itsjustc

There are 2 entries in the Christmas tree photo contest, mine and supernutjapan's. Both are really pretty trees so pop over and vote for whichever one you like best xx

Holidays with Frank 🎄 — your works!: frank — LiveJournal

I've got a new visitor who has recently started walking along the handrail and past my window every day.

He'd seen some peanuts hanging in the bird feeder next door!



Then he saw me taking his photo.



So he jumped across the walkway on to the birdfeeder which was hung up, took a peanut, jumped back on the handrail in front of my window and posed for me!!
I like that he was just chillin' and eating his peanut, while staring across the valley, watching the world go by!

I took a drive out on New Years evening to Castleton as I hadn't been out there to see the Christmas lights. I got there at 9pm with the hopes that the village would be quiet, and apart from the occasional couple walking from one pub to another, the streets were empty!! I've never been able to take photos of the empty streets before as its always a popular village to visit, all year round.

Here are some photos I took.

I got a new star for Christmas!

Hi...
I've wanted to post for ages but I just haven't really got anything to say or to tell you!!

Soo....

Have a photo of my scraggy looking Christmas tree that I've just put up today!
I have spent the last couple of months looking to buy a nice new artificial tree - but I just haven't found one that I like!

But I do like my individual glass baubles that I have collected over the years.

As hugely tempted as I am to join in with therealljidol this season, I think, regrettably, I'm not going to be able to.

For the last five Decembers, I have had to spend all month filling in massively long official forms that have taken up the whole of the month and have forced me to turn down Christmas get-togethers with my friends, be late sending Christmas cards and presents, not put up my Christmas tree or decorations, or simply just relax and watch some bad Christmas tv!!! As last years form was hopefully the last until at least Dec 2020, I made a new years resolution to treat myself, enjoy, and relax this December/Christmas without rushing or stressing. All year I've been turning down anything that is going to take up time in December as I'm determined to party/relax/do whatever I fancy doing, - I think I have forgotten what a non-rushed, non-stressful Christmas/December feels like!

Having said all that, I do still plan to be as involved as possible, reading, voting, commenting and recommending peoples writing - as I have really made a lot of friends in this groups and I look forward to chatting with everyone again.

So... I wish everyone competing in this season of LJ idol - all the best and good luck xxx

When I started in the second chance contest at the beginning of January, I honestly never expected to last more than a week, let alone end up going through to the main contest. Then, I never expected to last more than a week in the main contest. The next steps of reaching top 20, possibly the only non US person in the top 18, top 10 and finally, top 8, were all amazing.

I have really enjoyed my time as a contestant in this season of therealljidol. I have met some lovely, encouraging people and think it is wonderful and am thankful that everyone’s voting support for my writing has grown tremendously, from my first entry in the second chance contest, as an unknown, to this week, when I think I have gained my most points and highest position.

I have managed to keep every ‘sudden death write off’ day clear, since January 1st - ‘Just in case’ - but I knew last week when the closing date was announced, that ending up in the write off this week would be a problem, as a relative would be staying with me for a couple of days.

However, today’s arrangements with my relative ended up being cancelled. At 3am, as I woke up from an hour of sleep last night, I started being sick and I developed a very unpleasant stomach upset. As I have an ileo-anal pouch and no bowel at all, what would for others be a twenty-four hour bug, usually makes me really ill for five to ten days and I’m already fed up of travelling between the bathroom and the bedroom!

I am due to go away in sixteen days time, and feel it’s now quite important for me to work on getting some rest, getting better from this stomach bug, and being well enough to travel.

This will be the first holiday I’ve had in a couple of years, and it was booked in November. I’m heading to the Isle of Iona, on the Scottish Hebrides for Easter week (19th-27th April). It’s the place I wrote about in my ‘Happy Place’ entry. Again, I never expected to be still in the contest sixteen days before my holiday and now realise that if I by some miracle I had been lucky enough to still be in the contest in a couple of weeks time, I would have had to sacrifice before I set off, as the island is one of the last places on earth to not have any mobile signal or internet connection – which is also one of the reasons I go; to get away from technology for a week.

So… I have unfortunately had to make the very hard decision to sacrifice my place in the sudden death write off and let Sonreir go through to the next round. By sacrificing, I can get the rest I need, and Sonreir will be able to avoid going through the process of voting day, plus I think I also get to have the last position on the jury!

There is still a little voice in my head, that keeps telling me I was brought up not to quit, but when I add up the number of times I’ve quit something in my life, I can still count them on one hand! I know that I will probably have a ‘What if?’ moment in a few days time, but right now the thought of resting and getting better, gives me more brain relief than carrying on does.

I would like to say a big thank you to all the previous contestants and my LJ friends for all your comments and votes - I’ve really appreciated them.

And lastly, I wish the final six contestants all the best of luck. I’ll be happy with whoever wins. You are all fantastic writers, and I’m really pleased to have got to know you and to have played along with you this season.

So long and thanks for all the fish.

Carol xx

Well... there is two and a half hours of voting time left for this weeks therealljidol! The contest is now down to the Top 8, and all the votes are really close. 

My entry is here if you care to vote for it, and the link to the voting poll and all other stories is both here and at the bottom of my entry page.

Thank you xx

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I was born at the latter end of the baby boom in 1964.

By the time I started at Infant and Junior school, the tiny, stone-built, Victorian village school, originally built to hold two hundred and forty pupils in two classes of fifteen pupils per year, had exploded to an exceedingly cramped six hundred pupils with three classes of forty pupils per year.

The school’s solution was to install multiple temporary outdoor Portable-style classrooms which had to be placed in the only available space, the playground.

By comparison, the extremely large comprehensive school I attended, was purposely built in 1963 to accommodate the demands of the baby boom. It provided education to over two thousand five hundred pupils in fifteen classes of forty three pupils per year.

I was always in the highest of the fifteen classes. I was good at maths and science and, at a time when it was still compulsory for girls to be taught Baby care, Housewifery skills, typing, and needlework, I was the first girl ever to be allowed to study Chemistry, Biology, and Physics as optional subjects.

But English was by far my worse subject. I just didn’t understand it! I felt as if somewhere in my early days of infant school I had missed out on the early building blocks of how English grammar and punctuation worked!

Whenever it came to end of term reports, I would get A’s in Maths, Chemistry, Biology and Physics and ‘E’ in English, along with the all too common phrase, ‘Must try harder’. But, as I didn’t actually understand what I was supposed to be doing, and nobody told me what I was doing wrong or how to correct my mistakes, how could I possibly know what to do, to try harder?

The day I discovered, aged thirty-three years old, that I, and thousands of other people born in 1964, had been part of a national experiment, I was angry, but not totally surprised.

It was actually my best friend who found out. He decided to return to education as a mature student with the intention of qualifying to teach English in secondary schools. His university interviewers asked him his birth year and looked at each other knowingly when he told them 1964. They informed him about an experiment the Department of Education had decided to run on all pupils born in that year. They wanted to know what the future would hold, for the children as adults, if they were not taught any English grammar and punctuation at all!

Now I understood why I had always had problems with my English!

With this knowledge, I decided to retake my exit level English exam at night school. I proudly left my first lesson knowing all about nouns, proper nouns, adjectives, adverbs and much more. The second lesson introduced me to punctuation, including commas, periods, and quotation marks and after the third lesson, I had a list of notes with definitions to words like: onomatopoeia, simile, homophone and first person.

My night school course was a revelation and I learned more English structure in those first three lessons than I had ever learned in the whole of my school life!

After being directed to a livejournal fan fiction group in 2007, I quietly read and commented on other people’s stories and, after five years, I finally wrote a fan fiction story.

A livejournal friend suggested I enter LJ idol in 2014 and, for eight weeks, I wrote factual essays and humorous traveller’s tales. Then my mom was diagnosed with cancer. I felt I needed to leave the contest to spend as much time with her as possible. I will always remember the kindness, friendship, love and support I received from members of the group at that time.

Still having only written six short fictional stories since leaving school in 1980, for some bizarre reason, in late 2015, I got really excited when I saw a poster pinned on the local noticeboard about a new monthly writer’s group at the village library.

I was nervous at the first meeting, believing they were all going to be brilliant writers who would look down their noses at me for not knowing punctuation. Of the six people at that first meeting, two were indeed scary intellectuals, three seemed quite normal and one gentleman, claimed he was only there to support his wife and put the kettle on.

Attending the writing group is the best thing I have done in years. The seven of us who were at that first meeting are all now firm friends. The intellectuals are no longer scary, none of us are ‘normal’ and the gentleman now writes, too. They have been encouraging and honest about my work, which I appreciate especially when it comes to grammar and punctuation, as I still believe that most people in the world know far more than I ever will!

This Christmas, kehlen, whose writing I greatly admired when I was in Ljidol in 2014, sent me an invitation to therealljidol second chance. Having decided to enter, I set myself the challenge of writing a short fictional story for each round rather than writing about myself.

Having been set the challenge of creating five pieces for week 17, I decided to have an attempt at different styles and themes for each one of them. Therefore, it seemed right for this prompt to be a factual piece of writing.

As a procrastinator, sitting down to write is not something that comes naturally to me, but in these last few months, I have found that setting time aside each day to write is really pleasurable and I am enjoying the results of my productivity.

I continue to have many insecurities about my writing. I still see myself as a relatively new writer. I find it hard to accept that it is okay to write in first person, after years of being told by teachers that, “Writing ‘I’ in a story, is lazy writing!” I naturally have ongoing problems with grammar and punctuation and don’t have the confidence to post anything online without getting it proofread first.

I have discovered my love of writing late in life, but now have a real passion for the everyday structure of working hard to get a piece completed, and will hopefully carry on for many days, weeks and months to come.