Welcome to the new thing I’m doing! I thought I’d try something different. (Obviously I am prevaricating because otherwise I would be using this time writing fiction). I know a few authors who have Patreons and work like this, so I thought I’d give it a go.
My plan is to release work chapter by chapter as I complete it and also witter on about more personal stuff, possibly. A very long time ago I had a blog called Ducking for Apples, which in the style of the mid-noughties dumped my life online with vague pseudonyms. After the kids were born I chose to wind it down, because my mother-in-law found it and was pissed. I deeply resented not having that outlet to frame our life in dark humour, so maybe I can use this space to do that, too.
As some of you will know, our life has changed a lot over the last couple of years. We lost Littlest — who would have been eighteen this year — in 2023 and and my mother last May. Mama’s death meant that my sister and I inherited a five bedroom house divided in to two, and seven acres of more-or-less derelict horticultural nursery. Also four elderly sheep.
Possibly stupidly, instead of selling it, we have moved in to the big bit of the house alongside my sister, who has always been in the smaller part. Therefore, instead of dealing with grief and sitting with it all and letting it flow over us, we spent the remainder of last year doing a house-clearance. My family moved here in 1958 and no-one has thrown anything out since. There were three inaccessible rooms with boxes and boxes of things. And the attic. A lot of it was moth-eaten Boer-war army blankets and 1950s twin-tub washing machines. Ten pairs of dentures. Glasses. Our baby clothes. My father’s braces (suspenders, for USA-ians). He died in 2008. When mum and dad moved in to the big side of the property on my grandmother’s death in the 1990s, mum must have picked up her mother’s kitchen draw and just…put it in the coal cellar–when you have outbuildings, you don’t need to take anything for recycling. Poor Mr AL has taken forty car-loads of things to charity shops and the tip and we have also had three vans full of things go to the house-clearance people.
It’s been…a time.
We are now settled though, and are thinking about what we want our lives to look like going forward. We have had solar panels and batteries installed. We are applying for a Forestry Commission grant to plant native woodland on some of the land and are hoping to restore the orchard and dig a nature-pond. We still want to keep a few sheep and we are thinking about a glamping site. We spent last weekend planning a vegetable garden.
I am still having stupid functional seizures, probably tied to the fibromyalgia, and can’t drive or do active things unattended, but they are gradually getting a bit better now I have time to pace myself and rest properly.
As I said in my re-introductory newsletter a couple of weeks ago, I have story-ideas bubbling up and I want to get them down on paper. I hope this space is going to help. Some of the content is going to be free, and some of it will require paid membership. I’m hoping a steady income will help me plan bit. Thanks for being here!
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