on it, sitting miserably alone in their own grey tragedy – then suddenly opens the door of their house to jump off the cliff that’s waiting just beyond the threshold only he is saved by a rainbow bridge and whilst he is standing on that rainbow bridge he magically transforms into a colourful rainbow clown and laughs at his own sorrow and skips off down the curve of the rainbow to play with the faeries!

Well that’s how I visualise myself anyway.

Dark sense of humour at times!

But you have to admit though, the depths I go, the sarcasm at times, the irony etc. – I see myself as ironic, my humour is definitely ironic and I know because I have been told multiple times that my humour is lame – but you’ve got to admit, sometimes it’s funny?

Was never meant to be, but boy I can get too deep at times cant I? Its almost like a romance with death and despair!

Well, if I didn’t laugh I’d cry and which one is better eh?

I’m trying so hard not to be a Sylvia Plath, not going down her route.

However, my depression is very real.  Have no doubt about that.

Thank you for reading… 

Being an authentic author

Great literature comes from the heart.  A great writer put their heart, their soul and their experience onto the paper.  They write what they love and are passionate about and they ensure to put as much emotion into their piece as they could possibly muster!

People want to read amazing literature, people want to write it too; but some people seem to think that they can’t trust themselves, their passions, their ideas because they have a low self-esteem and value for what they believe they are worth – so these sorts of people tend to be what I call “the idea stealers” and then they wonder why they aren’t as successful as Joe Blogs down the road and to me it’s purely a matter of just being you.  You weren’t being genuinely yourself when you are writing and that’s why you aren’t as good as someone who has their own path, their own ideas and put their heartfelt passions into a word format, like a book.

You’d be surprised at how many people would read a book about a character that is passionate about stamp collecting, if the author has the same passion – because the spirit of the author leaks onto the page and makes it feel genuine and fresh regardless of the subject matters general popularity in society.

I’ve read books with such a boring synopsis but were riveting reads, because I believe the author had done that – put their spirit into the pages of that book, by being themselves!  After researching the authors I find out that they do have similar lives to their characters and that’s why they are a success – even fantasy authors, though magic isn’t real, the power of belief and imagination is so strong in them as a person, they can trick you into believe it is!

Trend chasers do not tend to be very successful authors or at least not authors with readership longevity.

Don’t chase trends, don’t think that one author is doing really well on her blog or her sales that you must try and copy the frame of her work as your own in order to succeed as you think that’s a trend – you are not harming that other author, but you are harming yourself and your authenticity.  If there is nothing more that can sell better than talent it is a person’s authenticity – their brand. 

You being your authentic self is your brand.  Can you really keep up the pretence for the rest of your life that you love fairy romances when you by your very nature is a conservative person who doesn’t believe in magic and dreams coming true and love at first sight?

There is a time when it will become a grind for you and your mental health will suffer.  I have seen this happens to many authors over the time I’ve been online and befriended a few.

They tend to crash and burn out and give up.

The catalyst is usually the time when they choose a prompt and they are led by that prompt and the stealing of multiple ideas of other authors which reflect similar subjects of the prompt.  This is a thing, I’ve seen it time and time again and I actually have friends who are the writers of these prompts and they’ve cheekily used some of my ideas in their prompts to prompt other writers to write.

This has caused a surge over the years of certain subjects swamping the publishing industry with the same old subject and similar storylines, which gets old for author agents very quickly and it is why many book trends come and go erratically fast!

Trend chasers exhaust the idea pot because they are frightened of their own authenticity.

They feel that others will judge them as harshly as they judge themselves and that is not the case at all.

I am not sitting here being all high and mighty, I have succumb to this kind of pressure myself and I have sat down and seen the industry exhausted by vampires, so I have chased the other trends, witches or werewolves or demons and I wasn’t as happy as I was when I was writing my vampires and it is clearly seen in my works.

The heart isn’t there.

So where is my heart?

Where is my authentic self?

That’s another post…

For now, I want you to ask yourself the same question.

Thanks for reading!

Art project for tarot

Over the next few days I am drawing up a plan for a relatively big art project, an art project I am hoping to put out into the market to sell; the project is creating my own deck of tarot cards!

It is something I have always wanted to do, but until recently I have had little confidence in both my ability to read the tarot without referencing to books and even less confidence in my artwork.

I am now a little bit better off where I can afford to replace art supplies again as I use them, so there are no more excuses in me not doing art anymore.

There is only one true thing against me and my art now that is doing the art in a stress free environment away from the icy cold.  My art table is used for other means most of the time and so it is a fight to get the space used for what it should be and I can’t move it to a warmer location because it is currently being used as a dining table in order to make room in the house.

The art table was also my jigsaw puzzle table, needless to say I haven’t touched a jigsaw in nearly three years and you’ve guessed why by now haven’t you?

So, being as my art table is being used, I have to try and consider doing art elsewhere… the only other option is to use my adjustable laptop table in the bedroom, but then that risks getting ink and paint on the bedclothes and the table rocks a lot whenever I tap on it, which could ruin the art consistently.

My other option would be to sit on the floor and place a dragon box between my legs whilst my Pooh board balances on the top of it and I cover the board with cling film so I don’t ruin the art of my Pooh board.

What is my Pooh board, you may ask? 

It’s a board with Pooh on it – Winnie-The-Pooh, I once had this board downstairs and Henry was around 3yrs old and drew a scribble on the board, or so Paul thought it was a scribble – I looked at it and I said – OMG IT’S AMAZING LOOK WHAT HE’S DRAWN PAUL!  Paul nodded and smirked and I said, can you see what he has drawn?  No, he said.  I said, look, there is a snout here see?  And an eye… to me this is the very head of Winnie-The-Pooh!  Oh yeah said Paul vaguely… I am still not sure he saw it.  But after a few months went by I decided I was going to thicken the outline with a sharpie, exact to the lines Henry made and then Paul saw it!

This board was shunted around the house without any real value or meaning, never to this day did I know why we kept it, but it became useful when I became sick around a year later – because it became my sandwich board!

Meaning, as I was too sick sometimes to leave the bedroom to eat, I would rest my plate usually sandwiches or a bowl of soup on the board whilst I sat in bed and I ate alone.  Over a time this board developed more and more pictures as in the boredom of being mostly bedbound I started to draw all kinds of various images/crap on it.

Some aspects of it positively scream street art or graffiti, other aspects old style cartoons and yes, some occult images too and affirmations.

Paul told me, one day, when I sell my book and people hear or even see this board, they’d want to buy it!  I should frame the board in a manner it can be framed double sided, so you can choose which side you want it on the wall.  I said nobody will be interested in my sandwich board!

He said nobody will see it as your sandwich board; they’ll see it as art – put it up online for sale and see what I mean! 

I AM NOT SELLING MY SANDWICH BOARD!

He told me if I died he would!

So yeah, that’s what I am doing over the next few days, planning the art I want to do for each tarot card, then it will take me one day per picture to create on average, maybe three depends on what medium I intend to use – I think I intend to use ink personally.  So there are usually 78 cards to a tarot deck, this means that the project should be finished around 90 to 100 days after I start the plans. 

So I am going to presume that it will take me two days a picture which gives me an estimated time frame of the finished product being around the 1^st August to the end of August 2023.

This is achievable if my work is done at my usual pace of 3 to 7 hours per picture every two days.  Really the 1^st August is 201 days away from now – and I only really need 156 days to do it, but I know I procrastinate and have sick days so I’ve made allowances for that and a couple of down and out failures and restarts as well as artistic lethargy! 

Thing is, I want to do more than one deck in the future, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves, shall we?

Let’s do one deck first and let’s see!

The art for the tarot will be used to sell prints, pins and stickers as well as a bunch of other items and I plan to sell them via square space.  I also plan to start a paid subscription service here on my blog where my users will get a huge discount voucher and a bunch of other stuff. 

Yes a paid subscription for extra material is coming up sometime in the future, not sure when I am trying to figure all the technical stuff out first and I am procrastinating because technology outside of games is just boring to me!

So yes, that’s what I am up to now.

Thanks for reading! 

Top 10 dreams or imaginings

Top 10 of dreams or things regarding my imagination

Top 10 favourite scenes to imagine

Anything with caves or subterranean

A world made of candy

Dark street scenes

Scenes with rain

Scenes with fire

Vampires

Lost souls fighting against the odds

Spooky children

Circuses and carnival life

Ballroom and parties

Top 10 favourite movies to imagine replaying in my head but differently

Charlie and the chocolate factory with Gene Wilder

Disney’s Funny little bunnies

Rise of the guardians

Mad Max movies

Tank Girl

Hook

Batman movies

Labyrinth with David Bowie

Mr Magorium’s wonder emporium

Alice in wonderland with Martin Short as The Mad Hatter

Top 10 favourite books or stories to imagine and do differently

Gregor the overlander series by Suzanne Collins

Fool by Christopher Moore

The man in the picture by Susan Hill

Smoke and mirrors anthology by Neil Gaiman

Tales of the peculiar by Ransom Riggs

Charlie and the chocolate factory by Roald Dahl

James and the giant peach by Roald Dahl

Engelbert Sneem and His Dream Vacuum Machine by Daniel Postgate

The spider by Hanns Heinz Ewers

The Hobbit by J.R.R Tolkien

Top 10 repetitive dreams I have at night – whether I like them or not!

Going back to my mum’s house in London packing over and over again!

Being chased by something but all it is, is love

Reptiles protecting me from something or shepherding me into places

Swimming in clean water and being pulled out of the water by crocodiles or alligators

Walking or running through a woodland with large lake and streams that is situated behind an army barracks

Sitting in a car talking to the man in a black suit

Putting up or taking down Christmas decorations, usually Christmas is cancelled

Visiting the dentist who takes out the wrong tooth or did something wrong

My pets in the garden falling into a muddy pond or being swept away by floods

Visiting a candy stall in a market but it’s all free because a mysterious person paid for it for me

Big dreams given up

This post is all about the big dreams and goals I had in life that are too far reaching I have given up wanting them because of one thing or another. 

As a young child I had a huge love for fashion, particularly fashion design; I remember watching the Fashion Roadshows on TV and The House of Elliot and I remember begging my parents for the Barbie design packs and the make your own design toys.  I got a small pack once, but mum didn’t like my enthusiasm for it. 

When I was going through the pack like nobody’s business, she grew angry about it and tersely stopped my enthusiastic interest in fashion by stating that a fat girl like me would be torn apart in the fashion industry.  She really did a number on my confidence when she knew I actually wanted this as a career.

I was eight or nine years old when I gave up wanting that sort of thing and I grew to detest other girls who were really into that sort of thing because of jealousy issues… if I can’t have that life because of how I look, then why should I support them?  I grew bitter, I admit that.

Because even when I had lost the weight to my mother’s satisfaction there was always the issue of my squinty eyes and my smile is never right either, in fact, my smile looked like a snarl or a grimace.

So the big dream I had as a kid to be a fashion designer went out of the window as did my dream of ever going on the cover of Vogue magazine – which is still something I kind of dream of from time to time.

Another dream I am trying to come to terms with is the fact that since I was a child, I had always wanted a large family – I wanted a minimum of five children all told and as many as nature or God would give me. 

I am coming to terms with the fact I am now 40yrs old and have only one son because of the lack of enthusiasm from his father to have any more with me.

It’s hard to digest because I have the belief that as a woman, I should be mother to a large brood as its natures intention – but there you go, circumstances out of my control dictates to me I can’t have anymore; unless I am lucky enough to have a new relationship soon and I have taken a large chunk out of my paternal families genepool, so that I am fertile into my mid 50s like they are!

OK I suppose for many being a mother to a large family isn’t such a big dream, but it’s one of mine.

Another one of my dreams is to have my stories made into movies, comics or TV shows.  I prefer them to be on screen, I have never written for the motivation to create books – just stories for a screen.

I write the things I want to see on TV.

I have always had the dream of brainstorming with the stars my new story ideas, sitting there discussing what we should do and testing the water a bit with some playful dialogue with each other or play acting things as we’re thinking about them.  I loved drama class at school, though I’d never be confident enough to be a professional actress, it’s not stage fright I have, it’s the idea of becoming too well known where I lose control over my right to peace and tranquillity of not being bothered everywhere I go.

I had my fifteen minutes of fame as a teenager and it drove me bonkers.  I won a fight with the biggest group of school bullies single handed and I became the popular kid for about a month, until my grumpiness about being followed around made people avoid me – Well, I was a moody Goth at the time.

It also became bothersome for a few years that every so often I’d be pulled up in the street being mistaken for two celebrities, this was worse when I was thin!  People didn’t believe I weren’t one of them, because my voice is so much like hers.  Martine McCutcheon, the singer that was also on EastEnders for a time.

I have to admit; I worked on my voice a lot to try and not to sound like her so people would believe me!

I had also wanted some of my stories to be theatre plays, musicals in particular for some of them as I have a huge love for music as much as I do writing and fashion.  I haven’t learned to read music, but when I lived in London and was still in contact with my family my brother let me use his Cubase and was astounded at the compositions I made for my rap/rock band I had in college.

A few people in my family and friendship circle keep telling me I should be a professional singer but I don’t want to do that, I only really want to write the lyrics and compose the music whilst someone else sings them.

I know it sounds like I don’t care about my craft very much but the average song or poem I write can be done in less than half an hour on average and it’s never revised.  Composing music can take one to three days with Cubase, that’s my average anyway – unfortunately I don’t have access to Cubase anymore.

I have also wanted to have a breedable pair of dogs and train them like I always do, but specifically for agility contests and go to dog sports events with them as a competitor.  It’s something I’ve always wanted to do, but when I had dogs when I lived with my parents my mother wouldn’t let me go to the events unless they were within three miles of the house.  So the only event I went to was for three years and that was the Silverstream summer fete contests in Burnt Oak, North London.

My dream has been to have a breedable pair of dogs because I want to keep the bloodline of my original dog in the family for generations, so I am never without at least one dog and the dogs could be inherited down to the family.  Henry loves the idea of this, but Paul says we can’t afford a dog anymore – not with this heat or eat crisis that is going on in the UK right now.

I have also been interested in fly ball and other dog sport activities.

In the past I have been known to train dogs to understand at least thirty commands, but it depends on the dog and my time with them.  To get to the thirty command stage I worked on a new dog three hours a day for four months solid.  I didn’t have that much time with some of the others when I lived with my mum.  But mum hated the bond I had with that dog in particular so much, she got rid of it and gave it to an aunt, broke my heart.  That puppy would have been amazing when she was older.

Another dream of mine is to rebuild The Garden Of Eden, but there you go, probably a little too big for me?

I have simple dreams really – like winning a bakery contest in a country fair, or a contest in applique design.

I know given the right circumstances and resources, I’d be as glamorous as Lady Gaga and other similar stars – I know I would have wacky ideas for fashion, I love to play – I am a very playful person and I like shinies – not necessarily jewellery, I don’t really like to wear that much of it – but I do like shiny things and bold fashion.

I am a big fan of Moschino since Jeremy Scott took over a lot of the designs, that’s the kinda wacky I am on about!

I’m unashamedly a big kid at heart, really I am – there are times I wished that the public weren’t so snippy as I’d love to wear plaited pig tails again in public, not just around the house!

I say I don’t like wearing jewellery much, but I do love bangles – I am the annoying office worker that has ten up each arm and types at 90wpm and jingles all the way!  Or at least I used to be, before the bracelets got presumably lost.

I try to keep a turquoise at my throat area as much as possible too.

But other than that most of my ideas for my dreams are pretty small. 

If money was no object I’d probably have a huge house simply so I can adopt more people and let people stay over and use me as a stop gap – as I am very friendly and I like guests if they are friendly.  I’d have acres of land just so I can have many different types of garden and entertainment areas and play areas for children and pets. 

I’d probably be a party animal, any excuse for a party if I knew I had friends or a lot of people to invite to them, that is.  As I do love parties, but I don’t like drinking much – I just enjoy the positive energy of parties.  Easter, Christmas, Halloween, birthdays, BBQ, New Year, etc.  I love dinner parties too especially if there are guests who are not opposed to games after dinner.

I love planning for events, decorating, preparing, I love it sometimes more than the actual thing itself.  I put my heart and soul into things like that – but it’s an almost non-existent life here with Paul, he doesn’t socialise and so… life in a word is DULL.

I am always thinking about how amazing things are going to be for the people who are going to attend, it’s selfless, I think about individuals who will be there.  It’s just me – I don’t know if I have ever mentioned this before but I was in the hospitality trade for a while as a PA for VIPS.  I was doing so well at Nordic Cruises base as a meet and greeter and was quite popular with the clients for it, that I was offered to go on the cruises for some of the people, but I had to give up the job when they offered me that – because mum didn’t approve me leaving the house for weeks on end.

Because part of my job as a meet and greeter was to also provide lunches and I was so friendly and got to know people so well that I started to customise lunches for people I knew were going to attend meetings that day.

I loved that job, I am a people pleaser if I am honest – it brings me joy to make people feel at home!  I think it was Nordic Cruises anyway; my memory might be a big off.  But whatever, I loved it there even if I wasn’t there for more than a couple of months, of all jobs I had up to that point I thrived there.

So I think the biggest most extravagant thing outside of being on Vogue’s cover magazine and having my stories made into movies would be this… A three day party cruise with a pool with all my favourite people on board almost like an annual thing.

Another extravagant thing is an ice-cream sundae I always wanted to try in New York at Serendipities, it’s the opulent sundae.  Just because it looks freaking cool… no pun intended, its ice-cream – eye roll time!  But it’s like 1k for it!  1k!

But there you go.

Other than that, I just like simple things.  Like the idea of going on the world’s longest zip wire… going zorbing… learning to roller skate and ride a bike… silly things like that. 

Thanks for reading!