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Satisfied Saturday Six

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The SSS celebrates six things that have gone well, or at least okay, in the past week. It is the creation of Terry Egan, who is all things wonderful.

1. I got to choir this week and passed my audition, so I’m an official tenor now. It’s also good to have my feeling that I do have a low voice for a woman confirmed.

2. I’m signed up to write three articles for Jane Austen’s Regency World over the next 6 months or so. Look out for information on ‘incredible cures and quacks’, toilet habits, and kept men…

3. I faced the fact that my weight is really not what I want it to be, and went to my first Slimming World session on Tuesday. I’m hoping that having to be weighed once a week in a sort of ‘official’ setting will make me more inclined to stick to a decent diet.

4. I went book shopping yesterday. I frequent charity shops and the like, to try and prevent myself bankrupting the household. Anyway, I ended up with 19 books (though three of them were for Child) so it’s very exciting having them lined up for myself.

5. I am an unashamed Manchester United fan, and my team have now basically been confirmed as being in the Champion’s League next season. (The next thing is to get us playing well, but one step at a time…)

6. Oh! I think I might finish the first three chapters of the new novel (working title The Sisterhood, and again a lesbian Regency romance) in the next week.  This feels like a Success as I set myself a secret target to finish them before the end of May. (I’ve also written another 12,000 words of other bits of the book, as I don’t work in a linear fashion, but it’s nice to see the beginning coming together a bit.)

Friday Fiction (Article Snippet)

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So, I have recently been writing about mistresses in the Regency Period for Jane Austen’s Regency World magazine, and I thought I’d share a little bit of it with you for  today’s Friday Fiction. (I continue apparently not to know what ‘fiction’ means.) Here am I wombling on about the difference between mistresses and prostitutes

In the Regency Period (and indeed in other eras) there was a definite difference between a ‘mistress’ and a ‘prostitute’. A mistress belonged to, or was ‘kept’ by, one specific man, whereas a prostitute would have sex with any man for money. Mistresses might be taken up by one man after another, and perhaps have the role of courtesan in between gentleman lovers; however, a mistress was by definition not a prostitute. Whilst it was expected that she would have sex with her lover whenever he required it, she would also be likely to have a social or emotional relationship with the man as well. For the mistress, it was not necessarily a bad choice, though it could have problematic outcomes not only for the lady herself but for her family. For a start, it would be considerably more difficult to marry after having been a mistress: if Darcy hadn’t forced Wickham to marry Lydia Bennet in Pride and Prejudice, it is very unlikely that anyone else would have married her – and the ill reputation would also have fallen upon her sisters.  It also left a woman reliant on the gentleman in question: in Sense and Sensibility, we are shown the downward spiral of Eliza Brandon’s life after her first affair.

Satisfied Saturday Six

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The SSS celebrates six things that have gone well, or at least okay, in the past week. It is the creation of Terry Egan, who is all things wonderful.

Well. This has not been my best week ever. So it’s even more important than usual to focus on the positives.

1. I successfully(ish) managed to paint a small section of wall which had been a dreary concrete colour. It improves our kitchen immensely.

2. The election results, whilst not (at all) what I wanted, have given me a distinct idea of the sort of world I want to live in, and some ways of moving forward personally and with like-minded folk to try and move our country in that direction.

3. I’m also really appreciating the friends and family I have. They are most excellent people.

4. Child has been agitating to join a local football club, and I just heard this morning that he can start next Saturday, which will please him.

5. My cats are gorgeous and cuddly.

6. It is still mostly sunny and we are making the most of it, spending hours at the park.

Satisfied Saturday Six

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The SSS celebrates six things that have gone well, or at least okay, in the past week. It is the creation of Terry Egan, who is all things wonderful.

1. It has continued to be mostly dry and even sunny this week. Which means that Child is playing happily outside, and my solar panels are making a happy-sounding humming.

2. I wrote another piece for the Huff Post, this time a political satire on Ukip.

3. Met up with an excellent friend whom I hadn’t seen for ages on Wednesday. We have to make sure it isn’t that long again!

4. Two more medical appointments successfully navigated, and I have a new medication which is supposed to help my pain levels become lower, so it will be lovely if it does.

5. Child and I read together again this week. We were doing it regularly, and then we got out of the habit. We’ll have to make an effort to get back IN to the habit, because it’s fun. (We do voices and everything!)

6. I keep thinking it’s September because I was in Cornwall a couple of weeks back, and usually that happens in August. Then I remember I have the summer ahead of me still, and it’s very pleasing!

Wednesday Word of the Week

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Okay, it’s been a while since I’ve done one of these, but someone (Alan, you know who you are) suggested I did something for the word ‘guttersnipe’.

Well, the dictionary will tell you that guttersnipe means “1: a homeless vagabond and especially an outcast boy or girl in the streets of a city. 2 : a person of the lowest moral or economic station.”

I, however, always imagine the picture below whenever I see or hear the word. Poor little snipe in a gutter.

guttersnipe

Satisfied Saturday Six

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The SSS celebrates six things that have gone well, or at least okay, in the past week. It is the creation of Terry Egan, who is all things wonderful.

1. I’m back from (a glorious) holiday, feeling tired but happy (and ready to start blogging again 🙂 )

2. I’ve discovered that one of my rugs has sold at Upstairs Downstairs. This is very encouraging: I love making rugs, but can’t have them out at home because one of my cats eats them (really really eats them). (If anyone wants to commission me to make one, please do! I can work to any colour scheme.)

3. Child is happy to be back at school with his friends (though he had an excellent holiday too), and it’s now light and warm enough to play outside after school.

4. I’ve had some long, lovely chats with a very good friend this week.

5. I set myself a goal of writing 200 words at least five times a week, and have kept it.

6. I have been Out In The Evening twice this week. It looks suspiciously like having a social life. On Tuesday I went to a choir rehearsal, and I’m hoping they’ll let me join. Then last night I went out with some local friends in the village I live in. This is exceedingly unlike me, but it has been very lovely!

Satisfied Saturday Six

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The SSS celebrates six things that have gone well, or at least okay, in the past week. It is the creation of Terry Egan, who is all things wonderful.

 

1. Wow, I am really happy that my blog entry ‘Five Things People With CFS/ME Would Be Happy Never To Hear Again (And What We’d Like You To Say)’ has done so well. Obviously, after 22 years living with ME, it’s an area really close to my heart and I’m so glad that it resonated with so many other people. (Well, sort of glad – I’m really sorry how many people with this illness have heard the same unhelpful things I have, but I hope that maybe a few more people might understand now.)

 

2. The ‘Dark Lord Funk’ version of ‘Uptown Funk’ (a beautiful Harry Potter parody) has made me so happy.  I have no shame in saying that I’m a Harry Potter fan, and it incorporated so many parts of the original books and films into it – words, phrases, even the film’s theme music – that it was perfect. Love it.

 

3. I have a new (to me) car! After a couple of weeks without one, it is so great to have the freedom to get about. When your mobility is as limited as mine is (very), life is very curtailed without a car. I’m still getting used to its quirks, but I’m sure it will come.

 

4. On a slightly more mundane level, I managed to take my anti-migraine medicine the other day before the migraine took hold. I was still under the weather, but when I get migraines I can get frighteningly ill, and I managed to avoid that.

 

5. I had a parents’ meeting at Child’s school last week. Child is doing very well at maths (which doesn’t surprise me – he’s the sort of kid who thinks ‘mental maths problems’ is a great game to play in the car) and he seems happy at school. (That doesn’t surprise me, either – I ask him after school each day whether he’s had a good day and he always says yes. I got paranoid that maybe it was just a reflexive response, so I asked him if he’d tell me if he hadn’t had a good day, and he said “Of course!” So apparently, he really does have a good day every day!)

 

6. I’m really looking forward to going on holiday next week with my extended family. Thirteen of us! I’m expecting chaos…

Friday Fiction (poetry)

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Random anecdote time: My grandmother had a slightly eccentric habit of clipping out pictures and phrases about cats and sticking them all around the two bathrooms she had. (When I say ‘bathrooms’, there was actually only a toilet and washbasin in one, and a toilet in the other with a washbasin in the ‘real’ bathroom next door. But I wrote ‘toilets’ to start with, and it gave me a mental image of picture-covered-u-bends…) Anyway, she has been dead for many a year, but a whole lot of the phrases/poems/extracts about cats have stayed with me. There was one, I recall, which read:

The gardener’s cat called Mignonette
She hates the cold, she hates the wet.
She sits amongst the greenhouse flowers
And dreams for hours – and hours – and hours.

Now, in one of my more pretentious moments as a 13 year old (fresh back from holidaying at my grandmother’s house), I wrote a poem. I felt a little guilty because it was the poem I’ve just typed out that gave me inspiration, and you can see links between the two. But I doubt if the original author would feel that I had stolen their poem. Mine?

Oh rose! Thou rose of ruby red
When summer comes, lift up thy head,
And dream away the passing hours
Sitting alone from the other flowers.

Oh rose! No greater beauty known.
A summer flower, yet one alone.
As pure and simple as is gold;
A sign of love from days of old.

Oh rose! No flower quite so sweet.
As cold as ice in days of hear.
In summer thou art dearly blessed,
But then in winter, sleep and rest.

Now, before you comment – I know, I know, it is not the most wonderful poem ever written. And even when I wrote it, I was sometimes embarrassed by it. But it’s interesting how one thing may trigger another. And my grandmother’s bathrooms will live in my memory forever 🙂

Wednesday Word of the Week

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Crannied –  Having crannies chinks or fissures as a crannied wall

Okay, so I couldn’t think of a word for today so I went to a ‘random word generator’ online and it gave me this. Whilst, if offered the word ‘crannied’ I would probably have come up with this definition, I would not have been certain that it was a word which actually existed. I’m still not 100% convinced by it now.

Anyone ever used it?