Simon Armitage, calcium and ‘If’.

Good morning, at this slightly stupid-o’clock-time-to-be-up on the weekend – my brain literally won’t switch off – so, I shall make the most of it.

My week has been a roller coaster of emotions and temperaments. Last weekend, I had a heavy, heavy heart due to sad news, throughout the week I’ve supported others whilst experiencing elation regards my own personal achievements. Phew, I’m emotionally knacked! Which goes some way to explaining why the old brain is a whirring. Any way, at a writers’ meeting this week a poet, Mal Dewhirst, duly quoted Kipling’s ‘If’ – and yes, it was very appropriate, as was ‘if all around you are losing their heads, and you’re staying calm – maybe you don’t quite understand the situation’ was is possibly nearer the mark.

Monday and Tuesday saw very little writing occur as I had the day job to contend with – class observations and all that razzamatazz. Anyway, once achieved, I returned to my W.I.P. At first, it felt strange working with new characters and settings but now, I. Am. Loving. It. Tuesday evening, I had a read through of the first six chapters and critically assessed each characters’ introduction, setting and situation – I surprised myself, which was nice.

Wednesday night, saw me attending the Mad Hatters’ Writing group – I didn’t take anything to read, as the chapter I wanted to read needs a slight tweak. Strange, but I literally don’t want the group to critique what I already know needs attention. So, I attended and critiqued their work instead. I’ve mentioned before that there are only four regular attendees, we have two others that attend when they can. So, we do have quite a varied agenda from critiquing work, chatting about anything literary and anything obscurely related. The group must have entered some kind of time warp on Wednesday night, as we were critiquing and chatting for about four hours and yet, only two and a half hours had past on the clock???? Strange, but hey, bonus time - an early night! The congratulations of the evening went to Mal Dewhirst, who will be inaugurated into the role of Staffordshire’s first Poet Laureate tomorrow, 4^th October - National Poetry day.   

Thursday evening, provided another carefree night at the laptop pummeling away at the W.I.P. plus, I got to watch the first of the new series of Downton Abbey – yep, that’s right, I’m only four weeks behind the t.v. schedule.

Friday was a day of mixed emotions. It was the funeral of baby Campbell Burns – I thought about his fmaily all day, as I couldn’t attend. The day job simply turned manic. By the evening, I needed to be soothed by the dulcet tones of Simon Armitage, appearing at the Birmingham book Festival, to talk about his new book ‘Walking Home’. The added delight was having my copy signed and chatting briefly to him about ‘Clown Punk’ which is currently on the GCSE exam syllabus. Bless him, he seemed quite embarrassed by the honour. Hubby was cheeky enough, as always, to ask for a leaflet of the event to be signed – bless him, Simon immediately drew a pair of glass and a squiggly moustache onto his photo and signed it. What a lovely chap!

Which brings me back to this morning, having spent my early wake-up chatting with you guys, I am about to head off for my weekly dog trek – miss muse included. I’ve just purchased, as a reward, a year’s adoption of a donkey called Oscar, as a class pet for my form group and now, my day can begin. Sometime today, I shall be writing a piece about the element calcium – which has the twentieth position within the periodic table. I shall be submitting the short piece sometime tomorrow, for consideration in the Stroke Associations celebratory book organised by Mal Dewhirst. Hopefully, the piece flows nicely and I get chance for more W.I.P writing before bed time.

As always, you can follow me on Twitter @odwyer_author to receive random updates throughout my creative week. The follower numbers are going through the roof – which humbles me greatly. Enjoy x

p.s. - that was the 100th blog post - boy, oh boy!