New 'wet' Dawn

Well, that was a wet and windy start to the day...and that was just in my house...boom boom!

IS IT WRONG TO BE SO HAPPY THAT YOUR CHILD HAS STARTED SCHOOL?

Firstly, apologies for being somewhat absent of late. Summer holidays, half pint starting school, manicures, you know what it's like!

But here I am, sat at my desk and having started my FULL-TIME writing malarkey in earnest. I am giving myself a daily pat on the back for reaching my self-set target of at least 1500 words each morning. Whoop!

It's a very odd feeling though. For twenty five years (on October 10th) I have been a mum and when I haven't been at home with babies or pre-schoolers I have been out earning a wage, actually being paid - real money. Here I am now, no little people at home and no wage coming in and, god only knows why, I am happy!

I now it's a long journey and hard work to get a book written and then a harder job convincing a publisher to buy it. A work of faith on both sides, but if I don't write the book I don't even have the chance of receiving a rejection letter and will never know if my writing is good enough.

I was interested, this week, to read an interview with JK (all hail) Rowling, where she expressed her own fears about not being good enough and people not really getting her adult fiction 'A Casual Vacancy'. Harry Potter was rejected by something like 13 publishers and she just kept going. I am praying that I have that kind of staying power!

A great part of this new 'job' of mine is that reading, something I once felt a selfish pleasure, is in fact a vital part of my day....another whoop! So mornings are spent producing the word count and afternoons spent getting lost in somebody else's words, heaven!

I'm off for a little read now - finally got round to reading the pile of books stacked 'not-so' neatly by the side of my bed! I did mention reading always been a guilty pleasure and there are only so many baths one can take in a day!!

MAD FANTASY

I could enjoy going mad

Smilingly sliding into my immoral pit

With each slice of sanity disappearing

Another care

My hair

Filthy and shameless

I’d eat shit and spit

Out the bits, which, for whatever reason,

Displease my madness.

I’d wear my skirt so short

And my stockings would be wrecked with holes, some hopefully stitched

Stares as I stumble, mindless and happy

Down the street, are distorted in my madness and perceived as desire

My twisted red lips promise something other than decency

‘I wouldn’t mind having sex in a toilet’ they say

‘smeared with other people’

Some dirty, drunk stranger would suit my demeanor now

And we’ll fall out of our cubicle with a post coital can of tenants to share

But not our names.

Or I could call myself Sue

I could quite enjoy going mad.

You?

GREY MATTER

Sledgehammer

Chisel maybe.

Anything cruel, hard.

Just here - if you could just break my face

Loosen off the ivory grip.

Can you slide your finger between incisors

And yank down the flesh?

Ugly and uglier to come.

Hideous words will dribble out and punctuate pathetic tears.

You can disregard the tongue and heart; they’re useless now and have been no friend to me.

So, trying not to make me gag

(even in bitterness I have my conventions) onwards and I feel upwards is the proper course

Here you’ll find the messy truth of the grey matter

And somewhere there amongst the floodlit brilliance and the shopping lists and amidst the lovers and the liars you’ll find your place,

Where you fit in to this ‘piece‘ ‘bit’ ‘bird’ ‘tart’

And of course you do.

Sorry to fuck up your clean shirt,

I can be ‘such a bitch’

Funny that!