Fish-hooked Monday

Mildred and her
best friend Maud

Today I feel like I’ve been rudely jerked into Monday by a giant fish hook. There I was, all Sunday-ish and kind to small kittens, when all of a sudden – wham! Into Monday I go, without so much as a by-your-leave, or an excuse-me.

A fish-hooked look is one of startled scruffiness, I’ve decided. In fact, my inspiration today appears to have come from The Worst Witch’s Mildred Hubble. I am sporting a very similar plait, which is tied not only where you’d expect but also ‘in the middle’ with a ribbon snipped from a clothes item. Now, at 7am this seemed the height of sophisticated practicality. It was keeping unruly hair ruled and was the only thing to hand. But, in the harsh strip lighting of a corporate-ish office, why do I have a random piece of ribbon in my hair? I don’t know.

Another inspiring 7am idea was to pair suit trousers (a nod to respectability) with trainers that have a go-faster bright blue stripe. Fine, you may say, but I forgot I fretfully painted my fingernails varying shades of pink in a WHY-WON’T-MY-INTERNET-WORK! tedium crisis on Saturday. I’m also wearing a pink scarf. So, ignoring the plait thing, I look like I’ve almost thought about my look today – and then you glance down at my trainers and realise oh, actually, whatever stylistically matches is a pure lucky stumble.

This wasn’t going to be a blog post on being fish-hooked into Mondays. It was going to be a Very Intelligent article on Art, Science, and Deep Thoughts. So I’d like everyone to just imagine that for a minute instead.

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I thank you.

Britain’s changing high street

Lulled into and lolled out of a dark Christmas, January slid into view behind the scenes, the skies giving no clue as to the new colour of the year. But now, mid-way, we are smacked out of our glittery jumpers by minus temperatures, crystal piercing skies, and the news of one high street behemoth after another lying down by the bleached bones of Woolworths, eyes rolling, one last snort of steam from its nostrils, killed like in a bad sci-fi movie from that unseen virus – online.

Poor His Master’s Voice. For ninety-two years that little dog sat, ear cocked, listening intently to a gramophone. It never was upgraded to displaying a boom-box on its shoulder, never listened via gigantic headphones to walkmans, didn’t progress to being a digital projection of a cartoon dog street-dancing to an iPod. Like its logo, HMV also just sat, *squatted on every high street, usually on the dust-blown ashes of an independent record shop, belligerently happy with its position as ‘top dog’ for music, until it glanced around in shock and realised its customers were all shopping elsewhere.

But HMV was handy, especially once you waded through the racks of over-priced band t-shirts. I liked seeing what box-sets were on offer. A voucher from HMV was the stock Christmas present staple for all the blokes in my family (thankfully not this year – that honour has now been awarded to Costa vouchers since we are all hopelessly addicted to caffeine.) But what did I actually buy from HMV stores? Earphones. The odd film for £3. And occasionally there would be something to buy that I’d have no idea about unless I wandered the shop – such as the London on Film DVDs. But in recent years wandering the shop was not exactly a pleasure. The aisles were cramped. The fixtures and fittings dark. The music too loud. DVDs stacked on the floor, bunched on tables. The store started to resemble a chain pub over-run by a bring and buy sale, haunted by the ghost of Dixons staring down from the flat-screen televisions.

Blockbuster also gasped a final breath this week. Back in the day, we had a little local ‘Video City’. I used to don my rollerskates (quads), noisily whoosh down the pavement, and clunkily tip toe on the rubber stoppers all around the shop, trying to find something to watch that had actually been released in the last three years. Finding a new film was rarer than a Dodo feather. You had to put your name down on a list. Then along came Blockbuster. So bright! So much choice! Lots of sweets! My allegiance swiftly transferred, along with the rest of the community, and stayed throughout the transition from school to college to University. But then I found less time to watch films. Videos were cheap to buy. DVDs came down in price... especially if they were bought online.

HMV and Blockbuster should have put their heads together. They should’ve gone for a walk around the neighbourhood, popped into the latest trendy club, taken a casual stroll around an Apple store, recognised which way the wind was blowing. Unfortunately the online world is fairly stealthy. The activity is not heard. Yet those virtual shopping baskets are still being filled, and the invisible cash register is silently adding up for somebody.

It’s incredibly sad for the people who have lost their jobs. It always is. But perhaps this will be seen, one day, as a good thing for the high street. Maybe it will usher in an age of hand-made, of independents, of locally sourced, of craft. Maybe each high street will eventually become unique to its area again – a place people want to visit. The majority of people still like to go out and potter around. Shops should look at the demographic and footfall passing their door and think what can entice them in. The Internet will always be a factor, but online has different strengths to offline, and businesses that work that out will be onto a winner.


*I know this should say 'squatting'. But here, I rather like 'squatted'. Squatting sounds transient, like the store will straighten its knees at any moment and stride off. Squatted, on the other hand, sounds like it's bulkily blocked down on the street and put down concrete anchors.

Progression

And so I start the first (official) working week of the year with shiny blow-dried hair, a new scarf, and firmer ideas about what I want to achieve. I don’t make resolutions in the time-honoured ‘I Shalt Not Ever Again Eat Gorgeous Biscuits!’ kind of way (as that would be sheer January madness), but I do like to plant little virtual signposts in the months ahead. Sort of like this:

 I’d like to be more creative this year. There’s a lot I’d like to make happen, if I can, and a good part of that will mean recognising new opportunities, speaking to new people, and learning to trust in my own abilities (and not disparage the poor things at every opportunity... including just then. Darn it!)

Update on the novel rewrite

Slowly the evenings and weekends, the hours and minutes, the time squished out of the day to tap-tap-tap at the keyboard is repaying me with a stronger story. I downed tools on Sunday evening (far too late) and realised that there’s only 81 pages left to detangle / polish with Super Novel Shine (patented in 1872 by Mrs Paige Turner, no less.)

Ahem.

This is SO exciting!

 I’ve booked two days off in January to give the writing a time-boost and my main mission for the next six weeks is to finish and submit. Whoop! Once the submission process has started on that novel then I need to start plotting out my next idea. There are several lined up but each needs to be explored to see which pulls me in most. During that time I’ll also be looking for a new place to live. (Another whoop!) I am hoping to be in a new place by the time I start exploring ideas, but am slowly discovering life is not linear. For so many years I had the mindset that until ‘A’ happens then ‘B’ can’t happen, and so on and so forth, but that’s not necessarily the best way to live. In fact, it’s time to take advice from Yoda...

... and when he says it, you know it makes sense. Happy creative week all!

A summary

Hello! While I’m bustling around the blog with a yellow duster, squinting and squirting each element with Super Shiny Element Polish, let’s chat 2012. How was it for you? Did you accomplish many things and move forward towards your dreams? Or did 2012 rugby-tackle you from behind, and sploosh you face-first into a pile of cold mud?

I feel muddy but undaunted, oh blogger buddies. The word that sums up my 2012 is ‘emotional’. Losing my vibrant aunt to cancer earlier in the year was massively hard, and continues – of course – to be a huge sadness. If you’re lucky, then parents, nans, granddads, aunts and uncles – these form a protective but invisible umbrella over your world – people who love you unconditionally, just because you are you. When they go there’s a gap where they once stood, and you can always feel the draught, no matter how many years go by.

So that was the sadness – and it did stop my blogging, as grief does rob people of easy words, and replaces them instead with tricky ones that are hard to spell – like despondency (which I spell ‘despondancey’ - imagine Gene Kelly doing a sad soft shoe shuffle), melancholy (which I spell ‘meloncholy’ – someone suffering with cholera, chomping on a melon), and disconsolateness (a Mexican salad).

It didn’t stop me entirely working on redrafting my novel, though. Writing fiction can be such a gift when you wish to escape reality. Stories always give the writer, and reader, a gently swinging rope ladder to climb up and into for a while. So there has been progress, and I feel it is a much stronger story, and hopefully it will be ready to submit to agents in January.

This year has also seen moments of pure sparkly happiness, too. I was the bridesmaid for one of my best friends, who here I call Good Friend R, and it was such a wonderful and special time. R is my vintage partner in crime, and a lindy hop / swing dancer extraordinaire, so it was great fun to plan a vintage hen party, and her wedding was a complete delight. Lots of love and happiness to R and A.

I also attended another gorgeous wedding – one that was in OK magazine, no less – and this was my friend Kerry-Lucy to Lee Latchford-Evans, who you may know from the band Steps. It’s been so much fun sharing their pre-wedding excitement, and the celebrations.  Many sparkly congratulations to them. Kerry is also in a band – Concrete Rose – 2013 is set to be their year.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, nostalgia has been higher than usual on my radar. I am prone to a nostalgic wander or two, sometimes even the sort of wallow that would make a hippo proud. This year not only did I see My First Boyband (which sounds like a Fisher Price toy) – New Kids On The Block – but I also went to the Hit Factory Live, which was a Stock Aitken and Waterman concert-fest of pure pop memories.  Seeing NKOTB – well. For a heady teenage year they were plastered across my bedroom walls (along with Corey Haim, Christian Slater, and a random Home and Away actor. Even his poster looked bemused at the company he was keeping.) And then the world turned, and I left them behind... only for twenty-two years to pass, and here we are again. As for the Hit Factory – where to start?! I’ll start where I’ll end – with Kylie and Jason Donovan singing Especially For You. I tell you, Blogger friends, it was like Charlene and Scott had stayed together all those years, and the unseen episode of Neighbours – the one where Charlene cuts her hair and gets sexy with Michael Hutchence  – never happened.

Another nostalgia trip this year was visiting The House at Green Knowe. Hand up who knows what I’m talking about – which of you is smiling right now and thinking of the books by Lucy Boston, or remembers the magical BBC adaptation in the 1980s? Well – I’ll let you into a secret. Green Knowe is real! It’s a real place that anyone can visit – and Tolly’s room is completely as it is in the books and the show – and that wonderful air of magic and adventure from the stories is fully conjured by the house’s owner – the author’s daughter-in-law, Diana Boston. I went with another best friend, Good Friend A, and it has a special place in both our hearts.

A skip through my phone’s pictures and there are so many things I could tell you about but I can’t for fear of becoming that relative at parties who, after finishing the anecdote, goes on to repeat the same thing from a different angle unaware of the audience checking their watch and muttering ‘is that the time? I’m supposed to be calling into another blog’.

So all that it leaves me to do is raise a glass to you, dear reader, and wish you a very merry and productive New Year. May your 2013 sparkle bright.

Jayne x