Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart. ~William Wordsworth

Lj idol week 2 - living rent free inside my head

mrstotten — Mon, 07 Oct 2019 20:03:40 GMT

It’s always there. That voice inside you, urging you onward and upward. Constantly striving for something more.

It pushes you forward and can be rewarding. It’s how you got to where you are. It got you through the bullying. The doubt. The recriminations and pushed you into a place where you never thought you would land.

But sometimes, it pushes even when you don’t want to be pushed. It’s that little voice telling you that you’ll never be good enough. Never be strong enough. That you’ll never be what you want to be.

It’s echoed in the voices of employees and stakeholders, reminding you that you need to try harder. Be better. Do more.

It’s in the voice of your husband who loves you, you know he does, but he is always reminding you of how much time, reading, drawing, writing takes away from the things you should be doing.

It’s in the voice of the school mums who remind you of all the little events you miss. The memories and moments you give up in your child’s life by having a career.

These voices can be tamed. Can be used and straddled to help you achieve your dreams. But they can also destroy. Can whittle away at your belief and make you doubt everything you know.

It can depend on the day, your mood, the turn of a phrase.

Sometimes they drive you forward. Sometimes they push you back but they are inescapable. Always there. Always waiting.

A small whisper of a voice from which there can be no escape or reprieve.

Here I go again on my own, going down the only road I've ever known, like a … well you get the idea

mrstotten — Thu, 05 Sep 2019 13:50:46 GMT

*Opens creaky door*

*Dusts off the cobwebs and grime*

*Waves at any friendly people passing by*

It's been a while since I posted (so long that im not 100% convinved the post below was me, I hate poetry, well unless its WB Yeats or a limerick, or at least not from the 'Romantic Era') Anyways I'm back, dusting off the journal and dusting off my very very creaky writing skills to take part in this years LJ Idol (note one, learn how to tag users in new LJ tool)

Why you may ask. Well I love writing and I love reading and LJ Idol was the first thing that ever made me brave enough to publish my own writing on an open forum. It is filled with amazing writers and lovely people and is just FUN

So here we go :D Wish me luck

The Sun

mrstotten — Sat, 26 Jan 2019 07:22:16 GMT

Have you ever seen
anything
in your life
more wonderful

than the way the sun,
every evening,
relaxed and easy,
floats toward the horizon

and into the clouds or the hills,
or the rumpled sea,
and is gone--
and how it slides again

out of the blackness,
every morning,
on the other side of the world,
like a red flower

streaming upward on its heavenly oils,
say, on a morning in early summer,
at its perfect imperial distance--
and have you ever felt for anything
such wild love--
do you think there is anywhere, in any language,
a word billowing enough
for the pleasure

that fills you,
as the sun
reaches out,
as it warms you

as you stand there,
empty-handed--
or have you too
turned from this world--

or have you too
gone crazy
for power,
for things?

- Mary Oliver

This entry was originally posted at https://mrstotten.dreamwidth.org/230707.html, comments.

LJ Idol Season 20, Open Topic

mrstotten — Tue, 06 Jun 2017 22:59:39 GMT

Once upon a time…… oh no wait you’ve heard that haven’t you?

How about, a long time ago in a land far far away….. no chances are you know that one too. My grandfather used to start his stories with ‘and so it began’, but he said the editors never thought it sounded right, and so they changed it to Once upon a time but I always liked his beginnings best.

You get used to that, living here, you get used to things not always being exactly what you think they are.

When you live in the land of make believe, where fairy tales come true and happy ever after is the accepted norm, you would think that life would be that little bit easier right? After all in a world where dreams come true, and wishes were horses, what can possibly ever go wrong? Well let me tell you even in the land of happily ever after, there isn’t always a happy ending. My name is Melody Manners, I am a scribe and a story teller as my father and grandfather before me, and this is my story.

And so it began……..

~*~

Melody bit down on a startled cry as her toe hit the end of the bedpost, grimacing she fell down on the bed, rubbing at her toe as she glared at the offending post. She so didn’t need this today, a sore toe meant forgoing her usual Ella ‘Sparkle’ pumps in favour of some flat cinder slippers, meaning she would reach the total of her full five foot three inches, never a good thing when you were trying to impress people with your new authority; the Ella pumps added a good five inches to her height but the glass fit was unforgiving on injured feet, so they were now out.

Sighing she opened her wardrobe pulling out her new suit, Emerald silk, hand tailored by elves it had the exact right cut to flatter her figure without showing it off, pretty but business-like it was the perfect choice for her first day as Assistant Editor, or it would have been it if didn’t have several huge splotches all over the lapel of the brand new jacket.

“Mother,” Melody yelled as she headed down the curved staircase of the small family home.

God she hated this place, she could remember a time when they lived in a beautiful house, full of light and air with a garden full of vegetables and animals that at the drop of a hat would begin a friendly chat or burst into song. But that had been before, before the scandal that had cost them the house, their family, their reputation.

In an instant everything changed and they had moved into one of the shoe apartments on the outskirts of town, a place for people with too little money and too many children.

Melody may have been young, but she had been smart enough to know that their station, their position in society had changed. What Melody didn’t figure out, her classmates were always quick to fill her in on. They were poor, they were trash, their father had been a witch lover, they deserved to live in the slums.

The taunts had only spurred Melody on, without the burden of having friends any more, she had worked harder at school, even with the teachers ardent dislike of anyone from the Grimm family she had excelled, leaving school with handfuls of accolades and grades good enough to take her anywhere, even the palace. But for Melody there had only ever been one choice.

Despite the anger, the recriminations the ‘How dare she’, she had headed straight for The Big Book, the towns newspaper, once owned and ran by her own father, before he had swindled it and ran it into the ground, almost taking the land of Ever After with it.

Melody had been sharp and determined and as luck would have it, Amelda Banks had recently taken over the paper. Sharp ruthless and with very little time for sentiment she had seen the fire in Melody’s eyes and had known she had a talented, capable writer with ambition and something to prove, which meant she would work for far less than the going rate.

Melody hadn’t even had to hand in her writing samples, of which she had plenty.

After all, when all was said and done she was still a Grimm, telling stories was in her blood. To some people that still meant something.

It had taken seven years of hard work, late nights and low pay to get Melody where she was now, and now it was ruined because her bad-tempered, lazy, selfish sister had no concept of leaving other peoples things alone.

Finding her mother in the kitchen washing up whatever mess Lydia had left last night Melody’s anger flowed out like a torrent.

“Mother she ruined my suit,” Melody waved the emerald green material in her mothers face, trying not to let the look of helplessness on her mothers face dampen her anger.

“Today is my first day as Assistant Editor and thanks my brat of a sister I can’t wear my suit.”

“Melody darling,” her mother voice was soft and worn, already working at the tight knots of tension in Melody’s body. “You have a full wardrobe of nice close, your sister needed something to wear.”

“Needed something to wear?” Melody asked, her voice tight. “What for, she doesn’t work so what on earth would she need an Elf tailored suit for?”

“She had an interview,” her mother supplied happily, the smile on her face growing, showing a trace of the once beautiful girl she had been. “Down at Mother Hubboard stacking shelves.”

“She wore a ten ruby suit to an interview to stack shelves?” Melody exclaimed. “Mother do you have any idea how many late nights I worked for this? How many meals I missed just so I could look perfect on my first day?”

“Oh Melody dear, please stop being so selfish, it’s not like anyone at the paper doesn’t already know you. Your sister needed a hand and as you are far better off than her, I think you could show a little kindness to her.”

A million responses flew through Melody’s head. She wanted to scream at her mother, to lash out, to remind her that they only had a roof over their head and food on the table because of how hard Melody worked. That Lydia despite having no job, or money was never in on a weekend, never seemed to suffer from the same hunger pangs that Melody and her mother had become accustomed to. She wanted to scream that it wasn’t fair, none of this, that it was her mother and fathers fault that she went to work every day with a fire in her belly to prove herself different from her lying cheating father, her flighty sister and her helpless mum.

But of course, she didn’t, one look at her mothers face, her eyes carefully avoiding the stain in Melody’s jacket, her mouth turned down, the wrinkles at her eyes deep and scored and the fight went out of her.

“Just, please mum, tell her not to touch my stuff.”

Taking her mothers quiet sigh as a sign of consent Melody heading back up stairs. Pulling out a flowing white stop she put it on with her emerald skirt. Without the suit jacket and wearing the flat pumps Melody looked all of sixteen years old. Her blonde hair curled in soft waves adding to the look.

Checking the clock she groaned as she registered the time. It was already twenty minutes to nine and it was a forty minutes’ walk to the office, it didn’t take a goblin to work out the maths. She did a quick calculation in her head of her current gold situation as she headed out the door, a hasty good bye shouted in the general direction of where her mother still stood.

If she skipped lunch for the rest of the week she could just about afford a carriage ride.

It took ten of her precious minutes haggling with the horse over the price before it finally headed off with a neigh of discontent, bloody horses were getting greedier by the day. Melody could still remember the days when a horse ride across the city would cost you less than half an apple and some bramley seeds.

Sighing she leaned back against the faux pink leather upholstery grimacing at the tackiness. Every man and his dog wanted to pretend to be Cinderella nowadays.

Reaching the office just before nine, Melody skipped up the steps, running through the schedule of the day.

Pushing down the mixture of nervousness and excitement, she reached for the door handle/

This was it, it all started here, the first day of the rest of her life.

~*~

Have to admit im being selfish in deciding to go with this one as this idea has been living in my head for a long time and I want to get it out and I wanted to know what people thought of it

LJ Idol Season 10, Week 19 - The Invitation

mrstotten — Fri, 26 May 2017 23:40:13 GMT

I noticed them instantly at the school pick up. A rush of excited eight year olds pouring out the school gates. The flash of coloured paper clasped in tightly gripped hands. Another birthday party invitation.

I groaned inwardly, this was the fourth in as many weeks, the joys of having kids. The smartie parties with bouncy castles, brightly dressed characters whose names you could never remember and enough sugar to ensure that you would be receiving a stern word from the dentist on your childs next visit.

When Robert came out I noticed that he wasn’t holding his. At first I figured it was in his bag tossed aside carelessly with everything else. But when I emptied it once we were home there was nothing.

Now my son is many things, but organised and responsible are not words I would ever attach to him, so I then assumed he had lost it, or left it on his desk which would make my job of RSVPing that much harder, I needed to at least know whose party it was first.

So I asked him, and his reply made my heart sink.

He explained in a voice, a little quieter than usual that it was Brian’s birthday, and no he hadn’t lost the invite. He didn’t have one. I asked if Brian had forgotten one for him, he confirmed no, Brian had stated clearly he wasn’t invited. I then asked who else wasn’t invited, to be told no one. Every one else had an invite. Every single member of the class, except him.

I then made the ultimate mistake of voicing my confusion. It was then my son told me Brian didn’t like him. In fact a few kids didn’t. Mainly Brian and his friends. He didn’t know why and he pretended not to care.

But I knew he did. I knew from the slightly tense set of his shoulders, from the way he refused to meet my eyes, from his quiet insistence that everything was ok. I also knew he didn’t want to talk about it so I banked down the fury, the pain and the indignance and we changed the subject.

It came out over the next few weeks, that some of the kids found him funny. Not haha funny, weird funny. They didn’t like his accent (American), they didn’t like that he fidgeted in class (Sensory disorder), They didn’t like that he was too friendly, that he got in their faces too much. He said he didn’t care, but the droop of his shoulders said otherwise.

On the day of the party we went for ice cream and the cinema. The Monday following he was quiet after school, we went to feed the ducks and spoke about Pokemon, Mario Bros and Minecraft.

He insisted on inviting Brian to his own party several months later. A part of me wanted to be petty, to insist that he couldn’t. It’s crazy how small and mean you can get when someone hurts your child. But my son has a heart far bigger than mine.

So he invited everyone and welcomed them all as they came with smiles and excited chatter.

It wasn’t the last hurt or the last petty cruelty, but as the first, it still stands out clear in my mind. That moment when you realise you can’t save your children from the hurt the world can bring.

All you can do is smile, pretend your heart isn’t breaking and move forward, helping them grow and deal with it.

And if some kids ended up with no cake or toys in their party bag, well I guess thats just one of lifes unfortunate little coincidences.

LJ Idol Season 10, Week 17

mrstotten — Thu, 18 May 2017 22:56:08 GMT

“It’s not right”

Martin sighed as Sarah walked through from the living room.

“What’s wrong with this one?”

The house was the twelfth one they had seen, that week.

Over the last three months there had been more house than he could count. None were right. Some were too small, some too large, too close to the station, too far from the station, too new, needs too much work. To close to a school which would be too loud. One too far from good schools which their kids might one day want to go to. They had no kids.

Each house had started to blend into the other, each one with a fault, a flaw. Each one just not right.

The estate agents smile, so wide when they first met now had a strained quality each time. He was the fourth, the first three no longer answered their calls.

“It’s a fixer upper I agree,” he said, the strain in his voice passed on from his smile. “But with some work I think it could be perfect for you. It ticks all the boxes we discussed.”

Martin braced himself as Sarah turned, a look of contemptuous anger on her face. He had seen this look a lot of late. It had surprised him the first time, now all he noted was how the downward turn of her mouth marred her pretty face, how the ice in her voice took her normal melodic tone into something shrill and almost whiny.

Thirty minutes later they found themselves out in the cold, heading back to the car Martin knew they would now need to find another estate agent. As he climbed into the car he felt the slam of Sarah’s door as she continued her tirade. They had to raise their budget, she said. This wasn’t the time to be cheap. It was the location, the areas they were looking at were too rough, it was all about location. Happy she had made her point the conversation turned to his trousers ‘too shabby’ and why couldn’t he have shaved. How could they be taken seriously when they didn’t make an effort.

Sarah had made the effort. Her new red soled shoes and sharp black skirt looked the part, although Martin didn’t understand how she could afford them but had been unable to add anything to the deposit fund. Every penny of their deposit was coming from his savings.

Turning into the street, he parked and headed upstairs listening and agreeing with Sarah when needed. A quiet dinner followed by some work whilst Sarah was on the phone to a friend bemoaning the current state of the property market.

Heading to bed the stray thought came to him that they hadn’t actually spoken to each other at all since they came home. The distance between them at that moment seemed like an ever-growing chasm, too large, too wide, impossible to breach.

Sighing he settled in too sleep, preparing himself to start again in the morning.

They just had to find the right house, after that everything else would fall into place.

~*~

Settling back, Martin lifted his feet onto the foot rest and surveyed the room.

The house was perfect, he had known that the minute they had walked through the door. It was a ten-minute walk from the train station, set inside a small up and coming area that had an almost village like feel. There were good schools nearby, but far enough away that noise and parking wouldn’t be an issue.

The house itself was an older building, lots of charm and character but the previous owner had refurbished it to a fantastic standard. With two bedrooms and a large living space it was perfect and the second room was already a lovely sunny yellow, perfect for a nursery.

He had lasted another six months with Sarah, got through four more estate agents before they had both realised the problems weren’t with the houses. The houses hadn’t been right, because they hadn’t been right. After that things had ended quite amicably. Sarah had kept the flat, he had moved into a room share. He had met his wife through his room mate. The spark immediate and explosive.

Within six months they were married, expecting a baby and looking for a home. He had been almost afraid to contact the estate agents, convinced his name must be on some black list for life. But things had been different this time. This had been the first house they had seen and just like when they had met each other, they had just known.

Martin shifted as his wife sat down next to him, making room, his hand moving over her rounded belly, feeling the tiny soft movements as their baby got comfortable too. Less than four weeks and their perfect home would become their family home.

“Happy?” she asked, her smile soft and wide.

“Couldn’t be happier,” he replied with a smile.

LJ Idol Season 10, Week 17, The Rent I Pay

mrstotten — Sun, 07 May 2017 23:14:44 GMT

There was £4.65 in the current account. Some stale bread, milk and half a tin of baked beans in the fridge. That would do both girls for the evening.

But there was still two days left until she was paid. Jasmine needed £1.50 for drama class, Courtney needed £3 for the school play and there was less than four pounds in the gas meter.

No matter which way she ran it, the numbers didn’t add up.

She went to bed that night with a light head and a growling stomach. The girl's laughter had distracted her from the hunger, she had went to bed as soon as they did, knowing that she could wake up in the morning and stretch the toast out.

The next morning, she tries to ignore Jasmine’s whining, the grumbling of her stomach helps. Jasmine doesn't want to go to breakfast club at the school, none of her friends go. She doesn’t understand why she can't have pop tarts at home like her friends.

The whining drones on, penetrating past the banging in her skull. Halfway to school she snaps, her voice reedy and strained as she yells at Jasmine to shut up. Courtney’s hand tightens on her own, a small measure of comfort as her eldest storms on, angry and embarrassed.

She drops them at the school. Her heart sinking as Jasmine side steps her goodbye kiss, heading into school her head high and proud. She tries to ignore the smells of toast and bacon as she pops a kiss on Courtney’s cheek sending her on her way. At least the girls would start the day with full bellies.

She heads into work, ignoring the light headiness as she works her way through the small offices, dusting, polishing. She knows she isn’t giving it 100%, she is tired and sore. Her bones ache and she feels at least twenty years older than her current thirty-two. She never used to be like this. She was a grafter, a hard worker who took pride in what she did. Her boss was forever calling her out on her excellent work. But being tired, being hungry, all the damn time takes its toll.

She is back at the flat just before 2pm. It's May and the warmer weather had just hit. The sun had shone and warmed her skin as she headed home. She had always loved the warmer weather. A couple of years ago it would have meant trips to the beach with the girls, sticky ice creams and warm sand. Now it meant she didn’t have to worry about putting on the heating before the girls came home. It meant saving vital pennies on the gas. She checks the meter as she heads off to the school. £2.19 remaining.

Heading home from the school she listens to Jasmine excitedly chatter about the senior disco. It is her last year, one more term and then she was heading to the high school. She bustles around the kitchen, listening to the girl's chatter and whistling as she whips up some French toast. With sugar for Jasmine, with ketchup for her and Courtney. A quick clean up earlier had helped her locate an extra £2.18 which had meant tea and eggs.

The sense of contentment dies over dinner as Jasmines chatter finally soaks in, the conversation full of dresses, hair, make up, cars, shoes. It is a cheap dress Jasmine insists. Only £24.99 in the sale and shoes were cheap. The throbbing behind her head shifts behind her eyes. £24.99, it sounds so reasonable to her eleven year old, full of her dreams and ideas. £24.99, it might as well be £2,499. She doesn’t know how to explain this. £25 was a weeks rent, it was food for a fortnight. It was a months worth of classes and activities they could already ill afford. It was money they didn’t have.

She falls asleep that night to her daughter's hiccupping sobs. The silence the next morning is tense and tight. They walk to school in silence even Courtney’s excited chatter dimmed.

She goes to work, spends the day invisible as girls, women her age swish through the offices, light, carefree. She had grown to know their names. Some were single, party girls with high heels and bright lipstick. Some were married, settled with children and were a mix of shiny hair and shinier pearls. They went and lunched together, chattered excitedly together, to them she was all but invisible.

She had been one of those girls once. She had gotten great marks at school. Finished a small collage course, she had been working as an accounts assistant when she fell pregnant with Jasmine. Had went back from maternity leave to good hours and a promotion. Mike had a solid job in the engineering plant. When she had fallen pregnant with Courtney, it had felt like all of their dreams had come true.

Then during her second maternity leave, the unimaginable happened. The recession of 2010 had taken everyone by shock, but she had struggled to see how it would affect them. Then Mike had started talking about mortgages. Apparently, the kitchen extension that had once seemed so vital had put them into negative equity.

The house went first. She had convinced herself it didn’t matter. They downsized, rented a smaller house in a slightly less nice neighborhood. But it was all just temporary. She went back from Maternity leave early to make up the difference. Then Mike lost his job, then he had lost himself. It took less than a year for him to leave. One loud argument, not that much different from the others of late.

She had realised three days later that it was different when he still wasn’t home. His phone went straight to voicemail and his relatives stopped answering her calls. It had been five years since she had last seen him. There was a rumour that he had moved to Newcastle. Set up shop with an old girlfriend and her three kids.

The next year she had tried to hold it all together, but childcare made her job next to worthless and having no support network made her unreliable. She had handed her notice in just before being fired. Took a job cleaning that fitted in with Courtney’s nursery and Jasmines school.

They had moved again, smaller and dimmer but the place was more affordable, it was where they still remained. Her salary was half what it had once been, even with overtime and they had learned to cope.

Except when they didn’t. It took a lot to accept how to deal with a life where each paycheck didn’t quite stretch. Where the holes were filled with high-interest loans and food banks. Where you learned to accept hunger because your kid had gone and grown a shoe size again.

Closing off the lights she sighs as the last of the girls leaves the office in an exhale of perfume. Her goodbye call echoes unanswered and she trudges home. It is pay day tomorrow. It had been all anyone had spoken of all day, chattering about plans, ideas. About communions, parties, holidays and the latest shoe sale.

Entering the house she sits down and quickly starts doing the sums. If she let Jasmine wear her pair of black heels, they were small kitten heels with only a tiny bit of scuffing. And she could do Jasmine's hair and makeup, make it like a game. A girls beauty day.

And if she just shifted the rent, missed one week and promised to make it up, she could pick up the dress. It would mean hiding from the landlord, but she could make it up by week three if she was careful with the food bill.

Making a final decision she heads off to school. feeling a million times lighter. A smile spreads across her face as she pictures how happy Jasmine is going to be, how important it was to give her daughter these little moments. The memories that would last.

The rent could wait.

LJ Idol Season 10, Week 15 , Thunderclap

mrstotten — Thu, 27 Apr 2017 23:18:58 GMT

I get told a lot that sexism is dead. That racism isn’t the issue it once was. Homosexuality is no longer seen as something bad and wrong. That the world has changed and the we no longer have ‘isms.

And yet we have a US president who talks about grabbing woman’s pussies. Black kids being shot on the streets due to nothing more than the colour of their skin and this week a UK politician who equated being gay to her own sexual attraction to gorillas.

I’ve been in fandom for just over eighteen years now and being surrounded by likeminded, progressive people, you forget sometimes that the world isn’t always as it appears in your own safe haven. Although even fandom has been known to have that darker side that leaks out. I think I first noticed it with the birth of the anon meme. An internet phenomenon that showed me a slightly darker side to the world I knew. Without accountability, hidden behind a screen of anonymity people felt safe to let out their true thoughts. I know most of them were harmless, but even then, in the small corners, you saw something darker still.

That was the beginning, but nowhere near the end.

Some people blame Facebook, or the rise in mobiles, the ever-growing connectivity or just the fact that we are all so much a part of each other’s lives now. We have never been more connected, never been more aware, and we have never been more afraid.

The world seems scarier now than it did when we were small. The threat of nuclear deterrents, world war three, the constant bombardment of fear, terror and war hits us at every angle. For some that fear is driving them to something, they may have once turned away from. The rise of the far right over the last few years has been nothing short of mind boggling. Parties and politicians with racist, bigoted, sexist agendas are no longer booed or ridiculed. They are now lauded and rewarded as the truth speakers. The ones keeping it real.

It can sometimes seem insurmountable, I know it did to me. The end of last year, I truly wondered where we were. Where we were going. For the first time in a long time I was truly afraid of what was to come, and I know I wasn’t alone. The at the beginning of the year something changed. Something shifted. Something amazing happened.

The woman’s march in Washington. A single day supported by people all over the world. It was thunderclap of noise. A riot of colour. A day in which it seemed, to me at least that the world stood up and spoke as one.

I am not afraid

You do not speak for me

I do not stand alone.

Although it may have been called the womans march, it stood for everyone. Regardless of creed, colour, religion, sexuality. It stood for those who believed in it, and even for those who were against it.

It wasn’t the end, but it was a beginning. A move away from fear, towards something better. It was a reminder, a warning to the people who try to rule through fear, to win through oppression. To those who hold the highest power, that we have a voice and that we aren’t afraid to use it.

It didn’t change the world. Trump is still president, bigotry still exists. The world is still full of ‘isms and we still have far to go. But god damn we have shown them just how loudly we will shout on the way.

LJ Idol Season 10, Week 15 , Patchwork Heart

mrstotten — Tue, 18 Apr 2017 23:03:55 GMT

I was seven years old the first time I saw a dead body. My mum’s uncle had died and they were hosting the wake at my Gran’s. It felt like there were over a hundred people. The place stank of cigarettes and stale whiskey. I remember screwing up my nose as I tried to find my way out of the room past a sea of legs. Knobbly knees and tights wrinkled at the ankle. Dark grey and black trousers. I remember my Uncle Tony had mismatched socks. My gran noticed too, pulled him out by the ear as she shirricked him.

I remember hiding upstairs with my cousins, giggling as we listened to drunk singing. I also remember listening to silent sobs and my brain trying to work out the sounds of revelry alongside the sadness. None of it made any sense to me. From that day on my grans house seemed to hold onto a layer of sadness. As if grief had permeated the walls the way cigarette smoke coloured the ceiling. She moved house less than five months later. A part of me wondered if she felt it too.

~*~

I met Kim in first year. Eleven years old with knocking knees I slid into a seat desperately hoping no one noticed me. The girl beside me had long messy black hair and a wicked smile. I avoided her eyes and her smile for nearly three weeks. She would always try to talk, being shushed by the teachers repeatedly, but I never replied. I hated this place, hated the school. It was too big, too loud. Full of noise and pushing people and sneers. On the second day of the third week, she pushed a piece of paper at me, neatly folded lines that opened onto ragged edges and a drawing of one of the Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles. I smiled before I could stop myself, my brother loved that show. The ice was broken, she started whispering, told me she could teach me how to draw it, it was all about the symmetry.

We soon became friends, not best friends, she had one of those and I was settling into my own new friendships, but we shared three classes together, Science, Maths, and Music. We sought each other out in those and spent hours working, and giggling. In third year I told her I wrote songs. She begged me to let her read one, I went home that evening, looked at everything I had written, threw them across the room and copied out the words to The Carpenters ‘On Top of the World’. I figured it would be too old for her to know it. She was more of a Nirvana girl. She loved it, told me how talented I was. She found out the truth three weeks later, she had shown it to someone and they had laughed and told her the truth. She didn’t get mad or mean, she just told me one day I’d trust her with my songs. I never did.

In fourth year she met a boy. We were fifteen and still new and green and the world was so big and small at the same time. He became everything to her, made her smile wide and her eyes shine. When they broke up she was devastated. I never understood it. Didn’t know how someone you had known for so short a time could hurt you so much. She stopped smiling, then stopped talking. Our positions reversed I tried to coax words from her but they never came. Ever again.

She killed herself less than two weeks later. An overdose of painkillers. The dosage she took wasn’t fatal, but she had an underlying kidney condition she hadn’t known about. Her funeral was the first one I ever attended. Everyone came, it was like a school dance. I remember looking at the popular girls, the same ones who had mocked her, mocked everyone. I watched as they cried prettily into white handkerchiefs and strong shoulders. I didn’t cry, not once.

The next week Sharon sat next to me in Maths, we started doodling and I showed her how to draw a turtle.

~*~

I spent five years waiting on a positive pregnancy test. I watched friends fall pregnant, I cooed over babies, I told myself I was in no hurry, but every month, in secret I did test after test. I got my first positive pregnancy test on the 8^th December 2003. I was on Clomid, and my friend had fallen pregnant, and my body felt different, and I told my mum and she told me not to get my hopes up but I just knew. I went to the shops, bought a takeaway and two pregnancy test, went home, dished out the food and sneaked into the bathroom. When the two lines came up I remember staring at them, mesmerised, no faint lines, no holding it up to the light, squinting. I went out and asked Robert if he wanted an early Christmas present, tried to tell him and then burst into tears.

For the next five weeks, the world changed. My friend and I started talking about plans, our babies were due within four weeks of each other. Christmas came and my mother in law joked about my ‘bump’ showing. As I was attending a fertility clinic I got a scan at eight weeks and saw my baby and its heartbeat for the first time. For five weeks, everything was perfect. Then it came, at first, I told myself I was imagining the pain, short sharp aches in my tummy, then I mentioned them to Robert and he insisted on us visiting the hospital. I held out hope until they gave me the scan, told me there was no heartbeat.

As we went home silence seemed to fill every inch of the house, or it did until I started breaking things. My laptop, the mirror, the bathroom. Robert held me as I sobbed, I felt his own tears fall onto my neck, silent as he tried to be strong for me.

I threw the pregnancy test out the next morning, folded up the tiny hat I hadn’t told anyone I was buying, put it in a box with my scan picture and hid it away so well I never found them again.

~*~

On the day of my wedding there was a catalogue of disasters.

My bridesmaid broke her dress, ended up running through my mum's house in her underwear screaming for a dress. My friends made a last-minute dash to town to get a replacement. My father wandered about complaining about having to wear a tie, and my ten year old flower girl monopolised the hairdresser and makeup artist.

Half my family wasn't speaking to me as I had decided to have a quiet ceremony, with only immediately family in attendance.

My little brother lost his shoes and couldn’t fix his kilt and my grandfather’s dementia kicked in and he didn’t make the day at all.

I cried when I said my vows, my voice breaking on the words as my baby kicked away merrily inside my tummy.

Yet despite every disaster, I remember just one thing. My husband. His smile as I walked down the aisle. His steady hands that held mine tight. His laugh as my voice broke and the squeeze of fingers around mine. I remember his whispers as we sat at dinner, his jokes to lighten the mood. I remember going to sleep with his arms wrapped around me, thinking how on earth did I get to be so lucky.

I remember knowing, that no matter what happened going forward, I would never have to go it alone again.

~*~

It was my thirtieth birthday and it started out like so many others. Except for the first time, I was a mum. I woke up, got dressed with the type of peace most mothers of newborns never experience. I had plenty of time, plenty of space, then I headed up to the hospital to visit my son. It was hard at times not to feel angry, bitter. My son was born sixteen weeks early and had spent the first two and a half months of his life in hospital. When I finally got to the hospital, it was to my first surprise of the day, he was awake, wide awake, large round eyes staring out at me. The midwife explained that now he was off the ventilator, on oxygen they had cut down his morphine, so he would be less sleepy, more alert. When she asked me if I wanted to hold his, I thought I misheard. I had only held him once, when he was 2 weeks old and they thought he was dying and that I deserved a chance. Since then we had made do with hands touching through portholes.

As I finally settled into a rocking chair, looking down at those wide eyes as his fingers wrapped around mine, I felt peace for the first time in my life. We sat there for hours, staring at each other, learning each other’s faces, drinking each other in.

That was the day I became a mum.

~*~

For each of our patches, the ones that make up our lives, there is thread weaving through them, holding them together, forming the shape of our heart. For me that thread is woven up of the people I love, the ones I’ve loved and even ones I’ve yet to meet. I met some of my best friends in my thirties. If you had asked me before them I would have said I was set, enough friend now thanks. But each of them opened up a side to me I didn’t know before them. There are old threads, worn and faded. My mother, my grandfathers, Kim and the ones I’ve lost. But although faded they hold strong. In the centre of them all are my family, the threads that weave so tightly they are impenetrable. My husband, always solid, always strong, my father, brother, and my son, his bright stitches interlacing through every square, even the ones that came before him. Because he was always there, hidden, just waiting to come out and claim my patchwork heart as his own.

LJ Idol Season 10, Week 14 , Campfire Stories

mrstotten — Mon, 10 Apr 2017 23:05:18 GMT

So this week.... this happened. C'est la vie.

Campfire stories. They are the tales we whisper in the dark. The heat of the fire warming our toes, the flames licking against small sticks that waft with the smell of sweet, heated sugar.

We watch faces change with delight or fear as the story reaches its conclusion. Smile as they shiver, laugh as a well timed scare brings screams and giggles.

It is storytelling at its finest, with a captive audience and a readymade atmosphere, quick to soak in the tale.

It’s not always that easy. Telling a tale. Some of us are born with a gift for sharing the images in our heads, a talent for weaving words, making them swing and sway to the rhythm of our pen. I’ve read books where the images dance across the page. Some of my earliest childhood friends, Lucy, Anne Girl, Katy. Were brought to me from well worn pages with tiny words that merged together to form whole worlds different from anything I could ever have imagined. I longed to share their adventures, to disappear into a world that made more sense, seemed more fun. Where rules were absolutes except when they took you to a world of magic, where it was always tea time and carpets could fly.

We live in a world built on stories. But what happens when you have no story to tell?

We are a family of storytellers. We tell each other stories in the car, whiling away stolen minutes in traffic jams. My husband who lacks imagination is dreading the day my son starts watching mainstream horror and finds out his father’s tales of a deathly fog, or masked Halloween killers didn’t quite originate from inside his head as he has so long been led to believe.

Imagination has never been my problem. Stories play out in my head frequently. Characters, ideas, images all playing out their tale, telling me where they want to go.

I don’t thI'mk im devoid of talent. When I write well, I think I craft a good story. When I understand my subject, when it speaks to me, the words can flow easily. Some of the best things I’ve ever written, I don’t even remember writing them, they just flowed, from pen to paper, fingers to the page.

But then come weeks like this week, the wall. We’ve all hit it. I knew the story I wanted to write, about a young boy, dealing with peer pressure, trying to live up to the others as he shares his campfire story. The tale has been rattling around in my head for days. I’ve talked it out, plotted it, built it out around a couple of lines of dialogue (God I suck at dialogue). I’ve started it, wiped it, started it again. And now here I am.

It’s ten minutes to deadline, I’m all out of byes and I have a story that refuses to be written, the most frustrating thing imaginable.

I can tell you it by the way, if you are sitting here, with me, around the fire. I can describe every moment in finite detail. The boys sweaty palms as he takes his turn at the fire. The way his tormentors faces glow in the firelight, transforming their sneers into something deeper and darker. I know how he feels, and I know how he will triumph. I know the story, and if I could talk to you, I could tell you it, if we were all camped around the campfire with our s’mores and cold hands, I could make you believe it. Make you feel for this poor boy who doesn’t know quite which story to tell.

But for now, his story and mine will go untold. It may creep out another day, the words may make sense and flow into shape, or it may remain spoken, a story told to my own eleven year old boy in the car, in the middle of a traffic jam, when he needs a fable to let him know it is ok to be scared, it is ok to be unsure, it is even ok to fail. Just so long as we never stop telling our stories, never ever silence our voices, always pick up our pens and start again.

There is always another story in there, just waiting to be told.

LJ Idol Season 10, Week 13 , Abandon all hope, ye who enter here

mrstotten — Tue, 28 Mar 2017 23:03:45 GMT

Turning forty seems to be like one of those moments in a story, where the heroine is choosing her path and there is a big door with words inscribed in Latin above “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here”. Warning her, in no uncertain terms that just by entering, she will cast herself into what could possibly be the worst of damnations.

There are so many horror stories of what happens when you turn forty. You lose your sex drive, your skin loses elasticity, you enter that age, where you are no longer youthful, but you are still way too young to embrace being a silver foxy lady.

I remember how old forty seemed when I was younger. My mum always seemed ancient to me, even as a young teen, all sensible skirts and warm cardigans. I was never going to be like that. The irony of it is at sixteen, my mum was seven full years shy of turning forty. I had so many ideas of who I was going to be, what I was going to do. And now here I was, staring the middle year sof my life in the face without accomplishing anything of real note.

But the thing people don’t tell you, is that with age, with experience and life choices, you gain a different perspective, and you can, if you are really lucky, become pretty carefree. See I do have the first onset of wrinkles, something I dreaded in my twenties. My hair, if it didn’t meet with a very talented hairstylist every month, would be greyer than my grans. I wear sensible shoes far more often than I wear heels, and my only statements of fashion are that I am known for pearls, dresses and sensible scarves.

I am middle aged!

There I said it, I’ve reached what is likely to be at least the middle of my life. I could wax on about not feeling any different than I did when I was twenty or thirty, but I do, and I’m glad I do. I loved my twenties, but for a good proportion of them I was an insecure wreck. Never skinny enough, never fit enough, constantly worried that I wasn’t good enough. I enjoyed my thirties, becoming a new mum, watching my son hit his milestones, but I also remember constantly watching pennies, scrimping, scraping and for nearly three years I couldn’t work because of chronic illness.

It has taken forty years, some amazing friends, a wonderful husband and son and a whole lot of growth to become who I am now. I am probably the most confident and centred I have ever been. I love my job, I have climbed high enough in my career that I can work hard, in hours that suit me. I’ve grown into my talents and achieved things I never thought I would. I was voted one of the fifty most influential woman in the UK IT market, and whats more I can be proud of it without worrying people will think me a blow hard.

I have never been in a better place with my husband. Yes there are far few wild sex escapades, but they still come, he still makes me smile, he can still make my tummy flip with excitement and I love him in a way that is far deeper after twenty years of a shared life. I miss the baby my son was, but every day I love watching him turn into a young man.

I am comfortable with who I am, I make no excuses for my love of all things geeky, or my sometimes polarising political views. I stand up and I’m counted and I hold myself and others accountable in a way I would never have done before.

It took me a long time to get here. I know I’m not perfect, and never will be, but unlike in my earlier years, I don’t strive to be. I am happy being enough. Enough for my friends and family and most importantly enough for me.

You see that’s the thing people forget on these heros journeys. When they enter that door, cave, mystical realm, it is part of an adventure. It is a road that takes them onwards and usually on to something far greater than what they left behind.

So this year, my year of middle agedness, I look forward to raising a glass to myself. To making new mistakes, learning new things and embracing the changes to come.

Except for the wrinkles, yeah I lied, I’m still really not a fan of those :D

LJ Idol Season 10, Week 11 , The Blue Hour

mrstotten — Fri, 10 Mar 2017 20:52:28 GMT

I never had the best relationship with my mother.

I loved her, of course I did, and she loved me. I know that now, although it took a while.

I came too soon you see. She was sixteen years old when she fell pregnant. Too young to be a mum, but there I was. She and my father cut their teeth on me. I was the mistake that they learned their lessons from. It didn’t help that I was a difficult child. Demanding, croupy, forever exerting my needs with a voice that shook the walls. My brother was a different matter, born five years later he was the golden child from the beginning. He was planned, he was perfect, everyone loved him. Even me.

And so, the lines were drawn. I quickly became a daddy’s girl, John became a mummy’s boy. It settled smoothly with little event other than some minor jealousy on my part, at least until my teen years, when the wrong kind of boy brought out my rebellious streak. As if it had always been bubbling underneath, our uneasy truce descended into screaming. Harsh words and unforgivable taunts that left an indelible mark on each of our hearts. Even after that stage, when I met the right kind of boy and settled down, things remained just a little on the rocky side.

Dont get me wrong. We didn’t hate each other, we just never truly understood each other. Our relationship was different from the ones we had with others. She never kissed me goodbye, or hugged me hello. Those small affections were saved for my father, brother and when he came along, my son. Her second golden boy.

My son did a lot to strengthen our relationship. She loved him, fiercely, completely - they clicked in a way she and I never had. We came together in our mutual adoration for the tiny little boy that changed our lives. We learned we had more similarities than differences. Becoming a mother helped me see things with a kinder eye. But there was still always such an uneasy line. A truce that held only when there was no turbulence. One day we would be fine, the next, more screams, curses, tears and silence.

Perhaps it would have always remained that way, if cancer hadn’t come knocking. It had visited once before and she had beaten it off with fierce resilience and grim determination. This time, we knew from the beginning that it was different.

It took me months to see her getting weaker, far longer to accept that we would soon lose her.

Time became a loud, ticking clock, counting down the hours we had left. The fighting stopped, it seemed pointless in the wave of what we were fighting together. We had a mother daughter spa day for the very first time. We went out, spent time together, sometimes even without my son as a buffer. As she grew weaker the outings stopped and were replaced with long chats and midnight feasts. In the wee hours of the morning we would confess our deepest fears, laugh over our favourite jokes. Her reliance on me which would have once felt suffocating, now felt exactly right.

When she finally left, I was curled up next to her. She had spoken her last words only hours previously. She had cradled my grans face in her hands and whispered that she was beautiful, before turning to my brother and saying, ‘I love you’ it was the first time in thirty-seven years that my heart realised and accepted she meant us both, the words were just easier to say to him. To the boy who was the mirror of the man she loved. Words she struggled to confess to the girl who resembled her so much. She was never as good at loving herself as she was at loving others.

She went too quick. I live now with the knowledge that I’ll likely spend more of my life without her, than I had with her. It took me so long to accept but she left me with the knowledge that I was loved. I know that no-one will ever love me quite the same way again.

But I refuse to dwell in regret. Whenever I feel down or low, whenever I miss her or feel like the memory of her is slipping away, I remember those moments we shared as the blue hour approached. The giggles, the belly laughs, the midnight feasts and the secrets shared.

I remember that I was loved.

And so was she.

This has been my entry for therealljidol

LJ Idol Season 10, Week 10 - Take a Hike

mrstotten — Wed, 01 Mar 2017 23:17:08 GMT

"Let me tell you that I love you, that I think about you all the time, Caledonia you're calling me, now I'm going home"

What follows is a tale of a place that I know inside and out, and yet keep on learning about. To try and share this fully I have dotted in a few hyperlinks that will help me tell the story of where I come from :)

~*~

In Scotland, we call big hills ‘a Munro’. Well they are slightly more than big hills, A Munro is a mountain over 3,000 feet. There are two hundred and eighty two of them in Scotland, when we climb one, it is called ‘Bagging a Munro’ (no I have no idea why, we are the land that brought you Haggis and the Deep Fried Mars Bar, we don’t always make sense). They are called such after Sir Hugh T Munro, who was the first person crazy enough to catalogue them.

The game is to bag them all, kind of like Pokémon, but way more exhausting (although I did once partake in a seven hour Pokémon Go hunting session with my then ten year old son in York, that must have earned me at least as many miles as one of the mountains).

I’ve never bagged one, a Munro that is - my husband has, he climbed Ben Nevis (sitting at around 6,500 feet). The closest I ever got was Ben A’an. A slightly less impressive and far less imposing big hill. It comes in at around 1,300 feet. We did it one year with the kids and some friends and my strongest memories are of my brother trying to scale the side with no safety gear, my son making friends with a baby sheep, the view, and how my slightly too big hiking boots ended up near crippling me for over a week, (travelling downhill, over 1,000 feet with shoes that don’t fit is not something I would recommend).

But the view – by heavens the view is worth it. It reminds me of every little reason that I love my little country. It’s green, and lush, it has open beauty and little hidden nooks and crannies that surprise you at every turn. Scotland is home to mountains – of every type. It has given the world some of its biggest achievements – from tarmac roads to the pedal bicycle, from JK Rowling to Robert Louis Stevenson. Every year, on New Years Eve (or Hogmany as those in the know call it) people, the world over, sing a song written by a man who was born, lived and died in a wee Scottish village.

When I hear Auld Lang Syne, I’m always filled with a mixture of melancholy and pride. The words of Dougie MacLean’s Caledonia can drive me to tears, and Sunshine on Leith, makes me think of my husband with a smile.

Scotland is home, it isn’t just the place I live, it’s the place I belong. I love travelling, but as soon as I head on outwards, my feet itch constantly until they head homewards. It is a world of small beauties and big ideas. Of green hills and bustling cities. From the pedestrian cobblestones of Edinburgh Old Town, to the breathtaking beauty of The Isle of Skye, it is like an everchanging kaleidoscope of people, places and traditions. But to me it is so much more than the sum of its parts.

It speaks to me in a way that few things outside my friends and family ever have. I take pride in belonging, faith in its people and my oh my, I love this little country with all my heart, it belongs to me, and I to it, in a way I’ll never been able to quantify or explain.

I tend to write what I know, write what I love. I have very few stories that are entirely fiction, as when my fingers start moving, they tend to tell stories that they already recognise. When it’s real, the words seem to just come that little bit easier. Of course, they never fully behave. They wriggle and move about, and are never truly happy until I’m tearing my hair out after trying to wrestle them into submission.

I’ve never told a story of Scotland. Of this little green place I call home, of the city I belong to. Maybe there is a larger story hidden inside me, waiting to take flight and stretch out. But for now, this little snippet will do, even though it tells so little of this land I love. Of the history, the people, the stories and their songs.

Perhaps it will entice you, make your wandering feet start itching and spearhead you to that tiny wee place, added onto the end of London, where we have no queen sitting, but we do have castles. Maybe the breadcrumbs I have dropped here will inspire you to take a trip, to come and see what we are all about.

If you ever do, feel free to let me know and I’ll help share with you this home of my heart.

Maybe I’ll even help you ‘Take a Hike’, or Bag a Munro, as us Scots prefer to say.

This has been my entry for therealljidol

LJ idol Week 9 - The Trolley Problem

mrstotten — Mon, 20 Feb 2017 01:21:47 GMT

They called him Mop.

His actual name was Jonathan, but he had come to them with a wild mop of brown hair, hiding huge brown eyes and a small mouth set in tight lines.

He was four years old when Sarah first met him. An alcoholic father, no word on the mother, large purple bruising on ribs, several cracked bones that had mended badly, small scars on his legs, round and perfectly matching the butt of a cigarette. He didn’t speak, they were unsure if he could, he just stared out, silently appraising, waiting for the fall.

One of the care workers gave him his nickname, chatted about his wild mop of hair and reached out to ruffle it. It took four hours for them to get the child back out of the corner, the indented teeth marks on the newly minted care workers hand would stop him being so careless the next time. Sarah held no rancour against him. They had all been there, they had all had their first.

It was always harder with the younger ones, it shouldn’t be. A child abused, neglected at sixteen was as much a crime, but the little ones hit you harder. Sinking through the cracks in an overworked system, sometimes being discovered due to a helpful neighbour, or an inquisitive school. Mop had been neither, he had been found by an angry landlord who had opened the flat to evict his tenant. He hadn’t even known there was a child living there.

He was tiny for his age, each rib showing through skin stretched too tight, eyes large and round in a face too sharp, too angled. He should have been angry, he should have been wild. A ball of spitting raging fire. But he wasn’t, he was quiet as a mouse, his eyes darting around them as the adults talked, deciding his fate. Sarah saw beneath the quiet, saw someone who was desperate to be saved. Desperate for someone to remove him from the life that was a car crash waiting to happen. To flick the switch, derail the car and pluck him out of harms way. It was all there in the eyes.

Sarah knew then and there, she was going to save him.

*

The first rule in their line of work was to never get attached, Sarah knew it, they all did, but sometimes, someone slipped under the armour. Mop creeped in under the kinks in her hers.

As the months moved on, he became more open and trusting, giving glimpses of a bright, inquisitive child. He had been placed in a group home two days after his father had been arrested. It was a bright, sunny place with a good matron and kind staff. Kids flourished there and Sarah had pulled more than a few strings to make sure that was where he was placed. He turned five four months after Sarah’s own daughter. Although she shouldn’t, she took cake and streamers. They sang happy birthday and she revelled in the growing delight in his eyes. He learned to talk quickly, thriving and growing like a plant stretching out roots. The first time she heard him cry had been like a kick in the stomach. He had been playing with some of the children and one of the bigger kids had punched him. His cry had been loud and distressed, as if it had jolted him from a safe world and reminded him of the cruelties the world kept for him.

Sarah remembers shouting at the other kid, a boy of barely more than twelve, she had ignored the tears and only restrained from worse at the clipped sound of Matron’s voice. She had held Mop while he cried, promised him no-one would ever hurt him.

She had meant every word.

*

As time passed on he began to fill out and grow. The angles of his face becoming round and full, his teeth, now growing strong and healthy, stretched into a wide grin, and he still had the same wild sparkling eyes and mop of hair, they had cut it of course, but the curls seemed to have a mind of their own and refused to be tamed - Sarah loved them.

He learned to read, and quickly became a voracious booklover. He was going to have a huge library, he told her often. Once he was adopted, he was going to create bookshelf upon bookshelf and keep all his favourite books, and read them to his new mum and dad. Which always led onto the questions of when.

His father had been easy, had given up rights almost instantaneously, as if surprised they even had to ask. His mother was a different kettle of fish. Despite starting a new life, herself, and making it clear she didn’t want to rehome him she had refused to sign the papers allowing him to be adopted. What kind of mother would she be? She exclaimed indignantly. If she just cut him off.

It took all Sarah had not to tell her exactly what type of mother she was.

It took four long years to finally cut him loose, to allow them to finally give him his second chance. By that time, Sarah and the Matron had become the closest things to a mother he knew. Sarah knew his favourite song, his favourite book, she knew the scars old and new mapped across his body, the latter down to childhood play and an overactive sense of adventure and carrying none of the old heartbreak of the former. Sarah knew he loved warm milk, and hated bananas. Matron knew his favourite book was Horrid Henry, and that he secretly dreamed of becoming a pirate.

They both knew he was deathly afraid of the dark and that his biggest wish was to finally find his ‘forever family’. He loved the home, loved the kids, the teachers and Sarah and Matron. But he yearned for a family of his own. When visiting day would come around he would wrestle his curls into submission, wipe his face spit clean and smile widely, waiting to be claimed.

It almost happened, twice. The first failed the programme, after thirteen months of testing and checks, no one ever told Sarah why. The second seemed to be the keeper, the one that stuck. They had been entranced with Mop from day one, everything went swimmingly, until the woman fell pregnant and it all became ‘too much’.

It was hard not to get angry, as she had watched Mop cry silently in the corner. He deserved better than this, he deserved his own family. Over the years, she had wondered of course, if he hadn’t been brought to her for a reason. When he first came, she had already been a mum to a four year old and eight year old, and had barely enough time to spare as it was. But the children were older now, ten and fourteen, it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to fit in another lively ten year old. Her husband loved kids, and they finally seemed to be past that time where everything just seemed already too hard. Once the train of thought had begun, it hurtled forward. It seemed obvious to her now that the reason it had never worked for Mop with other families was because he was meant to be part of hers.

When Michael lost his job four days later, her heart shattered and splintered. They were now in a recession. The daily news told them to buckle tight. Her husbands face was lined with worry. She had rubbed his back, told him not to worry, they would get by, and she buried her hopes of Mop and home and went back to doing what she could for him.

Of course, things only got harder. He turned eleven, hitting puberty. A growth spurt stood him now at a firm five feet. His baby cheeks had sharpened out. He was still a beautiful child, inside and out but families wanted a baby, or at a push a small child, the market for children who were already grown and developed was small and diminishing with each year a child grew. Older kids came with problems, with issues, they were never truly theirs.

But he continued to hope. Each visiting day he would put on his smartest clothes, clean his glasses and sit with his favourite book waiting for a family to come chat, shoulders slumping and head wilting as the day went on and couple after couple bypassed him, stooping down to chat with round faced cherubs, with lilting voices and tilted smiles. Then he stopped attending visit days, content to just sit and chat with Sarah about books, school, her family.

When it came, it was like being hit by a train, one she really should have seen coming.

When she arrived that morning he was as spit shine clean as he normally was on visit day, and strangely agitated. So many things had run through her head, was he being bullied? Struggling at school? He was thirteen now, could it be a girl, was he at that stage yet?

It took forty minutes for him to finally tell her the plan. He knew now why it had never worked with other families, it was because Sarah was his family, She and Michael and Lucy and Sam. He had learned about all of them over the years, knew them better than he knew anyone. And Sarah loved him, yes? And he loved her, it was perfect, it could be perfect. And for one shining moment it was.

He had been hers since the day she met him, he had crept into her heart, slipped past every defence she had. She took pride in him, worried about him, he held a place in her heart that few people ever could, like her children. Well not exactly like her children. I mean they were her kids, and they were at such a vital stage. Sam had been struggling at school. A diagnosis of dyslexia and ADHD, there was an educational psychologist involved, he was sixteen and just about to sit exams. Then there was Lucy, she was the same age as Jonathan. How would it work to bring home a boy – not her brother – and make them share the same space. Then there was Michael, he was just starting to find his feet in his new job, the hours were long, and hard and hers were no different. But things were working, for the first time in a long time. Even with the issues. They were working. Their family was ticking along, sure and smooth. This would derail it, this would affect all of them. Change all of their lives completely. Was she ready to do that? To turn her families lives upside down for a child none of them even knew?

She pulled back, steeling herself against the hope in his eyes and pulled the switch. Diverted the disaster, choose them, over him.

She had explained as kindly as she could that she was his care worker. Her job was to make sure he was ok, but she couldn’t be his family. They would find him a family. One of his own, but it couldn’t be hers. He had taken it, as he had taken most knocks with a shrug and a quick 'it's fine', rushing to reassure her it was ok. Finding a smile - Always eager to please. He would be ok, he still had his friends and Matron, and her. She felt her heart break and for a second, she almost wavered.

She had put in for a transfer the following day. Went on holiday for two weeks and moved onto her new role without ever going back to the home. She knew it was cruel, but it felt like a smaller cruelty. They were both too attached, and she had her family to think of, and Jonathan would never find his own if she remained his emotional crutch. It was better for them both to have a clean break, a chance to move on.

She missed him terribly in the first year, the pain lessened as the years passed, but she was still prone to think of him now and again, to wonder how he was now getting on. She was icing the cake for Lucy’s Sweet Sixteen when she received the call. She had barely recognised the matrons voice husky with unshed tears - She had listened numb, words filtered through, bad crowd, speeding, joyride, two fatalities, but she didn’t really take it in.

She thanked her and hung up, finished icing the cake and took it into the main room. Her daughters day went by in a blur. Later she would feel guilt and yes even resentment that she didn’t remember much.

On the day of the funeral, she walked into a small room holding a handful of people. She recognised the matron, and Robert, the case worker who had taken over from her at the home. The rest were strangers. She took a seat near the back, kept her eyes trained on his picture. He had grown into a handsome young man, a little too skinny, but the same brown hair, a little too long and the same sparkling brown eyes, looking out at the world. Fierce and challenging.

She spoke to the matron after the service, listened as she talked about how highly Mop had thought of her, of how well she had done by him. She nodded along, her eyes stinging as they shared memories of that tiny little four year old from all those years ago.

She doesn’t remember the trip home, her husband finds her crying in a corner, her strangling sobs leaving him confused and worried. He had wrapped his arms around as she cried, bewildered at the strength of her grief, it was sad yes – but he was just a boy – he wasn’t hers. Her body shook with sobs at the words as they rang through her head.

He wasn’t hers

He. Wasn’t. Hers.

But he could have been. He should have been.

It could have all been so different if she had chosen him, if for once, someone had chosen him.

But she had made her choice, them over him. Now she just had to live with it.

~*~

This has been my entry for therealljidol

LJ idol Week 7 - Where I'm from

mrstotten — Tue, 31 Jan 2017 23:41:35 GMT

Glasgow 1958

The door slammed behind him, the sound loud and jarring as it shook the paper thin walls of their single end. Storming down the stairs and into the street, his nose scrunched up automatically as the smells of Glasgow hit him. He had been here for nearly ten years now, stepping off the boat, then bus, full of hopes and dreams. Leaving behind him, the political unrest in Ireland, an angry Da and a future filled with responsibility and accountability that at fourteen he hadn’t been ready to accept.

He had loved Glasgow, from the very beginning. The busy streets filled with hustle and noise so far removed from the green landscape of Claremorris. But he had never, ever gotten used to the smell. The cloying smell of decay and the heaviness of smog hung onto everything. It clung to your skin, appeared in mucky grey of your clothes, came through in the chesty, sickly cough of your kids.

As he pushed open the door of the pub, the smell disappeared, replaced by tobacco and sweat. He spent more time here now than he did at home. Tired of the fighting, the yelling, the screaming of four small kids and now May wanted to go and add another one. No, not wanted to, had. The quietly spoken ‘I’m pregnant’ had been the catalyst for their latest fight. He barely knew how it had happened, they didn’t touch each other anymore. The early whirlwind of romance was long gone, lost in his fourteen hour shifts and the two cleaning jobs that May fitted in around four kids under seven.

He didn’t want it, he had told her so, her look of shock and betrayal quickly flitting to disdain and anger. He was the catholic, not her. They didn’t have the money, the energy for another one. So he had decided to do what he did best, bury himself in beer and woman and go back when his bloody wife had come to her senses.

Four months later he found himself out of Glasgow, down south, surrounded by the red terraced houses of Manchester, where his wife had run off to after finding him with his latest floozy. At first he had left them to it. Rejoicing in the quiet and solitude. But he had started missing them quickly. Little Mary’s soft singing, the three boys playing ‘Sojies’ as they jumped on every available surface of the house. May’s laugh, the way she would smile as he danced her around the kitchen. He wanted his family back, wanted to be the man they believed he was.

It took three weeks, but she eventually agreed to come home, it was as they were packing their things that May’s labour started, two months early. Charles came into the world kicking and screaming. It wasn’t until later, when they were registering the birth that the full enormity hit him and he began to chuckle. His Da had stopped speaking to him when he first married ‘The Proddy’ as he called May. It would drive him round the bed when he found out the grandson that bore the family name was a ‘Damn Englishman’.

Looking over, he saw May’s besotted smiled as she looked down at their newest son. And he knew, that no matter what, they would be ok.

Glasgow 1976

She searched the room frantically, her fingers grasping under the bed desperately. Tissues, lipstick, varnish but no sign of the neatly folded piece of paper she was seeking.

“Patricia, downstairs now, you have to leave for school in five minutes.” The shout broke the silence, forced her to her feet and out the room.

She rushed down the stairs two at a time, wondering for a brief second what would happen if she slipped, tumbled down the stairs, what would happen then?

She skidded into the kitchen with the enthusiasm you can only get away with as a child, although she was currently approaching the shift. Sixteen going on seventeen, almost time to leave behind the childish things like skidding on floors in her slippy socks.

The kitchen smelled of bacon and grease and her tummy turned. But she knew that there was no way mum would let her out without eating something. She grabbed a slice of toast, heavily buttered and held it between her teeth as she pulled on her school blazer. Her mum was at the sink, already juggling the pile of dishes breakfast had left behind. For half a second the words formed in her mouth, she wanted desperately to talk to her mum. To have her stroke her hair, tell her that it was all going to be fine. A kiss from mum to make it better.

But this wasn’t a scraped knee. She looked closer and noticed the droop of tiredness in the set of her mums shoulders. Seven kids, three jobs and a husband working nightshift, yet she always made time for everyone. She knew if she just said the word, her mum would drop what she was doing and help her fix this. Her lips almost formed the words and then stopped as the front door opened. Her dad stepping in out of the morning cold, his mouth set in a grim line that lifted as he saw her.

“Morning Patsy,” he greeted her with a kiss on the cheek with chapped cold lips. Sitting down he grunted at her mum, noises taking the place of conversation. His smile now gone as he looked at his wife, searching for just the right fault to pick away at.

She sneaked out the door as she heard him start to complain about the temperature of his tea. She caught up with her sisters at the far corner, both had left before Dad came home. Both like mum used to his coldness, his disapproval. She was the only one exempt it seemed. Although she knew that would change if he found out what she had done.

She turned her mind away from the dark places it was going and into her sisters gossip. They were passing a stub of a cigarette between them and she grabbed it, taking a long slow draw and letting the nicotine seep into her system, bringing with it a sense of calm. She has started smoking three years ago, thirteen and desperate to prove how cool she was to her new friends. Then she had met Charlie and had tried to stop when he complained it was like kissing an ashtray.

She had met him through her friend Liz who was dating his brother John. Charlie had been brought along to keep Tricia occupied while John and Liz had some alone time. She had hated him at first, loud, brash and full of opinions about everything. But as the days and weeks passed she started to see a different side to him. She listened to him talk about his parents, who were even worse than hers. Her mum and dad had retreated into a wall of silence, but Charlies mum May was wild, she attacked his dad with fists, pots, knees and nails. His dad Pat was softer, a sweet Irish man who seemed to just ignore his whirlwind of a wife, but Tricia had heard the stories, of the other women, and secret kids. Not that she ever mentioned them to Charles.

Over the course of months, then years they had fallen in love. Her mum and dad didn’t like it. They thought Charlie was poor, dirty, rough. Not good enough for her. But they were wrong, she saw past the filthy house he lived in, the wild family and loud noises to the sweet loving boy underneath.

She loved Charlie, totally, completely, fiercely. She loved him enough to defy her family, something she had never done before. She was the good girl. She had none of her older sister Margaret’s wildness or her brothers sleekitness. She was quiet, well behaved, smart, studied hard. But for Charlie she had broken all the rules. Even the big one, the one she thought she never would. Freezing in place she knew then and there that it didn’t matter. That if she had Charlie, she could do anything.

Ignoring her sisters calls she ran back to the house, her heart feeling like it would burst out of her chest as she ran, her feet missing the puddles of black ice. Mustn’t slip, not now.

Barrelling through the door, she could hear her father’s heavy footsteps upstairs, good that would make things easier. Heading into the kitchen she found her mother sitting at the table.

“I’m pregnant.”

The words slipped out, as if unstoppable, inescapable. Once they were out it was like a weight had been lifted, she looked at her mother, waiting for the explosion. Watched as her mum removed a small folded piece of paper from her pocket. The lines crisp from repeated folds, the letter from the doctor, confirming the words that had just been released.

“Sit down Patricia, we need to talk.”

Taking a seat her heart started pounding again. She was sixteen, still in school and she was having a a baby. She knew it was going to be hard, knew what people would say. But then she met her mums eyes, saw the softness there, no anger, no recrimination. She wrapped her fingers into her mums palm, and she knew, no matter what, it was going to be ok.

Glasgow 2005

Wrapping my arms around the silver bar, I feel another wave of the pain creeping up on me. Gritting my teeth, I can hear the groan hissing out, almost unbidden as my body shifts and moves to deal with the pain.

My husband is standing beside me, looking for all the world like he wants to be somewhere else, the noises im making barely sound human and he looks embarrassed by the fuss I’m making. He makes the cardinal mistake of leaning down and saying that I am being really loud. I love him, more than anything in the world and at that moment I want to kill him.

I had heard stories of partners in the delivery room before, it was why in my original birth plan, he wasn’t supposed to be here. But very little of my original birth plan remained. From the moment I had screamed the words ‘I’m pregnant’ I had made so many plans. I planned a natural birth. Lots of movement, no drugs. When my son was born (we had found out it was a boy at my sixteen week scan. My husbands smile had put the Cheshire cat to shame) I would lay him on my chest for bonding. Would count out the ten tiny fingers and ten tiny toes and look into the face of the baby we had longed for.

We had been trying for seven years. Years broken by the misery of miscarriage and dashed hopes. When I had finally managed to get one to stick at the ripe old age of twenty nine, it had seemed like all of our wishes had been granted.

My mum had found it strange. She thought I was a little old to be a first time mum, to be fair she had fallen pregnant with me at 16, had married and had given birth by her 17^th birthday. By the time she had hit 29 she had a twelve year old, a seven year old and had passed more than a decade married.

I still felt too young, still worried that I would do everything wrong, that I wouldn’t be the mum this child I longed for needed. Up until 13 weeks I had worried about losing him, but as each week progressed past that I had never worried that I wouldn’t get to keep him. At least I hadn’t until I hit week 23 and my waters broke. Then I learned that my child at that point was not classed as a child. I held on until week 24, until he was classed as ‘viable’ and now my body was giving up on me and expelling my precious boy, sixteen whole weeks too early.

Now instead of a natural birth with my best friend, I have my hubby and what seems like fifty doctors gathered round me. Instead of soothing music, I listen to men with accents tell me just how little chance my child has of surviving. They prep me to give birth to a child who will likely not survive the night (5%). Who if he does, probably won’t come home alive (20%) and if he did would be severely disabled (65%).

I make the mistake of looking at my husband and see the fear that lies behind the request to be quieter. We are just two people, two newlyweds about to become parents to a child that likely won’t survive.

As the wave crashes over me again, I feel a sense of utter hopelessness overtake me. What’s the point. The point in all the pain, if I don’t get to have my baby. I‘m scared, more scared than I think I have ever been in my life and don’t know which way to turn.

As the helplessness and pain overtake me, I hear a different voice. Soft, soothing. My mum pushes back my hair and tells me to breathe. She tells me that everything is going to be alright and I believe her. She wasn’t supposed to be here either. She was most definitely not part of my birth plan. I love the woman but I always felt that she would tell me I was doing labour wrong and we would argue and I’d either throw her out of the room, or more likely be expelled from the room myself whilst being told to ‘think on my actions’. She wasn’t what I wanted, this wasn’t the birth I wanted.

But as I look at her, grounding myself in the worry and kindness in her eyes I realise I’m going to be ok. My mum is here and no matter what, it was going to be ok.

~*~

Where am I from? I’m a product of all of the above. I came from a wandering soul, who left his home in Ireland to start a new adventure. Who crossed the divisional lines of religious bigotry at a time where they couldn’t have been more dangerous. I got my love of the romantic from him, the idea that the next great adventure is just around the corner.

I’m a result of a quick coincidence, of a boy wanting to be with a pretty girl who roped in his impulsive brother to date a shy quiet lass who never thought anyone would look at her twice.

I’m the result of a sixteen year old girl and seventeen year old boy, who put away their own fear and became parents at an age where they were just kids themselves.

I’m a mother who gave birth under the worst of circumstances, but who knew she would ok, because these are the people I came from. Strong, smart, imperfect people who love fully and who taught me that no matter what, with love and family around me, it would always be ok.

This has been my entry for therealljidol

LJ idol Week 4 - “I don't skate to where the puck is. I skate to where the puck is going to be. "

mrstotten — Fri, 06 Jan 2017 22:02:21 GMT

I met Vivien on a miserable cold autumn morning in Glasgow in 2011. At the time, I was freelancing and doing some digital marketing for events and had been recommended to her, so she had called and left a message with my receptionist (my mum) requesting a meetup.

‘Are you coming down for dinner, I’m making curry, oh and ive got a work message for you. Bev from I3 Squared called, she has something to do with Microsoft and wants to talk to you about the internet stuff. Microsoft, that’s exciting isn’t it?’

“When did she call?”

“Yesterday I think, about 1pm it was during Peak Practise”

*deep breath*

“Cool, did she leave a number?”

“Yes, but I think I forgot it”

“So how do I call her back then?”

“Maybe she will call back?”

My mum was great at a lot of things, but being my (unpaid) receptionist wasn’t one of them.

Luckily, she did call back and during the conversation I found out her name wasn’t Bev, it was Viv, her company name was actually IA Cubed and that she was running an event for Microsoft and was looking for help promoting it. We met in a small Italian restaurant called Sartis and hit it off instantly. I was on crutches at the time, had been caught in the rain, and remember struggling down slippy stairs, cold, wet and miserable thinking this better be bloody worth it.

It was.

I remember nonstop conversation between oodles of garlicky pasta and a nearly empty bottle of wine. After two hours at breakneck speed, I learned that Viv had recently discovered she had breast cancer. That she was more terrified of losing her eyebrows than her operation (or losing a breast) and that she was looking for a partner in crime. A business soulmate. We knew in less than the full two hours, that no matter what happened going forward, we were in this together.

Within six months I had stopped freelancing and was running IA Cubed with Viv full time. In less than three years we turned ourselves into one of the top 10 Microsoft partners in the UK. She remained saved in my phone as Bev from IA Squared (because we both found it funny) and she became one of the closest people in the world to me. We both had kids of a similar age, and both had a burning ambition to see our little company’s name in bright lights. We spent our days brainstorming, jetting up and down the country, building the business together and quite honestly having a ball.

Despite hitting it off so well, we had very different personalities. She was hard, I was soft. She was a visionary, I was a planner. So we took on very different roles in the company, she was Marketing, I was Sales. But in broader terms, she brought the ideas and I made them happen. Her brain never seemed to truly stop. Some of her ideas were good, some bad, some brilliant. She didn’t have a pause button and was constantly moving at one hundred miles an hour, so I had to learn to run at one hundred and one.

My entire job became making sure I was always one step ahead of not only her but the competition, predicting her and the markets next move and planning how to turn it to our advantage. I learned how to anticipate, how to read the situation and watch where the next step would be, before the other person had even thought to take it.

Of course, it didn’t always go our way. Hits would come from off field. Viv lost her father to cancer, I lost my mother a few months later. The team would falter, key staff members leaving for better offers. The game would shift when a competitor we didn’t anticipate would sneak up the side-lines and poach a key customer. But the majority of the plays, we called quickly and correctly, pushing us ever forward and we won far more than we lost. We joked once about writing a book of our adventures and then jacking in the IT game and living off the royalties. From then on whenever something of note happened, good or bad she would wink at me, with a wicked smile and a twinkle in her eyes. “One more for the book M”.

She was never easy, she would demand perfection, not only in work but in life. She could be thoughtlessly cruel and deliberately tough, but she pushed me harder than anyone else I had ever known. She taught me that ambition wasn’t something to be afraid of. She taught me that I was capable of anything, she believed I was, truly believed it and her belief made it so.

In April 2015, in the middle of a client dinner she took ill with a tummy ache. We drove home, an hour in the car with a tenseness in the air that had never been present with us before. More silence in the gaps than chatter. Within a week we found out that her cancer had returned, this time it had spread to the liver and bones. We took the kids away on holiday the next week. We worked and played on the beach, warm sand between our toes and the salty smell of the air as water splashed on us. We watched our children giggling as their tongues tried to catch sticky trails of ice cream running down their arms with their tongues, and she explained to me her plan of eating right and exercising. We didn’t discuss timelines, didn’t plan for the end, but we knew things didn’t look good.

For the next few months she just kept on going, No she went faster than ever, leaving everyone else dizzy in her wake. We never told anyone, not Microsoft, not the clients, and no one guessed. People sat in her company at events as she charmed and dazzled, and no-one ever knew. She actually had me believing for a while that through sheer force of will, she could beat the unbeatable. Then September hit, midway through a conversation I realised she wasn’t answering. I stopped talking to see she had fallen asleep.

As September progressed, more and more work was done in hospital. She acted like it was a world class hotel. Every doctor knew her, nurses smuggled in candy and coffee whenever we flagged. Then as she grew more tired we moved to calls, hour long chats about our next move, then when she got tired of talking we moved to texts.

Towards the end of October she sent me a text, thanking me for the time we had spent together. Telling me how she couldn’t have done it without me, and maybe she wouldn’t have. I know I couldn’t have done it without her. That race to keep up with her, to stay one step ahead, to predict where her brain was taking us next was the challenge that turned her vision into our reality. It sparked an ambition in me that I didn’t know I even had. I went from working as a freelancer to becoming the Managing Director of one of the most respected IT partners in the UK. She brought that out in me. She brought out my ambition, my desire to be the best. To always be one step ahead of the competition, to see where the next idea will be, and to get there before anyone else.

We lost her in October, less than six months after her diagnosis and two days after her last text to me. She was forty two years old and left behind two beautiful little girls. My grief was and still is nothing in the wake of those who loved her most. But I did love her. She changed me, changed my life and changed me as a person.

Thanks to her, I am exactly where I am supposed to be, analysing the competition, anticipating the next move, and getting ready to run.

LJ Idol Season 10, Week 4 (Break Week), Prompt 4 - A Possum ran over my grave

mrstotten — Mon, 02 Jan 2017 22:18:54 GMT

We call it something different here in Scotland. When we experience that random shiver, our mams would tell us someone is dancing on your grave. That always seemed incongruous to me. Why was someone in a graveyard dancing on the spot that I would one day lie! And why were they doing it at such odd times, didn’t they know the soaps were on?

There is a lot that used to be different. I believed in all this once. That unexplained shivers had a deeper meaning. That white feathers were a sign of someone you loved saying hello. That orbs in a picture were the spirits of those around you.

I visited a pshycic at least once a year, hung on her every word, came back and explained in awe at how much she had known. When mum first died I was desperate to go see her, to have a message, to have a chance to be connected to her again, but someone told me you had to wait for at least three months, so I bided my time and in the interim, my hubby and I watched a show called ‘The Mentalist’ and I learned how smart people can seem to know more, to be more.

After that I denounced them all as fakes, was angry at the women I used to see, the charlatan. I was now as firm in my lack of faith as I had been devout in my belief.

Then one day I was chatting to my cousins girlfriend about the night before my mum died. She had lost her mum and dad years before I met her and as it goes with people who have a shared common loss, we turned to a story of mum.

The night before mum passed she kept getting up out of bed, naked I might add, and wondering the house. Sleep deprived from the night before my cousin had taken it upon himself to stay awake and inform me every time she got up, so the evening went from slep, to a shake with “Maggie your ma’s awake”, to putting my crazy mam back in her bed.

I asked her the fourth ( or was it the fifth) time why she kept getting up and she glared malevontly into the corner.

“It’s him, he won’t fuck off”

I stared at the blank space in the corner. “Who mum?”

“Him, George,” she spat out. “he keeps trying to get me to come dance with him, tell him to fuck off. I don't want to go dancing with him”

“Ok, one if I swear you’ll slap me, two there is no one there darling, back into bed”

"I dont want to go dancing with him Margaret. Tell him to go." her voice turning fearful

I put her back into bed and lay down next to her. Letting her go back to sleep and stroking her hair as she muttered about how much George needed to fuck off cos she wasn’t going dancing.

It was a small little memory of the night before we lost her, a strange one as we didn’t know a George and I had remembered it and was relaying it to them, when I looked up she was grey, not white, grey. I asked her panicked what was wrong and she then told me that in the weeks leading up to my mums death she had prayed to her mum and dad. Had told them that an amazing wee woman would be joining them and could they help her.

Her dad’s name, yep you guessed it. George. I finally had an answer to the funny wee man who kept trying to steal my mammy off for a dance and who eventually succeeded.

And yes that day a possum really did run over my grave, in fact I think my Mum and George may have been dancing away on it.

Which leaves me now in a half way house. I still think most pshycics are con artists, I think most of it is mumbo jumbo, made up and used to manipulate those who need it most.

But I also think there is something more out there, something even the most reasoned arguments can’t push away.

Sometimes, when you need it the most,there really is someone waiting to take you to dance.

LJ Idol Season 10, Week 4 (Break Week), Prompt 3 – Jantelagen

mrstotten — Mon, 02 Jan 2017 22:11:42 GMT

“Someone needs to put her in her place”

“I saw her brazen as you like handing out leaflets”

“Up to her husband to bring her into line, nothing a sharp word wont call halt to”

William had heard all the scandalised whispers. Had nodded and uh huhed along to the words, even though he felt bad. Not that he didn’t agree with them. But Christopher and Elizabeth were friends.

Of course that was something else he had been called to task for. Letting Catherine remain friends with Beth.

“She will fill her head full of nonsense”

“Once those ideas get hold”

“I’d never allow my wife to associate herself with that”

He knows there are elements of truth in their words. Heck Christopher had said himself if Beth hadn’t started attending that book club with Margaret Spittal none of this would have happened. His wife would still be at home, tending to the house and preparing dinner.

That had been the part that had shocked William the most. Since she got caught up in this nonsense Beth had abandoned every aspect of being a wife. Their plans to start a family were on hold. Christopher came home several nights a week to a dark house and no dinner. The nights the lights were on were tense and full of anger. It was no way for a man to live.

It was hard to see where this madness had begun. To pinpoint where the radicals had infected good honest woman. And now there was actual talk of it being considered in parliament. Shocking what the world had come to. Women having the right to vote, it was nonsensical. They would only ask their husbands who to vote for anyway. It was stuff and nonsense. What would be next, your wife following you to work, female bankers, female policemen. William snorted at his own little joke, allowing himself a chortle at the nonsensical idea of a woman in a suit, carrying a brief case, perhaps she would pull her hair back and draw on a moustache.

I mean, it was beyond the pale. Don’t get him wrong, he loved women, he loved his wife, and he had loved his mother and fully respected the part that women play in this world. They were the homemakers, the caregivers. Without their warm steady hands, kind hearts and patient natures, who would raise the next generation of bankers and lawyers. IF a woman was out at work, how would she teach her daughter how to cook and darn. There was so much that made no sense to him. Especially with Beth, I mean she had married well, a husband with a job in the city, no money worries. Ungrateful is what it was. It was hard not to feel down for poor Christopher.

Aw well, it would blow over soon enough, these lunatics would realise no one outside their own little group of fanatics were listening and would shut up. The spinsters would go back to being quiet and not blaming the world for their bad luck and the thoughtless and careless ones like Beth would be welcomed back with a sigh.

Thank the lord it hadn’t touched his house. Taking off his coat and hanging his hat, he looked around with a fond sigh, preparing to greet his wife, but the house was silent. There so no fire on and no smell of dinner. Looking at the clock his eyebrows rose in alarm. 5.20pm.

Her book club had never run this late!

LJ Idol Season 10, Week 4 (Break Week), Prompt 2 – Sangfroid

mrstotten — Mon, 02 Jan 2017 22:09:00 GMT

I tell myself not to look. The hallway is filled with people. There are muffled sobs and whispers alongside the shuffling of feet. The smell of the flowers still lingering in the hall are dying off with the closed sitting room door. There are a mass of flowers in there waiting to be moved, but the door has been closed to stop the children from seeing.

Kids shouldn’t see a coffin. I get that, but a part of me wants to scream why are they here then. They should have been removed from the scene not hustled into a room being forced to keep quiet. An even larger part of me wants to open the door wide and scoop my son up for a hug, he would make me feel better right now. His warm sticky arms and sweet smell would calm the racing of my heart. But I won’t. Because they are right, he shouldn’t see this. I would normally wrap myself around my husband just now, let his warm, solid presence ground me, make me feel safe again. But he is in the room, getting ready to lift to lift her.

I never used to understand why people brought the dead home, it seemed morbid to me. Who wants a dead body in their house, but that was before. The last few days the only thing keeping any of us sane was her presence in the room, being able to go and sit with her, knowing we still had her there. Looking back I know I’m wrong, I remember her feeling cold, looking different, but there was enough of her still there to bring some peace.

Now that was leaving, I hear the sound of music in background, a song about colours or stars by one of those bands she would make me listen to.

“have you heard this song, the one that goes nanananan I, wanna fall, from the sky, straight into you arms, nananana”

I would nod and smile and let her continue to hum off key.

It plays low and soft, you have to strain your ears to hear. That was one of the rules I had about bringing her home. She wasn’t going to lie in a dark, dank silent room. She had never not had music on, and that would continue.

The shuffling of feet intensifies and I see the dark suited figures come out, heads bowed down, shouldering their burden. I look past them and stare at the room. Empty now, a bid wide space where something used to be. It fits our hearts and minds now.

For half a second I want to be that person. I want to break down and scream at them to put her back. I want to stamp my feet and cry and throw the mother of all temper tantrums until they put her back where she belongs. But I don’t. I think of how she was in the end, always with a smile, a laugh, composed, dignified, thanking those around her. Even in her worst moments she never broke, and neither will I.

So, with my chin lifted I put one foot in front of the other, I follow her out into the street and prepare to say goodbye.

LJ Idol Season 10, Week 4 (Break Week), Prompt 1 - Kummerspeck

mrstotten — Mon, 02 Jan 2017 22:05:58 GMT

Comfort Eating, it sounds fun doesn’t it?. Two of my favourite things are being comfortable and eating. But together they are a recipe for disaster. I have a cousin who growing up was pleasantly plump. Then she turned sixteen, exams hit and the stress caused her to lose forty pounds. Since then she has never gone over 100lbs. It’s like she found some sort of perfect recipe of stress to keep her weight down, because believe me, she EATS.

Me, not so much. Well that is not so much with the stress causing me to lose weight. No my scale tips in the other direction. When stressed, eat. When worried, eat. When hormonal, eat. When bored, eat I’m sure you can see the pattern.

When my son was born sixteen weeks early. I went back to only a few pounds over pre-baby weight after birth. Body popping back in pretty much like they said it would. By the time he left the hospital five months later, I was thirty two pounds heavier. I could blame it on living out of hospital food and always being on the go, but it was more eating and crying whilst alone as I wondered if I would ever get to take my baby home that had added the pounds.

Thus started my outright war with food. Pre-baby I was about 140 lbs and didn’t vary much. Post baby that number sits anywhere between 168lbs and 220lb depending on what is happening in my life at that given time. I have a job that requires entertaining people, a husband who works in shifts, a hair trigger temper, and a strong level of emotional instability at most times. Food is my comfort blanket.

Argument with husband – slip in a sneaky chocolate biscuit
Stressed at work – nothing a pack of cheese and onion crisps won’t help
Worried about how I look – Nothing a curry won’t fix

It took me a long time to connect the two, to realise that I didn’t feed myself through hunger. That normal people didn’t hide sweet wrappers in bedroom drawers. When you see it on TV, on shows like ‘the biggest loser’, knowing why is always the breakthrough. They push, dig out their fears and self-loathing, they discover why they eat and then bam, they drop 100lbs. My breakthrough happened eight years ago, when my mum and I had a pact, she would stop smoking, I’d quit the junk food. She never smoked again, I lasted two days.

There was a time last year where I hit the, you’re almost forty, does it really matter anymore, just relax and love yourself for who you are, and you know what I get that way of thinking, I respect it. But I’m not happy, I don’t love who I am right now. I lost my mum at 37, my son reaches that age in twenty-six years, at that time I’ll be sixty six! If I’m still here, and the weight I’m carrying around I might not be. I won’t do that to him. This is me in 2017, I am 16 stone (224lb) the heaviest I have ever been, and I am now saying no more.

I start a journey today, I know I will stumble, sometimes I will fall, but I will get up. The excess 100lb of Kummerspeck that is currently clinging to the person I am is getting blasted away. No more excuses.

Wish me luck!!

(this is a picture of me today. I do solemnly swear to upload a new one first of every month to catalogue my journey J )

LJ Idol Season 10, Week 3 , The Brushback Pitch

mrstotten — Thu, 15 Dec 2016 23:46:15 GMT

The sun sneaks through a crack in the blinds, the light fnding your eyes directly, refusing to leave you in peace. You can hear your father’s heavy footsteps as he leaves the house, your mums voice singing quietly off key as she prepares breakfast. The house smells like coffee and too much heat and you try to burrow back under the covers, hoping you can stave off the moment that things begin.

It’s Monday again, the relief you felt on Friday, the idea of two full days, forty-eight hours, two thousand eight hundred and eighty minutes stretched out in front of you is gone. It felt like enough at the time. It felt like respite.

You had plans, play computer, spend time with your family, read a book. They weren’t exciting plans, but they were filled with peace and calm and none of the whirling in your gut that sits alongside the week. The familiar dread had begun as you closed off Sunday night, tossing and turning in your bed as you prepared for the morning to come.

Now it’s thirty-four minutes until go time. You eat the cereal that has gone soggy, your mum is complaining that you are taking too long, you are going to be late. You eat as slowly as you can, then you lose your bag, can’t find that all important piece of homework, you know you left your shoes somewhere. Anything to put off the opening of the door. It doesn’t help matters when you realise you’ve hidden your maths homework so well you cant actually find it, and in the end you have to leave without it, another black mark for the day.

By the time you cross the threshold there are thirteen minutes left and your mum has went from grumpy to mad. She heads to the car grumbling under her breath about your lack of organisation. As you climb in you balk at the smell of stale cigarette smoke, you know it is going to stick to your clothes, permeate into every fibre until it’s all you can smell. You’ve asked her not to smoke in the car, but even as you sigh she has lit another cigarette, her fingers bouncing nervously as she opens the window, as if it makes a difference.

In the nine minutes it takes to reach your destination the possibilities play out in front of you, this is your favourite time of the day, where there is room for anything to happen. Your mum could decide to play hooky, she could take the sheen of sweat on your skin as you being sick and send you home, there could be a teachers strike, there could be car crash and you end up in hospital. Not a serious one of course.

For short time there is still hope, until there isn’t. You find yourself at the gate, wavering about putting one foot in front of the other. You look back and your mum is smiling, waving you on. She spots your hesitation and you see the worry cross her face, concern in her kind eyes. For a second you almost say something, but then her phone rings, she looks down, hesitates about answering but you know she needs to. So, you paste on a smile and wave. Her shoulders relax, she smiles back and she is off with a hastily thrown ‘love you’ as she lights up another cigarette and drives off speaking into her phone. There really is going to be a crash one day, and you won’t even be lucky enough to be in the car.

You enter the school, the place smells of stale sweat and too many people. The peeling walls with pockmarks of words all over, reminding you of those who came before you, as if you or anyone else cared that ‘Baz wos here’. You sigh and brace your shoulders, trying to remember the words your dad always throws at you. Walk tall, look people in the eye, never shy away. Your mum tells you to smile, that people like happy people, and in the beginning, you always try.

First period isn’t too bad, you like English, everyone is in individual seats, the teacher demands attention, and you like the book you are reading. She is always quick to throw out random questions, ensuring discussion and very little room for lack of awareness. There is no time for whispers and jeers, it’s a pretty good class. But PE is next.

And that is where it starts.

You are tall, it should be a blessing, but you are also skinny, clumsy and with no athletic ability and even less will. Sports confuse you, bore you. You don’t see the point, the meaning. So you’ve never really tried. It is there the jeers start.

‘Pathetic’

‘nerd’

‘Useless’

Each one is carefully placed. As are the giggles from the girls when you stand slightly closer to your ‘team’ and they place their fingers over their noses, talking in overly loud voices about the sudden smell.

‘Gag, seriously’

‘Never heard of deodorant’

‘I think I might barf’

You know you don’t smell, you checked when this first started happening. Even so, you shower twice a day now. You go through two bottles of body spray a week, but the barbs still find their target every time, your shoulders slump and you start to shrink.

Maths is next and the teacher is a dick, one of those pervy old guys who manages to remain in employment even with roaming clammy hands and the smell of vodka on his breath every morning. He starts on you about the homework, laughing at the excuse you trot out. Not as if you can say out loud that you hid it in the hope it meant you wouldn’t have to come in at all. By the time he is halfway through the tirade he has moved on from the homework and is waxing on about your less than stellar performance in class. You throw yourself down in your seat once he has finished, trying to pretend the burning in your throat is indigestion, and not held back tears. There is a scrape of chairs as the people in your group move further away, as though being an idiot was contagious.

‘So dumb’

‘Remedial classes’

‘aren’t geeks at least supposed to be smart’

You block out the words, but your lips are done smiling, the corners of your mouth droop as the teacher drones on.

You eat lunch alone, in the table furthest away from anything or anyone, reading and pretending the world doesn’t actually exist outside your bubble. Your chair is bumped into continuously, even though you know you are sitting in a place no-one actually has to go past, some food is accidently spilled on you. The apologies ring hollow, the laughs and giggles more true. You don’t look up, not once, you have learned how much worse it can be to make eye contact.

In fourth period they are talking about a dance. It is coming at the end of the school year. People have been speaking about it for months. You hear your name mentioned, and against every instinct you have your head lifts, a small stirring of hope that you have not yet extinguished apparently. But all it means is you see the sneers as well as hearing the words.

‘As if’

‘Can you imagine’

‘I would never’

Your head bows down, you pretend you can’t hear and sink further down in your seat. You know you aren’t as bad as it sounds, you’ve looked at yourself in the mirror, you’re not undatable. There are no gross deformities, you look ‘ok’ but you are different, you always were. You like scifi, anime, fantasy. Not in the retro cool way some people try to embrace, but in the obsessive way that makes people uncomfortable, no one is supposed to care that much about anything. You talk too fast, and use your hands a lot, you get a little too hyper, you find it hard to make direct eye contact. They did tests, way back when you were in junior school. You remember lots of labels, names, ideas/ But they all meant one thing. You were different. This school doesn't do different.

You used to try talking to people about it, about the things you loved. You had friends back then, but one by one the different drove them away, and they deserted you. Perhaps afraid that whatever you had would catch on, or at the very least taint them by association.

By the end of the school day your metamorphism is complete. Each word, barb, joke, giggle, laugh, whisper and look has been deployed to their full effect. The shots had come hard, high, fast and continuously until their job was done and now only a shadow remains, standing in the place of the whole person who entered the school gates this morning. Even the teachers walk past you without a word or smile as if you are invisible. Maybe by now you are. You sometimes think about raising your head, reaching out your hand, pulling on their arm and stopping them, pouring out all the words, the anger the frustration, the fear demanding to know why they don’t see it, why they do nothing.

But you never do, see you’ve never actually been bullied. No-one has ever hit you, there has been no physical contact and the words are never at you, they are around you. Over heard conversations, whispered words. Cruel yes, unfortunate definitely, but they would never be classed as bullying. All speaking up would do is make you look more pathetic than you are.

So you stand, your head down, back braced against the cold. You hear the excited chatter all around you, friends making plans, the giggles and laughs, the ribaldry of the football crowd as they walk past, this time there are no words, no looks, nothing aimed at you, in fact they don’t even notice you. School is over, they don’t need you as entertainment, they are off together to have some real fun.

Your mum’s car pulls up and you step in. Your answers are short and terse as she asks about your day, she smiles, ruffles your hair and jokes about reticent teenagers and you head home.

Only four more days to go and it is the weekend again.

Who knows, maybe tomorrow it will be different, maybe tomorrow the car will crash, you can only hope.

~*~

I literally had no idea where to go with this one, I had to google the meaning and even then it stumped me, so I started to think about how it feels when the hits keep on coming, which led to bullying, which led to thinking about a kid who just keeps getting knocked down, which led to this my first fictional piece of the series.

This has been my entry for therealljidol

LJ Idol Season 10, Week 2 , That One Friend

mrstotten — Thu, 01 Dec 2016 23:35:47 GMT

I got my eleven year old son’s latest school report this week. I had barely started reading before I was smiling. That great big smile you get when you feel like you are going to burst.

It wasn’t just the great marks, or excellent effort, that’s always good, its what you want, to see your child progress. But it wasn’t the reason for my pride. That came from the statements on how well he was liked by his peers, how he had gone out of his way to help people settle in, to make people smile.

You see my son loves people. He loves conversation and he is as comfortable talking to complete strangers as he is his closest family. He is the most charming little boy you could imagine and he can make anyone feel like a friend.

But not everyone wants to be a friend. Over the last few years I have seen people, adults and children alike ignore him, dismiss him and even at times laugh at him.

Hard to imagine isn’t it? That an adult when faced with a bright inquisitive friendly child can be cruel, can be detached. Or that kids, even the nicest, most well raised kids can reject a hand reaching out in friendship. But believe me, it happens.

Because to them my son is a little too loud, a little too intense, a little too in your face. A little too different.

You see my son has aspergers.

When the idea of autism was first raised to me, I denied it completely. My son wasn’t autistic, he wasn’t detached or violent, he loved people, he was open, affectionate, he never shut up. He was nothing like the portrayal of autism I knew from TV or media, but the truth is, I didn’t know autism at all.

Until five or so years ago I had never even heard of Aspergers, I had no idea how it related to autism, or anything about this rainbow spectrum that holds the hearts of so many wonderful, bright amazing kids within its many varied colours. I had a preconceived idea of what an autistic kid looked like, how they behaved and it wasn’t my son. But by the time my son was formally diagnosed a couple of years later, I had learned just how many layers there were.

It was during those years, the lost years where everything was possible but not confirmed that I realised how hard my sons journey was going to be. It was like my rose tinted glasses had been removed and I started to see clearly the people that avoided him, the adults that moved away uncomfortably as he spoke to them, the kids who laughed at him, not with him.

I got angry, then I became sad, and then came the worry. When you know, the world is going to be more difficult for someone you love it is natural to feel all of this. When it is your child you want to smooth the road ahead, you want them to have the life they dreamed off. When you realise that their journey isn’t going to be quite like that, that there will always be a label attached to them, it’s hard not to feel like they have been cheated.

Visually impaired, Autistic, Dyslexic, Dysgraphic. My son is all of these things, and he is none of them. He is a complex puzzle of so many different pieces. He is joy, and laughter and frustration and exasperation. He feels things so strongly, loves things so deeply he could name twenty different species of dinosaur as a toddler, and can now tell you more about Pokemon than you ever wanted to know. He sees the world through eyes that are never jaded. He looks for the best in people. When someone hurts someone, or bullies someone (even him) he can find sympathy for them. He worries about them and he tries to think of ways to help them. The simplest things in the world can be a struggle for him. He will always stand slightly apart, will always view things a little differently and be viewed a little differently.

There are layers of isolation that sit between him and the world. Don’t get me wrong, he is far from friendless. He has friends. Neighbourhood kids who have grown up with him and accept him for who he is. Other kids on the spectrum, who he seems to gravitate to almost naturally. He has even found soul mates, some perfect kids who also see the world a little bit differently and adore his outlook on life.

But there will also always be those who will never understand him, who will always find him too odd, too different, too loud, too much. Those who won’t see behind the manic chatter, the loud voice, the over closeness, those who find it easier to judge him as different.

Damn but those people are missing out.

Don’t get me wrong, he isn’t perfect. He has meltdowns, he has things that have to go his way. He can appear cold, he can hurt people with his bluntness, he can hurt people with the fact that he is so comfortable on his own. He can make even his closest friends upset, uncomfortable or annoyed. He is that one friend that you sometimes have to try a little harder with.

But you know what? He is worth it. Because when you are his, you are his for life. You will never find a better friend, you will never find anyone more imaginative, more willing to go with you on your flight of fantasy. You will never find a friend as loyal, one as willing as he is, to always have your back. You will never find anyone as loving, or as fun to be around.

He is that one in a million friend, good and bad, he will drive you crazy, he will make you laugh, he will take you on adventures you never dreamed possible. And he will always be, your friend, for life. He doesn’t know any other way to be.

My son will grow up slaying dragons, he will never settle for anything less than the extraordinary, he is hard, and beautiful and challenging and never ever boring.

You see he has been selected, to create the unexpected and I wouldn’t have him any other way.

The video above is a minecraft version of the song Simply Second Nature from Charlie and the Chocolate factory. The song to me sums up the way my son thinks and feels, and its where I took part of the very last line. As to why this version, one of my sons obsessions is Minecraft so this is exactly what he would choose. :)

LJ Idol Season 10, Week 1 , I need the struggle to feel alive

mrstotten — Sat, 19 Nov 2016 00:57:27 GMT

The weeks preceding her passing were filled with jokes and laughter. You would be surprised at how much joy can be in the home of someone who is dying. When life has a limit, people try to fill each day with happiness as if to fend off the impending event.

When it happens, it isn’t with a whimper or a bang. It’s not what you expected. You expected her to struggle, you expected her to fight, you were braced for the pain, but it never comes. There is a full house, words of love, then she closes her eyes, her breathing slows, then stops and she’s gone. She is still warm, not regular warm, but burning hot. It is her bodies last ditch attempt to fight off the cancer ravaging her from the inside out. You’re curled up next to her, holding her hand and the tiny hopeful part of your brain keeps telling you that someone that warm, can’t be gone. The rest of you is shutting down, little by little, step by step. Your little cousin is curled up at your back. You can feel her shaking, her tears seeping into your top. The old you would have ignored everything else, turned round and given her a hug, offered comfort. You want to but you’re frozen, the old you disappeared a few minutes ago, she left with the last breath your mother breathed out and you have been replaced with someone who sees the world differently. The old you never knew the world could feel this cold.

The next few days are filled with activity, the house is full of people, full of food, people telling stories, people laughing, people crying. There is no time to think, to stop, to feel. You are in full flurry, the eldest child, you are the organiser, there are things to prepare, activities to attend to. The day of the funeral is lost to you, even now. You remember flashes, her favourite colour of red, streaked mascara, silent sobs and loud cries. But the flashes are all that is left. It is the last day that is all about her, her life, her story, the last day where she belongs still to this world, to you.

Then the sun sets and life goes on.

Except it doesn’t. You wait for the numbness to thaw, sure that it will be coming. The activity is gone, house packed up. There are less people now, you weren’t the only one who lost someone. Your gran lost a child (unthinkable), her siblings lost a sister (unbearable), she was something to a multitude of people, a friend, an aunt, an ally, a foe. Others miss her but they do so alone. They retreat to their own tiny bubble of grief, their own turning worlds. You tell yourself off, a lot, you remind yourself how lucky you are. You have a life to live. A child who is your world, a husband you love, a job you enjoy. Your life is filled with love and laughter, you have something, no you have everything to live for.

But it doesn’t stop the cold.

You had read about depression before, you understood it, felt sorry for people who were gripped by it, but it had never touched you, you had always been the eternal optimist. Depression was something others struggled with, a bane for those unluckier than yourself. It wasn’t meant to touch you.

Knowing what depression was, didn’t prepare you for how it would feel. You never realised how silent and deadly it could be. How well it can be hidden. To the rest of the world you are fine, coping so well, jumping back in. You smile, you hug, you laugh, you live. It’s not dark or black like you expected, it’s just cold. There are days that you wonder if you will ever feel warm again. There are worse days when you don’t even want to.

Little things help, a family holiday, warm sand, children laughing, your husbands smile. They provide temporary warmth, for a second, but they never grip. It is during an argument that the first icicle breaks. Heated anger and ugly words reminding you that you can feel. It’s not happy, but it’s something. The struggle to find the right school for your son, the ugly frustration making you feel helpless and silently furious. It’s not happy but it’s something.

Once the thawing starts the ice starts to chip away and the thaw begins in earnest, puddles of tears at your feet.

You cry, a lot.

For the first time the magnitude of what has happened hits you. You are too young, too afraid, too small for the centre of your world to be gone. The one constant that has been part of your life, all of your life is gone and you are left reeling, lost in the grief you feel.

This too passes, like waves crashing on the shore, coming less and less frequently as the tide ebbs.

It’s been two years now, the coldness has been gone for a long time, but the grief still hits at the strangest of times. When you struggle, you still look for her, still yearn for that helping hand, but it doesn’t overtake you anymore, doesn’t make you break.

You have a child, a husband, family and friends, you have a life to live. That’s how she wanted it.

So you struggle on, you smile, you laugh and you cry. You remind yourself of the lessons she tought you. The important things in life are never easy. To struggle, is to live.

So for her, for them and for yourself that’s exactly what you do.

This has been my entry for Week 1 of therealljidol

Knocks on the door, peeps in, lifts the latch, walks in .......

mrstotten — Wed, 16 Nov 2016 22:38:33 GMT

.......Here's a seat, sit yourself down, how do you do, good afternoon.

Ok, Blows dust of dusty thing. Wow thats a lot of dust. LJ has changed so much, it's kinda scary. Ok so I have been wanting to write again for a while, work has made me crazy, writing relaxes me, but I always had an excuse, then for a bizarre reason I checked my gmail account, which is dustier than this and has like 80,000 unread emails and 10 down was an email saying therealljidol was open. So I thought, I will have missed sign up, clicked the link, and sign ups are still open!

So, dusting done, new LJ layout examined (this will take some getting used to) and here is my decleration of participation (far less exciting than one of independence, but hey I'm a Scot, we apparantly don't need independence from the British.)

I am in!!

http://therealljidol.livejournal.com/945807.html#comments

Give me a character and I'll tell you a story :)

mrstotten — Sun, 22 Feb 2015 00:44:03 GMT

Finally started with The 100, now on episode 4 and as usual I have fallen in love with some characters. Also been looking for things to get me in the journaling habit again, so give me a fandom, and I will give you my favourite male and female characters and why :)

This entry was originally posted at http://mrstotten.dreamwidth.org/230204.html, comments.