Risky to garden but…

Being that a lot of the garden has died back because it is winter and being that it is a mild winter, I have been seriously thinking about taking a risk and doing the gardening now to clear the way for spring;  why is it a risk?  Because my nosy and harassing neighbour could come out of his house and start on me again and if that happens I am in such a vulnerable emotional state right now I might actually cause a scene and I am afraid.

I had thought, maybe he won’t be interested in me if I can keep my camera to hand and film the process of me gardening or try and get Paul off his butt to film me being he hates gardening, just as a preventative for the neighbour not to harass me!

The garden is an embarrassing mess and at least the rumours in the village will stop about me being dead, murdered or moved out.

It is also a risk, because my neighbour’s huge Dalmatian is vicious and sometimes they don’t close their gate properly when he is in the garden and he could get through the entry of the houses and attack me if I am going from back to front garden getting supplies.

Also the dog throws himself at their window and their window is literally breaking with the weight of the dog, the frame of the window is cracked and part of my garden is around 6ft away from this window near the dog, because of how our garden is situated and I have to walk within 3ft of the window and the snarling dog in the window every time I need to use our side entry!

Not nice.

Not only this but no matter how quiet I am for human ears so I am not detected by this bad neighbour, I am never quiet enough for their dog, so the dog is like an alarm for him to see what this house is doing all the while!

I remember two years ago when he first got the dog, he was praising it every time it heard us, even when we was inside our own house and not outside at all, he trained the dog to be like that!

Twice that dog has lunged at Henry and Paul in the past two months when they were simply walking up the shared garden path, when he was taking it for a walk and twice they’ve been injured by the bushes as they tried to jump away from the jaws of the dog!

The owners have no control whatsoever over it and they can hardly control is on its leash, it isn’t muzzled and it should be!

Gardening was peaceful and healing for me, but it is a form of stress lately.  I know even if the neighbour doesn’t come outside to harass me he will no doubt sit in the window with his dog watching me and praising the dog to continue snarling and barking – making the entirely experience frustrating!

But it needs to be done.

Thanks for reading!

Queen of Winter

Skipping bare foot in the snow, dancing and laughing is the crystal fairy of winter’s chill

Tapping frost onto cobwebs and lacing the ground white with each step, over mountain and over hill

Icicles worn like gems decorate her silver neck and frosted leaves make her shining dress

A gown fit to impress, the faeries at the Yuletide ball

She will be much loved within the dance-hall of Oberon and Titania

Bringing a dancing mania to one and to all

An ice dance supreme, like a tremendous dream as she decorates streams of icy walls

For she is The Queen of Winter and she will stand tall!

Sentimental & very ready!

I am a very sentimental person and this is something that people have tried to get out of me, sentimentality is not respected in the world or rather the societies I was raised in. 

My mother had always tried to force that sort of thing out of me, by forcing me to get rid of a third of my stuff every three months so I never grew attachments to anything!

When a person dies in the family, people have to fight for things like photographs and things of sentimental value, because other members of the family will just get a skip (a hired dumpster) and throw things away – yes – even photos!

What things I had managed to keep over the test of time and hid from my mother, I still have and I know it sounds lame, but I am never getting rid of those things – including the fifteen soft toys I have managed to keep, because it was a huge fight for many years to keep them and I had to be tactical about it!

Over the years I have been gifted small things by people who have since died and I am not happy about leaving things like that behind or throwing them away either and I am paranoid about them breaking when I move out of Paul’s!

I don’t have many things, probably enough to fit in a suitcase or two, but they have a lot of memories for me. 

A little book ornament my grandma bought me with a rose on it for my birthday – that meant a lot to me because, I don’t mean to speak ill of the dead or anything, but my maternal grandma was a known miser and rarely got gifts for anyone – especially something like this, especially something personalised!

So the fact I got a personalised ornament with a gold engraving on it, means a lot to me, because nobody else has ever got such a valuable gift from her before!  I mean, it’s not expensive, but it’s not a simple chocolate box like she normally gave her adult grandchildren, you know?

It tells me that although she was never vocal about how she felt about me, she knew we had a special bond in comparison to everyone else, because she let me live with her a lot as I was growing up and we spent a lot of time together alone and shared the same hobbies!  I was also the only descendant she had who trusted her stories of our ancestry and who would listen to her little quips of gypsy magic etc; whereas everyone else rolled their eyes up and was like “whatever”.

I have some soft toys which mean a lot to me too, unfortunately a couple of them have got lost in the pack rat mess of Pauls here – so I have to try and find them and I hope they are not ruined like a couple of other things have been, which has broken my heart over the years, because Paul has moved somethings of mine temporarily but forgot to put it back!

So, yes, I am transitioning into getting into the mind-set to prepare myself to move out – it won’t be soon – it can’t be for a small number of reasons, but also because I need to start thinking about self-employment on a serious level now, so I can support myself.

I researched online last night with Paul actually about how much I need to try and earn monthly in order to be able to confidently leave him and support myself and I would need £1600 a month if I am to stay within a 3 mile walk of Henry my son, as he won’t be coming with me apparently.

I also will not move out unless I can support a dog in a rentable accommodation that allows a dog that is essential for my sense of personal security!

But for years, before Paul decided he had found someone else, I have not been happy here but just tolerated being here.  I have never been happy about the house environment; Paul has different standards than I do about what constitutes good, clean and tidy living!

Paul has come to realise that the house will be very empty when I move out, because I bought most of the furniture and Paul insists anything I have bought, must go with me – whether I want it or not!

I told him don’t be stupid, you won’t have any chairs, any sofa, any bed – what about Henry, you think I am going to take these things from him?

Sometimes he can be very irrational!

He will only have a dining table set when I leave and a bedframe for himself, if he is going to go that far!

Because I have to admit, a lot of my debt is due to me having to use my credit score in order to buy things we needed to replace as things broke down or became too dangerous to use anymore, because Paul was already in debt before I moved in!

My debt was caused by having to support breakdowns, because he couldn’t and we needed to feed a baby, we needed a new cooker, we needed a new mattress as I was cut to ribbons in the old mattress, Henry needed a bed, we needed a sofa because my mum broke it etc., you get the idea?

I came with 3 boxes of books and there were no bookshelves, so I bought those.

I am certainly taking the rugs with me so Henry goes colder!  Before I moved in there was no rugs on our stone and laminated floor at all, it’s an ice-box in the winter – Paul has always resented the rugs, but we can’t sit in a freezer all winter – especially when Henry sits on the floor all the time!

To say I am looking forward to leaving this house is an understatement!

I will hate the quiet solitude of living alone, because personally, any time I am alone I am in high anxiety and I prefer to be in any company at all, than alone!

It’s very likely no sooner had I paid my first rent, I’d have got into a relationship with someone and got them to move in with me, because I won’t hack living solo!  I just hope they are a decent person, whoever they might be – no one is planned yet!

But I need to start setting up my business and rolling up my sleeves now, because I never realised how much Paul could change in a short space of time and I don’t like it!

I am not comfortable here anymore, we have split up as far as we’re both concerned, so why does he still walk into the bathroom when I am having a bath to take a pee next to me?  That’s acceptable when we was an item, but now I am feeling a little weird about it!

I know I sound stupid, but it just doesn’t sit right with me anymore to do that.

As I am starting to go into a nesting phase mentally… I have started to try and gather things of mine whenever I can and weigh up whether I really want those things or not anymore and I am bagging them for charity.  But it hurts when I find something I love and had meaning to me, be destroyed because it had been thrown amongst the pack rat pile and got damaged, often severely!

I found a doll of mine which had been perfect all these years squashed against a radiator and her face had melted, broke my heart because it was the only proper doll I had outside of Barbie.

I know I sound like a stupid kid, but it still puzzles me how she got out of the bag she was in and thrown all the way over there like that!

Like a pair of kinky boots I had when I used to be involved in the lifestyle (BDSM) as a switch for a short while, as an ex master of mine thought I am a good alpha girl for others, so why not try and train me to be a dominatrix to earn some cash!  I never did that, but he let me keep the boots nonetheless and I loved them, but they were shifted from my boot box out into the utility room by Paul and when the storm damaged the roof the box dissolved and I didn’t know about it until months later, when I found the box had rotted into the boots and the boots were literally glued to the floor of the room like they had melted!

I didn’t know about this and a bunch of other things in the utility room, because the floorboards in the room were cracked, dipped and damaged and Paul banned me from using the room – even though it’s still used as our laundry room – so I never got to see the damage out there until I wanted to clean it up two years ago!

The utility room is our only safe access to the back garden – the other one is a shared entryway that is guarded by our bad neighbour’s ferocious Dalmatian dog, which is untrained and attacks everything – only Paul is stupid enough to use that entryway and twice the dog has caused him an injury, but still he won’t complain!

Be glad to be out of here, I can tell you!

Get to do my gardening again, get to have the safety that the bad neighbour isn’t going to come glaring into our downstairs windows whenever he likes, get to have a clean and tidy home that has fresh air and windows opened regularly!  Get to be able to access the food in the kitchen without twisted my sides as it’s all out of reach… seriously… I can’t wait!

If I had the money tomorrow to get out of here, you won’t have seen me move fast enough, believe me!

So, the 8^th of December my domain name gets renewed, with that I am adding some money to WordPress to update it to a business account to get advertisers to pay me!  I am also going to try and figure out how to use Instagram properly for business and poetry.

I am going to compile several of my old blog post poems into a book to sell on Amazon kindle. 

I am going to look into what I can do to utilise patreon and Pinterest. 

Then I am going to have to figure out alone how to set up my webcam and microphone on my desktop to start a YouTube channel!

Also, I am going to forego treat money for about six weeks to save up for a bulk in art supplies so I can sell my art in different formats on Squarespace. 

Every little helps!

Whilst doing all of that, I will be trying to add two hours a day again to writing my novels as I am not giving up on those either!

Busy, busy, busy, especially as I am trying to get healthier and fitter and exercise and what have you.

If these things haven’t got started by the second week of January then I am just a bum and that’s not acceptable to me!  Because I am no longer bedbound sick anymore! 

Thanks for reading!

What is winter?

What does winter mean to me?

Cool crispy frosty mornings, where cobwebs are frozen solid, glistening in the morning sunlight forming prisms on the snow.

I’m like a dragon breathing smoke because my breath is hot in comparison to the air around me and I am snug and warm in fleece from head to toe.

I get to throw snowballs at my favourite people in jest and run after each other in tension that we might slip and fall down; if we’re lucky it will be powdery snow this year, not the sludgy wet kind.

Winter means lots of lovely filling hot meals, beef stew, chili, roast dinners, soups – all my favourite comfort foods and it’s plum season to boot!

Morning walks are more of a pleasure because of the icy beauty around us from the night before; everywhere has newly made crystals which shine like rainbows if you look at them the right way.  Skinny dogs are uncomfortable and need a coat, fatter ones are eager to stay indoors – but get the right dog and it is a heavenly time of year to go for a walk!

Just at the end of winter is the time where I start to think about the garden for the coming year, sometimes prepping seeds before spring in the greenhouse already, to give me a few weeks head start in comparison to other people, therefore a longer harvest time.

It’s a spicy season, it’s a sweet treat and high fat season – it’s not the season for diets!

It’s the season for hot water bottles and fleece blankets and cosy snuggles by the fireplace.

It’s not the season for cold desserts; it’s the season for cherry pie, French toast and peach crumble all washed down in hot chocolate, ginger or hot apple spiced tea.

Poinsettias around the house welcoming in Christmas with holly and ivy and red roses!

The house sparkles in the joyous illuminations of the season of celebration, hope, renewal and promise.

Families and neighbours come together to sing, to dance, to pray, to forget the badness of the past year and to give thanks, gifts, charity and love.

It may be the end of the year, the harbinger of death all around us as nature is laid bare – but it is really the busiest time for creation, planning and new beginnings.

That’s what winter means to me – it means hope – it means a new start!

Thanks for reading!

When am I sending work to an agent?

Because of the Covid I had at Easter my plans to send work to any publisher by the start of Autumn 2022 has been shifted now to late winter 2022/2023; this is because I know that the current finished products are not ready to be sent to the world, but there is one that I am confident will be finished by the end of this year because it is so fresh in my mind and the most unique of the stories I have planned to send.

Basically I want my first published book to be special, who doesn’t?

Also I am in a quandary about one of the two books I am thinking about sending out – because one of those books I really want to make as a comic series, but I have little knowledge in creating comics and though I have studied a lot of “how to” books and watched a lot of “how to” YouTube videos, I am still not very confident about shifting a novelisation I have made into a comic book format, especially as I am not confident as an artist!

At the moment it is being written as a series of novels, I hope that eventually I will gain confidence in breaking it down into comic book form, because I think making this particular idea a comic book series would do better for it, than novels.  I doubt I would get advice on this from my future agent, but I hope it is something I could talk about with them eventually.

It is the second idea that is likely to be published first, the pure, simple, traditional novel with no comic book planning whatsoever.

Though I am sure that someday there may be comic book adaptions written by fans as it could work as that eventually too, but then again, most books of this particular genre end up in comic book format eventually.

Neil Gaiman’s snippet at the back of one of his Sandman comics about how to write comics has been a big help, as well as Peter David’s book “writing for comics” and a YouTube channel called Serkworks Art Lab.  Without these, I’d be even more clueless about what I am doing.

The thing is, I want the comic series, more than I want the novel idea out there first.  But, I am just so nervous about presenting a novel to an agent as a book, then saying, I can eventually break it down as comics, which was always my intention… how willing are agents to take on work like that?

I have to admit I am a little too afraid to approach them on that even as a question as I hate wasting people’s time!

The comic book I am writing has a lot of characters and action, but it is focused particularly on a group of three characters which work as a team together against a common evil, though the evil is from the same source, they too are different groups – it is like a gang warfare dystopian comic series with mild horror elements, to allow it to be sold to a young adult and possibly an older child audience.

To make life easier in explanation I will call this on my blog a dark fantasy side of my work, which would likely be under the pseudonym of my family entertainment side of my work.

Because I don’t want it to be too dark for family enjoyment!

It is about as dark as Watership down meets a tamer version of The Suicide Squad…

Just to tease a little there…

My actual novel which is likely to be sent out by the end of the year is more Warhammer meets Robocop, there are cyberpunk and fantasy elements in that story.

So there you have it, my plan for the year in writing.

Snow fairy

With tinsel hair and twinkle toes a little fairy glides

Spreads ice and snow from her wand and wearing rabbit hides

She spreads her wings above us all and snowflakes flutter down

To rain joy upon us all and making smiles from frowns

Each and every winter, the little fairy comes

To paint the world white with snow so you can play in it with your chums

Hip, hip hooray for snow fairy

In her pearly gown

She brings such joy to everyone, when she has come to town!

Frost bitten rose

 

The winter is cold now

There’s a bite in the air

A snowstorm, it invites me

To walk alone without a care

Into the white cascades

Death is a dream to me

I invite it

I embrace it all the time

Now it calls me

I go to it

You may find me near the springtime

Like a frost bitten rose

Wandering in my mind (Wimm) 1

I am watching the mass of people that have gathered here today expecting something new and unique to show them.  They are watching me with patient curiosity as to where I will take them today, the man who is slightly balding in his mid-forties is grinning with anticipation and scratching gently his wrist around his watch and the beautiful auburn young lady in her early twenties beams at me and clasps her hands in front of her.  I shan’t disappoint them, or the many others besides.

There is an icy chill in the air, a large bonfire crackles in the moonlight behind me and I turn to it to add another log to the fire, a scent of lavender fills the air as a beautiful blond lady in blue silks and a medieval gown throws a large bundle of lavender into the fire.  We sit down, this lady and I, upon felled wood and I play upon a pear wood recorder as she begins to recite a poem sang in beautiful Latin about the coming of snow, it is a haunting piece which fills the gathered audience with solemn peace and nostalgia, though they don’t audibly understand the words she is singing, they can understand it by the lilt and chill of her voice along with the biting of the air around them.  The young lady with auburn hair is almost overcome by the power of the ladies voice and others take in deep sighs and close their eyes as they soak in the night air.

Men dressed in blue velvet and silver medieval court clothes pass around toasted vanilla flavoured marshmallows to the audience, a taste of warm sweet snow, a great paradox to the subject of the song.  The marshmallows fill the audience with hope of warmer climes to come, a glimpse that it shan’t be forever cold, that tonight is just an interim and those come and go quickly.

 

 

Winter

Why so bleak?

It is the season

Never warm, always cold

Though thrilling festivals forthwith

Ever singing in the New Year

Riding the end of the year in larks and laughs

Autumn is the crisp morning dew

Autumn is the crisp morning dew followed by golden sunshine and rains of multi-coloured leaves

Everything crunching under foot with a satisfying crunch, scrunch, crunch

Delicious spices fill the air with pies, casseroles and soups

Harvest time for all, pumpkins, squashes, apples and more

Cheeky children knocking at Halloween’s door, begging for candies and little treats

You have to give it to them, they are so sweet

Dew drops start to freeze in the cooling air

Summer is gone without a care

Soon it shall be winter

Bonfires burn and glow, fireworks emblazon the night skies

The fire is filled to the brim with wood, hear it snap, snap snap to a crisp in the heat

Winter shall be here in a heart beat