I'm really on my own...

I’ve mentioned a few times here about my newish gym habit. I’ve been going down to the gym in our apartment block since about April but what I haven’t confessed to here is that I’ve been doing it with the help of a personal trainer. I’m sorry but when it comes to the gym I am the idlest woman ever; I would so much rather lie on my sofa reading a good book than go to any gym. God, even a bad book would be better than exercise!

Most apartment blocks here have gyms but when we drew up a shopping list for our new home, it was still one of the things I emphasised to Husband. The new apartment needs a decent gym, I said. Gawd knows it’s tough enough to take the lift 19 floors to get to the 6^th floor gym… If you’re asking me to leave the building… well, I couldn’t be sure I could achieve that!

So, the new apartment has a gym downstairs. Not a room with some equipment in but a branch of a membership/paying gym and we get membership with our rental. And I was a happy bunny because I knew this gym is the one that my trainer uses for her own personal sessions so it would be convenient for her too.

However, at our session on Friday morning it transpired that we were not on the same wavelength at all. She broke the news to me that the gym doesn’t allow anyone but their own staff to take personal training sessions. That’s when I went ‘arrrrghhhh.’ She thought I was worried about our training relationship coming to an end and tried to let me know that it was okay. Of course I felt bad that I hadn’t realized we couldn’t still work together but actually, selfishly, I was worried about being on my own…

I spent all weekend panicking and worrying. It still astonishes me that I wouldn’t dream of messing my trainer about by cancelling sessions – barring illness or disaster – but I will let myself down. Eventually I thought back to why I started all this; that I’d realized that I am on my own. No-one else can do this for me. I’ll just have to stand on my own two feet (while wearing trainers and attractive, stretchy gym clothes) earlier than I expected.

Today

Today was marked in the diary some four weeks ago as ‘the great hat making day.’ In truth, I don’t think any of us actually wrote that in our diaries because that would have been a bit, well, silly, wouldn’t it? I wrote something more like ‘S & C coming over to help make hats’ but the fact is that it’s taken on epic proportions in my head as one of the problems that I might, possibly, conceivably, hopefully, be able to solve.

(Aging parents who refuse to accept they could do with a spot of help: no, I can’t crack that one.)

But I can make the hats for the Melbourne Cup. Hmmm, I haven’t yet been able to work out how to hide the bits that we don’t want to see… so actually I haven’t resolved this problem either but three heads, when S & C turn up, are likely to be better than my jetlagged and under par one.

But it’s another day not writing, and the woolly one is banging out those words… I have, over the last few weeks of fretting about the folks who refuse help, also been worrying about the dénouement of the novel. Mostly I’ve been agonizing over the location and whether removing the characters from the setting – which is pretty important to the novel - will weaken the story or not.

In the end, I’ve decided to remove them… for the truth of their characters; inside the house they will not tell the truth. Therefore they must be removed. In order to have them elsewhere, I need to research something and a couple of days ago I heard back from a friend I was at art college with. She’s willing to answer some questions and so now, after the hat making, I can crack on with the last 10-15k of words.

Better watch out woolly one; I can still put you in the hot wash…

Letter to Brain

The Towers
Bangkok

Dear Brain

When I said to Susan ‘I don’t need to worry about the Melbourne Cup hats until I get back to Bangkok’ I didn’t mean the very first night I got back. I had just done a long haul flight and could really have done with the sleep. You, Brain, would have benefitted from said sleep. And, there were after all, only a few hours left on the Sunday; worrying could have waited until Monday. You know, daylight hours? Then I could have done something practical about the worrying.

I didn’t mean you to think that waking me at 1.30am after two hours sleep on the very first day I got home, and keeping me conscious and worrying about design and technical putting together of hat until 5.30am was necessary: particularly not when the alarm goes off at 5.45am.

See, Brain, it's now 9.20am on Monday and I need a night's sleep already.

They are just hats; how hard can they be? Don’t answer that. I know that you think assembling and subsequently hiding the feathers’ join seems a similar challenge to splitting the atom… but you know, I don’t think it will be. We have a glue gun, UHU, staplers and a needle and thread. I've even purchased some of those eyelet things. You do, after all, in your dim and distant past have a degree in sculpture: I reckon we can do this, you and I. We can put together a fascinator/hat thingummyjig - alright, thirteen fascinator/hat thingummyjigs to make everyone happy.

Anyway, Brain, I just wanted to send you this message to let you know that if I spend some of today working on the design (that’s if I can stay awake) I would really appreciate some sleep tonight. Okay?

Love JJx

Tagged by Leigh

Lovely Leigh has tagged me with this meme. The requirements for receiving it are as follows:

List ten honest things about yourself (try to make it interesting, even if you have to dig deep!) Hmmm, I’ve had a problem with this.

1. Pass the award on to ten other bloggers

Okay, here are the ten things:

1. I must have tea. I can do classy tea drinking but mostly, on a day to day basis, I just want workman’s tea. My daily dose of five to eight cups a day, needs to be PG Tips.


2. I am rarely … no, never… to be found without a lip salve in my pocket… and my handbag; and one by my bed. I might possibly give one to Husband too, to put in his pocket just in case. I have always been strict; a purist… Lip salve had to be ‘original.’ You wouldn’t catch me with a flavour until a few months ago when I really let myself go… and bought a milk and honey one. See, I’m not set in my ways.


3. I am kind, tolerant and thoughtful. I am always ready to empathise with people. I need time to get to know people and won’t be ‘me’ until I’m properly relaxed. I’m a ‘grower’ so if you make judgements quickly and don’t reassess, we won’t make it. I am astonished and saddened when people are unkind. Dislike who I am when you know me, but don’t judge me until then.


4. I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to write or to acknowledge to myself I wanted to write. As I’ve dabbled my family have been telling me for years … decades even, that I should but I didn’t know whose dream it was.


5. I am capable and confident – we’ve moved our family to Thailand after all – but I won’t remember what time it starts, where we agreed to meet or which cinema it’s on at. Rarely, I’ll even forget that we agreed to meet.


6. I am not very sociable. I am not the life and soul type. I’d rather be with a small group of people than at a large party. If I’m being loud then I’m relaxed with you (or I’ve had too much gin.)


7. I am a pathological worrier.


8. I need lots of sleep.


9. I need to read.


10. I’m not interesting enough to find ten things to say about myself.

If you'd like to do the meme, consider yourself tagged.

Smiling

There’s stuff worrying me that I can’t blog about. I’ve been feeling a bit down in the dumps for the last week. Then, while I was Christmas shopping, I chanced upon this in the Siam Centre. And really, it was impossible not to smile.

There were lots of university students around (the two posing in the photo for example; note that they wear uniform!) and one lovely girl, keen to practice her English said: Can I help you? Anyway, these dressed up people turned out to be a non smoking promotion thing.

T is for ...

I love a meme and this one is from Marmite & Tea. If you want to do it you need to leave a comment for me saying so, and then I give you a letter. Marmite & Tea has given me the letter T and the meme is my list of ten things I love beginning with T.

So, in no particular order…

T is for Tea: PG Tips is my favourite but I’ve had phases for Yorkshire Tea as well. Although I love a good strong builder’s tea, I can be quite classy too, partaking of green tea (oolong is my favourite) when the mood takes me.

T is for Thailand: I am part way through my fourth year here and I never thought I’d have the chance to live as an expat in another country. It was my first time in Asia and is my first experience living in a city. I think it is the most exciting thing ever to happen to me.

T is for TBR pile: I couldn’t live without books and my To Be Read pile needs to be well supplied. I always have a book on the go…

T is for Tootsie: I LOVE the film Tootsie with Dustin Hoffman who auditions as ‘Dorothy’ to get a part in a soap opera to prove to his agent he is employable. I can’t begin to guess how many times I’ve seen the film. I was going to try and tell you my favourite scenes, but there are just too many.

T is for Two children: I have two hands and two knees and when I got one of each gender, I thought it was perfect.

T is for Typography: I needed to take a year off between school and university because I didn’t know what subject I wanted to do. My Dad had a colleague who suggested a secretarial course that one of her nieces had done and I am eternally grateful to my Dad for sending me. I love being able to type. I love that I am fast and accurate and I don’t have to think what I am doing.

T is for Teetotal I wish: I do like a drink but the older I get the more ill I become. I stopped drinking red wine at University because I’d get a migraine before the first glass was finished. Now it’s any alcohol. Sometimes I’m stupid and over-indulge anyway, claiming I don’t care, but I do and it makes me so ill for so many days, I no longer think it’s worth it.

T is for Too much worrying: ‘Nuff said, really. I wish I didn’t.

T is for Trees in autumn: It’s my favourite season and I really miss the colours and weather in England.

T is for The Beast: which is the nickname of Husband.

Mentoring

Last Thursday evening I got my second report from my mentor.

There was always the potential (in my head) that the first 10k of words was a fluke and she’d come back and say “Oh dear, what happened to the second 10k?”

But I am a bit excited. I love how she’ll say something, such as “you have a tendency to do this…” and I go and look at it thinking ‘Do I?’ and yes, she’s right, so I do. I love how she’s not spoon feeding me but is highlighting things (tendencies) for me to identify and amend: all the while being there to feedback to if I don’t understand. Personally, I think it’s important for me to learn how to spot this stuff myself and what I intend from this experience, is how to stand on my own two feet with my work.

About one scene, she said: “… far and away the strongest passage is the conversation between M and her mother in C’s study. This is packed with dramatic tension, pathos and humour, beautifully balanced in that you invite us to sympathise with both women in their troubled relationship. The narrative pace is spot on…”

Coo.

Fancy that.

I worry a lot about everything narrative pace. My notion of pace is based on a woolly feeling such as ‘ooh, isn’t it about time we had a bit of a drama?’ I have absolutely no idea how to decide these things in any other way, so it’s a boost to hear that it’s working.

Today I was on ‘take Daughter and Friend to a party’ duty. I took my laptop to Starbucks while I waited for the pick up and wrote 720 words and felt myself getting back into the flow.

It’s so exciting. I am so excited.

(Please forgive the me me me-ness of this post)

Worried from Bangkok

I don’t have much to say today.

In fact I’ve been a bit dry for a while (that’s dry of words, rather than alcohol dry, which sadly I haven’t been. Possibly, I’ve annihilated so many brain cells with my non dryness that I no longer have enough cells left to think what to blog about.)

I’ve been struggling with the concept of writing my novel: I mean I actually have to write, don’t I?

I can’t justify my place here if all I do is talk about it. It won’t write itself.

On Friday last week at the Novel Racers coffee Helen asked us who inspired us. What I thought and kind of said was that anyone who just got on and did it, inspired me. I could name names but I won’t because I’ll name the ones I visit and forget about others who are getting on and writing, and then I’ll offend people.

But.

Anyway.

I’ve asked around, and no-one wants to write it for me.

Either I actually, really, positively have to do it, or I have to shut up.

And I rather like it here.

*SIGH*

Worrying

I'm such a worrier. These are the things I'm worrying about currently:

1. Why I'm not able to write.
2. That I'm not up to it (I'm just not clever enough).
3. That I'm not (and never will be) content to be just a reader.
4. That I'll always want to write but never be able to do it.
5. That everyone in the Novel Racers will finish, get published and I'll still be at 8,000 words.
6. That I have to go to Emporium and buy a disc for the video camera before Daughter's play.
7. That Daughter will forget her lines.
8. That Husband will be late and I'll have to remember how to use the camera.
9. That I promised myself I would write between 11am-1pm, and now it's 11.33 and I'm blogging.
10. That the hole in my foot is still not healed.
11. That I'm not thin.
12. That I'd be in the gym if the hole in my foot didn't hurt so much.
13. That I know that that's a total lie.
14. That I don't tell the truth to myself.
15. That my hair is frizzy.
16. That I want to sleep all the time.
17. That I'm (not) writing the wrong story.
18. That the voice I think I want to use isn't actually my voice.
19. That if it's not my voice - who's is it? And have they got mine?
20. That I can't even remember all the things I'm worried about.
21. That I'll have to come back and update the list when I can remember.