Watery writer

I’m going to throw caution to the wind and publicly admit via this blog, that I am not a confident person and I feign intelligence. 

I am a writer but I am uneducated, everything about me is self-taught and I am not a good teacher. 

I blunder my way through life, please take that seriously, because I really do!  Blunder Woman was a character that was in Russ Abbot’s show, but I am pretty sure someone saw into a crystal ball and knew that Blunder Woman might someday be a real person… me!  I think I might look like her when I am eighty; actually, we’re kind of alike!

But anyway, I digress!  So easily distracted like a dog with a… SQUIRREL! 

Right so, now that’s out of the way, I think it has something to do with my Chinese astrological sign – I am a water dog, a poodle or a Labrador I am not sure which, but a water dog nonetheless! 

Water goes with the flow, I always go with the flow, I am always flowing somewhere and even I never know where I end up or what I am about to do; I am true to my element, I am spontaneous, usually best at peace and generally calm but occasionally turbulent and rarely tempestuous!

But generally I am like any water, that if I am not in the right environment I go stagnant – and who wants stagnant water around them?  It’s quite easy for me to flow into stagnation, I am very much affected by those around me and if I choose the wrong sort of people to flow with, I do generally stagnate a lot or become tempestuous.

I am very self-aware, I know it’s my nature to be like this because my astrological element is water and this has helped me a lot to understand myself.  I love Chinese astrology and since I found it, I have found my life has been working more towards what I want from it, rather than just having life happen to me outside of my control.  But as a water element, I don’t like to control too much as I love going with the flow and I am easily dejected when the people I choose to flow to, aren’t good for a water spirit like me!

It’s easy to get me flowing into the right things, with gentle persuasion, love, conversation, I am easily motivated to flow anywhere and that does mean I am occasionally prone to finding manipulators that like to take advantage of my nature.

My main life partner Paul is a fire elemental (fire monkey), you are right to think that this sounds like chaos waiting to happen, because there are many times where I feel that I flow around him and dry up a bit.  Contrariwise he suffers as I can over suffocate him when I try to calm him down and he is easily exhausted by my high energy and my spontaneity.

My Henry, my son, is a metal tiger.  I consider him a huge support but I can’t help but think I am not good for him, as I sometimes feel I corrode him, like water does to metal over time.  Perhaps I am overthinking things, but this is how I feel!

Perhaps I should try and help balance him more by making lemon drizzle cakes and homemade lemonade to help maintain his metal spirit?  Lemons are good with corroding metal restoration!  Thing is, the boy hates lemons, so what is a water mother to do?

You may think I wrote this entry in jest, but it is my life, it is quite serious for me.  An insight to my brain like this can often terrify the sensitive, but at least I am honest!

I am drying up, or becoming stagnant, I am not quite sure which it is yet;

I say this because I am wanting to write more than ever these days and I am – but I am not focusing too much on novels anymore, because I can’t flow how I want to or how I used to, when being creative.

I used to brainstorm with a close circle of family or family friends, before I moved in with Paul and it would be good energy for me to make me want to write so I can tell them what I have done and what I might plan and to see what they have to say about it all!  But Paul just isn’t into my genres or my sense of corny humour.  I have no one where I can do this to, without the worry that they are going to steal my ideas and use them because I am too slow as I am a meticulous planner.

Because I have no one to share my thoughts with, I am being boiled within the inch of my life and becoming despondent with my storytelling, because, well, what’s the point?  If I don’t have someone who wants to share my creative journey with me on a personal level and talk about things as I do them, how else can I get the fuel to want to finish what I started?

I am easily downcast; I am easily demotivated by other people’s disinterest and I am a worry wart, who is fearful of anyone new who wants me to talk about my work – I have trust issues because I have been bitten a lot in the past.

I need a mentor or a friend I can trust, preferably a small group of them – but how can I find them?  I am at a loss… I had thought about joining a critique group, but there is a problem with that… I am a slow reader, I can’t read three or four extra novels in a week as well as my usual two books I need for research and my own pleasure reading, I just can’t read that fast!

So what is a water dog girl like me to do?

Flow into stagnant waters again I guess… I don’t like it there, it’s too murky and stinks and it’s a bit boring to be frank.

My confidence has taken a huge bashing recently; I feel lame in my sense of humour and I feel alone in my creativity because I am overly cautious and don’t trust the internet very much – sorry people!

But recently I am starting to feel a little bit ashamed of the comedy aspects of my work, because it’s too corny, stupid, over the top and it hurts!  It hurts a lot.

The only genre I can openly talk about without boring the only person who will listen to it, is dark humour in my horror or some dystopian works, outside of that, I don’t have any support.  I wrote a list last week of all of my current WIPs, there are nearly two hundred novels and eighty nine are fantasy mostly, half of which are comedy.  There are only thirty seven horrors that are not vampires or dystopian based.  I have to admit, this person is trying to make me refocus mostly on horror and I am more fantasy and family really.

My main project – the anthropomorphic dystopian is really loved by my listener and only one fantasy novel about dragons and magic is loved by them too – the rest gets a meh or a snore, if it’s not traditional horror.

I prefer fantasy because it heals me from remembering the crap in the world; horror was originally written because my life was horrible, I experience intense violence and been in survival situations that were horrid and I was excellent at writing nasty things like that because of experience.  But I don’t like reliving that kind of thing all the time, fantasy is more healing for me.

I need the pretence that life can be utopian and magical and miraculous and lovely, but I also know that leads to a boring story and I know there are always people out there who wants to destroy a perfect thing for someone else because they are jealous of it, so that is seen in my fantasy a lot, but it is more tame than my horror because my fantasy is written for a family audience.

I’ve personally had enough of pandering to ogres and monsters and being submissive to them and their demands – my horror stories have been developing more and more into revenge style plots, where nature gets its own back on humanity for tearing apart paradise bit by bit.

My reader has noticed and he misses the horror I used to do, the gore for the sake of gore, the horror where anything is possible just because it is meant to be horrible!  Although he likes my new take on horror, he doesn’t like it nearly as much as when I used to write descriptive body horror and taboo scenes.

At the moment I feel like my watery self is forming a whirlpool and it is getting scary, because I have never been a whirlpool before and I am not quite sure what’s going to happen if my instinct is right!

Thank you for reading and hopefully understanding *love you all*

Sickness and feng shui

Covid hit my Henry in the first week of April, then it hit me a few days later, because of this I have been functioning at zombie level, because not only did I have Covid at the time but I was recovering from a non-Covid chest infection and gastric flu – which coincidentally, happened again just a couple of days ago.  More gastric flu hit the house on Wednesday and apparently gastric flu is spiralling in and out of everybody’s lives a lot in the last few weeks or around here in any case.

Because of all of this, I haven’t written a word towards a novel since the 2^nd February 2022, ironic considering this was going to be my hardest working year in writing and I wanted to start as I meant to go on for the year.

I am exhausted but recovering slowly, my asthma seems much worse these days and my bronchial tubes seem to be permanently filmy and half opened, along with this it is also a bad hay fever allergy year for me.

Just existing is difficult these days, but I am trying to push through and though I have never been a huge coffee drinker, Covid has made me become one of the worlds many addicts as it seems to be one of the main things which is helping me through it all!

I don’t know if it is my neurological problem or Covid which has made this happen, but recently I am struggling to walk in a stable manner and I am finding it hard to sit up from a laying down position.  My legs feel like they have weights on them, however the weird thing about it is, it is as though I am walking on air at the same time, or that the ground has become marshmallowy.

My appetite has decreased further, where a simple dish of a small salmon fillet and half of a small a jacket potato with nothing else, is a feast to me!  This has meant, finding highly nutritious and varied foods on a small scale has become hard to manage.  I literally need micro-meals, I don’t mean microwave meals either, I mean small meals, miniscule for an adult, perfect for a 5yr old and I need to eat at stupid times.  I now regularly have to have a small meal at 10:30 pm just to get enough calories and nutrition in the day, which doesn’t help the insomnia.

A positive thing though, is I have discovered I am not actually lactose intolerant at all – I have found I have issues with gluten and lactose purely because those foods contained soy, since eliminating soy completely from my diet, I am now able to eat gluten and lactose again and let me tell you, its pure joy!  Though being a Chinese food addict means I can’t indulge in that anymore unless it is homemade and without soy!

I found out because twice I accidentally consumed things containing milk and then expected a bad night of gastric like proportions, but no, nothing happened.  Then I had another food which had milk and soy and I reacted, Paul thought that maybe it’s because I ran out of enzymes, but then we noticed that my lactase pills were not working for certain food items.  So I began a soy elimination diet, as suggested by a friend.

So I had been spending £18 a month needlessly on lactase pills, because it wasn’t a lactose problem at all, it was a soy one!

Despite being ill a lot this year, there is a noticeable improvement in other areas of my health, since going back onto lactose and gluten.  My skin and hair have improved a lot and a couple of other personal issues.

Henry is currently sick with very bad gastric flu and his fever broke earlier today, he had a temperature for so long that the doctor had said that on Saturday, if there was no improvement, he would have had to of been admitted, so there is a lot of relief there that the fever has now broken!

Because of all these health issues and so on, I decided that I should reconsider the house in a feng shui style, I knew certain aspects about feng shui, but not a lot, and I realised that things were better in certain years when furniture was in different places and worse when it was moved in other places.  Considering this, I read some books about what I did right back then, but was doing wrong now.  I found that there is a lot of blockages in areas that was good, particularly the health – which explains why we’re sick potentially.  The health centre of our house was established around the time I started to get sick eight years ago as a laundry pile area – not good feng shui, also we have small mirrors which we glued around each other so our reflections are always fragmented and cut up into bits, again not good feng shui!

Also I noticed that I moved dragon ornaments away from the places that they would like to be according to feng shui, we did better financially when a dragon and a tortoise was in the south west corner of the living room, but things have changed since I put them both in the south area of our bedroom!  Effectively moving them from the transformation area to the career area – career wise things may have improved as we are developing good contacts, though have not dedicated ourselves fully into creating a career just yet – so we will not move them back to the transformation area, but instead, move a spare dragon from another area to the transformation area and then move the tortoise out of the bathroom, which is a bad area to keep it according to the practise, especially as the bathroom is half in the health area!  Because our health centre is split into two rooms, which is unusual and complicated in Feng shui terms!

I love Chinese culture a lot, I believe a lot in the Chinese astrology and I do not like western astrology, I believe Chinese astrology to be more accurate in my life.  So, the idea of throwing me into Feng shui as well, I think, is a good idea!

My grandmother always said there was Chinese in my family, but I found out that she was slightly wrong about the nationality; they were actually Vietnamese and Singaporean ancestors, which kind of explain my so-called throwback eyes as some people call them (I actually think it’s kind of rude, but there you go).

 I would love nothing better than to move the furniture around again, but at the moment the family is sick and the areas I want to move would cause bad things to happen moreso this year, because those areas are all the areas of this year’s sha chi, which means if you move those areas outside of good construction days (according to chinese astrology) you will activate the bad energy there and make things much worse.  So we can’t make improvements until the 9^th of May or the 23^rd and 24^th of May, as per the household’s astrology signs.

I am a water dog, Henry is a metal tiger and Paul is a fire monkey!

Anyway, thank you for reading and maybe in the future there will be more about the feng shui as I learn more.

Discrimination and heritage

Stop being ashamed of your past

Stop pretending it’s not real

Just because things are not happening still

Doesn’t make your history anymore unreal

Stop sitting back denying

Shouting, wailing and crying

About things you don’t like to know and hear

Because nothing will change who you are dear

My extensive family is very diverse in both races and religion; I have seen major battles of race identity and religious identity in my family that have been so fierce, members of my family have been permanently scarred as a result of other people’s denials or hatred. 

This poem is dedicated to families who have mixed race and religious members and are struggling to find their identity amongst each group within their family circle.  I know in my family alone, there is a lot of denial of the other races and religions existence within our kin, even to the extent that very dark coloured individuals will not recognise their non-white heritage and this is sad, especially as it is happening today, it is very sad.

I have a beautiful female cousin who wishes not to be named who struggles in college and getting a job simply because she is mixed race – she feels she is lucky that she is lighter than her siblings because she can get away with lying that she has Mediterranean roots, when she does this, society accepts her a little better – this is shocking that this still happens!  It is true she does have Mediterranean roots amongst her Caribbean and British roots, but it is a shame she feels she has to deny one or other to suit her social situation.

I have a total of nineteen mixed-race Caribbean cousins from 1^st cousin to 3^rd cousin generations who I still talk to, two of which wanted to join the police force and if anyone tells you that the British police force is diverse and fair, you should know right now that they are lying!  Because these two cousins of mine have never been able to be accepted as a member of the police force, so they had to make do as security guards for supermarkets and malls.

I have A Kenyan Hindu mixed race cousin who is severely disabled.

I have five Nigerian mixed cousins.

My great grandmother was born a Jew in Kensington, London and so her whole side are Jewish and we still stay in contact through genesreunited mail, there are fourth cousins who still talk to me who knew my mum growing up. 

My grandmother’s great grandfather was Vietnamese.

My grandmother’s great great grandmother was mixed Afro American and white. 

I have Romany ancestry apparently.

As well as Italian, Dutch, German, Bulgarian – my sister in law is Slovakian, my other sister in law is Half Irish.

My great grandpa is an Irish Catholic.

My Grandfather is a half Jewish English and half Catholic Welsh raised in Greenford London, when his mother told her family she is marrying a catholic and converting to his religion her half-sister threw her into the fireplace, so much for family love.

An aunt married a Turkish Muslim.

My cousin Julie fully converted to Islam aged eighteen and married a Lebanese, she now has four children.

In my past I very nearly had six mixed-race/religion relations myself, but I was threatened every time I got what mum called – “too close” with a man from another race.  I had dated a Sudanese mixed British man called Marvin who was absolutely sweet and doting.  I had dated a cute and very generous Jewish Israeli called Gideon, for me, as sweet as he was it was awkward that I was six inches taller than him.  I was extremely serious about a mixed Japanese and Italian British guy named Tony, I adored him with all my heart and he loved me so much that according to his mother he never had another girlfriend after me and he permanently migrated to Japan to teach martial arts and English – mum adored him too until she met his Japanese father, then she hit the roof about how deceptive I had been.  A Peruvian Indian mixed Spanish Catholic called Genebrardo, I lived with him for fourteen months and mum accepted this which was strange as she wouldn’t accept the others, yet he could offer me less than the others as far as marriage and commitment was concerned.  Next mum didn’t accept him either, even after Genebrardo; a Hindu Kenyan called Rakesh he was incredibly sweet and very family oriented and homely, he would have been a great father, but he is incredibly easily hen pecked by all the women in his life, including me when I was with him, he was very sad to stop dating me but we remain friends to this day (though its entirely chats through Facebook now), it is funny but if I had stayed in a relationship with him and married him I don’t think my submissive nature would still be around – his mother encouraged me to make demands of her lazy son, lol, he was never lazy poor thing never got a rest!  His mother loved me for my diversity, she was incredibly liberal and elderly, and she was absolutely delighted about my interest in all kinds of cuisine particularly cooking lessons from her.  I thought my mother would be pleased that he was born and raised within three streets of where she lived, but no, he was the nearest guy I ever dated.  {Things have been edited out that were here} The last one I was going to list, well I decided to delete this entry, because I have made contact with him again – Paul is fine with it, as we have said before, we are in an open relationship together.  But all you need to know is that I couldn’t take things further with this guy when I lived with my mother because he was from Egyptian heritage, but there is a lot of feeling there for one another, even today!  We made contact again because I found another family secret through GenesReunited.com I found I have Armenian Muslim ancestry too, on my mother’s mother side of the family – not so much as Romany, but according to research they lived as gypsies to flee one of the many genocides that happened in Armenia over the past few centuries.  I love finding this out actually, it means a lot, it means that my grandmother wasn’t a liar after all – not like how my mother portrayed her to be and that means so much to me!

It is not just race and religions that are mixed in my family, classes too.  The class factor is a huge thing for my mother; she can’t accept the upper middle and ancestral aristocracy that my father’s mother has.

Over a time, I will share more about my ancestry.  Is incredibly diverse and it is so frustrating that so many people are willing to deny their roots.  It was proven by a scientist a couple of years ago that everybody in the world is related to each other within twenty five generations, for me and my father’s maternal line, twenty five generations is around the 9^th Century and this scientist says that anyone who was alive in the ninth Century AD are ancestors of everyone currently living in the world today.

Consequently my father’s maternal line is the furthest I am able to go back to, because of its royal links; I am descended with only seven daughter lines (removals I believe they are called) to Henry the 1^st of France and Anne of Kiev therefore my ancestry there goes back a long way into 555AD to a man named Charibert of Hesbaye.  My mother’s paternal family is difficult to follow because my great grandfather was workhouse born and raised.

So, forgive me for upsetting you – if you believe mixed relations should never happen and you feel personally affronted by any other race, religion or class, just remember this – we are all cousins, you are hating on family that you don’t personally know, people who could benefit you and make you happy, if only you thought differently.

The amounts of amazing people you would deny to be your best friend, your carer, your support, your doctor, your nurse, your family, it is such a shame.  Because I do believe everybody in the world is my cousin.

I don’t share my ancestry for bragging rights – I share it to show the world we really are all related – I research to try and prove it, I am tired of mindless discrimination and family denying family enough to delete them from family trees and their families verbal memories, it is time to change the world!

 

Things of December

Recently received books and movies via gifts or personal purchase have been;

Clash of the Titans DVD the 2010 version with Liam Neeson

Blue Planet II a hardback book

Paul O’Grady’s “country life” hardback book

Raising the Dead: The Men Who Created Frankenstein by Andy Dougan (gift from nephew to me)

RHS What Plant Where Encyclopaedia by DK Publishing

Hobgoblins–The Secret Histories by Ari Berk (A gift to my son from his best-friend but I read it first)

The Box-set of The Hunger Games DVDs

All of these came into my house in the month of December 2017.

Other purchases or gifts I feel match fantasy or horror are…

Quite a few different types of gemstones, especially hypersthene, a tigers eye pendulum, a lapis lazuli gemstone for Henry, A black onyx pendulum, a Rhodonite pendulum for my Henry, an apatite, a large rose quartz the size of a small hot crossed bun and last but not least a hematite thumb ring. 

I bought incense and a new incense charcoal burner in the shape of a Chinese lotus flower.  The scents were vanilla, cinnamon, patchouli, dragon’s blood, rose and lily.  I can’t burn these things when Henry is at home; I have to do them when he is at school and open all the windows afterwards because he is prone to headaches.

I was gifted a fairy house garden ornament in the shape of a mushroom at Christmas from my husband Paul and Mrs Tiggy Winkle acting as the old woman in the shoe ornament and a wolf trinket box.  I do like weird stuff.  He bought me a good sized wooden box too, the shape and style of a pirates treasure chest and it fits all of my gemstones in perfectly with room for half again!  It really does look like a real pirate’s chest now with all of those gemstones in it.

I am a big kid, anything remotely regarding fantasy or horror and I like it.  Depends what it is however but my house certainly shows what I love in every nook and cranny!  I am not averse to having marvels cushion on my sofa for example!

It is difficult when friends and relatives visit because they presume I allow Henry to rule the roost, but the look on their faces when I say “No, it’s for me, I wanted it there”.  They do ask occasionally whether or not I should put such things in my bedroom?  I can’t put everything there!  Besides, what is wrong with a marvel cushion?  A soft toy of the joker on my PC desk?  3 snow globes on the bookshelves?  Four different types of calendars in the living room, Gothic, minions, marvel, wolves and then there is DC comics in the dining room with an RSPB one.  The first of every month is interesting for me, I like guessing which 1 of the many calendars around the house my husband will forget to change!  Me and Henry take bets with fruit pastilles!

I love the fact that I can be so free to be more me, with Paul lately.  He always wanted me to be me, but I was never confident enough to make it reflect in my home and for the first 5yrs living together it was all cream and browns around the house to make it look more like a normal household – yeurgh.  But now it’s green, yellow, with the occasional quirky wallpaper.  In the living room on just one wall there is wallpaper that looks like pastel version of the trees depicted in the movie The Lorax.  In the bathroom it is mostly white tiled but we are going to buy dolphin and coral wallpaper next month.  The kitchen is kitted out with tiles a harlequin would love, also next month we are buying wallpaper for just one side of the kitchen and that will be in the style of Mediterranean food.  Our bedroom is royal purple and soon I will be adding cerise to the other side of the wall, I also wanted to get door murals to make the doors of the house look like medieval castle doors!

I refuse to grow up.

Anyway, have a HAPPY NEW YEAR all of you ❤

Presumption

 

Smile at the judges

Do not make presumptions please

All stories differ

Rats in superstition

There is a new category to my blog from now onwards, as you can see it is called “Cultural Stuff”; mostly this category will contain beliefs around the world in regards to the supernatural and weird, but also superstitions people have believed over the centuries.

We shall start this category off with a Romany and Isle of Man belief that it is extremely bad luck to write, see or even say the word “rat” unless it is written with a dot or dash between each letter to break up the bad luck. Like this r.a.t

It is also bad luck to mention rats whilst aboard a ship, to do so would bring about terrible weather for the rest of the journey.

Rats leaving a ship at the dockyard, was supposed to be a sign that the ship will not make its next journey safely and this is known in most parts of the world.

To dream of a rat, denotes that someone is scheming against you in your waking life.

Rats aren’t considered bad in all cultures though. Rats are considered sacred in India and have a temple dedicated to them by the people of Rajasthan. If a rat is accidentally killed on the premises, you must replace the rat with a statue made of gold to allay bad feeling.

Rats as a totem means that the person will be shrewd in business and can overcome many of life’s obstacles.
It is interesting to point out that the next year of the rat, according to the Chinese calendar is in 2020, previously it was 2008.