Hello lovelies!
A quiet few weeks for me. I found myself fairly unwell for a couple of weeks and spent most of my time in bed or too sluggish to manage much. The absolutely blistering heat seems to finally be packing itself up and while, mentally, I’m euphoric about the return of some lovely gloom and a bit more rainfall, my body is starting it’s seasonally scheduled tantrum.
Still! Lots to look forward to. It’s my fiancé and I’s favourite time of the year with a slew of mini traditions coming up, such as a week’s break just shy of Lincoln at the beginning of October where I will bundle myself up on the porch with tea and blankets and snacks and spoil myself rotten at farm shops and car boot sales. I am looking forward to shoving as many cheesy Halloween films down my throat as humanely possible, and huddling up in bed with books and picking away at stories between re-runs of X-Files and Buffy.
I’ve ordered myself a laughably cutesy pink MacBook Neo as a treat and pick-me-up to myself as well, so I can write a bit more comfortably. I’m sick to death of being chained up in the office on my desktop with my back to the window, unable to drag it with me to bed or out and about, and I am resolutely just not a pen-and-paper author. I’m disorganised as it is without ideas floating about on paper, of which Mavis loves to hole-puncture with her dorky little vampire teeth. Or I chuck them without thinking.
I’m part editing / part rounding off the final couple of scenes for The Lightning Heartbeat while trying not to let myself get too distracted by anything else. (I’m slow, I know. I always think my stories are simple, and then they snowball and get messy, and I have to untangle it, and I work full time and I’m always knackered when I clock off. I know, I know!)
I’ve been very quietly and secretly jotting ideas for a much more relaxed project where I return to some of my childhood reads and perhaps write a few homages to them for pure, personal fun (what a novelty, aye?)
I got talking about Point Horror to some folk and how that was, to memory, my first real stepping stone into reading and writing anything remotely spooky, discounting a hardly-literate me skimming through the pages of my Mum’s King books on holiday.
For whatever reason, Goosebumps didn’t really have a massive impact in the UK (not where I was, anyway!) but I remember Point Horror being pushed by Scholastic book clubs big time (I would know, being the introverted little dork that begged to skip playtime to help sort the pamphlets out.) The Boyfriend in particular I absolutely rinsed through time and time again, and I’ve slowly started collecting copies again to read around Halloween as a little tradition.
It brings back a lot of lovely, if not clouded memories, of occupying myself around the indoor market while my Mum had a stall outside for a short while. I’d mainly rummage through the ‘tat’ shops as my parents called it, where there was everything from handbags to disco balls to faux-tiffany lamps; extension cables, Christmas ornaments and biscuit tins filled with spools of thread.
I’d sometimes go to the Tartan bar and loiter, too afraid to ask for anything and usually without money on me, but it was mainly because I liked the fact they gave you a raffle ticket as your order number and I liked collecting odd scraps like that.
I was fond of the pet shops, too, though they hated me – I’d read a load of books about pet welfare because I was obsessed with my budgie at the time – Joey – and they apparently didn’t appreciate an 8-year-old girl politely, if not a bit loudly, saying a budgie had ruffled feathers, and was it sick? Whoops.
Book shops were the best though. Even in a busy town market they were pockets of calm (and where I could retreat with a bit of an embarrassingly teary eye after a snide remark from said pet stall owner). We had a couple of used book stalls where you could buy a book, and if returned, you got a majority discount on the next purchase if you didn’t want to keep it.
That was the last remaining book stall in my home town until recently – we don’t have a single one now, to my memory – you have to rely on the library and a charity shop. I won’t lie and pretend I don’t have dreams about having such a strong safety net that I could say fuck it and open up a small bookshop in town. Don’t all bookworms want to, at some point?
Then down at the other end of town, in our modest excuse for a ‘mall’, there was a shop I can’t even remember the name of anymore, whether a chain or a personal venture, selling brand new copies of books; this one slightly more abuzz, always with best selling copies or new releases, and an odd notion that always piqued my interest as a kid – series.
Ironically, I bloody hate a long-winded series now, but as a kid… lord. I couldn’t hack the idea of just getting one book if it was part of a series. I had to have the full set or it felt like I was going to rattle out of my skin. I was the exact same with TV shows. I was begging for video tapes so I could record shows on TV, and when I knew I had them all, then I’d watch them properly.
What a tangent. Anyway!
I’m at the office so cannot provide any Mavis tax today, but know she is well and is being delightfully cuddly now the temperature has dropped. I expect her to become a top rate lap cat when Winter arrives. Maybe I can get back to some embroidery or knitting soon with her as my personal thread-counter.
Take care. Hopefully you’re enjoying the gloom as much as I!