Tag Archives: author blog

21 Oct 2023 · 12:00 pm

Balls … all of it.

Well, it’s been a long time and I suspect most of you have wandered off, assuming I have disappeared off into the ether.

Nope, like a bad smell, I never go away, I linger. I have just … yeh well, to be honest I’ve completely lost the plot. I wouldn’t say I’m actually burning out yet but let’s say … we’re on the red line and there’s definitely an alarming aroma of burning oil and hot metal. Hence my stepping back. So having not blogged for a long time it’s time to catch up. Yes. You know what you’re going to get now, don’t you? That’s right. An entire sodding book. Mwahahahrgh. Jolly dee then. On we go.

You want to know how my life’s going right now? Here’s how it’s going.

A few days ago, as I was walking up the garden path, minding my own bleedin’ business when a sleepy wasp fell out of a tree and landed on my head, at which point it got stuck in my hair and the little bastard stung my face. Worse, the breeze kept blowing my hair, plus—now incandescent—jabby stingy wasp, back at my cheek. As I flapped at my hair to try and keep the wasp off me, and at the same time, shake it free, I inadvertently batted my glasses into the shrubbery. Then of course, I couldn’t find them because I wasn’t wearing my bloody glasses. Luckily McOther heard me effing and blinding, took pity on me and found them for me, although he had to put on his reading glasses first or he wouldn’t have been able to sodding see.

Finally, after repeated bouts of ‘the Wasp Dance’ the pesky insect in question fell out of my hair and landed drunkenly on the patio. I’m afraid I was very angry with it and trod on it.

Welcome to my world. Shit like this happening the whole. Fucking. Time. Shit so fucking bizarre you couldn’t make it up; day, after day, after day. I really should write more of it down.

So that’s set the tone. Now you know what you’re in for with the rest of this. Mwahahahrgh! I can’t say my life is lacking in comedy it’s just that it’s the kind of stuff that, if I put it in a book, would have reviewers saying it was too slapstick and unrealistic to be true.

Mmm.

The evidence would suggest that, here at McGuire towers, we are some kind of fucking masochists, we have had the fullest room in the house re floored. Why the fuck did we do that? This has involved us moving shelves, about 300 books and about 8,000 LPs a table, a sofa, a doll’s house, a printer, a LOT of curtains and Lord knows how much other shite into different parts of the house.

When the LPs are leaning against the wall along the length of 3 metre room double thickness, you know there are rather a lot of them. Said room is also full of boxes of books, tables, there’s a doll’s house and all sorts of shit. Not to mention a sofa blocking the door so you can’t actually get into it and a giant set of shelves all but blocking the hall.

The room being re floored is also a main thoroughfare. Think, central hall. So to get from most of the house to the kitchen we have to go up the stairs, along a corridor, and down the back stairs into the kitchen instead of along a hall and through a room, because we can’t walk on a newly tiled floors because … glue.

To get to the utility room and the freezer we have to go outside into the pissing rain, round the side of the house and in through the back door. To put the cat to bed … well … he’s having to sleep in another room. He’s doing really well—because cats don’t like this kind of stuff but he hasn’t run away—although I suspect he’s not enjoying it. There were many set backs. It was meant to happen two weeks ago but other jobs over ran and the chap couldn’t get to us until this week.

On the up side, we can access all rooms without having to actually climb in through a window. Frankly, the state things are, I call that a win.

Unfortunately, having the entire house becoming more and more discombobulated over a period of several weeks (because that room has taken a long time to clear because it was packed well above it’s plimsoll line with shit, anyway) has left me astoundingly arse about face. I have no fucking clue which way is up. Or at least, even less fucking clue than I usually have. On the up side. They’re done. And though we can’t walk on it tonight. Again. It will be dry tomorrow and—pending a quick once over with a mop—finished.

Then it will take us another three weeks to move all the shit back again.

No. We’re not going to.

We’re going to sort though the shit and sell/bin it. That’s kind of OK except I have so much fucking shit to sort though and get rid of and now it looks like I might be adding Mum’s to the mix because we all know how brilliant I am at cataloguing and tidying things up or selling them/giving them away. There’s a reason my rather fabulous collection of plastic tat has been languishing in 39 boxes above the garage since we moved here 15 years ago, instead of on display and it’s not all about lacking the room.

(Yes, just in case you need this spelled out. I’m shit at those things. Really, astoundingly, gobsmackingly, special-super-hero-attribute levels of shit, so my life is going to be an unbounded joy for the next six months/year but hopefully things will fuck off and leave me alone after that.)

On the Mum front. Mum is running out of money. The people who are supposed to be getting continuing care for us appear to have stopped doing whatever it is they do and I’ve chalked 4 grand of her cash up to experience. My interactions with them are very different to that of Mum’s carer, who recommended them to us. She said they couldn’t do enough to help, my experience is they have taken 4 grand of Mum’s cash and can’t do enough not to. I’ve paid 4k and it seems their job is to tell me what to do and wait until I do it for them. I did think, for that kind of eye watering fee, that the carers and I were going to provide the information and they were going to collate it.

No. Maybe the precedents they will use to prove their case will make the cash worth it. Maybe but it’s worrying, when the key reason I went to them was because I knew I was too burned out to collect the information required and navigate the process on my own in the time we have available.

The way things are, I am, indeed, too burned out to chase this stuff up myself and they aren’t doing it either. They do not volunteer any communication. I have to contact them, they take two or three days to reply to emails, and it’s not possible to speak to anyone on the phone, you have to leave a message and then they call you back, usually during a doctor’s appointment, or while you’re driving, or on the loo or in an area of stupendously sketchy mobile phone coverage.

I asked how it was going and they said they were waiting for medical records and asked me to send a document I’d already sent. I did so and chased up Mum’s doctor. They then contacted me to say they were still waiting for the records. I said I’d chased and asked them to let me know when the records arrived. Next port of call, chase them again and then, presumably, chase it up with Mum’s doctor.

Having employed them because I needed someone to do this shit for me, to take the admin out of my hands because I’m too slow to do it they’re just sitting there making me do it all. Indeed, it seems I’ve lumbered myself with a double layer, and a stopper between myself and the care board that is slowing things down rather than speeding them up.

Ho hum. So yeh. It’s probably actually taken longer than it would have done if I’d done it on my own. Head. Desk.

A learning moment then. Chalking that one up to experience. I’ve sent them heaven knows how many documents, in certain instances, several times. You wait. I’ll get a lovely email from them tomorrow now and feel really guilty for writing this.

No. I won’t. Although they say it takes 8 weeks to process after they’ve received all the information and I think Mum’s doctor is dragging his feet signing off the medical records, because he’s absolutely swamped with admin.

Meanwhile things are progressing slowly with identifying a possible learning issue for McMini. I am hoping to get an assessment for visual processing which is something that is relatively straightforward to sort once it’s identified. He’s burned out and I don’t think he would be burning out from school if there wasn’t something making life extra difficult for him. His intellect is razor sharp, which makes it all the more difficult. As I understand it, burn out is one of the tell-tale signs of a learning thing.

Other Mum news. OK, so … the continuing health care company may yet come through, but Mum’s financial reserves are unlikely to outlast the time it is going to take. That means we have to sell the house. Talking to one of her carers the other Wednesday, she confirmed that Mum doesn’t really know where she is anymore, which means we can now move her. So she’s going to my lovely brother. Not to live with him but to a home near him which is opening up, quietly, bit by bit, and which specialises in dementia care. We were looking at next year but Bruv has to do the do during the school holidays and I should be there to help too. If I am going to have Christmas at Mum’s with her that means, the way our holidays and trips abroad fall, that it would be June 2024 before we could move her. Too late. We’ll have run out of cash. Or just after Christmas. Except, if I do that, it will have to be the first week in January or Bruv is back to work and as a teacher, with school holidays, he can’t really ask for time off during term time for this.

But … we are going to McOther’s folks in Scotland for New Year and we can’t cancel that because they are 5 hours away, they can’t travel and with Saturday school, holidays and half terms are the only times we can go.

So … the only other time is the beginning of the this school holidays … which means I needed to drop everything last weekend and belt up to Shrewsbury to look at the home, which was lovely, luckily. It was lovely to see Bruv, wife and kids too and heartening to meet the staff and see the home. I genuinely think Mum will be happy there.

Having given the home the green light, we’re moving her mid December. Then we have to clear the house and sell it. I have to do stuff like cancel the phone and broadband contracts and get the garage cleared (it’s full of stuff that belongs to someone else). Bruv and I have to decide a) who gets what and b) what we might sell to pay care fees.

It’s been interesting, as at one point I was looking to meld Mum’s broadband and phone into one. This would be £20 a month for both rather than £30 for each one. However, where the utilities (except the broadband) were all with one company; SSE, that company is now defunct so it all went to Ovum or OVO or whatever they are. They then divested themselves of the phone account to a company called Origin broadband. I rang Origin but in the long chain of passing accounts from one operator to another something has changed the account name. It’s no longer in Mum’s name it seems, or at least, when I gave the account number and they asked for my account name for ‘security’ and I gave mum’s name, as printed on their welcome letter, they said I had got it wrong. They asked for a title. There isn’t one so I said Mrs. That was not the correct salutation apparently. I then suggested ‘hello’ which is what it said on the welcome letter. That was also wrong. We tried two different spellings of Elisabeth; the way she spells it and the usual one but that wasn’t right either. So nobody at Origin can actually access my mother’s telephone account … because it’s not in her name. So that’s a joy to come when I try and cancel the phone.

Dealing with Origin I spoke to a lovely lady in South Africa (she used ‘just now’ and had the accent) and we did have quite a giggle about it as she tried 101 different permutations of Mum’s name to get in but we failed in our mission and she wasn’t able to help. We had to give up which is a little ominous.

I guess I just write to them and cancel the Direct Debit with the bank, but they are now dealt with by a call centre in India (even though Mum chose a special account specifically to have her telephone banking handled by a UK based call centre). The folks in Bombay or wherever it is are actually lovely but it’s a terrible line, a lot of them are really soft spoken so even I have trouble hearing them and they are far more interested a perfect administrative record than any meaningful customer service — jeez nobody does admin and minutia-driven bureaucracy like a this lot I wonder if they’re handling BT’s help line as well — so I’m not sure how far I’ll get with that.

Meanwhile, I’ve been getting vaguer and vaguer. I know dementia is my destiny but I was hoping not quite yet. Two weeks ago I bought an air plant in the market. I know I had it with me at the check out shortly afterwards in Marks & Spencer’s because I remember picking it up and taking it outside but somewhere between M&S and home I put down the bag it was in and failed to pick it up again. I literally don’t know where I lost it. I only remembered I’d bought it two weeks afterwards. Arnold’s pants. What a bell end.

In health news, because I am one eighth French, which means that if you ask me how I am I WILL tell you … I have finally been to the doctor properly about my aching hands and while I suspect they are a bit arthritic, the main problem is carpal tunnel. The sore arm I have been experiencing when metal detecting for the last year and a bit which has suddenly become permanently painful … that’s tennis elbow. So I’ve had that for over a year and the carpal tunnel since 2015.

Ah.

Nice to know I’ve been looking after myself. Mwahahahrgh!

On the upside, both those things can be fixed with physiotherapy. Excellent. So long as I haven’t fucked the hands up too badly in the intervening 7 years since they started. I had been to the doctor before about the hands but they said it was arthritis. My bad, though, I should have been more articulate about the type of pain. I didn’t really think about it until it got really bad. Then I realised it wasn’t responding to the same things as my arthritic bits do.

So that’s a joy. But hopefully a fixable one.

There are Christmas events too! Please do feel free to come and visit me at the St Edmundsbury Cathedral Christmas Fair on 23rd – 25th November, 2023. Woot. I will be the one dying on my arse while those around me sell stuff feverishly hand-over-fist. I’m busy prepping for this, I have to order some eyebombing calendars, a couple of books and some cards. I also have to decide whether I’m going to visit a local cafe, clean the mirror in their loos and take another photo of the eyebomb I did there so it looks better as a Christmas card than the picture I have already.

Picture of an ornate frame with eyes stuck on it so it looks like father Christmas

Oh ho ho

Right now it’s the spit of Father Christmas but you can really see the dust. I thought writing Oh-ho-ho! in red or drawing a silly hat on it might help. I dunno.

Events! Norcon! I never blogged about Norcon! It was fabulous this year. Sorry not to post. Although no Nigel Planer selfie this time because he wasn’t there. Pity as I loved his book and was hoping I could buttonhole him and tell him. It has a similar feel to mine, which was heartening. So yeh, would have loved to have talked to him about that. Never mind. Can’t win ‘em all. Maybe next year. I sold a lot of books though, at pre covid levels. Which was lovely.

Ditto McMini’s most recent gig. Jeepers but he has gigs springing up like mushrooms all over East Anglia, including a Friday here and another on the next night in Norwich which will be a bit hard core for his perennially knackered 55 year old mother even if it will be fun. I should add that I sell the merch so it’s like doing a small event. I’ll get used to it though and the last gig I went home to entertain dinner guests and other people sold the merch for me!

Where was I? Oh yes. Events. A few weeks after Norcon it was time to take part in the first ever Fringe Literary Festival, here in our very own Bury St Edmunds. They had a short story completion: Fast Forward, for flash fiction up to 500 words. I put the start of an incomplete series in (one of the many things I’ve managed to get half way through but is now too complicated to complete until the emotional load is lighter than it is now). OK I condensed it a lot but if you want to listen, it’s here. Although there’s a lot of background noise. Sorry about that but the stories were read out in venues around Bury which was brilliant but less easy to record cleanly. Not that it mattered! As always, I was stoked to hear it read out. Here it is anyway.

So there you have it. Things are very, very hectic. I have a talk about burnout on 7th December. I’ve been working on it all year and I am cautiously optimistic that I will get it done in time but it’s tough because I’m … well … burned out. Mwahahrgh! Even more burned out than usual! As for writing, have I written anything new? Have I bollocks? Sigh. Maybe LIFE will fuck off for a bit next year and I’ll get a chance.

Ho hum, onwards and upwards? How have you been this last three months?

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Tagged as author blog, author blogs, author parent, comedy fantasy fiction, dementia, I fucked this up so you don't have to, istuffedthisupsoyoudon’thaveto, K'Barthan Series, M T M Makes a complete tit of herself, M T McGuire, off topic, writers, writing

15 Jul 2023 · 12:23 pm

Modern life is rubbish!

This is a blog post I wrote a couple of days ago. I’ve wrestled with my conscience as to whether I should actually post it. Mainly because it’s only going to worry people. I promise we’re all OK, but I do need to vent sometimes. This, being my blog, seems as good a place as any to do that. So it comes with a <rant mode> warning. Naturally, it’s written with a mental voice I use specifically for ranting which sounds like John Cleese doing Basil Fawlty going off on one. If any of it makes you laugh, that is the correct reaction. It is meant, foremost to amuse, but also to inform a bit in that it does genuinely feel like that sometimes.

Since the entire tirade genuinely reflects the way I felt at the time I wrote it, I think that, in the interests of full transparency, I should publish it. And also because I haven’t written anything else, so here it is.

[Rant mode] Modern life is rubbish!

A famous Blur album from the 1990s but also, sadly, very true for me. Or perhaps if I’m honest I should say, I am rubbish at modern life.

Aroogah! Aroogah! Whinge warning!

OK so I’m going to go on a teeny bit of a rant here, because in many respects, I’ve had a pretty rough time of it lately, and since this is my blog, I can sodding well do what I like. But I have a burning question right now and it’s this.

Why am I so unsuited to modern life? Because despite having been invited to sit the mensa test, it counts for zilch since I’m as thick as pigshit when it comes to certain, more mathematical strains of logic. I write numbers back to front and upside down (and add them up that way too) I often mange to look up completely the wrong hymn in church—because I read the number back to front—and my organisational skills are negligible. I couldn’t organise a fart in bed but the most galling thing is that despite knowing this, I still haven’t hit on a way to learn how to be organised. It just … doesn’t.

Then there’s the Mum stuff. The perfect storm of every single thing at which I am shit. I have skills. Are they any use to me for this? Of course they’re fucking not, I need the jot tittle and iota of formfilling and box ticking down pat and frankly, I suspect I’ve more chance of getting to the moon by putting car springs on my feet and trying to jump than I do of bossing that sort of stuff.

Mum’s mortgage money is dwindling astonishingly fast so I am trying to get some help from the NHS with her care costs. Yes, I know, I’m in the UK and the NHS is supposed to provide healthcare free to all at the point of need and yes, it does … except that some aspects of healthcare are more free than others. When you have dementia, it’s classed as a ‘social’ illness and dealt with by social services and presumably mental health services. It is a mental illness but at the same time, it isn’t because the causes of dementia are physical; strokes, bleeds to the brain, or neural diseases like Alzheimer’s, Lewy bodies, Motor Neurone etc which are all caused by physical factors, even if medical science doesn’t always understand why they happen, it’s a physical factor, not a mental one, which causes these outcomes.

Unfortunately, the NHS changed its classification of dementia back in the late 90s and for a whole swathe of people it was too late to plan for any healthcare costs, they just had to hope they wouldn’t need them. Worse, if those people did try to offload some cash after diagnosis, they stood the chance of being had up for avoiding care fees which is called deprivation of assets and is considered to be a criminal offence.

Some folks were lucky and they didn’t get dementia or they died fairly soon into the journey. My parents weren’t. One of the diffiiculties is that, for example, Mum has a house and the logical thing to do, from the point of view of death duties, would be for her to make over the house to us but continue to live there but even if she does this in a way that is compliant with UK tax law, then, since her dementia diagnosis, it would be a criminal offence because that would be trying to leave something to her children rather than spend the last of her and Dad’s assets on the healthcare she was promised for free until it was too late for her to do anything about it. Oh, and because the fact she and Dad have spent around £900k on care fees, to date—that’s right, close to ONE MILLION QUID—one million quid I didn’t even know they had, it still isn’t enough because the bastards want to make sure they strip those assets thoroughly, family antiques, pictures, the house, it’s all got to be sold to pay for care costs, or you have to make over the house to the authorities if they are going to pay (there may or may not be a cap on how much they can take for this. I think it depends where you are).

Yep, if you want to be tax efficient with your will, or try to avoid paying every last penny you have in care costs and give something to your kids … well … if you’re dying of cancer that’s OK. If you have a benign front temporal lobe brain tumour that presents very similar symptoms to the ones Dad endured, that’s OK, but if your affliction is associated with dementia then no. I’m sorry. If you try to do it, then, it’s a crime. Remember people, the D in dementia stands for destitute, and as far as the state is concerned, if you’re not destitute by the end of it, they’ve done something wrong. You’re supposed to surrender everything to pay for your care fees, suddenly, it becomes an actual crime to leave anything for your children or grandchildren.

Because we’re lovely compassionate people here in the UK and when our government screws over our citizens it likes to do it properly. Dementia isn’t a long grinding and hard enough road on its own, oh no, the government and the NHS like to ensure they make it as shitty for everyone concerned as possible. Why help one dementia patient when with a few deft tweaks to the care system, you can ensure there are more and double the assets you strip from the afflicted. Twice the money. Chancellor rubs hands together. Excellent.

As you can see, I’m not bitter or angry about this. Not at all.

Seriously, though. I genuinely don’t give a shit about my inheritance, that’s gone, although I do care about my brother’s half and that he gets nothing as well. What does make me angry is that it’s cost me pretty much everything; the never ending, grinding awfulness of it all has sapped me of any meaningful ability to write books and with that my purpose. It’s cost me being a decent mother, it’s cost me being an attentive wife, it’s cost me keeping in touch with my friends and wider family because it’s such a massive drag on my mental energy that I can only just keep in touch with a few folks. I guess we could just stop with, it’s cost me my happiness in many respects, or perhaps my contentment because in terms of stress, time, sadness, love, pain and god knows what else, it’s blown away any semblance of concentration and mental capacity I had (yes! Stress gives you brain fog, who’d have thunk it). It’s cost my husband and son because they feel it too, and they’ve seen me cry, many times and in my son’s case, at far too young an age. It’s cost my brother and his wife and my nephews and niece just as much.

I fucking resent the price we, and thousands like us, have paid because the illness our parents have endured has the wrong name. It does, indeed boil my piss. Mwahahahargh! I try not to think about it too much.

And fair due, when I say they take ‘every last penny’ they do generously leave you the last 23k. Except they don’t—and it’s not—because there’s a sliding scale of help beyond that and the full package doesn’t kick in until you are at £14k … which, to put this in perspective, is about 9 weeks of care fees.

Anyway, the amount of form filling! As you know, I am always a tower of strength when it comes to form filling, says she, with deep sarcasm. Did I mention that looking after Mum’s finances, healthcare and general wellbeing is a perfect storm of every single thing at which I am shit? And so was Dad’s. And it’s been going on for years and years, and years. And I am so, so fucking tired of my entire life being about trying to boss an enormous collection of all the things I am emotionally, physically and mentally least equipped to do. And Oh Lordy I took McMini to a consultation with a counsellor today and we fleetingly touched on the whole dementia dementor that is sucking away my life and I actually nearly wept. It caught me completely broadside because I thought I was through all that.

Not quite. Clearly.

The other day, I was listening to a programme on BBC sounds about dementia and they were so fucking upbeat.

‘Do you know carers everywhere save the government over £11bn a year?’ they said (or something along those lines). ‘Aren’t you all marvellous?’

Yeh the same way clapping people is so much better than giving them a pay rise and we don’t save them the money, they take it from us.

And I was sat there in the car, bundling along the M25 (it was flowing well that day) shouting,

‘No! We’re not fucking marvellous you absolute pus wangle! We’re fucking desperate, and lost and we have NOTHING left to give and NOTHING left to fight with! And no-one fucking gives a shit! And while I’m shouting at the windscreen like this, worrying the person in the car next to me,’ MTM turns, gives the nervous looking woman in the nissan micra a thumbs up and waves. ‘Can I just mention what it costs US? Everything. Fucking everything. Let me repeat that! It costs us every. fucking. thing. Our social lives, our hobbies, our capacity for coherent thought, our health and in some cases our sanity or our actual fucking lives.’

OK so I appreciate that sounds melodramatic but sadly, it’s true. One demented relative, and you are surrendering to years of sleepless nights and brain fog. Think new baby for years, and years, and YEARS until the lack of sleep kills you.

In a horrible irony, do you know what the result of that level of stress, for 15 years, was for Mum? That’s right. Dementia for her too. What a kindly joy! Thanks God you absolute get. The woman who said, ‘I don’t really care what happens to me when I get old, so long as I don’t lose my marbles.’ is losing her marbles.

Thank you, you to whichever clusterfuck of cucking funts made that decision back in the 1990s because thanks to your intervention she has, indeed, lost her fucking marbles.

Bastards.

Yes! I’m sure I’m entitled to all sorts of benefits and help and Mum gets it, what there is, but I’m too exhausted to look into it. And when I do, it’s for people spending 36 hours a week on care. If you have a part-time job that you can no longer do because of the strain of looking after your demented relative, that means you’re not eligible. If you worked during the school day, you’re not eligible because that’s not 36 hours. It’s a fucking shower! And I’m just running a house, a care team and a life from afar. I’m not even one of the poor bastards at home doing it 24/7 with no let up, no relief and no fucking hope. Waking up every hour all through the night and trying to persuade their demented relative to sleep because they are so … fucking … tired. People with dementia can live a full and happy life but it costs their loved ones everything. And nobody gives a fucking toss.

Then there’s … ugh … other stuff. Other stuff is a bit patchy to be honest. Everyone has a Draco Malfoy (look it up if you don’t know) and McMini is no exception. There’s a kid picking on him at school and for a while a lad who was a friend at one point was joining in, which made it extra specially hurtful. The ex friend has stopped now, thank goodness, but the other lad has continued. Luckily McMini, who was bullet proof on that score, and then very suddenly, not bullet proof, seems to have rediscovered his armour and ceased to care about the Draco Malloy in his life. Long may that continue.

Though the school is being brilliant it’s been tough for him. Hence the counsellor (psychotherapist who does counselling) and I arranged for us to meet to see if a few sessions would help. Things are a great deal better but I still want rule in or our whether or not Mc(not so)Mini might need a few handy coping strategies. Mainly because I doubt I’d be here now, in quite the same form, had I not had a lot of CBT at the beginning of this fucking dementia nightmare. And while he’s coping fine now, the kid who picks on him is still picking on him. So I set up an initial session to meet and see if the counsellor could help.

The first session was on Tuesday.

I forgot.

Jesus, Mary, Joseph and their fluffy donkey. Fuck me but I’m a fucking dickwad.

You know what. A few years ago I did an intelligence test, the result was a bit like a spider with 8 zones of intelligence and scores for each. Basically, I scored a solid top 80%-90% in seven of the eight areas. However, in one area—numeracy and certain mathematical logic—I scored below 20%. In an IQ test I scored one point off genius level (on paper, I’m well thick on screen) yet for everything that matters in wrangling my and my mother’s day-to-day existence my fucking enormous teflon-head brain is of absolutely fuck all use. The only thing my intelligence achieves is a keen awareness of how lacking I am in the one single form of fucking intellect I actually need. There are people out there with such severe cognitive disabilities that they are unable to live independently who are smarter than I am in the only area that anyone counts.

All my life I’ve railed against the stupid fucking bigots who say that the only intelligence that counts is mathematical intelligence and discount everyone else whose abilities aren’t a carbon copy of their own as ‘stupid’ because they’re too unimaginative to see the worth in any other kind of intelligence. I heartily loathe those people who aver that only one kind of intelligence is the arbiter of all intelligence and that without it you are thick, much as I heartily loathe the way the morning people have managed to fit the entire world to the way they function and have convinced us all that being a night owl (a logical evolutionary step to ensure some of the tribe was always awake to keep watch) makes you some kind of morally bankrupt deviant.

Sadly, modern life and educational standards are set up for mathematical logic, and nothing else, and it’s amazing the number of people who, when I suggest that it’s possible to be intelligent without being mathematically intelligent, will agree but then basically say, no. Engineering and construction and most stuff runs on maths or is designed using maths they argue. Therefore our world is built on maths and it is the apogee of all intelligence. I completely get that. I get that it’s important.

But we don’t all need ALL the maths to just … you know … live. I mean, for starters, if everyone in the village has one kind of intelligence and is brilliant at building the bridges, who’s going to do the fucking cooking? Rishi’s barking plan about maths until people are 18 … well … it depends what they teach. But trying to get people like me to understand advanced trigonometry isn’t going to happen, no matter how many times you try and drum it into me. It’s just a waste of everyone’s time.

Nobody insists we all play an instrument to grade 8 level and shames anyone who can’t as an inferior or a second grade person. Some people aren’t musical. Nobody gives them any grief. Some people aren’t mathematical. Newsflash. That isn’t a fucking crime. Why this ridiculous insistence that mathematical intelligence is the only thing that matters? It’s bullshit! Surely, unless they want to be a theoretical physicist then, so long as a person can manage their finances, or parse a spreadsheet/find an expert they trust to do it for them that’s all they need.

Yes, we need to understand certain mathematical basics to get by but the way they go on. It’s like saying that only one colour matters or that only one musical note is important. And what will making people who are useless at something keep trying—and failing at it—do for their confidence.

‘You have so much to give, and so much talent but that counts as nothing because this one tiny facet of intelligence (that you’re shit at) is the only thing that matters.’

Is that a healthy message to send to our kids? From one who received it loud and clear at school throughout their entire fucking childhood let me assure you that it’s very much not.

The other day, when I forgot that session with the counsellor for McMini, I hated myself: truly fucking hated myself in a way I’ve managed to avoid since the CBT I did to deal with just this kind of negativity when I was first trying to look after my parents and navigate the absolute craptonne of admin they seemed to generate. Fact is though, I’m just a massive fucking white elephant. I know I am. Normally, I can look away and carry on living the lie that there is some actual fucking point to my existence but yesterday. No.

It’s so hard to be bright, really bright, in a whole arena of disciplines which, while perfectly valid, are discounted by modern culture as worthless, it’s even more frustrating to be smart, but, at the same time utterly, crushingly, mind-numbingly thick at the only subject by which the world gauges intellectual worth … and filling in forms … and admin. Oh I know it’s a them problem (and the fact that I care is a me problem) but it’s fucking galling. It’s not that maths isn’t important, it’s that not everyone is going to use it to an advanced level, not everyone will need to and more to the point, not everyone can. Making them try for years is just going to make them feel shit about themselves and as we all know, miserable people beget misery.

Actually if you want to appreciate what trying to force people to study something beyond their ceiling does just read this. Read this to see just how shaming people who are bad at maths makes them feel. Read this to see how giving people the impression they are stupid or somehow morally lacking, because they are less able at something you can do easily makes people feel.

It’s this idea that because some people are engineers or scientists and are using maths to define space and time, or build bridges, we should all be doing it. It’s like saying that every single person in existence should be made to write a book. It’s like saying, ‘oh we’re having a bit of trouble with the new covid vaccine, MTM why don’t you have a go?’ and being surprised and upset when I can’t crack it. It’s saying that we should all be carbon-copy geniuses (geniai?). It is, quite frankly, a bit fucking mental.

Most of us need to do a tax return, manage a budget and possibly manage a business. Yes, it’s important to know that. We all need to. But just as important is showing people who are less gifted at maths useful stuff like the kind of logic required to parse a spreadsheet that’ll do that maths for them.

It seems a trifle unfair that the zone of intelligence, out of those eight, around which my entire chuffing life revolves is the one in which I sit in the bottom 20% of the population; remembering things, administrating financial matters, filling in government forms correctly, dotting every I and crossing every T as stipulated, and in a timely manner, not being able to see how my situation fits a standard box, sitting waiting on hold because I’m over thinking it.

On top of that, my startling lack of smarts—in the one area which dominates my existence—makes life such an uphill struggle that I have nothing left for anything else after I’ve finished with it all. That’s really where this whole sticking eyes on things cropped up. Because I wanted to write. NEEDED to write, but after dealing with all the shite, getting it wrong, doing it again, missing bits off and cocking it up, all while watching my father and then my mother slowly disappearing in front of my eyes; all while taking their hands and walking beside them as we made our way together into the dark … after that I had nothing left in the tank. But an eyebomb takes a few minutes, little or no energy. I still get to be creative and it cheers me up.

Hence the marked absence of any new writing so far this year. Or last year to be honest. Of course, that’s also the reason I’ve been concentrating on the eyebombing book. Because it’s a different kind of creativity and an easy win … except I did an event on Saturday and there was very little interest in it live … so to speak which was rather worrying after it looking like people were interested online.

This is the first book I’ve talked about on social media where people have demonstrably shown an interest but … The price was definitely too high. Nobody was countenancing paying £18 for the hardback and £10 was clearly too steep for the paperback too. I might try a smaller size and see if I can produce it more cheaply and charge £7 for the paperback and £10 for the hardback. I guess the trouble is that it’s still too expensive to produce a colour photobook for a price that anyone’ll pay. It may be that I need to aim it at a more deluxe audience … gulp … but then the photos should probably have been better. Yeek!

Bummer. It looks like I might have produced yet another turkey.

Never mind. I guess you can’t win ’em all… or any of them, it seems. I should give up already, but that would be easy, and I NEED to create things … and I’m pig-headed. Onwards and upwards.

[/rant mode]

Here’s something a little lighter …

Something for that person who has everything: Eyebomb, Therefore I Am

Picture of books about eyebombing displayed artfully

Step into a realm where inanimate objects come to life and a simple pair of googly eyes holds the power to transform the ordinary into the extraordinary. This book invites you to immerse yourself in the whimsical and hilarious world of eyebombing; that art of sticking googly eyes on unsuspecting inanimate objects to unleash the joy within.

As you turn each page, you’ll find yourself smiling at the quirky personalities that emerge from everyday objects ranging from lampposts and traffic signs to automatic hand dryers and even dinner. The juxtaposition of the ordinary and the unusual challenges societal norms, reminding us to embrace new or different things, and look for humour in the unlikeliest of places.

Whether you’re a fan of street art, a lover of comedy, or simply seeking a joyous escape from the mundane, this photo book is sure to leave you grinning from ear to ear. You might even end up stashing a pack of googly eyes in our own pockets and having a go at eyebombing yourself.

To find out more and be informed when it goes on sale, join my eyebombing mailing list by clicking on this link:

https://www.hamgee.co.uk/ebl

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Tagged as author blog, author blogs, author parent, book marketing, dementia, dementia emotional cost, dementia fiscal cost, full time mum writing, I fucked this up so you don't have to, istuffedthisupsoyoudon’thaveto, M T McGuire, Mary Fails at Modern Life, massive rant, rant, trying to be a writer

2 Jul 2023 · 6:36 pm

Eyebomb … everything. Publishing news.

Well, that was a hell of a week. In a good way. I’ve shared most of what’s been going on on social media. Normally I don’t do that because … spoilers! This time, because I keep forgetting to write my blog I just thought … sod it! And of course, now here I am, remembering to write my blog, so while last week, you kind of missed out, this week, you get duplicates. Sod and his chuffing law eh? Picture of air freshener canister eyebombed

Since some of this is a recap, I’ll try and make it brief. On Monday this week, the test copies for my next book release arrived. This is a bit of a departure from normal in that it’s a book about eyebombing. As you know, in order to make my posts more interesting I use my own photographs. As you also know, unless you’re new to this blog, those photos tend to be eyebombs done by me. I was hit by copyright trolls a while back so I am hyper-careful now about having any posts on either of my sites that are not my own photos.

For some time now, people have remarked, here and there, that I should make a photo book of my eyebombs, but until recently, the costs of doing so were prohibitive — we’re talking £20 wholesale cost to me for a 30 page book. Or the production side of it was too complicated — as in, I’d need to use some proper publishing software and didn’t have any or know how to use it, so I’d probably have to pay a designer, which I couldn’t really afford.

These two barriers to entry suddenly fell this year when I discovered affinity publishing suite, which is like photoshop used to be. No crappy subscription you just buy it. It’s also just as powerful and, woah! I could afford it. Second, a new player has arrived in the print on demand market which is a bit more user friendly and their costs are keener.

Though still a little unsure as to whether I could make a decent fist of designing a book myself, I had a go. It wasn’t bad so I tweaked my proof copy and sent off for 20 or so which I will put on sale at the St Edmundsbury Cathedral Summer Fair next Saturday, to see if anyone is prepared to pay ready money for them.

I think for world wide sales on this one, I am going to do a kickstarter, mainly because there are a lot of book fans on there and it seems a good place to connect with them and I’m not having much success connecting with book people elsewhere.

This week, flushed with the joy of a new HUP product in my hands, one that had been, frankly, a bit of a shot in the dark but which I was surprisingly pleased with, I went to a street art exhibition at my local museum with a friend. At the end, in the foyer, which is also the shop, I wanted to eyebomb a box on one of the shelves and eventually decided that since I was on CCTV it might be politic to ask. The person on the desk said, ‘I knew I recognised you! You’re the eye lady!’

I’m wtf? I thought. ‘Uh … yeh …’ I said.

They were delighted for me to eyebomb the box and when I said I’d been tempted to eyebomb the exhibition space they said,

‘Oh you should!’

Picture of an eyebombed scaffolding guard at an art exhibion

Yeh that is a Banksey behind there …

And the long and short of it is that friend and I went off and had lunch and then we returned to the exhibition and I stuck googly eyes on a lot of things … although I did avoid the actual exhibits. So then I asked if they thought my book could be put in the shop while the exhibition was on and they gave me the name and email address of the curator and said that I should definitely ask. Which reminds me … I must … you know … ask the curator. Doh. They may well say no, after all they are probably someone of taste and discernment, but even if they do, being encouraged to ask felt good.

So all in all, a good week.

I can’t quite explain this, but I seem to have found my art related creative mojo again. I’m guessing that now McMini is older I’m not using all the drawing art centre of my brain (which is totally a medical thing, obviously) to interact with him, be patient, find ways to cajole him into doing the boring stuff like getting from a to b within a certain time frame etc and also into answering question like ‘Is rain God having a wee?’ although to be honest that’s one I asked, he told me that he’d noticed that puddles disappear after rain and he thought that some of the water must go back up into the sky. But yeh, he’s smart and he used to ask a LOT of questions which I would always try and answer if I knew. And was a genuine delight for the most part, but it did tend to use most of the drawing creativity so if I sat down and actually tried to draw it felt like pulling teeth. It’s rather wonderful to have found it again.

Yesterday I knitted a wine bottle sock for someone. Didn’t finish it in time but it is finished now. I’m also working on a display stand for the eyebombing post cards I’ve had done. Yes there are seventeen cards as well (I’m nuts). I’m making this with card, and a lot of glue, and some spray paint. It’s fun and I haven’t had the resources or energy to do anything like this for ages. Perhaps I am finally post menopausal rather than peri, only the brain fog has lifted substantially over the last six months or so and I am getting acquainted with a MTM I haven’t seen for years; the dynamic one who has a bit more energy and who could, occasionally, remember her own flicking name.

I’ve also been taking Lion’s Mane supplements … don’t laugh … well alright, do, if you want to. But after starting Magnesium L-Theonate and suddenly discovering I could sleep through the night, I thought I’d give Lion’s Mane a go because it’s supposed to help with brain fog. I seem to remember someone said it was good for ADHD (which Mum always reckoned I had) in that it helps ADHD people focus and get organised.

Holy shit! First impressions suggest these things are gold. I have been so fucking on it this week it’s unbelievable. I have done stuff. I’ve made phone calls! I’ve remembered to do things … well … except email the curator of the museum to ask about putting my book in the shop but … you know. I’ve remembered to do quite a lot of things and I’ve procrastinated way, way less! Which is golden. So that’s been a hell of a thing.

At the moment there’s been a lot of Mum stuff so it’s been hard to write … although with the amazing ~~Ruthless Efficiency pills~~ Lion’s Mane pills I’m now taking, maybe I will be able to get back to that soon. In the meantime, I am building the kickstarter and I will make a special kickstarter edition which will list the names of funders in the back and have a couple of extra pictures and t’ing.

So here we are, and a book that I only did because the writing is a bit stalled and I needed an easy publishing win, seems to be rather more popular than my Real Books. Mwahahargh! For example; I’m now understanding, for the first time, how it feels to publish a book people actually want and it’s amazing.

Normally, when I bring out a book, apart from a few of you guys and the nutters in my fan group on Facebook, most people just smile with a slightly glazed expression and say, ‘that’s nice dear!’ Three quarters of the people on my mailing list haven’t even read one (God knows what they’re doing there but that’s another story).

This time, holy shizz! They’re asking when it’s coming out, where they can buy it, how much it will cost … I’m suddenly understanding what it feels like for other authors and why they are so enthusiastic about what they do. Hitherto, my relationship with publishing has been a bit like an addict’s with the substance to which they are addicted. I write because I love it and I have to and I need to share it. Also, a select few people do love my books … when they read them. But the when-they-read-them part is a huge problem because people only tend to read K’Barthan stuff as an absolute last resort, when every avenue of other reading matter has been exhausted and they are literally desperate … so desperate they’ll read anything … and then having finally had to read one of my books, they write and tell me that it was on their to read list for seven years and they read it in a sitting, have read all the other books I’ve written in a week and how come I’ve only written ten? And why aren’t there more? And they want more K’Barthan crack nowwww!

There is no middle ground.

So … yeh … eyebombing. Waaaaay more popular than my actual bona-fide books. Who’d have thunk it? You live and learn. Right now, I’m just enjoying the ride.

Eyebomb, Therefore I Am

Picture of books about eyebombing displayed artfully You didn’t think you’d escape without me giving the new book a plug did you? Ha! No chance. It may not be on sale yet, but when has that ever stopped me!

Here’s the blurb.

If you are interested you can sign up to my eyebombing email list. At the moment very little happens when you do this, although I’m hoping to send out a series of eyebombing photos at some point. The main impetuous, though is so I can tell people who want to know when the book finally drops and where they can get a copy. So you’ll hear when the kickstarter is launched, what’s in the fabulous kickstarter edition and you’ll also hear when the normal version goes on sale afterwards … and if I do any appearances selling it. To find out more and be informed when it goes on sale, join my eyebombing newsgroup by clicking on this link:

https://www.hamgee.co.uk/ebl

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Tagged as author blog, eyebombthereforeiam, eyebombtheschoolrun, M T McGuire new releases, new book releases, new books, trying to be a writer

21 May 2023 · 6:47 pm

We’re not at home to Mr Cockup. Oh no, no, no, no.

Except we so smecking are. Mwahahargh!

Picture of an amber warning light for an automatic gate with plastic googly eyes on it to make it look like an irritated face.

Yes he’s a bit fucked off.

I was going to do a post about writing this week—and accompanying things—but the accompanying things got a bit out of hand and so I’ve gone off on a completely non-writing related tangent.

Do you remember a refrain from the Blackadder II episode where he’s made Lord High Executioner?

‘We’re not at home to Mr Cockup!’ he tells his team. And they fuck it up, of course, and Baldrick says, ‘Shall I prepare the guest room for Mr Cockup, my lord?’

Yeh, well … Mr Cock-up seems to have taken up permanent residence in the spare room and his omnipresence has affected most events this week. Sadly this time, my inefficiency has impacted on my ‘work’. I put ‘work’ in quotes because we all know that I don’t have time for a real job, since what I do is look after Mum and be a mum. My writing ‘career’ is the thing I pursue in the few minutes a week that I laughingly call, ‘my spare time’.

Here’s the thing.  For the last, I dunno how long, the cunningist of my most cunning marketing strategies has revolved around the crack dealer’s school of marketing. Give them books, get them hooked and then make them pay. To whit, I have been handing out cards … these cards … (see pic).

picture of two business card-sized flyers advertising free books.

The QR codes send people to a page where they can download The Last Word (top card shown) or join my mailing list (other card shown) and grab a copy of Nothing to See Here… In case, like me, readers can’t get the QR code reader on their electronic thingy of choice to work, there’s a link written out longhand as well.

When I changed ISPs a few months ago, I lost my website. I’d run out of space and there wasn’t enough room on the server to back it up properly … except that I didn’t realise that and so when I got the new site up and running and tried to upload the backed up file it told me to piss off.

On the face of it, this wasn’t so bad. I have an earlier back up which contains most of the material I’d want to keep. Also, I used a lot of orphan pages; that is blanks with information about my books etc but without the menu and distractions that might make people browse away before they’ve properly assimilated how fantastically brilliant my books are and ponied up for one. Phnark.

Those were stored on my computer. I composed and edited them in a very ancient copy of Dreamweaver … 2004 ancient, to be precise … and put them backwards and forwards using the ancient Dreamweaver’s integrated ftp. As a result I was able to upload those to the new site and so most of the stuff in my automations should be working as usual. But things with Dreamwever are getting a bit shonky—it being nearly 20 years old and that—so I’ve been attempting to use an alternative.

Anyway, because I’m so organised and efficient (oh ho ho) I made a list and started downloading the code for all the pages I wanted to use … except that then, I suspect, I saw a shiny thing, or something happened with Mum, or McMini needed a lift somewhere and I got called away, and when I returned, I thought I’d finished. What distracted me is immaterial, the point is I hadn’t finished the job that I thought I’d done.

Yes, it turns out I’ve been handing out these cards like confetti and sending people to my site to download a free book to read and all they get is a 404 error.

Mmm, well done MTM. Bellend of the week award anyone? Ah yes, that would be me.

Balls up discovered, I have now put it right and the page for people to go to when they click the QR code is back in position. However, my gargantuan cockwomblery does not end there. Oh, no, no, no …

It now transpires that the QR code on my mailing list sign up cards points people to a sign up page with my list provider rather than on my site. I did these cards when I had artwork but in advance of publishing the book so I had to guess what I’d call the landing page with a view to making it later—when there was a book there for people to download and I’d written an onboarding sequence. I duly made up a name for the landing page, which involved the working title of the novella rather than the one it actually has…

Can you guess what happened next?

That’s right. I forgot to make that page. I forgot I’d made the link. I forgot that was where the QR code pointed but I had the cards printed anyway. Once again, the helpful QR code was taking them to a page that said oops but this time, rather than an oops page hosted by me, it was hosted by Mailerlite.

Mmm. My professionalism knows no bounds.

Bollocks.

In order to have a neat link, I used a link shortener.  Needless to say, in the interim, the link shortener in question, Bit.ly, has drastically reduced the facilities of its free account so I can’t just make a new one for bit.ly/hupbook or whatever because I’m only allowed to use the ones bit.ly gives me, you know; bit.ly/1f*5hio;avew or something equally catchy and easy to print correctly and remember. So what did I do? Well, I just duplicated the signup page I have, and renamed it with the name I used when I made the original link. Simple! But also. Ugh. Head desk.

As you can see, my marketing’s been just peachy this week, say I with such leaden irony that if I decide to move this sentence I’ll need a special, heavy-duty winch. Then again, perhaps my … er hem … marketing prowess has been kind of OK because I can tell myself that I’ve fixed a long-term problem that’s been extant since mid January.  Which makes this a win. Obviously. Snortle.

How did I not spot this problem earlier? I hear you ask, except I probably don’t because I expect you’ve nodded off by this time, but as usual I’m going to pretend, for comic effect, that I did. Er … hang on … oh yes. How did I fail to spot this? Well the QR code isn’t the only thing on there, I have also written out the link … except … it’s a different link which goes to a real page which does exist and will allow them to sign up and download the book. Not a total disaster then but kind of weird, all the same. I’ve left it like that for now because an alternative means changing the artwork.

Going forward (not a phrase I like but probably the best one to use here) people can at least sign up to my mailing list or download a free book with those cards, now. They probably won’t but that’s not the point is it? The point is that they can.

It’s been one of those weeks this week.

Similarly, I ordered a new case for my phone. I needed a wallet case because I like to have a single card in there and be able to go out with just my phone without being caught short of cash. Also, if my wallet’s nicked and I have to stop everything else I can still pay for things in a shop and get cash while I’m waiting for them all to arrive AND I can still buy stuff if I go out and forget my wallet.

However, I couldn’t find any companies that made them for my phone initially and had to buy a normal case—this is me, it has to have a protective case of some sort because otherwise, I’ll smash it. Although even with the protective case I smashed the phone-before-last on day two.

The case it has is great but I have to take it off to plug in a USB stick to download my photos, and as I’m doing the eyebombing book at the moment, I need to keep moving eyebomb pictures from my phone to my computer so, as you can imagine, this has become a sizeable point of pain. I have google drive but anyone who’s ever tried to download anything more than one photo at a time from Google Drive will know a) what a palaver it is and b) that when it compresses the photos into a zip file it leaves three quarters of them out. Massive, MASSIVE ball ache. The USB storage stick is way easier, even if you have to keep taking the phone out of its ruddy bastard case each time. That’s how eager Google is to ensure you don’t bother and pay for extra storage. Money grubbing bastards.

Sorry, where was I? Ah yes.

Having ordered the case, it arrived two weeks later from China and I discovered I’d inadvertently ordered one to fit a Pixel PRO rather than a plain pixel. When I put ‘custom wallet case for google pixel 6’ into a search engine, I have to be very careful that I check the results are not for a Pixel 6 Pro, which is bigger, because no matter what I do, it lumps them all together. I also get annoyingly irrelevant ‘sponsored’ results from companies who don’t make a custom wallet case for a pixel at all. I know I had the right one initially but the internet dropped, I had to reload the page and I didn’t realise it had defaulted back to pixel 6 PRO again. Bastards. That said, it was so rubbish that when it arrived I was almost glad it didn’t fit.

Needless to say, only one other site offering a Pixel 6 (not pro) wallet case popped up on my search results, but apparently they’d changed some vital parameter to ‘custom’ that made BT parental controls ban them. Or perhaps it was because they’re called hairy worm, phnark. Uh yeh … I guess it could be that. Sometime, long ago, in the dim, dark, distant past, we put parental controls on our BT internet access because … you know … McMini.

However, that was eight years ago. We are out of contract and neither of us knows our BT password so we can’t change it. I tried to get this back off BT but was unable to because it was confidential information. So confidential that once it’s been lost, they can’t even tell the actual account holder what their own password is. Likewise, if they spell your name wrong, they can’t change it. I might be able to tone down parental controls via the wi-fi router and I will probably try at some point in the far future, when I’ve nothing better to do.

Alternatively, it might be that only McOther can do it because he’s the account holder and being his mere wife means I’m not secure enough. I did have a secondary account and password which I could do this stuff with but those no longer work, probably because I haven’t used my BT email address, ever.

As far as the account goes, I think there has to be one default email address but we can’t get in because … password … and they can’t send it to us because we can’t get in to read the email. Anyway, they’ve spelled our surname Maguire, the ignorant tossers, so they can fuck off.

Hmm. Sorry. Not ranty or anything today am I? I’m just in a grump because my son has very generously shared his cold with me. Back to my long and rambling story. I just know you’re on the edge of your seat. Mwahahargh!

Luckily, I have data on my phone so I just used that to bypass BT’s draconian system by using my data and my phone, instead. I did try to report it as an error but obviously I needed to know my account name and password for that. Considering I uploaded the artwork, positioned it and chose the text colour using my phone I am actually quite chuffed. See picture attached.

Mmm … K’Barthan swag.

Nothing much else has happened this week other than my opening what, I suspect, is going to be the most gargantuan can of worms. I asked about getting Mum a care assessment for a continuing care grant; mainly because one of her carers’ grandfather had been given it and she told me that, in her professional opinion, he was no more in need of help than Mum. Her mother, who is also on the care team, agreed. I asked what they did, and apparently another family member had contacted an agency who’d done it for them.

Armed with this information, I rang the agency in question but they told me that if Mum is able to speak she isn’t bad enough. The chap there seemed to think that non-verbal was a key factor and told me to come back when she reaches the pureed food stage. I’m a bit confused by that because if she needs help to stand, go to the loo, wash, dress, cook, clean and can’t even use the phone or turn the telly on by herself then surely that’s 24 hour care.  To be doubly sure, I rang the Admiral nurses helpline. Sadly they don’t cover where Mum lives so they won’t be able to help with the process but they were able to advise me and said that yes, Mum definitely had needs that made her eligible for Continuing Care.  Next, I got through to social care at the council who thought I should contact her Doctor. I guess what I really need to find is the local social services number for her and get a social worker on her case. I’m not 100% sure how that’s done, as with Dad I seem to remember it happening automatically. I’ll have to look up his notes and see if I have a number for them from then.

Essentially, Mum needs a care assessment first from the right team. Apparently you can call and ask for one of those any time. Then the results of that are scrutinised closely and financial help awarded … or not. The trouble is, nothing says who you call to get this initial care assessment sorted.  There are parameters and a procedure, but to the outsider looking in the vaguaries of the system are very difficult to understand, at best and at worst, it comes over as deliberately opaque, whimsical and arcane … Mum ticks most things on the list but, as yet, I’ve found no concrete information as to where the starting point of the system is. As a result, I’m not sure who to contact to have the care assessment done. It’s a NHS team, who does the assessment for the actual application, but I have no clue if we need a ‘normal’ assessment first from social services. I’m guessing we do, although I’ve found a thing that says a district nurse can arrange this, too so I might see if I can get the carers to liaise with them.

There are two agencies who will apply for NHS continuing care on behalf of people, and a law firm with the most ridiculous name on earth—they’re probably really good but the name screams cold-calling ambulance chasers. The only one of these august bodies that quoted a price for their work charged £2,500 and some suggest as much as £6,500 depending on what they have to do. I will have to think about whether it’s worth that. No, it’s definitely worth it, for my sanity, to pay someone else to do it for me because this will be a grim project to try and undertake on my own and, like all the Mum stuff, is a perfect storm of everything at which I am shit.

In the meantime, I’ve started filling out the form on the website of the other agency. I’ve already stalled at how much Mum has spent on her care … well … you know … apart from, ‘everything’ but some of that was the day-to-day costs of running the house. She has a state pension so there’s that on top, as well, though so theory, it’s actually a bit more than everything.  Everything with brass knobs on? I dunno.

What I don’t understand is this; while I appreciate that they aim to make it hard for people gaming the system, it would be quite nice to set it up so the people who needed this particular part of the system would have some blind clue as to what, exactly makes them eligible and how it works. There are lots of really clear accounts that explain what will happen when you are already in the system and what the steps of the evaluation are. But how to start the process? Absolutely fuck all.

Carers looking after a sick relative who are seeking continuing care for them, or people who are sick themselves and need continuing care … they’re not exactly endowed with an abundance of energy for administriviatitive shit because they have a craptonne on their plate and are already nearly broken. I should imagine many of them will never get money to help with care, money to which they are entitled, because they are too fucking ill and their relatives too fucking frazzled and burned out to even begin to work out how to fucking apply.

Fuckity fucking fuck! Preparing the guest room for Mr Cockup then, even, also as we speak.

Ho hum. Onwards and upwards.

Astonishingly cheap ebook and audiobook alert …

Yes. Spoil yourself with your good taste (Ambassador) and a wonderful free book. Mmm hmm. If you are looking for a fun novella—to relieve the considerable tedium you may be experiencing after reading this blog post, for example—or if you’d like to listen to an audio book in the car, or at work, or on the commute and you are just fresh out of ideas for fabulous newness … well, you can fix all those things by grabbing a free book.

This book.

Small Beginnings, K’Barthan Extras, Hamgeean Misfit: No 1.

It’s free to download in ebook format from most of the major retailers (except when Amazon is dicking with me) while two and a half hours of glorious K’Barthan audiobook deliciousness is a mere 99p or c from Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Spotify, Apple and Chirp (if you’re in the States). It’s also free to download from my web store.

If you think that sounds interesting and would like to take a look, just go here.

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Tagged as an author with children, author blog, dementia, full time mum writing, I fucked this up so you don't have to, istuffedthisupsoyoudon’thaveto, M T M Makes a complete tit of herself, M T McGuire, off topic, trying to be a writer, women in sci-fi, women writers, writers

7 May 2023 · 10:04 pm

Coronated … and some

Not, entirely what you think it is, this one …

OK, so it’s been a long time, there’s been a fabulous holiday, an equally fabulous author event—the Indie Author Book Fair in St Ives—which genuinely was wonderful by the way. There’s been rather a lot to do in the garden and for Mum. As a result, I’ve walked a little closer to burn-out than I’ve wanted to, hence, no blog. But this week I’ve done a little writing, I’ve had a lie in and I have another one on Monday and things have been a bit more relaxing and quite … interesting so I thought I’d share them with you.

McOther and I have decided to have a new floor in our kitchen. See picture. This involved having it re-tiled, which, in turn, involved removing everything in it. I had no idea how much stuff we had in the kitchen and conservatory until it was strewn liberally about the house. Yeh. Now I know. Another factor was that there were times when we couldn’t walk on the tiles, and that involved one rather hairy evening when we couldn’t access the oven. Take away pizzas for us that night.

Then there’s the weather. The kitchen table, the island from the middle of the room, the dishwasher and the fridge were outside on the patio. Entirely fortuitously, I’d been buying a plastic greenhouse from Wilco last week (£40 and they last about 7 years) and I noticed they were also selling plastic sheeting. Wrap this round fruit trees over winter and they escape the dreaded leaf curl. With that in mind, I’d bought some. Seven metres to be precise. We opened it up, draped it over the white goods and table, and hoped it wouldn’t rain.

Speaking of rain, the forecast was good but only for a short while and of course, there was a bank holiday, so in order to ensure they got the full amount of work required done in the day, the tilers arrived at 7.30 am sharp on Tuesday. I had to forego parents’ swim, which I was a bit nettled about, so McOther could go to his bought-and-paid-for French class but actually it was lucky I did as they needed various cupboards emptied, the larder being one of them. It took a while but I managed to remove it all in time for them to put the first layer of gloop down for the tiles to go onto.

Over the three days they did sterling work and did different bits at different times so that, after the first night, we could walk into the kitchen etc. However, the weather was beginning to look a bit ominous. On the second night, half of it was grouted and could be walked on, the other half was glued but not grouted so if we went on there we had to step in the middle of the tiles only ~~–yes, because otherwise the bears would get us! No! Not because of the stupid effing bears you daft fucking tart~~ where was I? Oh yeh, because otherwise, the tiles might move.

McOther went to collect McMini from school and looking outside at the ominously gathering clouds I realised it might be going to rain. The white goods and the island were back indoors by this time, not where they should be but on a part of the floor which was now set and solid. The table was nestling happily under the (now) folded-in-half polythene sheet but there was a bamboo chair sitting out there, with a foam cushion. It’s more of a cat hammock to be honest, one of those round bamboo cup and saucer ones, I think the technical term is a pappadum chair. It was open to the elements but I realised I could put the bamboo bits of the chair on top of the fridge and dishwasher and the cushion on top of those. It was tricky because there was only one tile in the ‘walkable’ half next to the double doors but I managed it and got the two bamboo bits in. Brilliant, now for the cushion.

As I brought the cushion in, I passed an old plant pot which was on the windowsill. The pot contained a dead plant and a lot of very dry earth …

Can you guess what happened next kids?

That’s right. I caught it with the cushion and it fell down. The saucer in which it was standing smashed and the horrible dried out compost went all over the fucking floor.

Which bit of the floor d’you think it spattered over? The bit that was already grouted and dry or the bit that was only glued? That’s right, kids. The bit that was only glued. And where d’you think the earth went? Where would it go?

That’s right, into all the cracks of, fucking, course!

For a moment, I stood there motionless. Had that actually just happened?

Of course it sodding well had.

Fuckorama.

On the upside, to my left, on the windowsill, I spied the hoover.

On the downside, it’s a handheld jobbie and works for 10 minutes on a charge … how much was left? I glanced at my watch trying desperately to work out how long it had been since McOther departed to collect McMini and if I had enough time to clear up the mess before he came home, saw it and went into orbit.

I started with the dustpan and brush, sweeping up the bits from the middles of the tiles because lord knew I didn’t want any more of it going down the chuffing cracks. Then I got hoovering carefully sucking the crap out from between the tiles without pressing down on them. The clock was ticking but I was making excellent progress, indeed, I was nearly there. Would I manage to disappear all this shit before McOther returned …?

Of course I fucking wouldn’t.

I was down to the last three tiles when I was suddenly conscious of a wave of extreme disapproval so solid I could almost feel it as a physical pressure. Yep. McOther was home and yes, predictably, he was absolutely incandescent. To give him his due, he understood what I’d been trying to do and realised I’d the best of intentions so he didn’t shout at me and he wasn’t angry with me per se. He was just a very silent, tight-lipped, angry man about the whole situation for a considerable time afterwards.

My mistake was to try and make each bit perfect before moving onto the next one. I should have just bodged it all, and then kept primping at it until the whole thing was perfect. That way, it would have looked clean enough for him not to notice and I could have just hoovered up the bits he didn’t see after he’d gone to bed.

He is aware that a lot of this kind of stuff happens which he never knows about. Because he doesn’t need to be distressed unnecessarily … although I often tell him about it afterwards. Beiong caught in the act, or telling him, at the time, as events unfold is never a good idea. Unless something’s gone wrong that transpires to be unfixable.

The floor is fine by the way. I got every last scrap of that bastard compost out of the cracks. I’m just grateful it was dry.

Other crowning glories …

Yeh, in case you didn’t notice there was a coronation in my country this week. Anyone who has read my books will know I have a bit of a thing for arcane ritual. When my brother and I were small we used to draw the curtains to make some proper dark, light candles which we’d stolen from the cupboard downstairs (our poor parents) and then parade around, dressed in sheets, singing ‘plain chant’. Mostly a limerick about beans done in thirds. Yeh, this is why McMini’s eccentricities don’t faze me as much as they might.

Anyway, what I’m saying here is that I do love a bit of arcane ritual and a coronation promises to be as bizarre and arcane as it gets so I was agog …

It didn’t disappoint.

Oh and I absolutely loved it by the way, I thought it was really good, but a) I’m a very high church Anglican so I love all that wandering around in cloaks with people holding bits of them out of the way for you so they don’t flap your frilly bits into the holy stuff and knock it flying, or, heaven forfend, spill the consecrated bits so you have to spend the next ten minutes licking any and every piece of consecrated material off the floor. It’s a bit like James Brown being ‘helped’ onto the stage for an encore in his purple cloak; glorious, glorious theatre.

Yes, a coronation costs a lot of money, but it also keeps thousands of people in jobs, god knows how many crafts people working, a whole shit load of heritage crafts alive plus, farming, animals, plants etc are preserved. Remember everyone taking the piss out of Charles for talking to the trees and banging on about conservation and global warming. Yeh who’s laughing now? And considering the other shit the State funds and how much that costs, whinging about the cost of this is like ignoring a suitcase of money behind you and instead, choosing to chisel at the 50p piece someone’s stuck onto the pavement with superglue as a joke. I’ve used that metaphor about going after ‘benefit fraud’ instead of making corporate monoliths who run the world (and government) pay more tax but it’s a good metaphor for this, too, so it’s staying.

While we’re here, the people who run this world are the super-rich and giant companies, who through the sheer weight of their riches and ‘regulatory capture’ (or mates in high places, as the rest of us call it) get round the rules do what they like. They do what they do to earn more money and nothing gets in the way of that. Even though they are richer than three quarters of the actual nations on this planet people like Bezos, Musk, Trump et all (I’ve chosen these three at random) appear to have no notion of anything but swelling their coffers and little regard for the people whose work feeds their greed.

Politicians are supposed to care for their people but very few of them do. At the moment, we have a man among those glitterati who does genuinely appear to want to help people. OK it’s a King Man, but like his mother before him, he’s one of the few in high places who come close to caring and he’s the only person among those top flight glitterati who has anything like the power and newsworthiness required to make other people think. Or at least, one of only a handful who can who appears to actually want to. And it’s a shit job. I’ve done the whole goldfish life and it’s not easy if you aren’t cut out for it and he had no choice whereas I did. So yes, while I am mostly socialist, I don’t buy the non-monarchy line. I don’t vote for any political party regularly as I vote for my principles, and the party that gets my vote is whichever party is the nearest fit with those principles at the time.

MTM steps off soap box. Right. So I watched the coronation. And I enjoyed it.

Highlights …? First, the way the King and Queen were smiling at people as they processed, in slow state, up the aisle, it looked like the odd grin at people they knew or recognised and it immediately gave the whole thing, ridiculously formal as it was, an upbeat informality. Yeh. I know, but that’s how it came over. It was a bit like attending the wedding of a couple who, you just know in your heart, are going to be very happily married. It’s formal, there’s ritual and you want the theatre to go right for them but they are clearly very comfortable with each other and the machinery around them. That kind of thing.

Then there’s Penny Mordant parading around with the Sword of State like some avenging Valkyrie … but she’s fresh from day release to Olympus for work experience and still wearing the uniform. She had to do a lot of gym work to hold it up for that long, apparently. That was a belter of an outfit too. I think Penny silently stole a big part of the show, but not too much, merely … enough.

The blessing of the crown, watching the Archbishop hold a 2kg lump of jewel-encrusted metal aloft in front of him for what was, quite clearly, a lot longer than he found comfortable.

The anointing? Woah. He takes off his clothes, goes behind a screen and actually strips off … in church? That’s … a hell of a thing. He gets dabbed in various places with holy oil, including his chest, so you can stop snickering at the back because it’s only his top he takes off. It’s church though so he must get fucking cold. I was particularly intrigued to see that medieval style clothing is very similar from East to West.

See what I mean?

I couldn’t find a social media post to share of him wearing it and the belt, and I daren’t share anything else, so this will have to do. But once he had the belt on then, stick the right kind of Saracen helmet on him, and he could have stepped out of Saladin’s court from a Ladybird book about the Crusades in these duds. Or an illustration of medieval Chinese noblemen.

So … what do we learn from this? That, if we go far enough back everyone wore a dressing gown.

Three changes of costume though! THREE! He swapped the very lovely red Nehru jacket, which I rather coveted in a closet New Romantic kind of way, for something very, very gold. And reminiscent of something you might see worn by a Mongol lord in a medieval illustration, or a full-length figure off a medieval coin.

And did I mention it was very gold. And very heavy, presumably. If it had been lead then, come the apocalypse, I reckon it could have been used to shelter several people from radiation. And it was very medieval but at the same time, because it was so spangly, there was also that dash of 1960s Klingon about the glitteryness of the fabric which merely added to the mystique.

And also Dr Who. As they cleared the screens away, for a few minutes, there, I wondered if our new King is also a Timelord.

Although Timelords are based on historical costumes from the medieval era, principally Venice (the 1970s and 80s ones at any rate, lean heavily on that portrait of Doge Lorenzo Loredan which is from the 1400s but it’s as near as dammit).

Sorry, gone off on a tangent there.

The throne (snortle) … the revered 700 year old—or is it 800 years old—throne which has been defaced by generations of school boys at Westminster School.

Also gold. Of a different kind. Comedy gold. Because … really?

In my Dad’s house, at Lancing College (Gibbs) the very junior boys didn’t have an individual study, there was, basically, a cube farm, which was called a houseroom and everyone in their first two years had a cubicle in there. Except that in the second year some of them moved up to ‘the settle’ which was this ancient wooden bench in front of the fire. After that they then went on to ‘a pit’ which was an individual study. There was a kitchenette off to one side of the houseroom with a grill and a hot plate, which enjoyed a regular supply of milk, butter and sliced bread but if you were a member of ‘the settle’ you could toast that bread over the gas fire. The room perennially smelled of beeswax polish and toast with a hint of gas (from the pipes not the boys although there probably was a bit of both).

‘The settle’ was covered in graffiti. Every boy who’d been through that house had gouged his name deeply into the wood until the whole thing was knobbly with graffiti and there were names, on the names, on the names and very little plain wood anywhere. I’ve no clue if it’s there now. I hope it is. Likewise, I’ve no clue if everyone carved their names in it but one of them was singing in the choir at the coronation yesterday. My dad would have been so proud.

Thing is, The Settle … that’s at Lancing College. It wasn’t founded until 1848 and I think the present site was built in the 1860s (but don’t quote me on that). My point is it’s not that old, so it’s not quite such heights of vandalism to gouge your name into the settle as it is to gouge it into the throne upon which Henry VIII was crowned.

Word up, I did not expect the actual Fucking Throne of Fucking England (Yes that’s its full title. You didn’t know that did you?) to be the Westminster School equivalent of ‘the settle’ in Victorian times. Mainly because as stated, the Fucking Throne was over 700 years old before the little bastards even got carving. Except that, clearly the Westminister School equivalent of ‘The Settle’ is exactly what it was.

Holy. Fucking. Fuck! There is something joyously ironic about this. If I’d written that into a book, it would be dismissed as a bit over-the-top. Mwahahargh. Not. So. It was also, clearly, horrifically uncomfortable, especially to a man with an arthritic back who suffers from sciatica. You could see him shift position and wince every now and again.

Then there was ‘the giving of the presents’ I dunno what this bit was really called but … the special attributes. No, not eyes in the back of the head, a thimble, box and ring of state but … WAIT! Hang on! There WAS a ring of state. Mwahahahrgh! But I don’t think it was shrink-to-fit. And a bible, and some spurs, a sword, The Orb (no relation to the 1990s popular music combo) a sword and a couple of rod things which he has to hold in each hand so he’s got nothing to save himself with if he falls. Yep, if he trips over a dog or something with that lot on, he’s going to go flat on his face. And there’s the whole discombobulating effect of having one hand gloved and one hand … not.

Which reminds me … One glove!? One giant, beautifully embroidered, 1950’s-style-motorcycle-gauntlet-type glove. All this phaff and he only gets one? Where’s the other fucking glove? Did they drop it? Imagine being the bloke with the cushion. Shit I’ve dropped one somewhere. Fuck! Where is it? I’ll have to go back. Shit! No time. Oh no! Wait! There it is! Bollocks that security bloke’s just tripped over it and kicked it under the organ. We’ll never get it out in time. Shit and there’s my cue. What do I do? What do I do? Fuckity fuck! I’ll just have to blag it with one for now, go back and find the other and hand it to him in a quiet bit later on.

Imagine him riding his Norton in full regalia, the golden cloak ~~dragging along behind him~~ billowing out behind him in the wind but miraculously, without taking his head off, because this image is for cinematic effect, rather than real, with only one fucking glove on? What the …?

What happened? Were the glove makers like me at school? Was it this kind of conversation?

‘He wants two. You know that right?’
‘Shit! No! I didn’t see that part of the brief.’
‘It was over the page.’
‘What?!!! Noooo! I didn’t see that …’
‘Bummer mate.’
‘But now what do I do? He’s supposed to wear them to-actual-morrow! I can’t make another one in time. What do I doooo?’
‘Search me mate.’
‘OK, calm. Breathe … there’s nothing I can do, there’s no time to make another one now, I’ll just have to face the music; give him the one you have made and explain … Maybe he’ll understand.’**

So there’s the poor guy with one glove, and one not-glove, and rod, and staff and clothes that are made of solid gold and weigh approximately one metric tonne*.

*OK probably not but you get the gist and it sounds funnier.
** I know it’s a hawking glove but admitting that ruins the comic effect, such as it is.

Putting the crowns on. Again, I was completely riveted by this bit. First trying to get it on to the King’s head. ‘Careful! You’re going to crick the poor man’s neck. He’ll have neuralgia for weeks!’

Also enjoyed that Queen Camilla, who always strikes me as a down-to-earth, hands-on, practical kind of person, had to pretty much sit on her hands, they kept coming into shot as she instinctively went to put her crown on, herself.

At some point, I’m not sure when because I went to the loo, the King seemed to have changed clothes again and put on a purple silk jacket which I would have coveted even more greatly than the red one as a New Romantic/Goth-in-colour teenager.

A thought about crowns … I can’t work out if Crowns look quite cool or absolutely fucking ridiculous. I noticed the King was wearing a different one when he came out onto the balcony, I’m thinking, his mother’s. But it wasn’t gold, presumably it was lighter, because the gold one weighs a fucking tonne and he’d have ended up with a stiff neck for the next ten weeks***. Poor man, he probably has anyway. But … they do make your head look really big. Or maybe I’m just not used to such tall hats. I dunno.

Crowns … to make your head look REALLY big.

***OK 2kg/5lbs but you get the picture

The coach. Yeh. That looked horrendous too. There were all the others moving smoothly along, meanwhile you can see the finials on the four corners of the coronation coach bobbing up and down as it crested the tiniest bump. They must have been about ready to hurl when they reached the palace. No wonder they arrived in a different one. Graffitied the Throne may be may be, but it’s not the great-white-telephone kind of throne, after all.

No wonder the poor man asked for quiche for Coronation lunch. Comfort food. That’s what he wanted. And after all that malarkey I would too. Jeez. I suspect all they felt like doing was to go to bed early and sit there in their PJs, with the telly on, eating a cheese omelette each off a tray. I sincerely hope they got to do that … you know … if they wanted to.

For many reasons, I think the best photo of the whole day has to be this one.

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Tagged as author blog, ChazIII, Coronation, humour … probably, M T McGuire

12 Mar 2023 · 12:44 pm

Come with me on a journey through my exciting life!

Obviously, I use the word, ‘exciting’ advisedly, the ironic implication being somewhat the reverse.

This week, I have mostly been … running around like a blue-arsed fly! As previously implied, it’s not exciting and sadly it’s not even that funny either. But this is my blog, so I can do what I sodding well like, which means I’m going to tell you about it anyway.

On the Mum front … more admin popped up, just for a change. There is so. much. admin. Ugh. Never mind, it is what it is. I can’t fix that. It’s dealing with it in the most effective way possible that counts.

A few years ago, Mum very wisely decided that she would put all the bills with one provider. At the time this wasn’t the cheapest way but from the point of view of suddenly having to take care of Dad’s side of the admin for the first time in about 50 years while, at the same time looking after someone with dementia (Dad at that point) it was worth paying a little extra for the reduction in hassle. From the point of view of someone who takes to this sort of stuff like a duck to quantum physics and is now looking after a mother with dementia, I regularly give quiet thanks for this decision.

However … the company that looks after her electricity, gas and phone had been taken over by something called Ovo, yes that’s OvO people not OvUM. Needless to say, I can’t remember their bloody name because all I can think of is ovum. Yes well … moving on. We’ve been waiting to have our account ‘switched to Ovo’ for some time, inhabiting an uneasy limbo between the two which made it tricky to do anything. However, I reckoned we’d finally achieved splash down because something had happened to the direct debit so Mum suddenly owed them money. When I checked Mum’s post on Wednesday I discovered a welcome to Ovo letter with a phone number to ring to sort it out.

On, on… probably …

On the up side, despite the fact that all the operators were busy helping other customers, I only had to listen to a hilariously 1920s version of the Blue Danube before someone answered. I got someone nice, as well, which always helps. Her english had a slight midwestern twang and she kept calling me ‘ma’am’ so I suspect she was in India, or possibly Singapore or Thailand? It was all very straightforward though. Mum needs a smart meter but one of the carer’s partners, who fits them, had recommended waiting as long as possible … except that then the whole takeover thing began and we got stuck in the twilight zone between belonging to the old company and being absorbed into ~~Ovum~~ Ovum. Shit! I’ve just typed Ovum twice. Bloody Hell! OVO chuffing buggering OVO. Er … yeh. Sorry about that, where was I?

Right yes, ringing Ovo. I wasn’t sure if I was allowed to speak to them about Mum. I had special dispensation from the old lot but as we had a bill and I suspected this was because the Direct Debit hadn’t transferred over from the old supplier to the new one, I wasn’t certain the special dispensation would have transferred either. As a result, I saw no point in making things complicated so I did the usual trick of fraudulently pretending to be Mum so I could circumvent the security protocol without having to wait however many days it was for them to process a copy of Mum’s power of attorney or speak to her so she could give them permission to talk to me (which would have been difficult with her in Sussex and me in Suffolk). While I was on the line, I managed to book the installation of a smart meter on Tuesday, even better they have sensible slots so instead of 8-12 and 12-6 which involve a large gap when staff levels are thinner and I have to get an extra person in to make doubly sure that there’s someone available to deal with the engineer, they had a slot from 10.00 until 1.00 and from 12.00 until 2.00, which fitted into the right time frame for us and was surprisingly sensible and accommodating of them.

A quick message to the carers’ chat while I was on the phone and the engineer is now coming to fit a new electricity smart meter between 12.00 and 2.00 which is the time when there is absolutely guaranteed to be enough folks about for someone to take care of the meter ~~man~~ person. Even better, if Ovo turn up before 12.00 or after 2.00, Mum gets £30. Jolly dee … probably. So much could go wrong but … I’ve done my best.

I have also managed to end up running the bank account for McMini’s band, because I’m a special kind of stupid. That shouldn’t involve much, but this week I was busy sorting out T shirts to sell at their next gig. I managed to get more money, and therefore more shirts, by having the band member friends and family put our orders in up front. So that’s grand. I’ve also managed to set up a paypal account for the band with a Gmail address. Next step, when the money pours in after the gig, if it does, get an iZettle so we can take card payments.

Other news, this week, I went to a gin tasting with a group of ladies from Parents’ Swim, at McMini’s school, along with a wider group of folks, who I tend to run into when they’re walking their dogs on the school site and I’m going for a walk if the swim is cancelled, or I’m looking for mushrooms, or if I’m simply passing the time before the traffic dies down a bit and I can get home quickly (I see zero point sitting in traffic for 40 minutes when I can go for a 40 minute walk, get all my exercise in for the day and then drive home in ten minutes).

The tasting was in the bar part of the concert venue in my home town and was billed as being gin and ‘nibbles’. Naturally, all of us being either menopausal or a little older, we knew what our priorities were and a lengthy discussion ensued as to what ‘nibbles’ comprised. Would it be enough to absorb a substantial amount of gin? In the end, we decided it was probably canapes and as a result we all ‘lined our stomachs’ before we went with the kind of hearty fare designed to absorb large quantities of alcohol. The event started at 6.30 so the McOthers and I had supper early; spag bol.

It was absolutely lashing it down with rain, the kind of rain that would look far too unconvincingly heavy if you saw it in a film. I had to do that thing where you need to hold your coat out in front of you or the water runs off and soaks your trousers, leaving you with cold damp thighs all evening. I still got a bit damp but on the whole, it worked. I took photo of the town in the rain which I was quite pleased with, and also a picture of water running down the street because I thought it looked abstract. It does.

Rain soaked town … I think this would be a new Grongolian development if it were situated in Ning Dang Po.

Squigly lines and dots or running water?

Imagine our surprise, and possibly a little consternation, when we arrived to discover that it was a seated event and there were tables set for a three course meal. We started off with a cocktail that contained a lof of gin and an even greater quantity of Campari and probably some more stuff as well. On repairing to the furthest table from the others, so my laugh wouldn’t deafen people (I have had people on adjacent tables ask to be moved in restaurants before now) we then proceeded to get the giggles repeatedly about the fact we were going to have to do a Vicar of Dibbley and ~~three Christmas dinners~~ two suppers each.

We were immeidately identified as the Naughty Table so when two members of another party couldn’t make it, we were given their cocktails which we shared amongst ourselves.

The gin was fab by the way, the company is called the Heart of Suffolk Distillery and they have three gins out at the moment, the first was called Betty’s Gin, the second Rosie’s Gin and the third Ivy’s Gin. All were a bit of an eye opener as they were so much tastier and more aromatic than just … gin, but I liked Rosie’s Gin best, with Betty’s a very close run second and Ivy’s third. All of them were head and shoulders above what you’d normally expect in way of flavour, aromatics and general deliciousness. I bought a bittle of the Rosie’s becuase it had really lovely coriander kind of undertones and was delicious served with tonic and a strawberry floating in it.

The dinner was, indeed, three courses and was very good and luckily not too huge, although it would have been plenty on it’s own, without the large helping of spag bol I’d imbibed first. There were three little eats for starters; avocado mouse with a delicious home-made taco, a sort of salsa thing and a parsnip puree washed down with a lovely herby aromatic gin called ‘Betty’s gin’. It was followed by a kofta with some really good home made slaw and some ham croquette things, couscous with pomigranite seeds and a bit of curried parsnip soup on the side. This was served with Rosie’s Gin which was equally herbal and aromatic but where Betty’s was rosemary, this was definitely coriander, it would have been fab with a light thai curry. Pudding was a lemon tart with rasperry coulis served up with Ivy’s gin, which was more gluveinish in aroma, I could definitely smell cloves, and taste them too. McOther wouldn’t have liked it.

It seemed a waste not to finish everything so we drank all of the gin and I cleaned all three of my plates and the others did pretty well on theirs, too. Nom. But also sort of bleargh. Even now, two days later, I’m slightly feeling it … says the woman who bought a massive cake in the market this morning and snarfed it with lunch but … you know.

Next up we thought we might try doing pottery.

The following morning, in a somewhat debilitated state, hangover-wise (it took me until this morning—Sunday—to recover fully) I had to go for a blood test at the hospital. I didn’t get up in time to drive, it takes about 40 minutes that time in the morning, especially when some of the roads were flooded. I also left it too late to walk which meant the electric bike. It was still throwing it down so I put on my waterproofs and set off, aware that I’d only really left fifteen minutes for a twenty minute journey.

Unfortunately, I discovered that my usual route was blocked with an enormous puddle, however, there was no time to go round so I just had to plough on through and hope it wasn’t too deep. Needless to say it came up to the bike’s axles but somehow even though, when the pedal was at it’s lowest point, the tops of my boots were well below the surface of the water, none got through my waterproofs. I did pedal as fast as I could of course which may have created some kind of vacuum induced waterproofness … (is that a word?) I dunno. I arrived in time for the blood test. The check-in thing didn’t work but I managed to sort that anyway and apart from misreading someone else’s name and blundering into one of the bays while some poor chap was having a blood test it was more or less OK. Then I came out.

It was snowing.

A lot.

Never mind, I thought, it’ll stop in a minute. So I started off home. Pumped by my success on the way, I took the quick route which entailed going back through the enormous puddle. Once again, the feet stayed dry but the waterproof trousers caught on my pump, ripping it out of its holster. It disappeared into the murky depths with a plop. Since the water level would have been just below my knees if I’d put my foot down, I had to leave it and chalk the loss up to experience. If I go back in drier weather I might possibly find it … who knows … mind you, it’ll probably have tadpoles in by that time. As I exited the enormous puddle it began to dawn on me that snow is fucking painful when it hits your eyeballs at high speed. It was blowing a hoolie and I was riding into it as fast as I could, which was about 15mph with maximum electronic assist. The journey sounded like this.

‘Ouch!’ pedal pedal, ‘Fuck off!’ pedal pedal, ‘Ow that fucking smarts you fucking fuck!’ pedal pedal, ‘Fucking snow! Fuck! Owwww! Fuck!’

It only took me 10 (very unpleasant) minutes to ride home, but because snow on the eyeballs is so painful I was riding squinting out of one eye for most of it. By the time I arrived, I looked like this.

Lovely.

With all this extra eating, how is the eating thing going? Well … my weight this morning is 11 stone 8lbs and on Tuesday it was 11 stones 4lbs. Then again, it’s fairly arbitrary at the moment because two days before that 11.4 weigh in, I was clocking in at 11 stones and 7lbs. I have concluded that water retention affects this and some of it’s also about how much food there is in the system. For the most part, if I eat 1600 calories a day or more, the weight loss stops. If I hit my protein targets, it slows down. If I aim to hit my calorie target I get nowhere near my protein target.

At this point, I’m more concerned with which clothes I fit into and since there hasn’t been much change on that score I’ll not worry. I probably ate about 1750 calories yesterday and I was absolutely stuffed.

Other news this week. I am moving to a new ISP which means I’ve kind of broken my hamgee.co.uk website, on a temporary basis, though, I assure you. I need to do a couple of final steps in set up this morning and then, when the name servers are pointing to the right place, I need to reinstall the SSL certificate. After that, hopefully, everything should work again. Next steps after that will be to slowly rebuild it. I’m afraid it will probably be glitchy for a while.

And finally … once again, the chance to grab 12 hours of fabulous audiophonic joy for 99p (or 99c) continues … if the link works.

Yes. If you like cheap audio books, Few Are Chosen is on sale for all of March 2023. After that the price goes up again. As always, I’m cutting my own throat here. It’s 99c on Apple, Kobo and my own website. For anyone in the States, it’s also 99c on Barnes & Noble and Chirp (which is USA and Canada). I’m trying to walk the line here between offering a bargain from time to time and turning into a kind of audio DFS where there are only five days or so in a year when there isn’t a sale.

If you want to grab it while it’s mega cheap, though. You can find store links and a bit more info below …

Grab it direct from the author for 99c:

MTM’s Store

Or get it from one of these retailers:

Apple
Kobo
Chirp
Barnes & Noble
Spotify

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Tagged as author blog, author blogs, author parent, I fucked this up so you don't have to, istuffedthisupsoyoudon’thaveto, K'Barthan Series, K’barthan audio, M T M Makes a complete tit of herself, M T McGuire

4 Feb 2023 · 5:09 pm

2022 in Focus, career version

picture of a factory with sunlight shining on it

The Bury Beet Factory in sunset hue … Less Silver Spoon and more Golden Spoon in this one …

This blog post is written over a couple of weeks but I’ve not harmonised the timeline. Instead I’ve left it in as-I-wrote it mode because it seems to read better like that …

This week I have suddenly developed sciatica, or at least a trapped nerve but same end result. It just gradually appeared over the course of Wednesday evening as McMini and I watched TV. Yesterday it wasn’t great but I exercised a lot to try and keep it all moving. This was the right thing to do on paper, but unfortunately, I woke up this morning with the most evil pain in my lower back. It got better as the day wore on with a heat pad pressed against it pretty much all the time, and concentrated itself in and just above my left bottom cheek. Lovely. Lowlights of the week, trying to get dressed yesterday, today and the day before. Friday, especially, my socks were causing too much friction for me to be able to get them into my trousers without extremem pain. When you are standing on one leg shouting, ‘fuck off you fucking bastard trousers!’ at the top of your voice to an inaminate item of clothing you know you are in trouble but when it acctually makes you feel better, rather than an idiot, you know it might be piss-poor day, painwise. Still the only way is up. Except it wasn’t. Although let’s face it, things may improve from here. A friend came round to lunch on Friday which was lovely though, and it did take my mind off the pain.

Having googled myself extensively, if you see what I mean, I’m pretty sure I have what I had last time which is a tight piriformis muscle but I may have a disc pressing on the nerve too somewhere, too. The piriformis is a pathetic little muscle in your arse which, if it gets tight, traps the sciatic nerve, which hurts, which makes your arse clench, which makes it tighter, which hurts more … you get the picture. When I do a specific stretch aimed at helping this it … well … you know … helps. However, when I do stretches to releive a blurpy disk pressing on the nerve that helps too. Knowing my luck I’ve scored a full house. So now I just have to keep doing the stretch and moving around regularly, even if that does involve walking like Clive Dunn. No sitting at my computer for more than ten minutes. Productivity levels may vary. I have some absolute horse pills that they gave me last time which do seem to help but it means no alcohol if I take more than one a day. I did virtual church this morning, which was nice, except they had a collection of some of my absolutely favourite hymns … on the other hand, communion just happened to arrive at the same time of breakfast so I communicated with a glass of water and a slice of Lorne sausage. Probably quite unholy in the grand scheme of things but it helped …

Interestingly, I have been a bit more productive like this. Sitting on the sofa in my office with the omnipresent heat pad and getting up for a little walk round for ten minutes on the hour I seeem to be getting more done. So far I’ve read quite a lot of a book on antique bottles and have been able to look up some of the ones I have and come up with an approximate date. I’ve also written the thank you/Christmas letters I do to keep elderly friends of my parents and relatives to keep them in touch with what’s happening to Mum. Once the first is done, obviously, it’s easier to do the others because I’ve already written a lot of what I want to say and kind of … you know … got it down pat.

Never mind, onwards and upwards. I was going to talk about the year in book sales, although looking at the volume of sales, I am sorely tempted to say, ‘let’s not!’ On we go then …

MTM’s Year out of in Focus 2022

Aims

Ooo! Get me, all organised with my headings and subheadings but yes, despite my efforts, and my business looking like a completely random and chaotic shit-show from the outside (and the inside if I’m honest) I did start off with some actual aims last year. Rather loose ones, to be honest, and I probably hadn’t given enough thought as to how I would achieve them but they were:

Write and publish another book … er hem. Yes. Oops.
Increase my audio sales and see if I could get some sales of soemthing other than my two first in series
See if I could do some face-to-face events and sell more paperbacks.
Attempt to grow sales at outlets other than Amazon and Audible.
Try something new in marketing, possibly a kickstarter, and be more organised with other marketing efforts (social, mailings and ads).

Let’s have a look and see how I did then shall we?

1. Publish a book

Yes, that one fell victim to pressures at home but I’m hoping I might finish one in 2023. I won’t be able to publish it because if I do finish, that’ll happen in April after which I probably won’t have time to do much else but if I fail to finish I’ll throw caution to the wind and write another novella in the interim, or extend The Last Word or … I dunno. Something.

To be honest, if I want to get anywhere I have to write some straight medieval fantasy and something about a dorky american bloke in space. I haven’t done anything straight medievel fanatasy wise but I do have a dork in space (not american because america doesn’t exist in that version of reality but a guy who lost one leg just below the knee in an accident). In the meantime, I just have to go with what’s flowing, sigh, which is more K’Barthan shizz. Oh dear.

2. Audio sales

My figures for audio are not as complete as sometimes, mainly because I haven’t got round to finishing the spreadsheet where I log them all. However, this one actually went better than I thought it was going to at the start of 22. Gareth and I share a steady £60 or so from Audible each month but obviously, I wanted to grow my sales on other retailers. I did several promos on Kobo and tied in Apple and Chirp, adding Barnes & Noble as Findaway added those retailers to the promotions section. For future promos I can now add Spotify as well. On the whole, each sale was around two weeks long.

On average, my effots (bookbub ads and the odd post on social media) garnered between 30 and 40 sales of the first book in the K’Barthan Series at 99c during each promo. These were mostly on Chirp but occasionally on my site or on Kobo too. In the first instance, there was little or no readthrough but when I ran the second sale, I noticed there were some downloads of the second K’Barthan book or the box set, although these were mainly from Libraries. Third sale, more read through and even some purchases of later books so things are looking up there. In 2020 I earned about 2/3 audible and 1/3 Findaway.

Overall, audiobook sales are climbing and to my joy the non Audible portion is growing. It is rather wearing to read my royalty statements from Audible and see sums like $395 earned with $90 going to Gareth and I to share 50:50. Worse, ACX are now reducing the prices of books so we sell more. Great on paper, I mean Audible’s book prices are fictional anyway, they are twice as much as everywhere else to make the price of a credit look good but at the same time, the books they are selling a la carte on Audible for £24.99 are piped through to Apple at £10.00 so they know how much audiobooks actually cost. However, they say that the publisher compensation is governed by the published price so if they reduce my books by 20% then presmumably my royalty goes down by 20% too. Other authors whose books have already been reduced have seen this borne out on their statements. I have had the odd very low payment but I haven’t managed to track down if it was a sale or an offer or what … So far on Audible UK they haven’t reduced my books. I am unable to see prices on any of the other audible sites, or, indeed look at them … even in ‘private’ browsing it funnels me back to the UK store. So yes, the Gorilla is still providing 2/3 of the income but only from one book and I am beginning to think seriously about pulling all the others. I just see no point exposing myself to anymore of Audible’s shit than is absolutely necessary. I’d keep one book on there and keep my account so I can claim any new books as I publish to stop other people putting them on Audible. Otherwise, I’m close to just telling them to do one with their contract that reads like an unenforcable software contract and their punishment royalty rates for putting my books in libraries.

On the upside, although the Findaway portion dropped dramatically in 2021 this last year it appears to have gone up again. It’s still only 1/3 which is annoying but at the same time, if I’m earning 1/3 of my income from 10% or less of the readers it goes to show a) how shit Audible’s royalties are and b) that I should keep promoting my wide audio. Oh and I forgot to add sales of my own books which are tiny but were definitely a thing last year (along with Kobo) both of which had very little action the year before … zero on Kobo and a few quid on my store in 21 but some earnings in 22. Gareth and my earnings in 2022 are up by about 20% overall on the year before and that’s with December’s figures missing.

Conclusion: I might be doing the right thing for audio so I’ll carry on and hope it keeps improving and that the wide/my store share keeps growing.

3. Face to face events

This one was a bit of a mixed bag. I didn’t do as well as I have at previous events before lockdown. However, at the same time, I was able to attend a lot of events in a group that wouldn’t have been commercially viable for one person alone. And I earned £349 quid that I wouldn’t have earned otherwise and yes, the others earned way more than that, indeed one earned that figure in one appearance, alone, at the Christmas Fair during which I earned £35 but I’m still pleased with the overall figure. There’s an enormous £8.00 from Ingram Spark, the people who distribute my paperbacks online, on top. I think when I add Bookvault, who are similar to Ingram but much cheaper, I may well find things easier.

Will I do more face to face stuff? Yes because it was fun. However, I may try to be a bit more smart about which events I attend. For example, Ely Cathedral Christmas Market is one I should look at and I will definitely try Bury Cathedral if they do an event for Bury’s ‘Not’ the Christmas Market next year. I must also approach some schools offering to do a library talk, although I have to find out if I need CRB checked first. That’s expensive but might still be worth doing. Overall the most important thing was that barring one bit of one event, where I was a little bit embarrassed, I had fun and that is the main point, after all.

4. Grow sales on sites that are not Amazon

I can only really go on a hunch with this but as far as I can see, the non-Amazon portion of my earnings is growing. Now, admittedly, this could be because Amazon is pay-to-play and runs the most bizarre, opaque and arcane advertising platform so my choice is to get to grips with that one thing, or do everything else. I’ve chosen everything else. I’ve been doing the standard operating procedure with the others, I have a first in series in a free box set, I have a short and a novella permanently free and I have an exclusive story that people get for signing up to my mailing list. It’s OK but not hugely successful. Having looked at other people’s success I have decided to try running a kickstarter. After Brandon Sanderson ran the highest grossing kickstarter of all time, there are a fair few fantasy and sci fi fans on there and as yet it hasn’t been swamped by romance like everywhere else. Doubtless that will come but I need to try and sort one of those out before the Romance authors pile in and fantasy becomes a sub genre of romance on there like it is on all the other sites.

Unfortunately the only thing standing in my way is that I haven’t finished a book. I need the finished article ready to go and then I use it as a pre-order system essentially.

Looking year on year, at the nice easy fix that is Scribecount sales tracking, things appear to be going in the right direction.

In 2019 28% of my sales were off Amazon.
In 2020 it was 25% and I earned three times as much. I also had orders for books from non Amazon outlets where there had been no traction beforehand. I think a lot of that was the Pandemic but also that Amazon seemed to relax some of it’s algorithmic twiddling so people could find stuff they wanted rather than the nearest fit to what they wanted from the stuff in KU or that was advertised. This has since been tightened up again as far as I can tell and my Amazon earnings have dropped accordingly.
In 2021 the percentage of non Amazon sales was up to 33.3% (woot) including 6% from my own store but that may have been skewed by the launch of Too Good To Be True which a lot of lovely people bought from my store rather than any of the retailers. If that was you, thank you another 20% of those royalties went to me instead of ‘The Man’.
In 2022 39.5% of my income was from elsewhere than Amazon. (So close to 40%!) Kobo and Google Play were 12% a pop and my own store was 4.4% although I suspect that was mostly audiobooks (I can’t separate them out at the moment).

2022

2021

2020

I hadn’t really looked at the figures until now but that’s heartening because it is going in the right direction; the non Amazon share is definitely going up. Or to put it another way, the share I rely on from the most morally shonky, high maintenance of the stores is going down. I’m not sure what’s happened to my print sales though, I used to do about £40 a year from Ingram and this year it’s £7. I’m guessing this is Amazon no longer ordering my books in batches of six, which it then bins off for less than it costs me to buy them from Ingram at cost so I always purchase those and put them into stock! Mwahahargh, not that I’m devious or anything.

On the whole that’s a pleasing result though. I’ll keep doing what I do with that one then and hope that I can keep my dependence on Amazon and Audible dropping throughout 2023 and my earnings from other less abusive stores and/or sources of income rising. Also I haven’t posted my print sales on here because I can’t add sum up to the spread sheet as yet.

5. Try something new …

I didn’t do too well on this front. I guess I could call the in person appearances as trying something new because I hadn’t attempted that sort of thing regularly. They netted me the same as I’d usually have earned from my previous single appearence at the Christmas Fair but I do think it’s worth doing more. I bought a stand-up course to help me think about how I would talk to readers in public. I also bought an epic Kickstarter course and have so far got to about step two, but I’m slowly working my way through it with a view to reaching more readers of fantasy and sci fi books. With that in mind this year, I’m definitely hoping to ditch preorders and start using Kickstarter to get sales in advance. The upside of that being that I can give people more than just the book for buying in advance in a way that I can’t with the stores.

Other stuff to try. I’d like to expand my efforts on live appearences with two biggies:

Ely Cathedral Christmas Fair
School visits – time to contact local schools and offer a library talk
Move from pre-orders to doing a kickstarter for my next book, and possibly starting with Googly Joy or Eyebomb: therefore I am, depending on what I decide to call it.
I should sign up as a speaker to the Women’s Institute. I’m not sure how many sales I’d get but I should imagine it would be similar to the library talk I did at my local library, which was great fun.

Conclusions …?

Not many really. I think I’m doing the right thing. I think it’s been good to get out more among the people so to speak. Apparently, as authors get more successful, the profitability of in person appearances drops but at the moment compared to the vaguaries of internet marketing, personal appearances are like shooting fish in a barrel. They are not easy and on a couple of occasions I have been roundly humiliated. However, they are still an absolute piece of cake compared to trying to get some jaded online reader with ten million books they will never look at already parked on their e-reader to open mine and start reading. I won’t do the routine with about the wi-fi free island, the telephone directory and the lavatory because I suspect you’ll remember that but you get where I’m going …

Plans for 2023?

Yeh, there are some …

Last year I definitely made a little bit of progress so, at the risk of sounding as if I’m repeating myself, this year’s aims are pretty much the same:

Write and publish another book.
Continue to increase my audio sales, especially away from Amazon/Audible and try to build on my print sales too.
Pick the right events to sell more paperbacks face to face.
Attempt to grow wide sales (i.e. at outlets other than Amazon and Audible).
Try something new in marketing, possibly a kickstarter, and be more organised with other marketing efforts (social, mailings and ads).
Try to visualise how I could do these things and break down what I need to do to actually get them done.

Any progress so far?

Yes. I’ve started as I mean to go on. Work out what I want and then break down what I need to do to get there so I have small, easily implemented steps to take listed out and can consult the list and just do them on brain fog days. For something big like a kickstarter this is going to be especially important. I’m listing the stuff I’ve set in motion here so I have a reference document that I can return to, in order to keep myself accountable. Whether it’ll work I don’t know but I can try right?

1. Writing another book

This is where the Eyebomb: Therefore I am, easy win comes in. There will be another book this year and it’ll be that one. Another easy win is a short book; in this case, I’m doing a talk in December about coming to terms with failure. Achieving less by doing more is what it’s called but being a failure is what it’s actually about. Being a failure and being totally OK with that. The talk is schedulued for December 2023 and will run for 30 – 40 minutes online with powerpoint slides. Clearly, by the time I’ve written that, I’ll have pretty much written the entire book anyway, so it’s a case of setting out my thoughts and doing the slides early enough for there to be time to make it into a book. I think I’m going to call it, ‘I fucked this up so you don’t have to’. No obviously not fucked, the Americans will go mad. I’l

2. Increase Audio and Print Sales

The eyebombing book would be a great fit for Christmas markets if I can do it at a stocking filler price, I’m thinking 10″x 10″ hardback for £9.99 but I can take that down to 7″x7″ if that means I can make it longer for that price. I have found a cheaper printer and set up an account with them. Their books are good and so I reckon I’m going to try printing it through them. They also distribute across the UK and in The Great British Bookshop. So I’ll be using them for UK distribution and possibly for drop shipping if I do a kickstarter, in conjunction with drop shipping from Ingram Spark for the Americas, Africa, the Far East and Oceana. Ingram are between £1 and £2 more expenisve per book, wholesale and make me add a 50% margin to distribute whereas I can do 35% with the other bunch so I will definitely be using BookVault where I can.

Another important thing to do is to link my payhip shop to bookvault. I hope to move to an integrated woocommerce store on my website eventually but until I can fix that up, it’s possible to use Payhip and connect it to bookvault for direct sales via something called Zapier, which, I think is free until I make 100 transfers a month.

Likewise, if I can finish the next misfit book I will. I think it’s possible that I could but it will be important to keep up all the other stuff alongside so I won’t feel the pressure as keenly. Yes, in a strange twist of reverse phychology, doing other stuff that brings results at the same time may take the pressure off and help me finish this one. I need to do the carer’s memoir, too, as that’s very now and again, there’s a lot of stuff on my blog and in other places that I’ve already written and can use for that. However, that particular book is probably something I should attempt through trad. Hybrid is the way to go really as a trad deal shows the bigots you are good enough to get a deal and opens doors that will be closed to me forever otherwise.

3. Pick the right events to sell more paperbacks face-to-face.

picture of two people smiling in front of a table at a sci fi convention

Yes, I’m going to flex this photograph on you yet again.

I’ve already sent in my application for the Ely Cathedral Christmas Fair. Ooo get me! Will I get in? Who knows. They wanted a web address and my HUP website had just gone down so it’s actually quite likely I will fail this year. It’s also a bit of a conundrum trying to add product photos to a pitch, when a lot of the products haven’t been made yet. However, if I get a spot I will start printing up cards and merch over the course of the year; a few things each month to defray the cost pre Christmas. If I don’t get in, I’ll probably still do that ahead of any other Christmas Markets I might do, I just won’t print as many. I’m not going to inherit any money. It’s going to go on care so I need to earn some capital of my own, fast.

4. Attempt to grow wide sales (i.e. at outlets other than Amazon and Audible)

Here’s hoping I can keep the momentum going and hit 40% of my sales being from non Bezos companies. To that end, all I can do is keep trying to find readers on other platforms and continue to advertise to them.

Other stuff, finish uploading all my books to Barnes & Noble direct. I have seven on there and five to do. Then I need to sort all the Barnes & Noble links on my site so they go to the books I’ve uploaded direct. Then I need to contact Barnes & Noble and ask them to move any reviews on other versions to the ones I’ve uploaded and then I need to cancel distribution where I’ve used an aggregator. I also need to sort out the rest of my links pages at Books2Read.com this is a brilliant thing that lets you add all the links to a book for audio, paperback and ebook format. The only trouble is, it’s immensely buggy so you can only do about two at a time, then you have to clear the cache turn the computer off and on again and do another two and so on. So I tend to do a couple here and there when I remember because otherwise it’s so frustrating that I may be forced to smash my laptop to pieces. That would be bad. But really, I have to bite the bullet and do it.

5. Try something new in marketing

Gulp. This year, I may see if I can resurrect my Facebook ads again, perhaps doing one or two aimed at readers on Apple, where I get crickets, or Kobo, which is rather good. Ideally, I’d get them going to my own store and buying stuff there. This is another thing I could use Zapier for, I think … as I can also have books for sale on my Facebook page. Nobody buys them and the store is hard to set up and edit but I’m a great believer in having things available in as many places as I can. Then … I’m going to try a kickstarter. I’m going to do it for the eyebombing book, to start with, because it’s easy to explain what it is and there’s no mashing of genres involved, it’s a humorous non fiction art book. I’ll design it and build it first, then, when it’s proofed and finished and ready to go I’ll do a kickstarter campaign to try and recoup as much of the money as possible. If that works, I’ll try a kickstarter for the next Misfit book again, waiting until all three versions are ready to go before I start … and possibly adding an under-the-table hardback.

6. Try to visualise how I’ll do this and plan it in bite sized pieces so I am able to.

That’s kind of what this post is for … The minute I start writing or explaining it I come up with a very straight forward list of stuff I need to do. But when I sit looking a blank screen or sheet of paper trying to type, or write, it up I find myself completely unable to think. Doubtless something terrible will go wrong because it usually does. Not least, if I get into the Ely Cathedral Christmas Fair you can guarantee something will happen to Mum about ten minutes into it and I’ll have to do a mercy dash to Sussex and chalk £275 for the stall (and probably a life time ban from exhibiting ever again) up to experience. If that’s the case, I’ll just have to pack up and leave the stall because I have no back up. Here’s hoping …

In theory I could update myself, and you, on where things have got to over the course of the year but you may well lose the will to live and people will be leaving in droves! So. Instead, why not lose yourself in a book?

Astonishingly cheap ebook and audiobook alert …

Yes. Spoil yourself with your good taste (Ambassador) and a wonderful free book. Mmm hmm. If you are looking for a fun novella–to relieve the considerable tedium you may be experiencing after reading this blog post, for example … or if you’d like to listen to an audio book in the car, or at work or on the commute and you are just fresh out of ideas for fabulous newness … well, you can fix all those things by grabbing a free book.

This book.

Small Beginnings, K’Barthan Extras, Hamgeean Misfit: No 1.

If you think that sounds interesting and would like to take a look, just go here.

Oh and PS … my back has recovered and my knee is getting there. Onwards and upwards eh? A bientot!

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Filed under General Wittering

Tagged as author blog, author blogs, book marketing, comedy fantasy fiction, I fucked this up so you don't have to, istuffedthisupsoyoudon’thaveto, K'Barth, M T McGuire, trying to be a writer, writer parent, writers, writing

7 Jan 2023 · 5:08 pm

In retrospect …

It has occurred to me that I haven’t done a blog post for a long time and when a friend noted it in my Christmas card, expressing concerns as to whether everything was OK I thought that maybe I ought to, so here I am.

Picture of coloured glass table decoration with candle inside and glasses plus another night light in the background First up. Happy New Year everyone … belatedly, I admit.

Second, just to confirm, yes, I’m still alive.

There is a lot going on and I think part of the problem with the blog is that when I come to talk about everything that’s happening … I just don’t want to give that shit any more air time. I’m exhausted, I’m spent, I’m done. I pull up the page with the best of intentions and then, suddenly, when I think about the events I have to describe, everything is grey and dull. The same thing is happening with my thank you letters and my tax return so I need to get my finger out from up my arse. On the upside, I have successfully opened a new savings account which pays a higher, and fixed, rate of interest. So there’s that …

The other thing that has curtailed the blog is that I was increasingly discovering that I only had time to write a blog post and market my books every week and so I dropped the blog in favour of using that time to inch the WIP forward, one tiny, tiny increment at a time. Yes, as usual, glaciers are leaving me standing and I am eating the dust of continental drift, so slow is my progress. On the up side. It is happening. Which is definitely a bit of a thing, woot. I’m having slight difficulty with the timeline but I think that will improve over the next couple of months … once I’ve finished my bloody bastard tax return, of course.

So there we are … what better time to jump back into my increasingly sporadic blog habit than now, with a look back over the year in a post peppered with pictures from the many and varied holidays I went on, which I almost completely fail to mention? Yes. I think it would. On we go.

Where have I been?

You may remember that last Christmas was, to put it politely, a fucking nightmare. I came out of three nights at Mum’s short of breath, sleep deprived—yet still unable to sleep when I got into bed—and with heart palpitations, which was fun. I was also fourteen and a half stones, which is well over 90 kilos and I ached pretty much everywhere.

I wore an ecg for a few days and was pronounced fit but menopausal. Yes the menopause also gives you palpitations as well as brain fog. It’s the gift that just keeps on giving.

In the New Year, I managed to get the tax return done early on in January and then do some writing January as well as February, March and April. Those three months tend to be my window of opportunity and then, by the time the April holidays are finished and we are into May and the Summer Term comes, it’s birthdays and shit, and summer bar-b-queues so peopling edges writing out of the frame until I end up finally giving up and shelving everything over the summer holidays. It tends to stay shelved until either the next year or until I do Nano in the November (more on that later). Meanwhile back to early 2022.

I had been concentrating on rehab for my replaced knee and I was aware that I had pretty much sorted it but that ideally, if I could find a gym to attend for a year, I could push it that little bit further. Strangely, an ad popped up for a local gym on my Facebook feed, but I was browsing a local community group at the time and thought it was just a post so I filled in the form and they rang me back by return. I was about to go skiing so I booked to join up on 30th April and do a try out over the month of May.

Things with Mum were tough, we were still coming out of COVID in that everything took twice as much admin conducted through call centres where management had fired half their staff and weren’t bringing them back any time soon. Worse, I still hadn’t really managed to get back on the dementia care horse after having lock down off and lovely easy runs down to Sussex in the intervening months. It’s all very well but running another house and another person’s life for seven years is actually pretty fucking tiring. I was so weary. I was done. I still am.

There are always points with dementia care when you want to give up and it feels like being dragged kicking, screaming and protesting to your doom. Oh no! No life for you this will take ALL your spoons FOREVER. Into the valley of death we go, where the gas will sit on our lungs and stifle the oxygen out of everything. Mum was getting worse, my heart was filling up, writing was getting harder and harder and I needed an easy win. Since I was getting less and less writing done in the time I had, using that time for something else, said easy win being a case in point, seemed like a plan.

sunset over mountains With the gym initiation booked for 30th April, we went skiing, I did more writing, but not as much as I’d have liked because I was sick as a dog, discovering, on my return home, that I had COVID.

Joy. The Pandemic. Another gift that keeps on giving.

View from the pilot’s seat of a fighter jet.

Yes those are my knees, sitting in a fighter jet. 2022 wasn’t all bad.

It was also Easter and by some unfortunate coincidence, we managed to arrive in pretty much every town we stopped in for the night of the week on which all the restaurants were closed. Not that I felt that well—but the McOther’s threw it off in a trice obvs. I felt post-feverish for about six weeks afterwards.

However, on the up side, when I got back, I was 14 stones 2 lbs—which is about 90kg and about 5lbs less than I had weighed before I left

The gym wanted me to ~~do a diet~~ play calorie pontoon every day by tracking what I eat. I am pathologically averse to dieting in any form but I decided that I could hack it for a month to see if it worked because otherwise, I wasn’t giving the regimen a chance. Counting calories is easier than you’d think because there are apps that help you.

However, it would be even more easy if ONE SINGLE BASTARD CALORIE COUNTING APP HAD THE COURTESY TO USE THE UNITS, MEASURES AND RETAILERS OF THE COUNTRIES IN WHICH THEY ARE SOLD. Can you imagine the uproar if the American site for MyfitnessPal was all in Metric weights and measures?

So why impose their stupid incomprehensible mentalist random bastard system of cups on us poor sods trying to use their app in Britain. How much is a cup? It varies, which is fine until the recipe suddenly demands you measure out half a pint of fluid, or do a fluid cup which is different to a solids cup, or an Australian cup which is not the same as an American cup.

Lovely though the Americans are, it never ceases to amaze me how absolutely batshit crazy they can be and how officiously difficult they like to make life for themselves … they are absolutely germanic about rules, but without the flawless logic. That’s three cups of rice, half a lb of butter, a quart of milk, what the fuck is a quart? and then suddenly, 25 grams of sugar. AAAAAARGH! (Throws recipe book across room!) MAKE UP YOUR FUCKING MIND!

Oops, sorry. Slight rant there. Where was I? Ah yes.

In the end I used the gym’s own app which was bad but gave a bit more of a nod to the UK existing. The only saving grace is that once I’d done it for a month, I had looked up all the things we usually eat, broken down the constituents I was required to track in metric and added them as my own foods. Some of the others also loaded up correctly with the app’s barcode reader, except Waitrose frozen peas which for some reason is a can of Jolly Green Giant sweetcorn from Kroger’s. We don’t even have Kroger’s in chuffing England.

Never mind, once I started eating as much protein a day as they suggested, I was absolutely stuffed well before I hit my calorie limit. At the end of the month, I’d lost weight and was doing my belt up a notch tighter. Despite the food tracking initially doing my head in. The idea of getting a bit fitter looked like it might work as Easy Win for 2022.

Trying to take an interesting view of the avenue de champagne in Epernay.

On the down side. The potential new gym cost as much, per month, as my last gym per year, even so, the easy win was clearly go! I signed up. I’m now 11 stones 12lbs or about 76 kg. I have not weighed as little as this for 25 years. My waist is 5” smaller than it was this time last year and I’m wearing clothes I haven’t been able to get into since 2005. The heart palpitations still pop up occasionally but for the most part, they’ve gone.

There were holidays too. The picture is from our summer holiday jaunting round Europe. First stop, Epernay …

The Mum Stuff.

2021 was a bad run financially for Mum. Carer after carer got sick and couldn’t work, they had been with Mum since 2012 and I felt it only right that I paid them sick pay. It wasn’t as much as they usually earned per week but it was something. But it did hammer us a bit. As a result, by the time we hit 2022 my Mum’s financial adviser got in touch with me and explained that he could no longer manage her portfolio through stocks and shares because there wasn’t enough of it. Anyway … Ukrain. Thanks Putin you absolute melt. So I agreed we should to sell them all.

Mum had enough money for one more year at the end of which she either needed to die in a timely fashion (this doesn’t happen with dementia) or we would have to put her into a home. The thing is, even if she’s living in her house, since it’s just her, she has to sell it and use the proceeds to pay for her care. This rule is the absolute zenith of bastardy but that’s the UK for you, horrid, small-minded pissy little island that we are.

There is healthcare insurance here in the UK but it’s not as plentiful or comprehensive as the US system. On the other hand, the NHS doesn’t treat dementia. It’s very expensive and as we all know, the NHS has been a) gradually run down and b) split into hundreds of private companies, each taking responsibility for one aspect of care the net result of which is that nobody seems to be accountable and a lot of money, time and effort is wasted.

Basically, the NHS palms dementia care off onto social services run by local authorities but they lack the funding to treat it properly either, although Social Services in Sussex were brilliant with Dad, truly brilliant, the parameters within which they worked still entailed taking all Dad’s pension to pay for this nursing home fees. Luckily Mum had some savings to live on, otherwise I’m not sure what we’d have done.

It is what it is.

So I’m sitting here, having spent all but £30k of my parents’ entire life savings, £750,000–yes that’s three quarter of a million quid—on care fees that they believed, for their entire lives, that they would get for free. It will be every last fucking penny and the rest before we are done. For most of the year I drifted, rudderless, towards the waterfall of disaster; glazed eyes staring into the abyss like a deer caught in the headlights. Immobilised by panic and horror, wishing my Mum dead so I didn’t have to break her heart and worsen her illness by taking her away from everything that was familiar; in this case, her home for 50 years.

Then I finally got my shit together and started negotiating an endowment mortgage. I wasn’t sure we’d go through with it but the care team reckoned that if we could keep her at home for another 18 months, she might not know where she was after that and we could move her into a home without it being cruel.

My brother had serious misgivings about keeping her where she was and wanted to whisk her off to a home near him. I think his social services are better than the ones here in Suffolk—indeed Suffolk mental health services are notorious, I think they were second from bottom in the round Britain league tables last time I looked. I had misgivings about moving her anywhere until she was ready. I was also petrified that I’d fall out with my brother—who I have always got on very well with—over this.

View of countryside from a very tall hill in the sun

It was hot … this is Italy

Finally, round about August the mortgage was ready to sign, but of course, the interest rate was rising just about weekly by this point—thanks bampot Putin. I was aware that we were going to lose a lot of the asset we were liquidating. We went on holiday and when we came home, my knee, the one that’s supposed to be fine, gave out. I suspect it’s back of the kneecap. I dunno. It might settle with a cortisone injection. I may give that a go. If it doesn’t, I guess I’ll have to see a surgeon. I think the next stage from the injection would be a MRI or whatever it is they do instead if you already have a knee full of metal the other side, and then an arthroscopy.

View looking up the side of a pillar at an ancient church painted ceiling

This is one of the churches in Alba, Italy. It was really rather lovely, as you can see

The knee was the final straw. I was well fucked off. I hadn’t written anything since March because my heart and brain were too full of Mum stuff. My book sales were tanking—in fact my whole literary career, such as it is, was dying on its arse even more spectacularly than it usually is. I remember going up the hill one day and quietly popping into church, lighting a candle and having very strong words with the Almighty about what an utter bastard he was being to me. I pointed out that seven years having to play to a perfect storm of everything at which I am shit is a sod of a long time and that I’d fucking had it. I told it that caring for Mum and Dad had taken everything from me; I’ve no job, no prospects and pea-souper brain fog. I explained, forcefully, that there was nothing left in my life but grey and also it’s hard, when you and your sibling stand to inherit about a million quid each in assets, to inherit nothing due sheer, shite luck.

It’s not like Mum and Dad spent their money, it was taken from them by a government that thinks it’s a really good idea to take a fucking horrible illness that wrecks lives and turn it from a horrific experience into something that will grind everyone involved to nothing. I was so fucking angry. I’m still fucking angry about that one.

Maybe God listened. I dunno.

A few days later bruv told me he didn’t want to do the mortgage but that he’d like to fund Mum’s care ourselves. At this point, I passed on McOther’s suggestion that we mortgage her house to us and that we should bethe lenders. If we did it all above board then then any of the asset we lost in interest would be paid to us anyway, as the lenders. We would be creditors, not family, so what we’d lent would not be included in death duties, which, if we’d just put money in and kept the house un-mortgaged, it would be.

He agreed. Then within days, Bruv was talking about it to one of Mum’s neighbours and they put me in touch with someone who was happy to buy the house and allow Mum to live there until she died. That didn’t work out, there are death duties implications around that, too, which make it tricky to sell the property for less than the market rate. But those two rays of hope were like sunlight in a darkened world where all was monotone and ash.

We have now mortgaged the house to ourselves, all done above board through a legal firm. I left the form at Mum’s for Bruv to sign after I visited, pre-Christmas. He’s signed it but needless to say there’s some giant slew of signatures from me on the end that need witnessed by someone who isn’t my husband or son. So I’ll take it to Church with me tomorrow and get some other poor sod to sign it, at which point, McOther takes it to the solicitors to date and register it.

I think we can manage 18 months between us. Then I think it will be time for Mum to go into a home anyway. Ideally the money will see her out but I doubt life will do anything that kind. It will be really tough to move her, when the time comes, but I hope she’ll be so away with the fairies by that time that she won’t really realise.

Visiting Mum is getting harder and harder because we are losing so much of her, but that permanent sense of dread in the pit of my stomach about her finances has finally gone after seven months. My resting pulse has dropped a few points, accordingly!

A morning glory (NO! Not that type) in Portugal

It was October by this time and after a nice holiday in Portugal, crap weather but lovely food although I caught some grim bug on the plane out which was a bit of a pisser. Then Mum broke her ankle and ended up in hospital. That was quite a lot more of a pisser but I did see my brother and his family which was lovely and got McMini, who is a hulking great teenager now, together with his similarly aged cousins. And we sorted that out and got her home, as you know from previous posts.

Other ‘Easy wins…’

All the same, after that lot I decided it was time to attempt another ~~easy~~ possible win; Nanowrimo.

Briefly, in case you don’t know, Nanowrimo is an initiative where you attempt to write 50,000 words over the month of November. The idea is that this is the length of a novel and you get to write yourself the first draft of your next book over that month. My novels tend to be more like 80-100k so I haven’t ever written a whole novel … although I did manage to finish one once.

For Nano 2022 I had a list of ‘scenes we’d like to see…’ for the book I’m currently writing so I thought I’d give it a go. Obviously, I can’t do anything on Wednesdays, so I always start a few days down on everyone else, the way they all fell this time; five days down. It’s a hiding to nothing a lot of the time, Nano, but it does usually result in my writing 35k. This year, amazingly, I managed the full 50.

Have I finished the story? Have I bollocks? But I am a lot clearer where it goes now which is a bonus.

Christmas was also easier. We were due to visit my lovely in laws this year and so we visited Mum earlier. She has a machine to help her stand up and the carers showed me how to use it. Mum is doing really well with her rehab and can stand on her own now, although I think the machine still gets used, too. Back then, though, it was machine only. She was way more with it, because she no longer had the UTI and chest infection they discovered when she was in hospital with her broken ankle. I couldn’t believe the huge difference that made. As a result, we had folks coming in to help her to bed and help her get up, more to keep continuity than anything.

In normal times we have a carer in at night but this time I did it. Mum was fine, she woke up early one morning (I didn’t) and McOther told her all was well, and to not worry and relax because the carer would be in soon, which she was. I even got a couple of hours out on the lawn metal detecting and found some reasonably interesting things which, I realise, I have not looked at since. Hmm… I know what I’m going to be doing when I finish writing this then.

Three pictures of a huge glass bottle with a cut glass lid from above, side and with cat for size.

The massive carboy, from different angles, with cat for size reference.

Another highlight of the stay with my in-laws was that we managed to make it to a small antiques shop up there that we always enjoy dropping into. I spent £50 (yeh, I know) on a massive jug like they use to put in the windows of chemists stores. I think the correct word is a carboy. I think it’s probably Regency to mid-Victorian but it might be later. It’s massive, and a bit mad but also awesome! I tried to photograph it just now, by draping the tablecloth from my bookstall over some things to make a neutral background. This interesting new soft thing had been on the carpet for approximately 30 seconds before McCat decided it would be a good place to sit and give his arse a really good bath. He gives you a sense of size though. It’s about two ft tall.

Brighton got drubbed but not as badly as the score looked.

By the 28th December, we’d done all the miles and were able to hunker down here. I spent New Year’s Eve sitting on the sofa watching telly with the McOthers wearing my pyjamas and the lovely fluffy new towelling bathrobe Mum and Dad in-law gave me, which made me feel as if I was in a posh hotel!

Since then things have been relaxed, the only blot being that I’ve run out of the magnesium pills I take. I had not realised what a significant difference they make to the brain fog. Oh lordy me my brain is mush right now. I have a new supply arriving on Monday though. So that’s grand.

Summary of the year then?

Hmm … interesting times. Lows and highs I guess. I’m proud of what bruv and I have achieved and Mum is doing really well with her ankle rehab, which helps. And although she’s way more nuts in some respects, she’s less nuts in others.

One of the noticeable things about dealing with the dementia this time is that I am leaning more and more heavily on escaping into my writing. The last time, with Dad, Mum and I talked. I don’t know how much I helped her or how much she couldn’t say but I just attempted to lighten the load and help her carry it, even if that just meant ringing her up with a shit joke or making her laugh.

This time, no assist of that type is required so instead, I am ~~pretending it’s not happening~~ trying not to concentrate the whole dementia mess unless I absolutely have to, and I’m sneaking off to K’Barth instead. Only for short periods of time but quite a lot more in my head. Yep. More ‘scenes we’d like to see’ there. I also have some non-fiction and other stuff to write, more on that story next time as I intend to do a look back over the year with my writing, too. It probably won’t be next week because I have a newsletter to write and the dreaded thank you letters and a fuck of a lot of peopling to do next week—plus McOther is off to Oxford on a work jolly so I have to squeeze the Mum visit in on Tuesday. But who knows, it might be. Whenever it is, I’ll try and make it a bit shorter than this one.

In truth I’d be lying if I said I’d enjoyed 2022. A lot of it was shite, except for the bit at the end and, for the most part, I’ll be glad to see the back of it. But I’d also be lying if I said it had all been awful. There was light as well as shade.

Also, another upside, I feel curiously proud to have got through it. Pats on the backs all round, I reckon. With the McOther’s and Bruv’s help we’ve sorted out epic amounts of godawful crap. That has to be a win, right?

Happy New Year lovely blog followers … Here’s hoping 2023 is a bit fucking kinder to all of us.

On a vaguely book related note …

Graphic book cover with two old ladies silhouetted against a darkened street If you have the remotest interest in any of my books, I have a page on my site where I list all the stuff that’s reduced or free so you can try it out and see if you like it. If you think that sounds interesting (oh yes you DO think it sounds interesting) then click on this link: https://www.hamgee.co.uk/cmot3

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Filed under General Wittering

Tagged as an author with children, author blog, dementia, M T McGuire, off topic, trying to be a writer, writer parent, writers, writing

24 Sep 2022 · 12:12 pm

Compassion … so fucking underrated

A picture of the queen This week I was going to write about The Queen, I may not have time to do it justice because I am going to have to write today’s blog post yesterday and speak to you from the past. That means I only have half an hour or so before I’m due to take McMini off to a club. Then, since he’s already eaten I have to come home and eat, then shower and then McOther will be picking him up. Tomorrow, or at least, today as you read this—Crikey! This is complicated isn’t it?—I’m off at 6.30 am to Norcon; and on Sunday too.

The Queen was a reluctant monarch. She prayed that she’d have a brother so she didn’t have to be queen—at that time, a boy took precedence over a girl even if he was younger. She also prayed that her father wouldn’t have to be king because she understood, correctly, that it would do for him in the end. Then she went on to do this thing she didn’t want to do for 70 years. That’s … seriously impressive.

Managing my parents’ finances and watching them gradually losing their sanity is probably a perfect storm of everything at which I am shit. Seriously, if God had set out to give me everything I find difficult he couldn’t have done a better job. It’s all maths and being organised and remembering to do staff, remembering to phone at certain times, sitting for hours on hold, patience, and numbers; a side of my personality which is seriously lacking and an aspect of my intelligence that is entirely absent. If my other brain was like my numbers brain, I’d be living in sheltered accomodation for people with learning difficulties. I’m great in a crisis and so naturally I am given a long-term millstone; a grinding expanse of interminable twilight grey that stretches as far as I can see. I’m one for the sprint, so I have been given the marathon. I can’t bear watching people suffer and so I must. For years.

Thanks for that, God. Thanks a fucking bunch.

Then, of course, I look at The Queen who stuck at it for 70 years, and I’m complaining about seven. Maybe I should rethink my weapons-grade whining levels then. Although not here, because, clearly that’s what this is for. I watched all of the State Funeral, and I enjoyed it too. Oh I know all the miserable republicans will be saying that the money shouldn’t have been spent on the funeral but frankly, I would consider a national event like that more valuable than the pathetic drop in the ocean of public funds the money it cost would entail. Clearly, I lack the miserable protestant fun-sapping outlook to think The Moral Way. President Johnson? In his dreams but thankfully, not our reality. It’s worth the expense for that, alone. I believe it’s actually quite important to have someone in power who doesn’t want to be there. King George VI was a reluctant monarch, Queen Elizabeth II was a reluctant monarch and I suspect Charles III is equally reluctant.

Good.

Sorry Chas but at the same time, I feel your pain.

I suppose it’s hard to see past the luxury but to me, guilded or not, a cage is still a cage. I wouldn’t fancy it myself. Oh yeh, money makes things easier, C.F. my present predicament dealing with the whole Mum Thing, and money can contribute to happiness, but it doesn’t make you happy on its own. Something inside you has to do that.

Having lived in a very small community where everyone knew who I was, even though I didn’t know them, and where everyone felt as if they knew me, and treated me like a long lost friend (lovely in many respects but sometimes difficult) I can imagine what being Royal is like. I lived in a place where everyone expected me to know them the way they felt they knew me, even if we hadn’t actually met before (still touching but also extremely scary) I can tell you that, even from direct experience in a very, very small arena, this kind of notoriety is significantly less fun than people think. If there was no escape? Ugh.

Royals have lots of stuff but only two weeks a year in which to enjoy it. As non royals, the rest of us Brits get four. It’s easy to forget that people with money, or kept by the state, are still human beings like us at the bottom of it all.

Personally, I feel that the debate about costs is disingenuous; a blind to cover the real issue, which is that some nod to a sense of social justice among those in Parliament would be very helpful right now and seems to be distinctly lacking.

Yes. In all walks of life it seems we are still raging at the most vulnerable in pissy, small-minded anger and egging our government on to even greater heights of petty vindictiveness towards the have nots, while it does the metaphorical equivalent of trying to chisel off a fifty pence that’s been superglued to the pavement as a joke while they ignore the huge suitcase of money behind them in the form of corporate tax ~~dodging~~ efficiency. You know, the stuff over and above the 1% companies like Google and Starbucks pay that they’re supposed to be paying.

Also, excuse me but why the fuck are they using my tax money to cap fuel payments? The fuel companies are posting record profits while the vulnerable and poor are choosing between eating or heating. Who should be paying for this crisis? I’d humbly suggest the fuel and energy companies whose corporate greed caused it.

Here’s another example; supermarket petrol. Supermarkets use your loyalty card and credit card transactions as anonymous data to track which products sell best where. They give people a rating based on income, A through to C and possibly D, I don’t recall (it’s a while since I’ve done this kind of marketing). Then they split each group into numbered bands, A1 the richest, A2 less rich, A3 still loaded but not as rich, B1 well-off professionals, etc through to C3 … possibly D3 I have neither the time nor the inclination to look it up for this, a very generalist passing point.

The supermarkets use this information to look at who buys what, where and then provide more of those products in the places where they sell withdrawing unsuitable products for the market demographic in that particular place. There’s no point having shelves groaning with caviar and truffles in a place where most people take home about £20k a year. They can’t afford it.

However, they also use this information to set prices. In areas where they perceive the population as less well off, they will sell the same staple, petrol for example, at a lower price than they will in another area where the population contains a higher number of B and A level purchasers who can afford to pay more.

This is how petrol costs more at Tesco’s in Bury St Edmunds—£1.69 a litre as I write this—than BP petrol does at my Mum’s in Sussex—£1.67 a litre. It’s also why Tesco’s charges £1.59 a litre for its petrol 15 minutes down the A14 in Newmarket. More C-level purchasers in Newmarket Tesco’s, clearly, or perhaps there’s a local garage round there that they’re trying to drive out of business.

Yes, I suppose it depends how you look at this. A Bury resident, might see them as pitiless, profiteering bastards hiking up prices in specific areas, where a Newmarket resident might seen them as kindly benevolent people cutting the prices in an area where people can afford less. They might see it as folks of my ilk, in Bury, who the database classes as better off subsidising those less fortunate than ourselves. If only that’s what it was but I’m afraid it’s a simple case of their being profiteering bastards. They’re not going to sell anything for less than the biggest margin possible and where they can, they’ll carve out an even bigger one … like the energy companies and every other company that gets so big it loses sight of it’s actual customers, the point of its existance, in its bid to grow even bigger, lock people’s spending in with it and no-one else, serve shareholders a nice fat dividend etc.

Frankly, the older I get, the more of a raving pinko leftie I become. I cannot believe we are going to have a recession caused by the corporate greed of our energy providers. There might be a fuel crisis, I dunno, but they don’t seem to have had much trouble providing power and fuel so far. Any shortages have been about logistics rather than scarecity; people panic buying and the stores running out.

How I wish we could re-nationalise the whole bloody lot. Properly. Sure, keep the government at arm’s length and run it as a business but as a not-for-profit or simply a company that is accountable to it’s customers first—the nation in this case—rather than its board or its shareholders.

Maybe it’s just the way I’m feeling at the moment but I’m angry and bitter and everything feels grey.

Indeed, I had a major melt down at the boys the other morning before leaving for Sussex to see Mum in hospital. This was partly because the vertigo was truly appalling. The worst thing was that I woke up feeling fine, but then, as I raised the glass to finish the rest of a pint of water, it suddenly kicked in. The boys laughed and I just lost it completely. I nearly cried as I ranted at them. Not about the vertigo, but just about how I just couldn’t keep a lid on my grief, and how awful I felt about having to hurt my lovely Mum and make her miserable because of the institutional prejudice the State, and the NHS, displays against people with dementia. Because we are going to run out of money. And we will have to sell the house for her care. And every time I think about it my stomach ties itself into a veritable Gordian knot which no amount of breathing exercises and sundry attempts to relax will undo. I think I got so melodramatic that I actually said I wanted to die, and right there, in the moment, I probably almost did. Jeez it’s a fucking hard row looking after dementia people and the NHS and government seem to go out of their way to make it as hard as possible.

Putting the vertigo on top of that was the last straw, I guess. It was a right royal pain in the arse on a Wednesday, too. I was so giddy that accelerating was giving me the spins. I have perked up a great deal since then. But seriously, why no compassion? Why no mercy. Why make it as hard as possible for people to endure one of the most horrific illnesses out there. Oh yeh, because it takes a long time and so it’s expensive. Seriously though, dementia care in the UK needs an overhaul. Fast. And something approaching compassion or empathy in our lords and masters would be a good place to start.

So what is compassion? Well I saw some in hospital the other day; the most gloriously surreal moment but also lovely. An example of someone with dementia being treated, not as a thing, but as a debilitated human, who was worth something. Treated with understanding, compassion and kindness.

While I was sitting with Mum she told me she needed a poo, which involves several staff and a bed pan so I went and got the nurse who told me I should make a sharp exit and sit in the waiting area. There was a little old dear there, who’d been there for some time. She was very thin, with straggly hair and she was cradling a handbag in her lap. I had clocked that she might have dementia because of the handbag and the fact there was often a nurse or carer with her. I sat down and all was quiet for a while until she spoke.

‘You’d better watch your bag round here,’ she warned me.

‘Oh. Thanks. Right. Yes, I will,’ I replied, lifting my bag from the floor and putting it on my lap the same way she had hers. We sat in silence for a moment or two and then she said.

‘Has my friend gone home?’

I guessed she might be making sense of her situation by connecting it with a comparable experience from her past, which is what people with dementia are doing when they have those back-in-time moments apparently. It’s important to say the right thing so they are guided towards a make-sense-of-this memory moment where they are reassured rather than agitated so I answered with a certain amount of caution,

‘I’m very sorry but I don’t know.’

‘Oh. Only she said to wait for her but I think she’s gone without me.’

‘Oh. That’s a shame if she has,’ I said still treading water a bit, ‘I haven’t been here before, though so I wouldn’t know for certain.’

‘She was making up to some bloke, I think she’s gone home with him and left me here on my own.’

‘Oh dear. Would you like me to ask one of the others?’ I asked, looking helplessly over towards the ward desk where the nurses and clerk were in discussion about something. ‘They might know,’ I told her.

‘She said to—’ she began, at which point a nurse walked past. ‘Big boobs and a fat arse, that one,’ she said and then reverted to topic without missing a beat. ‘She said to wait for me but I haven’t seen her for some time,’ then she smiled and said. ‘I’ve not seen you here before.’

‘No, this is my first visit,’ I squeaked, trying not to laugh at her previous comment. Lucky I was wearing a mask.

At this point one of the admin or at least a plain clothes staff, she might have been a consultant I guess, came over and with a smile at me and the lady I was talking to she sat down on a chair the other side of her from me.

‘Hello Edna,’ she said.

‘Hello,’ said the little old dear, or Edna, as I now knew she was called. The newly arrived lady smiled over at me and I tried to smile back in as crinkly an eyed manner as possible so she realised that, behind the mask, I was smiling back and grateful to her for being kind to a dementia sufferer. Edna continued, ‘Has my friend gone?’

‘Yes Edna, she has,’ said the staff lady gently.

‘Oh,’ Edna’s face crumpled a bit. ‘She said she’d wait for me. What will I do now? How will I get home?’

‘Well, maybe you could go back to your room for a little while?’ asked the staff lady. She was so gentle and so sweet with the old lady that I almost wanted to cry (and I definitely wanted to hug her) because … Dad. And Mum but especially Dad because Mum isn’t as far gone as Edna was yet.

‘Should I? What if she hasn’t gone, I don’t want to miss her.’

‘No, I understand. Aren’t you tired, though, Edna?’

‘Yes, I am, very but I think I should wait for my friend.’

‘Why don’t you go back to your bed and wait there, then? You can have a little sleep.’

Clearly the idea of a sleep was very tempting but Edna’s reply sounded hesitant. ‘I don’t know if I should …’

‘Aren’t you tired?’

‘Yes I am.’

‘Why don’t you go back to your bed and have a sleep then? You won’t get lost. I’ll go with you and then, if she comes back, I can come and find you.’

And so they set off, ward lady taking Edna’s arm, shuffling slowly up the corridor, then back, into one of the ward bays and out again … at which point Mum had had her poo, the curtains round her bed were opened again and I was ushered back. I never found out if they got Edna back to bed. When I left the two of them were still shuffling slowly up and down the corridor, looking for Edna’s friend. The staff on that ward were lovely. Nothing was too much trouble and so many of the patients had dementia. Bearing in mind this was a ward to treat infections, the added load wasn’t what any of the staff would have signed up for.

We need more of this. We need compassion, and love and kindness. And I don’t know where it’s gone but we need it back. Maybe if everyone reading this tries to go out of their way to do one kind thing this week. One random act of kindness, it would be a start. Feel free to give it a try if you like. No obligation though.

And now … I must fly because tomorrow I have a six am start. Eeek!

Yep, tomorrow is Norcon. If you are interested, I will be at the Norfolk Showground which is on the outskirts of the city of Norwich, Norfolk, UK, tomorrow and the next day. I will be there, flogging my books to the unsuspecting public and devaluing them by signing them. Except it will be today and tomorrow by the time you read this because … scheduling techology. 🙂

If you want to know more or would like to come along, you can find more information here:

https://www.nor-con.co.uk/

On a completely different note …

Here’s some good news if you like cheap audio books!

Once again, I’m cutting my own throat and having a sale. Kobo is doing a buy more save more deal on audiobooks this September and the K’Barthan Series, as well as Too Good To Be True, are in it. As a result, to make it more exciting, I’ve reduced the first book in the series to 99c on Apple, Kobo (of course) and my own website. For anyone in the States, it’s also 99c on Barnes & Noble and Chirp (which is USA and Canada). So if you want to grab it while it’s mega cheap you can find store links and a bit more info here

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Filed under General Wittering

Tagged as author blog, author interviews, comedy fantasy fiction, dementia, Events and signings, K'Barth, M T McGuire, off topic, trying to be a writer, women in sci-fi, women writers, writers

18 Sep 2022 · 5:32 pm

Stuff happened … I even remembered some

Quite a lot to catch up on after the gap last week. Sorry about that, I was out digging, this time near Haverhill. Once again, it was a weekend event with two days’ on the fields.

However, on this one the fields had been ‘fertilised’ with something called ‘green waste’. Green waste is low grade industrial waste so it contains hundreds of tiny pieces of metal. Therefore, if you’re detecting on it, you will have to dig about 20 pieces of scrap; bits of circuit board, wire and—a favourite—the metal bottom bits of car light bulbs. The first day, I found a button, what I think was a Roman tile, a Roman floor tile and an amphora handle. Did I find anything metal among the pieces of twenty first century shite? Did I bollocks. The ground was heavy clay and wet so I had mud boats the size of snow shoes stuck to my boots and I might have been better with a cheese wire than a spade.

The fields were all on the same huge farm, so despite the fact they were releasing some new land to detect on the Sunday, I bugged out and went to a dig that a member of my club was having on his permission. It was the best decision ever, light sandy Norfolk soil and land that I knew. I found two long cross pennies, although one is almost blank, a Tudor button and a gorgeous cloth or bag seal … probably a cloth seal to be honest. I’d cautiously put that as Tudor, too, or possibly 17th century. I’ve had the little o-ring off the back and I’ve found the fronts of these seals but this is the first one I’ve found that was complete.

Interestingly, one of the other club members there had also bugged out of the big rally and both of us went home with interesting stuff, feeling fully vindicated in our respective decisions.

Maybe big rallies are not for me. You need to be fast because no matter how much research you do, you don’t know the land and it’s only by digging regularly somewhere that you begin to learn where the finds come up. That means the folks who are strong and fit enough to dig the highest number of targets in the shortest time are going to get the prize. On the up side, by the end of the first day, or the second day, you’ll probably have started to learn where the good stuff is coming up so you can go to those areas, on the down side, depending on how many people there are per square metre of land to detect, it may be that anything that’s at a depth a detector can reach will be gone when you get there or you find there is only stuff which is very deep and takes longer to dig meaning fewer items recovered and less chance of one of them being interesting. It is what it is but as someone with a dodgy knee who can’t always do a whole day, it’s only sensible to be a bit selective.

On the Mum front, things are looking up substantially. The Good news is that they released her from hospital a week after she was admitted, the bad is that we had to wait for the kit she needed to arrive at home. This being a broken ankle, she gets the stuff on the NHS who are kindly providing her with a hoist and a hospital bed. The bed was due to arrive on Wednesday but was the wrong type so had to be sent back. We were given a revised slot for Thursday; between 12.00 midday and 20.00 (eight pm). If if arrived in time, I had to ring the ward to let them know, which I did.

The following day, the Friday, Mum was put on the transport. It arrived home and the drivers, seeing that Mum’s drive was long, decided to leave the vehicle parked while one of them popped up to the house to see if they could turn round. The carers, waiting in the drawing room, saw her and rushed out. She explained what she was doing and said that yes, she could turn round so she’d go and get the vehicle. Naturally, having actually met the driver, the carers were expecting the vehicle to appear any minute.

It didn’t.

Not wanting to crowd the drivers, and thinking that they might have been going to go drop someone else off nearby first they gave it ten minutes and then walked down the drive. No sign of any ambulance anywhere. Next thing, 40 minutes later, Mum is wheeled back into the ward.

At this point the ward clerk is well annoyed but the transport is contracted out so she can’t find out much about what went on. The reason given for taking Mum back was that they couldn’t get the vehicle into the turning and since she is non-weight bearing, they needed a piece of equipment called a carry chair to get her to the house, which they didn’t have.

However, Mum has a wheelchair so, had they popped back to explain, both Mum’s carers were confident that the four of them could have easily got her into her wheelchair and off the transport, at which point they could have wheeled her up the drive, into the house and then, using the hoist, they could have got her into bed.

But no.

The transport staff didn’t bother to come and explain the situation to the carers. They just buggered off back to Worthing with Mum on board. And THIS, my friends, is why the NHS is running on a shoe string on the one hand, while it gaily spunks what little money it has up the wall on the other; because someone couldn’t be arsed to walk 100 yards up a drive and give an explanation that would have saved deploying another vehicle and two more staff to do the same journey. The Ward Clark told me this has been happening a lot recently. Urgh.

It’s also another way people with dementia are treated as things. My mother is not a flat pack wardrobe for fuck’s sake. It’s not sodding My Hermes dropping a card in. ‘I’m sorry your package could not be delivered, we will try again tomorrow.’ The carers who the driver had met and spoken to were effing there, waiting for the stupid bastard vehicle … or an explanation.

So we had another go and Mum finally reached her house, for the second time, at 5.30 but she was actually unloaded this time. Unsurprisingly she was knackered. Urgh. Head. Desk.

This last Wednesday, when she had arrived home she was on reasonable form but a bit distant. She just looked in pain and unwell bless her and seemed to be very muddled. Turns out she has a morphine patch though, so she might just have been tripping gently. When I spoke to her on Friday she was actually quite switched on. The words she uses don’t always make sense but I think that might be word finding difficulties making the confusion sound worse.

As you can imagine, I’ve done fuck all this past couple of weeks. Its’ been one of those ones when the small stuff mushrooms into a giant wobbly shite ball, like that canned foam stuff you spray into cracks in walls that balloons into enormous yellow bobbles that look almost edible (honeycomb anyone?).

On the up side, my Bruv had drawn my attention to a bin in the hospital which was labelled ‘offensive waste’. Obviously, we found this hilarious because we are both incredibly mature. I even took a vid so I can over-dub the bin saying something suitably offensive when I open it.

On the books front. No. Strangely there has been absolutely zero writing at all. On the other hand, I have boxed up one of each of my books with a covering letter ready to send to Suffolk libraries. Suffolk is in the Public Lending Right this year, which means that I will receive a royalty payment for any books people borrow. Since sending them, I have learned that they are now on their way to Bury St Edmunds Library so people can borrow them. I have used the online system to reserve a book from each of the authors I know and have also reserved one of my own, because I’m sad like that.

Also on the books front, the cosplay costume is done, I think. CF picture of incredibly sarcastic looking author in very messy bedroom. You might be wondering about the goggles. Yeh. Well the thing is, they just seem to raise the level of the costume from alright to Quite Good. So I’ll just have to write them into the next book, OK?

If you think it looks striking, have a squiffy at some of the photos of the event on Google and I think you’ll agree that it’s actually quite understated compared to most people’s and yet odd enough to fit right in. Or to put it another way, eccentric but not to the point where I’ll get mugged on the train … probably.

Norcon, as it’s called is running over the 24th and 25th September at the Norfolk Showground which is on the outskirts of the city of Norwich, Norfolk, UK. I will be there, flogging my books to the unsuspecting public and devaluing them by signing them.

If you want to know more or would like to come along, you can find more information here: https://www.nor-con.co.uk/

Most of the clothes featured there are things I couldn’t get into a couple of months ago so I’m quite pleased. The weight loss does seem to have started up again, at least some of it’s moved this week which is grand. I’m now wondering if the final target item of clothing—a pair of shorts—will fit by the time I go on holiday in three weeks. It’s not beyond the realms of possibility but I’m not going to sweat it if I fail to achieve that one. Even so we are entering the realms of being able to wear stuff that hasn’t fitted since just after McMini was born so it’s quite a thing.

The zip’s broken on the dark blue trousers but it’s a long shirt so I should be alright with some safety pins I think.

Briefly, I have to mention The Queen because she was ace. Both her and her father were reluctant monarchs. Maybe that’s why they were so good. But so far, Charles III is showing every sign of being a similarly excellent King. If I can get my shit together, I’ll do a longer post on this at some point. In the meantime, The Queen is Dead, Long live the King.

I’ve also been following events since her death including the lying in state. It’s been interesting, especially because of the amount of arcane ritual and tradition surrounding the accession of a new monarch and the death of the old one. It’s been an eye opener and I’m particularly peeved that I wasn’t switched on enough to saunter down to the bottom of my street and watch the king’s accession being announced by the Lord Lieutenant of Suffolk from the balcony of the Atheneum. Definitely missed a trick there, not to mentionan opportunity to take part in actual history. Then again, it’s been a bit like that this week, I forgot to go to a PCC meeting on Wednesday and I forgot to take my son to Boys Brigade on Friday then again, he forgot too.

Another member of the PCC also forgot or at least, he got the date wrong and turned up the following day. As he’s a world expert in his field, I felt a bit better about being a dunderhead because I can convince myself that intelligent people do stupid things so I’m not a thickie after all. Mwahahahrgh. As we agreed, it’s hard work being a pillock! We have standards to keep to. Definitely attained on my part this week though!

But, returning to the topic in hand, as you know, I like a bit of arcane ritual (rights of Twonkot anyone?) so I’m thoroughly intrigued and taking notes …