Amandababble Week Thirteen
Week thirteen!!! Unlucky for some, but not for me, I don’t believe in bad luck and therefore I never ever have any. I hear you laugh, but it’s true. When my mum got run over and injured a few years back, I considered it very lucky that she survived. When I got sick, I was just very thankful to get better – that was lucky! When we lost our little girl, I felt very very grateful for how the experience pulled Simeon and I together and the immense joy I felt at the prospect of having her, that was lucky too! It’s not always easy to find the positive and there are days when I want to crawl under a duvet and cry, but I think that just makes me human, albeit a very lucky one!
I’ve been up and down the country this week, from BBC Radio Devon to BBC Radio Manchester and a few stops in between. I’ve made new friends and caught up with some old ones, and I sit here tip tapping, knackered but happy! People are what count aren’t they, spending time and talking to people, that’s IT. And I can already tell that there will be people in Bermuda who I shall love spending time with. I’ve had a fabulous email from the Hamilton Book Shop team, who have very kindly offered to adopt me as they do all book lovers! I feel a tincy bit less worried knowing that I have these fellow readers to hang out with.
The boys have been on holiday or at summer schools this week and are now, stomping in the mud at the V Festival in Stafford. I keep watching the TV to see if I can spot them or their buddies among the 90,000 revellers that are all also wearing wellies and ponchos, with expletives written in neon on their foreheads – haven’t seen them yet. It was hilarious listening to their festival plans, an age was spent discussing the alcohol requirements and who was taking what. I casually asked if they had organised a tent, they looked at me like it was the first time they had considered their actual accommodation. I was quickly to learn that this was because it was. They had enough beer to sink a ship but not one sleeping bag between them. The Major says its character building; I say its hyperthermia inducing.
This week’s ITV This Morning short story has had some lovely feedback, thank you so very much. I wrote it after remembering a conversation I had with a friend of mine at university, many years ago and I hope I did it justice.
Here’s the link for anyone that missed it http://itv.co/1bxUgSM
Next week’s story is one for all the mum’s out there. I sobbed all the way through writing it. It just touched a nerve for me at a time when the kids are getting their results and planning their futures. I hope you like it, it’s called The Leaving of the Swallows and I think will be out on Tuesday!
I’ve packed and unpacked my suitcase three times, all my belongings are sitting like an abandoned clothes mountain on the floor and each time I look at it I feel a little overawed at the prospect of having to sort it out – it’ll all happen I’m sure, put it this way, if it doesn’t, I’ll be the only person in Bermuda to wear the same sweatshirt and jeans, every day for months!
Yesterday I met up with my best friends for a much-needed catch up. It’s brilliant isn’t it, when you can sit for hours, gossiping and swapping news and all the worries of the world disappear with a few well-chosen words of reassurance. Good friends are so very very precious. I shall always treasure mine and miss them when I am away. Although I suspect one of them might jump in a plane and land on a beach near me!
I popped into my mums under the guise of seeing her and my dad for a cuppa, but in truth it’s because my nephew Noah was there and I can’t get enough of him! He’s eighteen months and he fascinates me, he is beautiful. He doesn’t like me much and whilst I chase him, trying to squeeze him (ahhh, maybe that’s why he’s not so keen on me!?) he points his finger at me, shakes his head and says NO! – Yesterday every time I picked up one of his dinosaurs, he took it off me and gave it to the Major, who sat with a toy mountain on his lap, loving the fact that he is in the Noah inner circle – I shan’t give up!
We were sat around the kitchen table and someone asked my mum if I’d always liked stories and been a bit dramatic. She told everyone how I used to carry a note around with me, checking I had it every time I left the house. It read; these people are not my parents, please follow me and call the Police!
I was six years of age and when my mum first spotted it, she asked me what it was for? With a very straight face I told her,
‘If I get taken and put into a strangers car or the back of their van, I shall hold up my note at the window and the police will come and get me back after shooting the baddies. They’ll put me in the back of a police car with a blanket around my shoulders and you and daddy will be waiting for me, crying and buy me something because you will be so happy to have me back!’
- She also reminded me that for whole weeks I would talk with a new accent, practicing Scottish, American and Swiss! The reason being if ever I was recruited as a spy, I would be able to play the part better – I was about nine. …and then there’s the tape of me aged four, reading aloud one of my stories. Every time one of my three brothers, usually Simon, interrupted, I went bonkers and demanded that I start again and everyone had to listen! Cringing at how bossy I was.
So I guess the answer is yes, always liked stories, always been a bit dramatic!
Ok – I got me a book to edit! Better crack on. I wish you lots of love for the week ahead and a whole heap of luck.
Mandy x
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