I come from

I come from the smoky rooms of former North London cottages

A place where, as time goes by becomes more urbanised and exotic as does its people

A close peaceful community nudged out by hordes of shoppers, losing your family in the chaotic crowds as the familiar becomes ever increasingly strange

The cosy smells of fish and chips, apples, fruit and wool, overtaken by spice and petrol as new buildings pop up like toadstools in the night

The meadows I played on with dogs and cousins too polluted now, the solution?  More pollution of course, another hundred toadstools pop up to house more strangers, till the village is devoured by the ever starving beast called London

I come from the gossiping nurses and the nagging sheet metal workers, sitting around smoking their money and complaining that making it is too hard!

The smell of bleach stuns your senses and makes your eyes bleed but at least it’s clean

Helicopters sing you lullabies as you fall asleep and police sirens wake you up the next day

I come from neighbours leaning over your fence, giving you gardening advice and cake and eventually curry!

Stray dogs chasing loose cats and getting run over by milk carts

Pigeons swamping the garden pecking at stale bread and the last lizard I’ll ever see gets taken by a fat crow, falling down roof tiles and into a gutter unceremoniously

I come from two sides of a road that society says shouldn’t be crossed

But here I am and I am me and both sides are equally mine

I come from sugar, fat and bread, fizzy drinks and tea

Pure white walls broken by ivory and chrome

Vacuums replaced yearly due to overuse and the bigger the telly the more kudos to you!

I come from a large garden, a sanctuary and au pair

I come from fashion critics, jealousy and violence

In books I hid myself in multiple worlds so that it could never touch me

So I would be free to be me and not them

Finding my own way to a new place

A place that is more like me

It is lost forever now, that place, where I come from.

Grandma brings the class act

Gulping rats in a den of filth that is the childhood of a barn owl

Beating rats in a den of iniquity that’s the childhood that shouldn’t be allowed

Baying stray dogs in the darkened streets

Better than seeing your brother running from the bobby on his beats

As your mother sways home at nights from her clubbing and her fights

Whilst your father meek and mild takes care of her child, and whispers it’s alright!

Grandma brings the class act and makes you nice and posh

As your mother sits in the corner mouthing it’s all tosh!

Your father sits there tenderly, ignore her, you will hear

As he holds you close to his chest with a love that will endear

As horses are racing on the telly and gran fills your belly

Whilst mother sits and mocks you for turning into jelly

And choking you with her smoke, whilst gran complains it’s bad – get outside in the garden!

My mother shouts its raining are you mad?

Gran says it’s bad for her health!

My mother sits there smugly and says with happy stealth

Take her with you if you are so concerned, it doesn’t bother me!

She gets in the way of my fun – my gran nods and then agrees

She took me home and kept me, for a week or two and this happened regularly

Because of you know who!

And happy I was back then, living with my gran

And when it wasn’t with her, it was with cousins or Aunties June or Jan

I got around a lot when I was very young

Made friends in all sorts of places, where I was bunged

I learned to adapt so readily, to lots of different things

So there was never a song I couldn’t ever sing

That’s how I got to where I am today

In very different places

I’ve changed in many ways

And so I keep on growing

And I keep on learning things

Because I’ve become a butterfly

And I fly on colourful wings

Gypsies & cockneys

Today I want the gypsy look, a beautiful ruffled light brown skirt with gold coins sewn around it, a lacy crocheted camisole and beaded jewellery; big double circlet earrings, anklets and bangles and wedge heeled sandals.

That’s the look I’d like today, I have the skirt, but not the top, I have the shoes but not the style of jewellery.

Most of my jewellery has gone now.

My best crocheted light brown cardigan which had a sort of gypsy/Slavic style to it has lost some of its patterning with age and had to be thrown recently, that was a shame, it was my favourite summer cardigan, worn for comfort not warmth.

My hair would be styled with the curling tongs, that suits me a lot and makes me look like a porcelain doll, especially if I had make up to glamour myself up a bit better instead of making do with being a pasty natural thing.

I’ve always had a passion for the gypsy look, since I was a kid – well it’s in my blood, my grandma on mum’s side always said she’d half Romany and sent me to visit various locations where the gypsies lived to introduce me to them.  Two places mostly, a caravan in Portobello road is a distant cousin and there is a fairground ride repair place in Hendon, which are all apparently relatives of mine.

I miss Portobello road for lots of reasons, it’s a place I sorely miss since leaving London.  I visited it three times a year before I left London; I haven’t seen the place in almost fourteen years now.

The Cockney’s pie & mash shop there knows me well, saw me grow up – I often wonder if fourteen years is too long and maybe they’ve forgotten me, I hope not!  I hope they’ll remember me when I got back again someday, I hope the lady who runs it will be there again.

I was afraid just before Covid hit, there were rumours Cockneys pie & mash shop was going to close down due to a lack of custom, I hope not.  I have checked recently, they appear to still exist.

It’s one of the first things I want to do if I ever go back to London – have lunch at Cockneys!

Thanks for reading!

The Eighties

Tuck shops in schools

Hop scotch on the playground and in the streets

Eating space dust

Eating out of polystyrene boxes

Indoors for Saturday night TV

Games in the street with the neighbourhood kids

Helping the elderly across the street

Top of the pops is the bee’s knees!

Infatuations with care bears, my little pony and Teddy Ruxpin

Entertainment in the best decade ever! 

Sweets sold by the penny in every high street – that was the eighties! 

Written 1:31pm 16th March 2023

Creative expression plans

I am starting to think about doing some new approaches to my creativity soon, at the moment it will be difficult to do the changes that I want to do, because of the environment I am living in – but I am hoping soon, in the near future things will be different and I will have more freedom to express myself in an environment that I can thrive in.

A place where I am able to write when I need to and my personal time and space is respected, a place where I can do my art without fighting mess and a place where I practise my music without having arguments about overriding a television or making disturbing background noises because someone wants to listen to their laptop gaming noise instead of music.

Most of all, I am looking forward to an environment that is organised and clean most of the time and where nobody slobs about without a care for weeks on end, until mess gets so out of hand everyone moans and chips in finally for half a day, only for three days later it would seem nothing has changed at all.

It would be good to get back into the habit of watching movies again, because doing that here has always been impossible.  Nobody wants a movie on, unless it’s the same old, same old.

As a former movie buff, this has been a hard pill to swallow.

I haven’t kept up to date with the movie industry since I moved here in the early summer of 2009.

I am very behind.

Right after I have written this post, I am going to write something for myself and myself only. 

I am going to write a list of plans for my creative future and I am going to store this on my computer to read at a later date, a date when I am no longer living here in this environment.

I am doing this because I have been prompted to think about it by a book called “Art for happiness” by Val Andrews – they’ve set a task in which I am to think about any new ways I would like to express myself that I haven’t done already and there is quite a few actually and some I want to combine to create what I believe could be a new creative art form.

I have always had an interest in stage plays and the theatre and it is something along those lines.

I’ve composed music in the past, written lyrics and poems, done some amateur dramatics at college, did some private designs for fashion and dreamt up stories, painted pictures and even danced.  I have been known to decoupage and embroider, knit and crochet.  I have also been classically trained in opera as a child and was the main lyricist and singer of a rap/rock band in college, even though I was always more of a jazz, rock and soul singer in my heart.

Jazz and soul are the preferred genres my family and friends like me to sing.

As a child and into my teens I had always had an interest in burlesque but it was aggressively shunned by my mother, yet my paternal grandmother encouraged it as it was something her own mother did in between being a professional ballet and cancan dancer – my grandmother herself was a majorette and was known to do small amateur dramatic theatre work as a volunteer at weekends, usually to entertain for free the elderly visiting from residential homes and she did this along with two of my aunts and sometimes my dad.

My dad stopped going because mum didn’t like him doing it and she didn’t like my aunts encouraging me to think about joining them in their acts too!

They loved my singing, they said that my voice often moved them to tears and several old people in the audience too as I sang no less than twice for them all.

When it appeared I had some kind of talent, mum soon put a stop to my singing lessons too!

Some of the old people who lived in my street knew my mum did this and their hearts went out to me, because they knew I was home-schooled, they knew the house was noisy and didn’t sound very happy and they knew I lived in the garden.  They were sad when they used to hear me sing on my swing in the garden, people could hear me several houses away. 

Some of them tried to guilt trip my mum by telling them she should let me sing again and go back to her music classes, but she wouldn’t have it.

I lost my confidence when I was around ten years old to sing in the garden, when some new children moved into the house at the back of us and started to bully me for it, because it was opera and they felt I wasn’t cool not to mention I was fat and sad and lonely, as they called me.

Those children became the bane of my life from then onwards, as from 3pm until 8pm most days I would be self-conscious about being seen in the garden by them as they’d deliberately throw balls to bounce off my head and mock me by trying to knock me off my swing.  So I tried to keep nearer to the house, this meant that I couldn’t play with my rabbit called Toffee at the time or sit near the pond, because they’d make entertainment of me.

When I was around thirteen mum wanted more control of the garden and to make it family space as the summers were getting hotter and hotter and so because she was bothered by the children too, she put up a 6ft fence all around us.

This meant I felt free to exercise in the garden again without being mocked at any time I liked again.  I loved netball practise and swing ball, I played squash up against the house too and wasn’t self-conscious in practising my judo either.

I still don’t know when I will move out; I know I can’t really finance that yet.  But I am looking forwards to leaving – I’ve always believed this house is the thing that made me ill.

I never felt easy living here, it was like the house is alive and it didn’t welcome me – ever been in a house where you have an innate feeling you’re unwanted?

Paul told me his house is haunted and that since I moved in, within weeks the spirit seemed to have gone.  I promised him I had done nothing to scare it off, but Paul has always felt it was weird how the ghost seemed to have just vanished when I moved in.

Perhaps I made it insecure?

Who knows?

Thanks for reading…

Sex and poetry

A warning first and foremost as this post digressed hugely into talks of so-called sordid activities and smut, when it was namely about my poetry. 

Sometimes I write poetry and delete it thereafter because I am ashamed and I don’t want anyone to ever see it; other times I write poetry and I can’t bear to destroy it, but I am also slightly ashamed to want to publish it anywhere, so what do I do with those?

I put them into my cloud in a file called “Never Publish”.  What is the point of this you may ask?  I may as well delete them like I have others, what makes these ones so special?

Honest answer is I don’t really know and for some, I know that I need to verbally read these poems out to people for their opinions before I publish them.

Most of the ones I lock away in shame are about sex and some other non-sexual but dark views, views beyond suicide or graphic detailing of body horror, many of which are from my past bad memory stores. 

Some of these poems pertain to the BDSM lifestyle and others to the occult – and because some people can’t understand a writer who can write from different perspectives of their own and they often label the author as being “whatever” label fits at the time pertaining to the subject they’ve written at the time; I am quite nervous to be branded a “whatever” wrongfully.

My point is.  I believe a whole caboodle of things and I write from many perspectives; I am able to separate another person’s point of view away from my own and write as though those were my thoughts and feelings and I think to be a good writer, this is an essential skill to learn but it is fraught with difficulties and discrimination from others who may misinterpret you as a person.

This is why I don’t share a few of the things I write and I won’t even do so under a pseudonym.

Some poems are created and burned alive screaming, some are written and hidden in shame and others published online or waiting to be sent to a poetry magazine when I feel confident that I am a poet.

I’ve been in denial of being a poet for years, how is that for amusement?

I have often been heard saying “I’m not a poet, I just write poems from time to time because I am bored, I’d rather liken myself to a lyricist who can’t compose because I can’t access my software anymore”; Look really darling it’s the same thing, but try drumming that into me… it doesn’t always register.

Tonight I wrote one of the NEVER PUBLISH poems and they won’t even be published, why?  Because it pertained to quite graphic sexual acts of sodomy and I knew that for some people this could be offensive.   I just wanted to write something dark and sordid because I am feeling more than a little playful and dirty tonight and yes, I am quite open to say that sodomy for me is not a sin – so that’s what I came up with and I didn’t mean to offend anyone with it but rather entertain lustfully – but I had my reservations because of the sensitive people in society who will think that I am just either simply disgusting or that I am offensive to their sexuality.

Whereas to me, I was merely celebrating it in true revelry and the poem really showed the primal urges of humanity at their most base and animalistic level, but I know in some ways I went too far! 

Sex can sometimes make us feel dirty, make us feel like unwonted creatures and this is what was portrayed in the poem I stashed away.  True delicious filth and yes a woman can relish in homosexuality of men and sodomy in general, I relish in pleasure by definition and I enjoy observing the pleasures of others, is that so evil of me? 

Don’t answer it, I don’t want to hear those dogmatic views. 

I don’t think that’s an act of evil, do you?  Not if I love it, not if I don’t judge it, not if I don’t hate it… what do you think?

I have personally done a lot of art over the years pertaining to sex and what some people in society would call “Sleaze or smut”; I like drawing sexual figures, sometimes in abstract, sometimes in caricatures and I get immense pleasure from it.  But, I was raised to feel ashamed about being proud of sex and my sexuality and you know… stay a quiet good girl and don’t show public feelings for whoever you are with.  Shocking girl!

Who do you think you are to constantly be touching your partner as you are out and about, don’t you care that you might embarrass them?  But for me, no… it’s not like that, I like touching and being touched, if I give a person the permission to do so that is!  Being in a sexual relationship with someone, why not?  It’s a given, isn’t it?

I like the protective reassurance of a man who constantly touches me in public if I am his – holding my hand, guiding me to places, snuggling up against me and warning the world off with one glare over my shoulder as he embraces me from behind.  Why not show the world how you feel about each other? 

My only concern with this is that I am so easily turned on the whole world will know I am gagging for it and can’t control myself, that’s my only fear with it! 

My whole life I have been a very sexual being from quite young – mostly with myself as pitiful as that sounds – ha-ha!

Time and again I have entered relationships where the other partner has not been very tactile and to find someone who likes to be touched in my experience seems rare and few and it’s disappointing to say the least and it affects my confidence as a lover and often makes me feel rejected by them and used – I say used because it is like they can touch me when the feelings catches them but I can’t touch them!

I’ve got out of the habit of being tactile myself and now I am free and available again to look for a new relationship I am afraid that I may come across as rigid as over the years the touchy touchy me has been trained out! 

Yes anyone can be sexual and they can have lots of sex and talk about it whilst they drool, but do they really understand it?  Do they really have what it takes to be a genuinely sexual person who isn’t shy about it?  I am no exhibitionist, but I am proud of my sexuality. 

For me sex is more than just dip and go or rather in my experience with men I’ve had dip and collapse in five minutes flat! 

I am no whore and I am not constantly gagging for it with any Tom, Dick and Harry, no offense to any Thomas, Richard and Harold’s out there – however, I am not a person who is just all talk either, like most potential and actual lovers in my past appeared to have been.

I’ve had lovers who are look but don’t touch, I can penetrate you, but you can’t do a thing to me, I want you to suck me but I won’t suck you types.  Selfish lovers, lazy lovers… I am not like that.

I am a snuggle type too, I don’t like going off to my own side of the bed clutching a pillow and not touching my partner whilst I sleep – I expect to be snuggled most of the night or be touched in some way – I don’t like how people join and then separate so readily like they don’t matter to each other.  The only time this is marginally ok is if it is a super heat wave!

I don’t like the fuck and sleep aspect either, where’s the pillow talk and the extra tease?

Why is sex always rushed a two minute breast fondle, a five minute dip and an all-night collapse… what the heck is that all about? 

One of my exes once told me that my drive is too high, I need to get it seen to, it’s not right and it’s not natural.

I’ve been told so many times that “It’s not right or natural for a woman to like porn; it’s not right or natural for a woman to think about sex so much to the extent of writing about it or talking about it or drawing lewd pictures of people having sex as often as you do”, apparently.

It’s not natural for a woman to be overly sexual, talkative about being overly sexual and proud of it either and being very open about what she likes and dislikes regarding it. 

But the thing is it is; only few women do, because most aren’t brave to voice it and do it, because of backlash.

Because as women we are meant to be docile and discreet and good little girls!

The girl who talks about it a lot must be a whore, must be dirty, must be tarnished goods – they don’t believe that a sexual woman can actually be good and loyal and clean and not whores at all.

I’ve had many partners in my time who had their sexual pleasures with me, but not many of them ever actually penetrated me, surprise, surprise and not all of them have been same sex partners either.  Most of it was heavy petting and BDSM games without any vaginal penetration outside of toys.

If you think about how many sexual play partners I have had there would a few, but how many were penetrative and actually performed proper traditional sex with me?  Two consensually!  That’s all, two – but to think about my sexual experiences and the number I have played with, you’d think I was a whore, because you would have wrongly presumed they all put their member inside of me somehow and they hadn’t.

Primarily because I do not like taking contraception, but that’s a different subject altogether! 

Women will have a hard time believing that there are men in this world who can be around a naked woman playing with her bits and never being tempted to thrust into her within minutes, but in my experience they do exist and they appear to be quite common actually.

I’ve slept with several men who never touched me too, just sleeping with them and never doing more than just kissing a little and a hug now and again, women too.  Yes this can happen, no sex. 

Sex shouldn’t be taboo, it’s the most ancient activity in the world and we’ve been doing it for millions of years and if we hadn’t have, we wouldn’t exist, would we?

Societies are prone to trying to hide their most primal instincts and they shouldn’t – it’s not healthy, in fact it’s very mentally damaging.

I am contemplating getting a smaller bed in my bedroom so I can bring my art table upstairs so I can do more art – because as I am getting advanced in years, I am becoming much more shameless and a lot more embracing my true self and the art I want to produce is not really something for a thirteen year old boy to feast his upon! 

I want to write more sexual poems and I want to draw more sexual pictures.  I accidentally took the wrong sketchbook with me to the dentist a few years ago and dropped it, a woman picked it up for me and wide eyed saw the nudes and the sexual art I had done inside the book and she said to me – Oh my goodness, you are just like Tracy Emin only better!

At the time I had no idea who Tracy Emin was, but when I researched her, I liked her ballsy art, but mine does appear to be more graphic and doesn’t leave much to the imagination! 

When I was quite young, I was unprotected from the adult world and sex was thrusted into my face at most angles, my innocence to these sorts of things went when I was around four or five years old; things on the TV, sordid parties I observed through the bannisters my parents had all sorts of things and I often found things around the house that were quickly snatched from my hand only to learn they were mummy’s toys.    

A huge contradictive upbringing I had, devout religious parents who literally believes in beat the devil out of the child, spare the rod and spoil the child and children should be seen and not heard types – but at the weekends getting pissed in front of the said child and partying like we’re in Babylon!

Oh and don’t forget the small one serving bottles of babycham for the kids to make them grow up more human!  You get that from the age of five, after your fifth Christmas and every party thereafter! 

When I was a lot younger I thought I’d have healthy lungs to pollute so I can smoke, because I have a smoking fetish and I always saw myself as one of those ladies who had cigarette extensions and called everyone Darling and wore a red silk turban with a brooch in the centre and laughing like a kookaburra at cocktail parties.

I used to watch late night TV alone in my bedroom on my black and white TV, mostly looking for Godzilla but oftentimes there were adult movies and gameshows on channel 4.  I watched them as a child without a real bedtime when I was home educated and nobody bothered me after 2am. 

I’d watched all sorts of things that would make a decent parent cringe!  I was told never to reveal my favourite shows to people outside the family if they ever asked, because I liked things such as “Tall guy”, “the man with two brains”, “euro trash” and “band of gold” as my childhood favourites, the latter is a program about prostitutes! 

I remember sitting with neighbour kids and cousins some nights watching these shows and we used to have big discussions about it all and what we’d do when we grow up!  Some of those were suppositions of whether or not we would sell ourselves or not if we were adults! 

I fully planned to grow up having all sorts of cheeky things around my house like penis ornaments and big red lips leather sofas and all sorts of funny, quirky things just for a laugh. 

You’d be surprised of the imaginings of a 10yr old that was raised unprotected from the adult world!

I tried smoking as soon as I became of legal age and after just six weeks I gave it up because of a chest infection, I was sad, because I had only just perfected blowing circles and got into the fun hobby of blowing smoke into bubbles!

I always liked a smoky room until I developed asthma in my early 30s. 

How I got into talking about all of this when this post was meant to be about what I am doing with my poetry and art, I have no idea – but I am having fun with all these revelations and no I am not drunk.  I haven’t had a glass of wine since Christmas!

And you can stop the “yeah but what else have you had in the meantime?” snipe too, I have behaved myself, so now so should you – you naughty, naughty readers you! 

So there you have it – well you are lucky, lucky people if you do…

So now you know, that there is more to me than just snuggles and rainbows, there is a very passionate woman inside of me who is learning to embrace the idea of coming out in full fervour and using her passions for both sex and creativity to the fullest of its potential and to Hell with the prudish shoot downs from a society who is waiting to suppress my most primal expressions!

I’ve been trying to behave for decades and its boring as heck!  I am bored of men who just don’t have it in them!  When I want a pervert they are either excessively so to the point my stomach churns or they are just all talk! 

It takes a lot to make my stomach churn by the way, believe me! 

Now, does this mean that my poem about sodomy is going to get published now, right here, at the bottom of this post (no pun intended). 

No.

Spoil sport, I hear you say!

Sorry, maybe someday, but not today…

You’ll get some smut eventually, but goodness knows when!

Thanks for reading and remember… God said go forth and multiply!  I often wondered if that was translated exactly true to word?  was it actually “I deleted my true idea of the translation due to the idea that an atheist (Paul) heard it and though it was blasphemous for some people and I am not an atheist at all but found it funny, so I got into a flux and deleted it! 

P.S There is likely a similar and more edited version of this on my blogger account in a day or so.

Size changes & memories

I am so excited that I have lost another dress size!

In the UK I am a size 20 going into 18, I should be fully in the size 18 in about six weeks’ time – to the US I am a size 16 going into a 14 – which makes me about the same size as Oprah Winfrey, well Paul thinks I have similar shape to her only my waist is more defined – which really flattered me!  Especially as I see myself more like June Shannon, Honey Boo Boos mum from ten years back every time I look in the mirror, but I have been suffering from body dysmorphia my whole life, so I can’t trust what I see!

I struggle at looking at pictures of myself because it makes me just cry, whether those pics were of me when I was thin or not, because to me, I am just hideous, even now when I look in the mirror I see no visible difference to how I am now vs two or three years ago!

But the scales and the clothing tells me something different, I am significantly different now – I wish my brain wouldn’t lie to me!

On a positive note, my nails are growing! 

I had to unfortunately chop both index finger nails down though, because they were peeling and it looked ugly, don’t know why them and the right pinkie are doing that, so they have been cut down and I am trying to grow them, but it looks odd as all the other nails are half an inch long now!

I did a huge mistake in putting clear nail varnish on the other day, it is uncomfortable and irritating and I don’t have any nail varnish remover in the house until weekend!

I really must put up my stats again soon, been meaning to but keep forgetting and I am writing this at like 3am so it’s not convenient to wake Paul up so he can help me measure my stats, lol.

You can hardly tell I had alopecia now, though there is about a four or five inch thick strand of hair that stands up all on its own when I don’t wax it down, because that’s where the alopecia used to be, but my hair is nearly 2 inches longer than shoulder length nowadays, so it’s easy to hide now.

I am one shoe size bigger in the US – I am a 7 to 7.5 so in the US I am an 8 to 8.5!

If your grandma ever tells you that the bigger the woman’s foot is the less trouble she has in labour and the baby is likely to cannon ball out, please believe them!  Worked for me!

Even if I did nearly break Paul’s finger with my death grip on his hand during labour, at least I didn’t scream like all the other wussy pussy mothers in the ward that night!  I may have growled a little whilst chanting I love you and I want this baby almost seemingly demonically, maybe once roared when the midwife used the scratch and scrape to induce me, but I didn’t scream!

Paul’s finger was bruised for two months.

I often joked that next time he gets me pregnant I’ll get him a baseball mitt for protection!  But that’s never happening now, so, lol!

Oh just imagine… now I have nails…

Thanks for reading!

My themes & project AD

Here are the main themes I love to write about and I know it has been published in another post before, but I thought it would be good to have it as a post all on its lonesome as a sort of reference post.

My first favourite theme to write about are vampires and their perspective on life and existence, their lifestyle, the drama that goes on in their societies etc.

My secondary favourite literary choice is stereotypical fantasy stories based on dragons, battle and magic! 

My third one is anthropomorphic animals or seeing things from an animal’s perspective and explaining their lives through adventure or almost journalistic storytelling. 

My fourth favourite theme are anything pertaining to childhood wonder, Christmas and Easter stories, Santa, The Easter Bunny, nursery rhyme worlds, toys coming to life, that sort of thing.

My fifth favourite theme to write is stories about inventors and gadget creators in a post-apocalyptic world or perhaps even a steampunk world!

My sixth choices are giants or little people and how they see the world around them and what their stories are. 

My seventh favourite theme is stories about descent into madness or haunting memories or even haunted places, ghosts of both the mind and the ethereal.

The eighth theme is anything with regards to circus performers, carnivals, fairgrounds, fortune tellers and clowns.

The ninth favourite theme to write about is stereotypical war between gods and the underworld and the battle of control over mortality and or power, I especially like gas lighting stories or stories from a twisted perspective.

The tenth theme is stories about magical water/sea creatures or sea life, such as pirates, mermaids, kelpies and sea monsters or travellers of the sea.

Many of my stories will contain at least one of the above in order to keep me interested in writing them, sometimes they may have more than one theme going on for example; my project AD has five of the above themes in it.

There is a small vampire scene in it, with anthropomorphic animals in a post-apocalyptic, steampunk world that experiences a huge gaslight to their existence and in one characters case a descent into madness and a fight for reality and a real battle as well – along with this there are inventors of gadgets and a new way of life for everyone involved in the story!

It’s a project I am really excited about and this particular project has saved my creative life – because without it I very nearly gave up writing altogether.  It is rare for me to have more than two themes in any story, so when I get one that has this many themes in it – it really gets my heart singing!

Thanks for reading!

Memories of granddad

On Twitter today someone randomly asked that if I were fortunate to have known any of my grandfather’s what is the first thing that I would think of when I think about them!

I wanted to say a lot more than I did, because I doted on my granddad!

So I thought it would be a lovely post to share here and I can get to talk about him in more depths, these memories are happy memories, probably some of the few I had growing up – but there are only two things that I remember which were not so happy and none of them were my grandad’s fault at all!

Up until I was six years old I lived next door to my maternal grandparents, Granddad Leslie and nanny or nonna Dolly! 

Between the age of six and nine I never saw them, not once – because my mum moved us away due to a vicious argument which broke into a physical fight she had about my brother and aunt.  The physical fight was in their living room between my auntie Julie and her, it was quite a scary physical fight I never saw because I was at school at the time and honorary auntie Sheila (which is rumoured to really be a third or fourth cousin to us) had to pick me up from school because mum was in hospital over it. 

Both my mum and my aunt had scarring to their faces over that fight.

Before this fight my grandparents were part of my everyday life, I lived in an area in North London where I had a relative almost on every street and there were at least thirty households related to me within that small square mile, everyone else it seemed was some kind of family friend who looked out for everyone!

My granddad was an avid gardener and was always out in his garden talking to me about the flowers and nature and giving me updates on his breeding hobbies of tropical fishes, budgerigars and love birds!  He loved gardening so much he rented four plots at the local allotments (a gardening community) where he’d grow lots of food to share with the whole family. 

My granddad was a greengrocer once, before he lost his business to thugs and he met my grandmother when he was a farm worker on a farm her parents worked on in Enfield.

Sometimes granddad would pass over step ladders for me to climb up high enough for him to reach me to carry me over into his garden to help him with the fish and the birds – mum knew if she couldn’t find me in the garden that I’d be with him or passed onto Sheila who lived on the other side of my grandparents to play with her daughter who was only a year younger than me!

In my street there were four other households of family and only thirty yards away from the house was a shopping complex of ten stores, which whenever we’d pop round the corner for milk you’d have to anticipate forty five minutes before you got home again because of the amount of people you’d meet and talk to on the way!

I remember sitting in the window waiting for people I knew to walk pass the house and telling mum who was there, especially if mum wanted to talk to someone, she’d rush out immediately and they’d talk.  Most of the time she had hoped my older teenage cousins would be passing so she could bribe them to take me to a park or go swimming with them at the community pool nearby!

All of this ended when I was six, from the time mum moved away from all of that I was in pure isolation and I didn’t cope well at all with that arrangement!

My mum was ostracized by most of our family when the fight happened, but there were still people who spoke to us and visited, but only a small margin from that point onwards!

It’s funny to think that because three households crammed together in a line became the forerunner of huge family Christmases – where everyone visited those three houses and kept swapping and changing dining rooms to socialise with as many people as possible on Christmas day, literally eighteen people per house and then going from that to just me, my parents and brothers and a cousin until I was twenty years old.

You can imagine the culture shock and to be honest… no, I have never recovered from the loss.

When I was nine years old I was thrilled to be back in my grandparents lives again, but I didn’t realise at the time it was only meant to have been temporary because my granddad was diagnosed with lung cancer. 

So I have got the horrible bits out of the way now, now it’s time for me to show you what my granddad was like as a person!

My granddad came from Greenwich and he had a very strong husky East End accent, he was a short stocky and muscular man who was half Jewish and half catholic and had tattoos all the way up both arms!  He had a widow’s peak hairline and silver white hair, when I was little I used to think my granddad looked like a mesh between grandpa Munster and Pop-eye! 

Because my granddad smoked a pipe, had muscles, ate spinach had a rough husky voice, and loads of tatts!

He was the most muscular man in the whole family and quite a formidable character too!

He was a true man’s man but he was a man who was out of his time really, because my nanny Dolly didn’t have a domestic bone in her body – he did all the laundry, all the cleaning and all the cooking!  My granddad always said it isn’t my Nan’s fault, she isn’t lazy cocker, he told me – she has had a hard life with her heart troubles so she got spoilt and I am mostly to fault for that he said.

I remember my granddad having two large 6ft fish tanks in the living room and he put them like an L shape to each other and he placed his armchair in the corner facing the TV directly in the opposite corner of the living room he had so he could watching every wrestling show on Sky TV he could!

I would always sit on his knee watching the TV with him, even when I was as old as ten, even when he was dying, I remember that.  Clung to him for dear life, I loved my granddad!  I couldn’t do that with anyone else, he was the only one who’d let me snuggle with him like that and so it was a novelty I relished every time I visited him!

I remember when we had to go home I was often kicking and screaming as I didn’t want to leave him.

My mum was a J-witness off and on growing up, so I didn’t learn much about the families catholic ways, so granddad always tried to put in lessons every now and again for me and got his rosary out and showed me that we moved the beads in prayer, look see…

I wondered how my granddad kept his faith with the Catholic Church when he experienced so much racism growing up – the nuns at the school he went to often gave him a hard time and caned him regularly because they said he was born in sin because his mother was Jewish! 

Growing up with him telling me things like that and he was making excuses for their behaviour and being generally nice about it all – surprised me.  He told me that it never bothered him you see, because Jesus was a Jew and he thought that those nuns were ridiculous for what they were saying about him.  I told mum what he said and she didn’t receive that very well!

But it always stuck in my mind; Jesus was a Jew… wasn’t he catholic then granddad?  That made him laugh so hard it bought on one of those deep dense and awful coughs of his!

My nan would look over and laugh too and then say “Out of the mouths of babes hey Les”?

My nan was in every way similar to Catherine Tate’s nan depiction, honestly, anyone who knew her said that they were sure that the character was based on her!

It still sticks in my mind today… Jesus was a Jew and it was only recently that I learned not only was he a Jew but he was also a fierce rabbi who tried hard to steer people back into the old faith of Judaism as he felt people were losing their way – food for thought I can tell you!

My granddad was a backstreet wrestler and boxer in his youth to earn extra rations and money for the family, he told me. 

My granddad and I had a very similar life to each other in some ways – both of us were into combat sports, both of us were stocky in comparison to the others in the family though only 5ft 4, both of us were deaf due to the same condition (mastoiditis) and both of us were discriminated against for our mixed religious heritage and deafness and both of us loved our gardens!

Granddad was the only person I strongly connected to in most things in the family.

He would often sing to me all kinds of traditional London songs, some for kids and others not!  Bouncing me on his knee and he always greeted me as “Cocker” whenever I visited him – “alright cocker”?  He’d ask as I walked into the room!

Cocker means many number of things to an East Ender – mostly “Mate” or “little cocky one” or “fellow cockney” or something you called your descendants, usually aimed at personal favourites rather than generic – well in my family it was!

He would regularly give me cash in hand money to go the local shops with so he could have private chats with my parents, knowing I’d be gone for up to an hour because the family and extended family would watch out if a kid was going to the shops alone!  There were lots of eyes in those streets and you always felt safe as you knew almost everybody down there!

There was one particular shop I used to love going to a lot and it was a health and safety nightmare for how the candies were stacked in piles around the whole store, but it was a great store with every kind of candy you can think of, chocolates, crisps, sodas and ice-creams – it was called Lucky Sweets and was run by a really lovely and elderly Hindu lady.

My granddad would often talk about the wrestlers on TV and we are related to a wrestler who now has a wrestling family and that was my granddad’s pride and joy in pointing that out to me!

My granddad often bought dinner from the fish and chips shop as well when I visited him; it was always cheaper than it should be because there were rumours that the owner was a distant cousin from our Greek roots as we also have Greek in us.  In fact our Italian relatives from Naples are mostly Greco-Italians they say, but we have had family in Naples since 305BC on both sides of my family actually.

But I do know when I was growing up and visiting my nan a lot when granddad died, that the local teenagers who were not associated with my family in anyway were really nasty to me in the school I went to purely because of the knocked off price of our fish and chips dinner because of family discounts.

My granddad gifted me his budgerigars every couple of years and one of them I loved so much lasted for nearly three years called Bobby.  The other, funnily enough was called Henry.

But when I talk about Henry on my blog, be sure to know it is my son I am on about and not some record breaking old budgerigar – lol!

He is also the reason why I love tropical fish keeping, because to me a house isn’t a home without a tropical fish tank and a dog.  I don’t have a fish tank here… tell a lie… I do… but there is nothing in it because Paul won’t help me set it up.

I always felt safe with my granddad because nobody messed with my granddad and I could tell him anything my mum did to me and knew he would be the retribution she’d get!

When he died she got more cocky about things and wielded it like a power.

I moved in with my grandparents when I was ten years old, for a few months whilst granddad was dying of cancer, until his death.  Then my nan was required to come and stay with us whenever she felt lonely, which was about four times a week until she was hospitalised and died fourteen years later.

When I got the flu when we lived with him, granddad wanted to know how mum took care of me when I was at home and had the flu in the past and I was brutally honest with him about it.  He was not happy and he rang his bell which always sent mum into a panic running into the room to him.  He said, cocker over there isn’t well; she needs a drink of water, not Lucozade!  She went and made a drink, he then rang the bell again and told her that I was hungry and not to just pass me candies but to get some chicken soup into me!  She got angry at this point, but he kept ringing the bell for me and made sure I was cared for properly and not dumped with bags of candies and bottles of Lucozade and left for hours on end like normal!

He defended me even though he hardly had the breath to do it; he had a mischievous nature which I adored!

He got told off really bad by my nan when he used blackmail on my mum by switching his own oxygen off to cause a panic and stir when mum tried to tell him off!  As he did it he winked at me but it really scared me to see that!

I had a nightmare the day before granddad died, I woke up knowing that that day would be his last – even though the doctor said he would have four months at least before that stage came, I was right.

He died three days shy of his birthday and it was supposed to have been a huge family reunion party too – the party still happened but it was more morose than it should have been!

My granddad would be 100yrs old on August 15^th of this year.

Thanks for reading!

Shrivelled Heart

It’s dark in my heart

It’s cold in my heart

It’s tight in my heart

There’s no room

All the wounds have made it shrink

Shrink so tight

I don’t think there’s room for love

I don’t think I’ll love again

Because my heart was torn out

It was squeezed so tightly

It dried and shrivelled when he took it

And tried to break it in half

But my heart is made of some kind of rubber

But it is bruised and beyond recover

Will I ever love again?

Will my heart ever mend?

Who knows…

Who knows…

Maybe if life’s clown watered my heart it will beat again?

Maybe if I found someone it will love again…

But I don’t know

Who knows…

Who knows…

Coming from that horrible place again, from 2004 – seriously for four years I couldn’t see myself in a relationship with a man again, not a normal one and to be honest, I know it sounds weird – but going into the BDSM lifestyle actually helped me recover a lot!

I owe my ability to love and trust again due to the guys I met during that time!

But I love cautiously and when I can sniff bad memories resurfacing in someone new, I can be abrupt with them.  Be warned!

I don’t ever want to be in the place again.

The only thing I have ever truly wanted in my life was to be loved and cherished without any indication that the feelings are fake from the other person – a genuine person who loves me for who I am.  Someone who likes snuggles from time to time, someone who cares enough to ask how I think and feel about things – someone I can trust enough to love back and when I love, I love deeply and I am a nurturer – I live to nurture others. 

I know a lot of guys have got a problem with the nurturing type – “hey, I am not your baby” kind of thing – but I can’t help it, I show my love by hugging, talking a lot and asking how you are, do you want to talk about things?  Get things off your chest, unburden yourself by being open with me… but people I’ve experienced don’t like that kind of thing and I sit back and wonder – well then… what is love?

To me love is where you can be totally yourself with the person you are with, without the fear of being judged and criticised – yes constructive criticism is good a little conflict is healthy, but you know what I mean right?  You don’t actually want those criticisms to hurt the person you love, just guide them gently… yes?  Hey you really should think about so and so, it’s not healthy to do so and so… that’s gentle – not words like hey stop scarfing all the pizza or you’re gonna get fatter gordita and if that happens I’ll dump you!

To me past is past, I don’t like bad past being bought up as a weapon when in relationships – to me that’s love, love contains forgiveness and if you forgive someone in one moment and then weeks later remind them of their failure a few weeks back, you haven’t truly forgiven them!

But that’s me.

Yes, OK, some of my poems seem like I haven’t let go of my past, but sometimes as stupid as it sounds it’s OK to relive those places if you are a creative person, because creativity is more appreciated when it comes from a place of authenticity – when you know the writer has experienced that, you know they know what they are on about… you get me?

This is why, when I was in college a few years back I did so well in drama classes, because I can make myself relieve those memories so authentically, that I can bring myself back to the place I need to be when acting.  But I had no support back then about going into theatre like I was cajoled into doing by my college friends, outside of college. 

Except of course my oldest brother, he did try to encourage that, but when you have a mother who tells you, you’re not doing that and won’t let me go out to do it, what can I do?

My brother took me to the theatre once a month over a four year period, I enjoyed it a lot and I miss it a lot since moving in with Paul.  I made friends at the theatre and they asked me to join them behind the scenes and learn about it, when they knew I did drama as a side subject in college – but I told them I couldn’t do that, because my mother would have a problem with it.

In fact, most of my life before I moved in with Paul, my mother was bought up a lot socially – because she had such tight control over my life.  I couldn’t even say, yeah, sure I’ll go to the pub and have lunch with you at lunch break to my colleagues – because my mum had set me a packed lunch and if that wasn’t eaten she’d be furious, but that’s not all – she’d sometimes sit in her car outside my place of work anticipating things like this might happen.

I know it sounds unbelievable, but really, she was that controlling!

But anyway – she is out of my life now and I have friends who know about my past, the drama classes and they know that my son goes to the performing arts school up here and they are trying to talk me into approaching the Rugby Theatre, even if it’s just helping to make props – just to get me out a bit more, now I am getting a little better again.

I don’t want to act though, not now, I am not body confident.  But prop making would be fun!

Henry is getting into the idea of acting a lot now, because he is interested in playing in Matilda.  The school is helping him a lot with that and recently an actress has seen Henry and has suggested, depending on Henry’s audition next year, that she may actually sponsor Henry for outside of school drama classes to help him along as she runs a charity for underprivileged children who is interested in the craft. 

Henry also wanted to be a child model, but Paul won’t support that as he is afraid it will interfere with his schooling.

Henry is very upset about that, because Henry wants to work ASAP and he keeps asking – he knows I will support him, but he also knows I won’t do anything behind Paul’s back.

Thanks for reading…