ENGLISH MUM: never knowingly undercatered

Me Mam and the Disreputable one, although no longer together, were never (and still aren’t) that type of pushy parent that are ‘in your face’, forcing great accomplishments upon their unwilling children, bribing and cajoling in that ‘beauty pageant mom’ way that us stiff upper lip Brits particularly detest. No, they’re more the quiet, vaguely encouraging type (I think my Dad rustled his Telegraph over the breakfast table and said he’d give me fifty quid for every exam I passed, which was more than enough encouragement to a 16 year old girl with a serious shopping habit) and generally me Mam is more concerned with us being happy than being either disgustingly rich or very successful. I’ve tried her patience quite a bit…there was coming home with a tattoo: that didn’t go down well, then getting fired - or stomping out in a strop - from every bloody job I had for several years (I have a short attention span)…but hey, she’s still talking to me.

Even better, she’s a regular blog reader and last time she visited, she’d brought with her a copy of Louise Doughty’s book ‘A Novel in a Year’ reminding me that I’d purchased the exact same book about a year ago which was now gathering dust somewhere on a shelf. My computer’s files are littered with half finished plots, semi-crafted characters and descriptions of people and places that one day I plan to insert into my finely crafted novel. Somehow it’s just never happened and this book was the reminder I needed to get to work. Since then, I’ve been following the weekly exercises set in the book and I’m actually quite enjoying it.

No matter that I’ll probably be diverted by some new mad scheme in a couple of weeks (decorating, an urgent desire to bake the perfect brown loaf, a sudden spurt of exercising, Christmas…oh God, yes, Christmas…), I shall endeavour to keep up these random scribbles and to one day produce a passable manuscript that I shall file away somewhere safe and never refer to again. Or I might send it to an agent. Who knows?