Keris Stainton's Blog, page 92

Dancing With the Stars… hubba

I don't remember very much about this week's Dancing With the Stars, except

It was Rock Week
Jennifer Grey messed up again.
Audrina Patridge went home, which appalled the judges, but didn't surprise me at all since she had absolutely zero connection with the audience.
Maks wore leather trousers
And the show started with the Top 10 Best Ever Dances As Voted For By You, the Viewers. A few of my faves were in there (Apolo Anton Ohno's samba, Helio Castroneves' quickstep, Mel B's paso), but the winning dance was Drew Lachey's freestyle and it was… not good.
And then there was this… (hubba)

I love Paris… and I love New York… but which is best?

No need for a Harry Hill-style FIGHT – graphic designer Vahram Muratyan has worked it out in these gorgeous prints.

See more at Paris vs New York, a tally of two cities

via A Cup of Joe

This is why I love Catherine Newman so much

Click pic to read Catherine on Mommy Blogging

I have wittered more than once about how much I love Catherine Newman's gorgeous memoir Waiting for Birdy. She also writes for a few of my favourite magazines: Family Fun, O Magazine, Body + Soul* (she also wrote for my favourite ever parenting magazine, Wondertime, now sadly defunct).

A couple of weeks ago I decided to email her and tell her how much I love her writing. I'd actually drafted a couple of emails before, but then scrapped them cos I was worried I sounded weird or gushing or dorky. Or all three. This time, I just thought 'what the hey' and sent it anyway. And Catherine sent me a lovely reply. Of course she did.

Anyway. She writes recipes for Family Fun online and I just started reading one and had to stop and write this blog post. This - from a recipe for Iced Oatmeal Cookies – is why I love Catherine Newman so much.

"Sometimes I can't believe that I have become this person–and I mean that in the best possible way. I fold their clean t-shirts and make their dentist appointments and read Farmer Boy and dig splinters out of their toes and kiss them when their school day is done, and I think, "These are my children! I am their mother!" Me. I mean, I am practically a child still myself–at least in my own mind. But I don't think the kids even think twice about it. I don't think they ever shake their skeptical heads and think, "We're onto you and the gappy way you inhabit your mom costume." They see me, and I am their mother, the one with the boobs that have been nursed down to the floor where they drag along righteously, the one with the morning smell and the busy work life and the good dinners on the table and the irritable loathing of loud noises and the affection that twinkles like a whole galaxy of stars lit up across the heavens just for them. The tax forms come, and that word "dependents" always puts a lump in my throat: my dependents! They are dependent on me. I am dependably theirs."

Love. Her.

* Now called Whole Living

Idiotic Eureka Moments

A while ago, I was listening to the podcast of Frank Skinner's Absolute radio show and the phone-in was Idiotic Eureka Moments (IEMs). Someone called in and said they'd only recently "got" the connection between Sooty and Sweep (i.e. chimney sweeping). Someone else said they thought that when parking instructions specified "No return within one hour" that they couldn't actually come back to their car for an hour, even if they'd finished what they were doing after, like, five minutes. I have a number of these IEMs, but I've literally just had one, thanks to @DTMM on Twitter and so I wanted to share.

Goodbye Girl (that's a Go West song)

Peter's the one on top

If you know me IRL or even if you used to read my old blog, you will have heard this story, but I'm telling it again anyway. Years ago – like 1989/90 – I lived and worked in Richmond, Surrey. One day, I was on my way home from the shops, about 15-20 minutes walk, and I saw Peter Cox from Go West. I went up to him and said something like, "Hello. I haven't got a pen so I can't ask you for an autograph, but I wanted to say hello."

He was very sweet and charming and said, "You walking this way?" I was and so he walked me home. We talked all the way, he was lovely. We got to my gate and he gave me a quick kiss and I went inside, all giddy and thrilled with what a lovely person he was. Years later, I was telling someone the story and they said, "I bet he just wanted to make sure you didn't follow him home." Oh. You know, that's probably right. It had never occurred to me. Damn.

Ker-ching!

I don't think I've seen a £50 since. Sad.

A couple of years after the above, I was working in a music industry accountants. At Christmas, we were all given cash bonuses. How it worked was the boss told us all to come up to his office before we went home. This was to pick up our bonus. We weren't told that, but most of us knew or at least suspected.

On the day in question, I'd worked late and when I went to see him he gave me my envelope and then said, "Eva* didn't come for hers, so you can have it" and handed me a second envelope. There was £200, in £50 notes, in each envelope. Now I'd like to say that I saved the envelope and gave it to Eva next time I saw her, but I didn't. I don't actually think that even occurred to me. I just thought, "Result!"

I was telling this story (obviously much more consisely) to @DTMM on Twitter today and I said, "I felt a bit guilty, but not guilty enough to not accept it, cos I was skint. Got burgled that Christmas tho." Ping! "Probably karma," I added. It's taken me – what? – almost twenty years to put the two together. The burglers didn't get the cash (I'd hidden it in a Blackburn Rovers Season Best Of video box), but they got almost everything else. Served me right, no? Goodness, I'm slow on the uptake…

So make me feel better – what are your IEMs? What's made you go "duh" at yourself?

* not her real name!

New York office

I like my office. I do. It's got pretty much everything I need. It's cosy, it's fairly well-organised, sometimes it has small children nearby doing avoiding homework, reading throwing books and being cute. It doesn't have a view, but a view would just distract me, wouldn't it?

And yet…

I can't help thinking that if I had this view, there'd be no stopping me. If that was my office and that was my desk and that was my view, I'd be a writing MACHINE! I'd be so incredibly inspired and productive. Wouldn't I?

What does your perfect office look like?

I want an American school desk

When I was a kid, I really wanted an old-fashioned school desk. You know, the lift-up one with the inkwell. Eventually I got one and I loved it. Have utterly no idea what happened to it, which is annoying.

But then, when I was a teenager and obsessed with American culture, I really wanted a US-style desk, with a swing-around writing table. I've used one since, but I'd love one at home. Would be brilliant for writing in front of the TV. I think. Anyway, I particularly love this one, since it's got the storage underneath the seat. Genius.

It's £195 – ouch – from Pedlars.

Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

I mentioned last week how much I've been enjoying reading Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird and since then I read something in there that I think is pretty useful, particularly if you're going to do NaNoWriMo.

It's Alice Adams' formula for writing a short story. But it would work just as well for the first draft of a novel, I think. It's ABDCE:

A Action

You begin with the action that is compelling enough to draw us in, make us want to know more.

B Background

Background is where you let us see and know who these people are, how they've come to be together, what was going on before the opening of the story.

D Development

Then you develop these people, so that we learn what they care about most. The plot – the drama, the actions, the tension – will grow out of that. You move them along until everything comes together in the…

C Climax

… after which things are different for the main characters, different in some real way.

E Ending

What is our sense of who these people are now, what are they left with, what happened, and what did it mean?

What do you think? Would you find that useful? Particularly for NaNoWriMo? What's your favourite writing book?

Scoring with Len Goodman (*fnar*)

So on the Dancing With the Stars results show, Len did a segment about how he scores.

For a 1 – Just show up

For a 2 – Move one foot

For a 3 – Move both feet

For a 4 – Get from the start of the dance to the end of the dance

For a 5 – Bit of musicality

For a 6 – Len has got to start to see potential. For Len, a 6 is a C. It's average

For a 7 – Starting to see improvement. Some chemistry. Far more good than bad.

For an 8 – Get on with the dance (no messing about). Confidence. Starting to drive the dance.

For a 9 – "Now you're really cookin'!"

And for a 10 – Great technique, great performance, chemistry, personality. And an X Factor (though he didn't call it that, obviously.)

It was a little tongue-in-cheek, but I also found it pretty interesting. What do you think?

The voices in my head

I am re-reading Anne Lamott's amazing book on writing, Bird By Bird (thanks, @sallylawton). I read it years ago and loved it, but I'm enjoying it even more this time round (at least, I think I am – it's hard to quantify how much I enjoyed it last time). Either way, it's wonderful. And this bit really resonated with me:

"Quieting these voices is at least half the battle I fight daily. But this is better than it used to be. It used to be 87 percent. Left to its own devices, my mind spends much of its time having conversations with people who aren't there. I walk along defending myself to people, or exchanging repartee with them, or rationalizing my behavior, or seducing them with gossip, or pretending I'm on their TV talk show or whatever. I speed or run an aging yellow light or don't come to a full stop, and one nanosecond later am explaining to imaginary cops exactly why I had to do what I did, or insisting that I did not in fact do it."

Years ago, I mentioned the constant chatter in my head to David and he said something like, "Voices in your head? Doesn't that mean you're insane?" But it's normal, isn't it? The reason I'm mentioning it on Writing Wednesday is that I think it's actually a useful thing for a writer. Occasionally out of all this mental blether, I get an idea for a story. In fact, the idea for the book I may be writing for NaNoWriMo this year (I'm not sure yet – I'm trying to choose between two) came out of exactly this kind of thing.

What about you? Do the voices in your head ever say anything useful?

{Photo source}

A good day's work

Before

I'm quite embarrassed about this before picture, particularly my enormous Mr Blobby pyjama bottoms, but what the hey…

After

SO much better. I've tidied and organised, hung some pictures and moved lots of things (mainly car seats) out. You can't see n the photo, but I've got the bigbooklittlebookcardboardbox in here too (for Joe) and the Ikea spinny chair Harry got for Christmas and which has been in our bedroom all year. I'm also going to have a couple of big boxes with supplies for painting, colouring, etc.

Joe's verdict was "Wowwwwwww" and Harry said, "Well this is just great! How did you do it? Daddy is going to be impressed."

I didn't manage to do the batteries and stuff though…