Road Closures & Rats!

I don’t think it will be too long a blog this week. Life has been a needy, greedy bitch and I’m running on empty from an energy and time point of view. There’s a meme currently doing the rounds, which runs something along the lines of – Being a grown-up consists of saying “after next week things will get back to normal” every day until you die! – And although I’m not sure that’s strictly true, this week it has definitely felt like it.

To sum up all that has happened since we last chatted, well, for a start, I’ve decided to have a stall at the Bury St Edmunds Christmas Fair this year. Yes, yes, I know I said I’d never do this type of thing again after the Literature Festival fiasco – for those of you who don’t know, in a nut shell I spent hundreds of pounds buying in stock, didn’t sell a single book, had to carry them all home, cried a bit.

How this decision to do a stall at the Christmas Fair came about, was a group of us Bury St Edmunds authors have found each other and formed a little group. We meet for coffee every other Friday to just talk books and encourage and support one another. One member of the group, the young one with all the zip and enthusiasm, eagerly suggested we do a stall between us. She’d researched the venue, got a price and basically arranged everything. What could I do? I was surprised how reasonably priced the stall was, and between the five of us, it was even cheaper. I really wanted to be a part of this and couldn’t help feeling if I wasn’t, I would seriously regret the loss of the experience, if nothing else. So, I said yes.

Although the stall itself is quite cheap, as always, it’s the cost of buying in books to sell on it that is the expensive bit, and then there’s the dilemma of which books do I sell and how many do I buy? In the end, I decided to stick to just four so have ordered ten each of Becoming Lili, Chaining Daisy and Eclairs for Tea and other stories, and fifteen of my most popular book to date, The Forest ~ a tale of old magic ~ which still comes to 45 books in total and a big chunk of savings gone.

Why did I choose these four? Well, Becoming Lili and Chaining Daisy are the perfect pair to sell at a bargain price for Christmas, Daisy is my latest release so interest is still high in it and they just look so beautiful together, and will make an impact on the stall. The Forest, of course, with its iconic cover, is an obvious choice, and then Eclairs for Tea is the smallest and cheapest of the four and is perfect for readers who might be daunted by the bulk of the others, plus it also makes for a perfect Christmas gift.

The idea then struck me that it would be perfect to have individually scented candles to sell alongside the books, so I am currently in negotiations with a local candle maker and will keep you posted as to progress. I will bring plenty of exclusive Julia Blake bookmarks to give away with every book purchased, plus I will be personally signing every book and offering a beautiful gift-wrapping service free of charge.

So, if you are planning to attend the Bury St Edmunds Christmas Fair this year, then why not call round to say hello. I and four other local authors – Jackie Carreira, Amy Warren, Rachel Churcher and Pauline Manders – will be in the Guildhall down Guildhall Street between the hours of 10am-4pm on the Friday to Sunday. (I personally will only be there the Friday and the Saturday as I have to work on Sunday, but the others will be there all three days). You can’t miss me. I’ll be the red headed one desperately trying to pretend she knows what she’s doing! It would be lovely to see you, so please do come along.

Aside from trying to arrange all of the above, I’ve of course been working as usual, both at my normal job and at my part-time job of “Mum’s Taxi – evening and weekend work, very reasonable rates”. Sadly, I receive no monetary reward for providing a taxi service to Miss F and her friends but do it out of the goodness of my heart. However, this week there’s been a few too many calls upon my time and petrol and it’s been a job fitting it in.

Wednesday, I received a request from Miss F, please could I run her and her friends out to a local pet shop a couple of miles out of town to pick up the two pet rats her friend was buying. Then could we run them out to another friend’s house on the other side of town to pick up a cage that had been promised to house these said rats in, and finally could I run everyone to the proud new rat mummy’s home. She asked me in front of them all, and I don’t know about you, but if someone asks me to do a favour for someone else actually in front of them, I find it very difficult to say no. It was also requested that I first run them all to Pets at Home to pick up supplies, but here I put my foot down.

It was coming up to school rush hour, to get all the way out to the retail park that Pets at Home is located on would take thirty minutes, then another forty minutes to fight our way back through traffic to the pet store where the rats were and then another thirty to get to the third friends home and another twenty to get everyone back. That added up to two hours of my time idling in traffic just because the bedding from Pets at Home was reputedly better than that of the store where the actual rats were. So, I said no, then felt guilty, but stuck to my guns. Being the only one of the party with driving experience, knowledge of the roads and location of everything, and just how hideous school run traffic is, I felt justified in saying no this time.

Off we went, me, three girls and a carry cage all crammed in my little car. We got to the store where the rats were. Now, I don’t like wild rats of course, and never really had an opinion on tame rats, but must admit the pair Miss F’s friend bought were very pretty and very cute. Miss F looked around at all the assorted squeaky, fluffy critters and pulled a pleading face at me, but I pretended not to see it and tried to hurry things up, very aware of time ticking on.

Bury St Edmunds is a small town at its heart, the infrastructure simply isn’t there to deal with high volumes of traffic so it’s best to avoid it whenever possible. Add to that, the fact that one of the main roads through the centre of town is currently blocked, as well as a few other smaller side ones, and the chaotic hell that is school going home time becomes even worse. I belted along the road, rats squeaking at every turn, desperate to drop off friend three and pick up the cage from her house before the school bell went and gridlock ensued. I’m happy to say we made it, but Miss F has been begging ever since to have rats. I’m sticking to my guns on this one as well, I don’t really want caged animals in the house, they smell, make a lot of mess, and I think my cat would have a very hard job restraining herself from murdering them.

Speaking of pets, a lot of you have messaged me asking how Queenie Ant is, well, I have to admit, we’re not sure. As you know, at first, we thought she was dead, then we thought she was alive but hibernating because all the worker ants piled in around her and seemed to settle down for a long nap as well. But now we’re not sure. They keep moving her body around the habitat, which is very odd. It’s almost as though they don’t know if she’s alive or dead either. We’re leaving them alone to do whatever they feel they must, but it’s a bit worrying. If Queenie is dead, then all those worker ants are basically dead ants walking. Although they can live without a queen, without a purpose to their lives they will eventually die. They can’t join another colony because they would be killed and it’s no good putting another queen in there, because they will kill her. Usually, Mother Nature’s systems work very well, but I can’t understand the reasoning behind this one.

I can’t remember if I mentioned it last week, but Miss F went for a job interview for a position as front of house staff in a newly opened, trendy gastro pub about a twenty-minute drive from Bury. Well, she went for a trial session Friday evening 5-9pm so again called upon the services of Mum’s Taxi. Bearing in mind on a Friday, I already run her and her friend out to their voluntary work placement for 9am (a round journey of about 1 hour and 20 minutes), then do the repeat journey to pick them up at 2pm, it doesn’t leave much time for us to get home, eat a late lunch, and for her to shower the stable off her and get ready, before we have to leave at 4.20pm to allow time in rush hour traffic to get out of town and reach the pub before 5pm.

Normally, it would be fine, but this particular Friday I decided to take my mother out on the pick-up journey so that she can see where she has to go, because when I’m busy at the Fair on that Friday, she is going to collect the girls, so I don’t have to take two hours out of my day to do it. Anyway, normally, it’s a simple matter to cut across country and reach the village where my parents live, and I’ve done it a couple of times before. It only adds a few minutes to the journey time and is a straight-forward route that I know very well.

But we all know how things go when you’re in a hurry. Driving back from dropping the girls off in the morning, the plan came to me to ask my mother to help on the day of the fair, so I cut across country to take the normal detour to their village. All was going well, until I hit the first of the road closed signs. Now, out in the countryside we all tend to ignore these signs, usually they mean there’s two bollards around a pothole and you can still get through, or the actual road closed is miles away from where you need to go. So, I bomb merrily along the road, Radio 2 blasting out, until suddenly there’s an actual barrier across the road and it’s clear I’m going no further.

Bugger it. Not being able to get through meant a long backtrack and then an even further cross-country detour to reach my parents. Driving back the way I came, I see a signpost to a village I know, not far from my parent’s village, if I can get to that then I’ll know the way from there. Making a snap decision, I turn off the main road and into what I can only describe as “here be dragons” territory. The road got smaller and smaller! I was totally off the map, lost and had no idea what to do except keep going. At one point, I think I went through a farmyard, and I kept expecting to hear the sound of banjos. Finally, after about twenty straight minutes of “where the f**k am I” driving, the road spat me out on a road I knew and I was able to make it to my parents house with my car looking like I’d been rally driving!

Oh yes, I hadn’t mentioned there was also torrential rain with mud being washed off the fields onto the roads. Big fun.

When it came time to do the reverse journey it started out so well. Mum had come into Bury to do some shopping, so we were able to go straight from there out to the farm to pick up both the girls. I’d looked at the map and figured out another route to get her back to her village without having to go all the way to the ends of the world and back again. I told her the route I planned to take, she agreed – initially. We picked up the girls, we’re on our way back, when mum springs a surprise on me.

“Take this turning.”

“What?”

“Take this turning, it’s quicker.”

“Mum,” this was Miss F in the back. “I’ve got Google maps up, there is another way if you turn left there and then right at the end of the road.”

“Ok.”

“No,” says my mother. “Don’t go that way, you can’t get through.”

“Google maps says you can, Nana.”

“Well, Google maps is wrong, because I know you can’t get through. Trust me.”

Now, you’d think I’d have learnt by now. Which option should I have gone with? Miss F and Google maps. Or, my mother with her vague recollections of a road she hasn’t been down in forty years? Yep, you’ve guessed it, stupidly I went with my mother. The road went on and on and on. It got smaller and smaller and smaller. Finally, we found a signpost telling us we’re heading in completely the wrong direction. We turn around, take another road.

This road also goes on and on and on. Time is ticking by. I’m very aware that we have to get home. Miss F is honking from shovelling horse poo all morning. She has to have a shower and wash her hair, we have to eat, she has to get ready for her all-important job trial. My eyes meet those of Miss F in the mirror and I see the panic in hers.

Then about a quarter of a mile down the road we see it. A massive hedge trimmer. It’s taking up the entire width of the road. No room even for my tiny car to squeeze through and I know from experience there’s no way this thing will back up to a passing place and let me through. There’s nothing for it, we turn back around. By now, we’re so disorientated from all the turns we’ve made we are well and truly lost. My mother, who up until this point has been very vocal with her local knowledge suggestions, has suddenly gone silent on the matter. Picking a road at random, we creep along it until suddenly I’m back on the tiny lane I’d found myself on that morning. We’re saved. I know where we are, but we’ve wasted thirty minutes of precious time and we’re still thirty minutes from home.

Finally reaching home, Operation Panic Stations swings into motion. We quickly gobble down the pasta bake I’d thankfully already made that morning ready and Miss F shoots off to have her shower. She’s upstairs getting dressed, it’s now 4.15pm so we’re up against the clock, when suddenly there’s a howl of disbelief and a pair of black jeans land at the bottom of the stairs. The pub had requested that she dress in plain black jeans and a white shirt for the job trial, and as she had neither, we’d had to go shopping for them the day before. Now I’m looking at the new jeans in horror, more specifically I’m looking at the socking great security tag still attached to their waistband! We’d paid for the jeans, of course we had, but somehow the cashier had forgotten to take the tag off and somehow we hadn’t set the alarms off when we left. What can we do? She can’t wear them with this giant metal disc attached to them. Miss F had now left the small town of panic and was heading into the suburbs of meltdown so I sent her back upstairs to finish getting ready whilst I took the jeans into the kitchen to see what could be done. Stores attach these tags to prevent shoplifting because they are impossible to remove without the correct in-store device. Wrong. A desperately determined woman armed only with a blunt pair of secateurs can get one off in under three minutes. So the tag was off, but we were now running ten minutes late!

What I know you’re all wanting to know is did Miss F make it in time for her job trial and how did she get on? Well, it was tight, she was about a minute late. I’d planned for us to leave at 4.20pm to allow for the increased leaving college traffic, but because we didn’t get away until ten minutes later it put us slap bang in the middle of it. I had to push the car to its limits where I could, and we screeched into the pub car park at 5.01pm by the car clock. She rushed in and I then had to face all that traffic again to fight my way back into town. Only now it’s worse, because now all the people leaving work have joined the fun. Back home, I had to wait and try not to fall asleep on the sofa, before having to turn out at 8.30pm to go and pick her up again. This time the journey took 17 minutes, clocking up to a massive five hours total I’d been driving around that day. The things we do for our kids!

But the important thing is she loved it and feels that she did very well. She seems pretty confident they will be offering her a job, and even despite the inconvenience and extra petrol, I hope they do. It’s a nice job, in a lovely working environment, and the pay is very good considering she’s only 16. More than enough for her to save for university, driving lessons and to compensate me for all the petrol I’m now going through.

And that’s been my week. Once again, there’s been no time to write or read or relax. I’m back to work tomorrow, so maybe I can rest then. It’s now 4pm Saturday, the fire is laid, I’ve just about done all my chores and a nice dinner with a glass or two of wine is planned. Let’s just hope I stay awake long enough to enjoy my evening off.

Thank you as usual for joining me, and I hope you all have a great week.

Julia Blake

Just Kidding… 15 Years of Being a Single-Parent

This week my daughter, Miss F, turned 16. Like most parents of teenagers, I look at her and wonder where on earth all those years went to. For fifteen of them, I’ve been a single mum and raised her totally alone with no help from my ex-husband. Whilst this was not exactly what I signed up for, as a wise woman once said – “It is what it is” – so I just had to knuckle down and deal with it.

They’ve been eventful years, in which she’s grown from a tiny baby with the smallest feet ever, to a lanky teenager needing size seven shoes! There’s been a great deal of hardship and sacrifice along the way, but there’s also been side splitting, roll about on the floor moments of laughter as well.

When my daughter was very young and had newly started nursery school, she had yet to learn the art of diplomacy. That sometimes you need to think before you speak and not blurt out things you’ve heard mummy say to a friend when she thought you weren’t listening. A perfect example of this was the case of the classroom assistant. A lovely lady, she nevertheless had the ability to not only talk all four legs off a donkey but persuade it to go for a walk afterwards.

Any parent unfortunate enough to be cornered by her in the playground would stand there, eyes glazed, as she rattled on about anything and everything. Bound by British politeness and a urgent desire not to piss off one of the people who looked after their precious small human all day, the hapless parent would nod and agree, desperately sneaking looks at their watch and seeing the other mummies and daddies scuttling by at speed, thankful for once it wasn’t them caught in the small talk limelight.

One morning we entered the playground and before I could stop her, Miss F ran over to the classroom assistant crying out “Mrs S, Mrs S, stick out your tongue!” Confused, Mrs S looked at her and enquired why Miss F wanted her to stick out her tongue, to which my darling daughter shrieked at the top of her lungs, “Because I want to see if it’s hinged in the middle the way mummy says it is!”

Mortified, I tried to apologise and laugh it off, but this lady was not to be mollified. She gathered up her dignity, swept all the children before her into class, and NEVER SPOKE TO ME AGAIN! I was the envy of the playground. No more sneaking in and hoping to be able to drop and collect without being stopped, I sauntered in as casually as I liked. I was concerned she might take it out on Miss F, who was innocent of any crime other than that of being a parrot, but another teacher – who found the whole thing highly amusing – told me apparently Mrs S had loudly declared that “Really, in these cases it is always the parent who should be blamed.”

We survived the early years quite nicely. Potty training and weaning came and went with no real problems – mostly because I was quite a laid back mum and didn’t pressure her into them until she was ready and wanted to do them. Her flappy mouth though continued to be a problem. Seemingly with no filter, she’d say exactly what was in her mind, regardless of the consequences.

Trying on a pair of trousers one day in a changing room in Next, I looked at my six-year-old who’d been bribed to be good with a packet of smarties and asked – “Do these trousers make mummy look fat?” Giving the question her full concentration, she studied me intently, head on one side, before announcing loudly and with complete candour – “No mummy, it’s your fat that makes you look fat.” Snorts of laughter erupted up and down the length of the cubicles. Needless to say, I did not buy the trousers.

She was quite a studious child, and as books are obviously very important in our house, reading and writing were skills she was keen to learn. I remember one day she ran through to me, all puffed up with pride and declared “come and see, I’ve just written my first word.” Thinking to myself this must be one of those parental moments all the books tell you about, I ran to see. Well, her “word” began with an Z then a Y then a K then an X and progressed from there. I squinted at this word that quite legitimately could have been the name of a firm of Polish builders, before gently asking what it meant. Looking at me as if I was the stupidest person on the planet, she replied – “Well I don’t know! I haven’t learnt to read yet!”

This notion she had the dimmest mother in the world is one that seems to have persisted. Driving her to an after-school club one day she suddenly asked how hard it was to drive. I replied that it was quite hard. You had to pay attention, learn all the rules of the road and what all the signs meant, and then when you’d passed your test and could drive alone, you always had to be aware of what you were doing and what was happening on the road around you. That, in conclusion, it was quite a difficult thing to do. She considered this, then asked – “Well, how did you manage it then?”

And then there were those after-school clubs. Oh, we did them all. Swimming – all the way from tadpole group at pre-school age, right up to marlin group in middle school. Every week we’d hurtle like a rocket from her school which was one side of town, to the swimming pool, which was right the other side. Having only 15 minutes to get her there, changed and in the pool, the drive was always a flurry of her changing in the back of the car, whilst I risked life and limb and probably violated a few traffic laws negotiating school run traffic and all the other manic mummies trying to get their offspring to their extra-curricular activities. We were always late by a few moments, always got a look from the instructor, and once it was suggested we transfer to the later class. But I didn’t want to do that, it would have meant hanging around the leisure centre for 45 minutes because there was no point going home first, and then we wouldn’t have got home to have dinner until gone six o’clock. Nope, I stubbornly refused to change, and so we managed, week after week, always being a few seconds late.

Then there was ballet. Miss F started taking ballet classes at age two. A serious drain on our finances, we managed to pay for them because I thought they were what she wanted to do. For seven long years she’d don a pink tutu once a week and lumber around like a heavy-footed pixie. Until she finally admitted she hated ballet, was crap at it, and had only carried on with it for so long because she thought I wanted her to do it! But she’d rather leave so she could take up archery instead please. When I thought of all the hundreds of pounds wasted over the years on lessons and ballet kit, I wanted to cry, but hey ho, such is the life of a parent.

Archery I didn’t mind. The classes were supplemented by the school and all the equipment was provided. She stayed late after school once a week, so it meant I merely ambled along after all the school run traffic had cleared and picked her up. The archery craze lasted precisely one term and was dropped in favour of rugby. I had no problems with her playing rugby – hey, my girl can do whatever a boy does – but by now she was wearing glasses, so I was a bit concerned about them being broken. As it turned out, I was worrying about the wrong end. Involved in a tackle once day, a ligament tore in her leg and that was her benched for the rest of the term and me having to drive her to and from school every day. And that was the end of rugby.

She sang in the girls’ choir at the local cathedral for a few years, and I lost count of the number of Evensongs, performances and carol concerts I sat through. That lasted about three years, before she got bored with that as well.

Ask any parent, and they’ll tell you the loudest sound on the planet, is that of a young child saying something hugely inappropriate in the worst place they could possibly say it. Once, we were picking up a few bits and pieces at our local branch of the upmarket grocery store, Waitrose. A tad more expensive than other supermarkets, it is right on my doorstep, so we’d sometimes shop there rather than get the car out. When Miss F was practicing her reading, she’d like to carry the shopping list and read out each item to me in turn. We were in the last aisle, the bottled drinks aisle, and she informed me proudly there was only one item left on our list. I asked what it was, and in a voice loud enough to summon the cows’ home, she announced – “COCK, MUMMY. YOU HAVE TO BUY SOME COCK!”

My eyes bugged. My face went bright red. My mouth opened and closed several times because I had no words. All around us, eyebrows were raised, mouths quirked into grins and a nearby shop assistant told me – “You won’t find any cock in here dear, try Tesco.” Snatching the list away, I exclaimed, “COKE! I have to buy cocoa cola!” For months afterwards, every time we went back, I swear the assistants would all smirk knowingly at me.

That same branch of Waitrose used to have those little trolleys for children to push around behind their parents as they did their shopping. A hellishly bad idea, I can only assume they were the brainchild of a committee of childless idiots, and luckily, they didn’t last long. Of course, Miss F thought they were brilliant and absolutely insisted on having one every time we went shopping. One day, I was doing quite a big shop. I’d had an unexpected windfall and was having a little party to repay all the various invitations Miss F and I had had over the years.

Wandering around the shop, Miss F clanked her little trolley behind me, ramming it into the back of my legs every time I stopped, crashing it into a display of tinned goods and sending them flying, and nearly kneecapping an elderly lady. We finally reached the last aisle in the shop and I loaded up the remaining few things on my list into her little trolley because I had no room in mine. Making our way to the check out, I noticed a few people looking askance at us and it suddenly dawned on me that the last aisle had been the alcohol one!

Yep, you’ve guessed it, Miss F’s little trolley was now full of bottles of wine, beer and a bottle of port all rattling away merrily, with Teddy riding high on top. I stopped, realising how bad it looked and hustled her away behind the freezers, where I picked all the most innocent things out of my trolley and swapped for the bottles and tins of booze in hers. Bad Mummy!

One day she came home from school full of the history lesson they’d had about Tudor times, and how King Henry VIII had broken from Rome and created a new religion so he could marry Anne Boleyn. I’m very interested in British history, so we chatted about it for a while, before she asked – “Mummy, is our current Queen a prostitute?” I replied – “Yes, dear, but don’t tell Philip.” Of course, she meant protestant.

Looking back over the years, I remember more laughter than tears, and I really wouldn’t have changed a thing. Well, a bit more money and a bit more time would have been nice, but we managed. And now she’s 16. Regular readers of my blog will know we had her prom a few weeks ago and her Sweet Sixteen birthday party. She’s growing up so fast it leaves me breathless. She’s done with school and is preparing for the adventure that will be college.

Being a single parent is hard, let no one tell you otherwise. You have to be good cop/bad cop, and everything is on your shoulders, and it’s one of those jobs that you don’t know you’ve got right until it’s too late. I think I did ok, looking at the wonderful, kind and hardworking human being she has become, I don’t think I did too badly at all. But, at the end of the day, I did my best, and that’s really all anyone can ask of you.

Having fun with filters on her new phone Christmas 2017

Thank you once again for joining me, as always, I’d love to hear your thoughts and comments on this or any of my blogs, or if you simply have something you want to ask me or have a suggestion for a future topic.

Julia Blake