Writing workshop - Hold me up

I’ve got these thoughts running through my head. They never let up. I lie in bed and they jab through the peace of my dreams. I drive to work and they spool behind my eyes, causing me to jump the lights and overshoot the roundabouts. I go to work - they leap out from their lair and make me scuttle around the building looking for somewhere to hide. I laugh with my friends and they poke me in the back and remind me of sorrows. I play with my son and they invade our games, unwelcome visitors in our world of make believe. I lay in the bliss of love and they pounce on me and remind me of what I have lost and what I may never get back.

They make me cry. They make me panic. They make me angry. They distract me from living my life.

I’m trying to force them out. For a long time I didn’t even recognise them as the interlopers they truly are. I thought these thoughts were part of me, but they’re not. I have lived with them for so long that I believed I was them, that they defined me.

I’m on to them now. I am worn down by these thoughts and I’m going to need help to oust them. Perhaps they’ll never really go, but I’m going to try and push them out from centre stage. They are not me, they are part of what went before and I am determined to make them retreat. So much of life is being sucked away by these thoughts. I didn’t get through it all to live a half life, worn down by thinking of things that can’t be changed.

I will do it. I am trying so hard. All I ask is that you let me take my time. That you take my hand and try to let my angry tears wash over you. That when it's tough, you give me your support, grab me tight and do your best to hold me up.

Black and white - spot the difference...

This one's for the Gallery over at Tara's. I've had a little rummage and there are some amazing photographs this week. In fact, they are really fantastic every week! Please pop over and have a look...



Spot the difference between these two little boys. One of them is my son, the other is his dad. Loads of people say that O is a little mini-Mel, but here I see that he really is his daddy's son...







There is the same cheeky glint in the eye. The wayward hair sprouts perkily on both of them and they are both sporting glorious knitwear. How things run through the generations.

M is going through some tough stuff at work at the moment. He's weighed down with cares and worry and is very quiet and introspective. When I look at his baby picture, I see the boy he once was and I see the gleam in his eyes and the happiness in his smile and I long more than anything for the light and life to return to them.

 Meanwhile, we'll get through as best we can...

Silent Sunday - the view from my bed

See the rest of the entries on Mocha Beanie Mummy.

An Autumn wander...

A few weeks ago me, M and O went for an Autumn wander through the woods and around the lake. It was one of those perfect Autumn days - cold and fresh. The trees were so beautiful - after looking through these pictures again, I feel mournful for the loss of that beauty. It did seem to be a particularly stunning Autumn this time around - I think it may be my favourite season. Plus I don't have to worry too much about shaving my legs - hurrah for black opaque tights...

The teeth are coming in!

I cannot describe the whirling that occured here...

My Autumn boy

Hard at work in 'The Library' (a tree named by the children where much fun is to be had)

Creeping through the trees...

I also took some moody black and white ones - the troll bridge is particularly sinister...

*spooky music*

Looking up through the canopy

Show me the funny - O's comedy thang

It's Gallery time again over at Sticky Fingers and this week Tara's asking us to tickle her funny bone and spread the laughter throughout the internet. So without further ado, here's my funny, gurning, daft little O doing his comedy thang...

Wearing Great Gran's comedy teeth

The Egyptian

Mother and...gurn

Still smiling after throwing up in the maze and taking half an hour to find our way out...

Even his socks are funny...

Hot priest alert...

I'm finding myself flitting from one book to another lately. It's not like me. I tend to have two or three books on the go, but usually finish one off before getting immersed in the others. However, at the moment I am leaving a trail of unfinished books in my wake and it's starting to bother me. Am hoping it's a blip - I need to get my reading mojo back...

I've always been a retro reader - going back to old favourites again and again, but recently, I've been doing this more and more. Am not sure why - perhaps its comfort in the familiar or maybe I just need something simple. When I was in hospital with my fractured skull earlier in the year, there was a copy of Flowers in the Attic in the scabrous old patients' lounge. This book was one which I read over and over again when I was 15. It was a craze - all the girls in my year were crazy for the titillating tale of Cathy and Chris and their doomy incestuous attic-based loving. How wholesome. As I mouldered in the orthopaedic ward, I took a break from helping the nurses out with the old ladies and speed-read my way through the book, marvelling at the sheer wrongness of the whole thing. It was strange going back to it 20 years later and realising how much I still knew off by heart and how overwhelmingly emo I must have been during the teenage years...

I think it must have sparked sort of yearning in me. Last week I ordered a copy of The Thorn Birds off Amazon and am about to delve once more into its depths. Does anyone remember The Thorn Birds? Catholic priest, Father Ralph and his relationship with Meggie? Inappropriate, forbidden, hot loving? Oh, how I adored it. I remember when I was a little girl and mum was gooey-eyed over the mini-series back in the 80s. I recall the cringing as she swooned over Richard Chamberlain and reminisced over his glory days as Dr Kildare back in the 60s. I eventually got over this horror and read the book during the same emo teen phase as when I read Flowers in the Attic. And, true to form, I was captured by the same obsessive devotion to the paper Father Ralph as my dear mother was by the small screen version.

I had a look on YouTube for some clips of the mini-series based on the book and came up with a number of  steamy scenes. Inspired by ShitMummy and her pervular blog, I bring you one of the best. It appears I am my mother's daughter, as I now have a raging and disturbingly fierce crush on the gorgeous Richard Chamberlain and his smoky, sexy voice...



In celebration of this delightfully filthy video, I shall post my new badge, handed to me by ShitMummy..

Must go. Got a priest to seduce. I'll be in the barn if you need me...

The Gallery - the one she begged me not to post...

Hello! It's Gallery time once again and this time Tara's gone with 'A Smile'. Please do pop over to Tara's Sticky Fingers blog to check out the other entries.

I have loads of pictures of my smiling boy - although these days his smile looks like a broken dry stone wall as he's losing teeth on what seems like a weekly basis. I was so tempted to post one of his grinning chops.

Then I thought of the photo my darling little sister, K, hates with a passion. It is crying out to be posted. It is one from my mum and dad's 25th wedding anniversary party. From the brief, happy time when I was the thinner sister and she was a little chunkier than normal. How we have laughed over this picture...

It is fondly termed 'the Chinese picture' and has gone down in family lore, along with other seminal works:

• the one where the school photo lady combed K's hair and she looks like she been in a wind tunnel 
• the one where I have a Jackson 5 perm
• the one from 1971 where Dad is wearing purple swimming trunks - shudder...
• the one where we've both been forcibly sat in a tree and I'm smiling through ill-disguised tears

 I have just come off the phone from talking to my lovely little sister and have told her that this is going on the blog. I am sorry to report that she used offensive language which I cannot possibly print in a respectable family blog. I hope you all enjoy her picture and please, do comment freely. I will be happy to share your words with her when she next pops over...