Man's Not Hot

No, I'm not going to quote the song any further, I promise, but it seemed like an appropriate title for this blog. 

When I started Camp NaNoWriMo this month, I was planning on writing thirty-one blogs about writing over the course of the month, but then this blog has always been a bit of a blend between my life, my writing and mental health issues, so it seemed natural to veer off into that, but this particular blog is about writing and it's about characters. I'm going to specifically talk about characters we write to inspire attraction in the reader. 

Inevitably, the kind of people we are attracted to is probably going to translate into a novel even if we try and avoid it, though writers in historic fiction will research and look at what was attractive at the time, common hairstyles, how people were built and how they dressed. It would be illogical to write a female character in the Victorian era who was upper class and extremely chaste, then have the Love Interest (LI) or MMC (Male Main Character) be most attracted to her ankles or something which wouldn't be on display because of the clothing that chaste Victorian women wore. Whilst there is diversity within attraction, it's possible to borrow from the Peter Kay joke about Manfred Mann's song Do Wah Diddy Diddy, a girl snapping her fingers and shuffling her feet looking good, and that not seeming to make any sense. 

Some things are timeless classics. The tall, dark and handsome thing seems to have stood the test of time pretty well, even if the understanding of it has changed a little over time. Mr Darcy has always been a good MMC for the tall, dark and handsome thing, but more modern audiences struggle to connect with the idea of his pride and arrogance, and it can be difficult to forgive that, despite it being a product of the time and social context that he lived in. 

There are characters now where we think in the book, yeah, he sounds beautiful, and then they are lost when translated to screen, such as Edward Cullen. I was disappointed at best when Robert Pattinson was cast in that role, even though I like him in other things he's been in. Maybe it was just everything else that was wrong with those movies that didn't help, but I've even seen descriptions where I question what the author was thinking making someone a love interest in a story because I don't and can't relate to the main character (MC) for finding them as irresistible as they do. It's as though someone wrote Joe Exotic as an MMC in a romance novel; I just wouldn't get it. Anything with a mullet and that's me done though, I guess. 

Then again, that can be a difference in culture - perhaps in the Deep South in America, he's seen as a hot option - and also to do with time periods. When you say tall, dark and handsome to women of some generations, or even just different women, they might think of someone with rippling large muscles and body hair as thick as a gorilla's, whereas I might think toned, solid shoulders and tone down the hairiness a lot of degrees. 

We have to accept that readers are going to have a different image of our characters in their heads to what is in ours, and that's okay. We have to accept that the MMC or LI character is not going to be considered an attractive description by everyone, but it's why looser descriptions aren't always a bad thing. If the reader can flesh out some of the details themselves, that can be helpful in some ways. 

Of course, there's no right answer though. There was a time when a ginger character, like Annie, would have been seen as the most undesirable orphan, and yet now people love ginger hair. I'm a bottle ginger because it suits my skin tone better than the flat chestnut brown I am naturally, but also there are people like Prince Harry and Ed Sheeran, whose ginger hair is seen as a massive asset. Things will change, people's tastes are different and if not, well the world just wouldn't work, would it, but it's something to think about as you paint a picture in the head of your dear reader about the different characters in your novel. It's also okay to write about a character as the LI who wouldn't be considered physically attractive, because physical attraction is only a part of what makes us fall in love, and it doesn't have to be a very important part. In the Netflix film Tall Girl, the Main Female Character has a very specific idea in her head of what she wants, physically, and yet the *SPOILER ALERT* ending shows that she sees that as far less important. 

So, this is my last blog from Camp NaNoWriMo and must be the first time I have ever achieved my Camp NaNoWriMo goal, so I'm really proud of that. I'm also really thrilled with the number of people who have been reading my blog as this month is currently my second highest readership ever, and it's on track to be the first by the end of today. I'm crossing my fingers a bit because that would also feel like a pretty huge achievement, so we'll see. 

I've made changes throughout the month, like remembering that a lot of people who read what I write don't actually hang out on Twitter, so whilst it's become my favourite spot, I need to remember that Facebook is still a thing and share links across the both of them. I've also realised that posting late at night just to make sure I get the blog for the day posted doesn't really work out so well, so I've been making an effort to write and post at more civilised times of the day. 

I'm not sure I'm going to be able to keep up posting one blog a day, especially as there have been times this month where I have stared at the blank screen and wondered what the hell I was going to write, but I am committed to making more of an effort to continue writing on the blog and hopefully also launching the charlieswrite.co.uk website soon, though that will depend on how well I get through every other thing on my To-Do list as well.

It's been a really interesting month because making time for writing isn't always easy and having the capacity to write is not always easy, but actually, it's okay to hold your hands up and say I can't do this right now, and I have done that once this month. Most of us don't have the luxury of being able to give up our full-time jobs to solely focus upon writing, not that I think I would if I had the option, so fitting it in around every other thing in life is always going to be a struggle, but what has been really valuable to me this month is I have found that I can do it. I can find the time, I can find the energy, most of the time anyway, and I can make my writing a priority, even in the middle of a house move, work chaos, life chaos and a mental health lapse that is still not completely resolved. It is possible, it's not painful and it's good for me, so I'm going to take that lesson going forward and hopefully remember it in November as well so I know I don't have to do things like twenty-four hour marathon sprints on the first day to write as much as I can whilst aiming for finishing in less than my previous personal best. I'm not saying I won't do that, but I am saying I don't have to. 

A lot could change over the next few months, but what is extremely exciting to me at the moment is having the time to figure that out, think of a plan and exactly three months from today will be a Saturday, getting ready for one of the weirdest NaNoWriMo's ever. I'm going to have to educate my mum on Annual Pizza Day. 

Reasons Not to Wear a Mask

Okay, so we're not even a week into the mandatory mask rule and I know that some people are finding it difficult, some people are complaining and some people think they are geniuses for wearing masks made either of netting or that look like they were made out of a string vest because they're complying with the rules, apparently, without actually paying due care and attention to why the rules are in place. No, this isn't a list of reasons you shouldn't be wearing a mask, nor is it going to be a rant of insults about people who don't wear them. I'm sorry if either of those things disappoints you, but read on and it should make some sense. 

When COVID first happened, unlike fetch, masks were in short supply, such that even care homes staff couldn't get their hands on the vital pieces of Personal Protective Equipment. Non-medical members of NHS staff were entering hospitals and working in them without the proper attire to protect themselves and those close to them, and there was a general discouragement of wearing masks which, as I understand it, was for two reasons. One of those reasons was a supply and demand issue. There simply weren't enough to go around, and it is why we saw the prices of PPE and sanitiser skyrocket. Everyone wanted it, so what little there was could be charged sky-high prices to get hold of. The other reason is probably a lot more simple though. The more flexibility people have been given, the more that they have pushed it. If the government had stated: Stay Home, Protect the NHS, Save Lives, but if you must go out, wear a mask, a lot of people who stayed home would have donned a face covering and gone out even when the virus was killing hundreds of people per day and we would probably have been in a more severe phase of the lockdown than we are now. 

As things have moved on, supply chains have sorted themselves out a lot more and it's possible to get reusable masks and sanitiser more widely and more cheaply, but also, more and more people are being prompted to resume life as close to normal as they can do. Now that we're piling people back into pubs, bars, restaurants etc, even with social distancing, there needs to be some other form of prophylactic course of action. Masks and face coverings are that option. 

There's a meme going around about having to wear glasses and a face mask and being entitled to condensation, and it's true, they can steam your glasses up. Most people are using their masks incorrectly, as well, but actually, even the improper use of a mask is going to cut infection rates, so surely it's better to have a lot of people do something badly rather than a small percentage do it well. Some of the examples of the wrong I have personally seen are touching the outside of the mask whilst wearing it, pulling it on top of the head or under the chin when it's not needed, keeping it in a pocket without any form of the bag (probably right next to a germy phone) or wearing a mask so that it covers only the mouth and not the nose. I've also seen one that covered the nose and top lip, but not the bottom and that did not look comfortable. There are also times when you should change your mask and people don't. If you've worn it for more than a few hours - I believe the current view is about four - have coughed or sneezed into the mask or have touched your face through the mask, you should change it. This is what I mean about having them in a bag. 

Women who use reusable Cloth Sanitary Protection will be used to the idea of carrying a wet bag, but even something like a scrub bag - a cloth bag that you can throw into the washing machine with everything inside of it - or a plastic sandwich bag would do. You keep a bag for used things, in this case, masks, and keep your new, fresh, unworn items in another, preferably airtight. If you need to cough or sneeze, try to do so somewhere where you're not going to spread droplets onto other people and cover your nose and mouth with a tissue. You know the whole phrase of catch it, bin it, kill it? It was literally made for viruses which are transmissible in this way. If you're at home, or somewhere you don't need to wear a mask, cough or sneeze into your elbow instead of your hands, because you're less likely to then transfer that liquid onto another surface, and you can still use sanitiser on your elbow, even if it makes you feel like a weirdo, and of course, wash your hands - and elbow - as soon as you can with warm soapy water. Coughing fits can come on unexpectedly, as can sneezes and sometimes, people spray spittle when they speak - this is what masks are trying to stop, but if you have just been on a five-minute coughing spree, your mask is likely saturated with vapour/ droplets of sputum, saliva or whatever. You want that out of the way as soon as you can. 

I'm a relatively lucky spud, because whilst I have mild asthma and haven't been running anything like as much as I should have been, I have been able to get away with wearing a mask without problems, but my granddad has COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disorder). It's not something I'm an expert in, so I won't pretend to be, but I can say this, he can be out of breath getting up from his chair, his breathing sounds laboured all of the time and his hands are very often a blue-y purple that means that they're not getting enough oxygen. He tried to wear a mask. He tried to get along with wearing them. He is a very stubborn man, but he tried, and he can't. Some people cannot cope with the feel of them, some feel they cannot breathe in them. It's not a simple case of not wanting to wear them, and I can't say it's something I can explain, but whether these reasons are physical or psychological, some people are simply unable to wear a mask. Some people are trying their best to come up with different solutions, some people are trying forms of exposure therapy to lessen the panic that they feel in masks, so they can wear them. This means there is no right answer and no one size fits all. That annoying ass hat you've seen not wearing a mask might not simply be flouting the rules, but may have a genuine reason not to wear one, and that's kind of none of everyone else's business, so maybe just try and be kind and understanding in case?

Granted, there is a limit to that. If someone is not wearing a mask, walking too close to you and coughing in your face, that's obviously an issue, but some of the issues which people have with masks might not be visible or audible. If you stood near my granddad, you'd hear him rasping and it might be obvious to most people that he has long term issues with his chest, but you can't tell by looking at someone that they're autistic and triggered by things touching their face, or any of the other perfectly valid reasons that someone cannot wear them. Whilst I appreciate the frustration with the crowds who are making lace masks that miss the point completely, or the angry mob of 'I know my rights' - thankfully more of an American issue that one we face here - there has been a tendency, both online and with the average Joe or Joanne in the street to assume that anyone whose mouth and nose are on display falls into one of those two categories and it is simply not that simple. 

TL;DR - Wear a mask if you can, don't if you can't and accept that not everyone is the same. Also, if you can wear a fun mask, do it. Treat it like an accessory for your face and it makes it a lot more fun. 

Oooh, let's call this the epilogue, ha... One issue I have found with having to wear masks frequently, particularly when they make you a little bit red-faced and sweating like a pig left alone with David Cameron, is that they can easily cause breakouts of spots, which is so annoying. I mean, sure, if we are heading for a stage where it's all masks all the time, whatever, but I don't think they are, and I don't want to show my face in public when my jawline is underlined in red, so I've found that carrying handy wipes or a small packet of baby wipes can be good to have a bit of a refresh when I take a face covering off and it seems to have done the trick for the moment. And that, gents, is why ladies have to carry large handbags; we have to be prepared for everything. And with that, I'm done talking about masks. For today anyway. I'm sure I'll be back to talking about them when I get back to making them in the next couple of days. 

Part Two

Before I lived in my flat in Sutton, I had previously lived alone in a little studio around the corner in a place called Hackbridge and I realised that living in a studio did not work for me. 

As studios went, it was a decent size, but the kitchen was really small and the backroom was really small, and ridiculous because someone put the wrong pump into the shower when they fitted it, so to get it to run, you had to take the showerhead off of the wall and hold it low in the shower tray until it came on. There was a decent amount of storage for such a little place and I had my own parking space, but the idea of the sofa also being your bed didn't work for me, because I'm only just okay with the thing of making my bed each morning before leaving the house, never mind having to make it back into a sofa each morning and then remake the bed each night. I moved out of there because the landlady was making my life hell on earth for a few weeks, and I figured it was a good time to look for something cheaper and save towards a deposit on my own place... This was about five years ago, so it tells you how well that went. 

After a "false start" of a move that still gives me palpitations thinking about it, I moved in with two blokes in their thirties who were professionals and mostly everything ticked along just fine. I say mostly - the landlord, who was one of the blokes, and I butted heads a few times over a few different things, but the biggest thing was his refusal to call me by the name that I asked him to, Charlie, and his insistence on using my full name. He argued it was about respect, and I argued it was anything butt. He also had a thing about putting his face right near anything I was cooking if he thought that it smelt good and that just upsets me. I don't like people's faces near my food. After a year of living there, I realised that having housemates just doesn't really suit me, and the hour and a half plus commute to my new job was a killer as well, so I decided it was time to move again. 

When I found the flat in Sutton, I was being given the run around by the people who were organising the viewings, but thankfully they listed it with another estate agent who wasn't requiring block bookings when I was in work and took me to see my flat and the flat opposite one evening. I'd been to see the building before when I was looking for my first studio, though that was in the private section of the building, and surprisingly I would have paid more per month for that studio than I have ever paid for my one-bedroom flat. 

They were getting new carpets in and painting done and it was all going to be, I thought, quite lovely. I was looking forward to having the bigger of the two flats, but I had a strict timeline. It was September, so my parents were going to Greece for two weeks and I had my little man Teddy to look after, so the move had to happen at a very specific time, or it wouldn't be happening at all. Unfortunately, the dates didn't work out for me to have the bigger flat, but in some ways, that's been a blessing. 

In 'Part One' of this blog, I mentioned the light in the flat. It's amazing. Granted, at five in the morning during the summer it makes me wish I had blackout blinds and a sleep mask, but it's great to be able to throw open the blinds and have the sun pouring in, and it seems to have been sunny pretty often whilst I've lived there. I've crashed out on the living room floor treating it like a balcony with the huge windows open, enjoying the sun and the sounds and the breeze, I've sat in my armchair by the open windows and read Pride and Prejudice cover to cover. I have loved a lot of the time in that flat because I have been able to spend some good time by myself.

A couple of NaNoWriMos ago, I put my big wooden chopping board on top of the cooker, propped my laptop up on there and had a wireless mouse and a gaming keyboard on the breakfast bar. It was right next to the kettle and I kept tea making things by my right side, biscuits and snacks by my left and there I was comfortable enough to crack through my first every twenty thousand word day (writing twenty thousand words in twenty-four hours). The last NaNoWriMo, I had my coffee machine sat next to me, with the hot plate keeping my filter coffee warm in the jug as I wrote. I was in my element. 

I felt safe there because there was an intercom for the door and several flights of stairs up to my place. That being said, I have struggled with my anxiety because I've been too isolated because central London and my friends are so far away and because of how noisy the high street can be at night, but that could happen anywhere. The space I had there meant I was able to have people come and stay and I loved that. 

I've loved having a wardrobe full of Lindy Bop dresses, wearing lipstick that some people consider far too red and having a cupboard full of twenty different kinds of tea, all of which are open at once because I love them all and like to decide what I want like I'm in a coffee shop. I love having many 'favourite' mugs which make me happy for all sorts of reasons, and I love that I can shut the blinds, put my headphones in and dance around in my underwear because it's my place and no one has a key to be able to let themselves in. I've loved being able to be my happy ridiculous self without having anyone to explain it to, and it's something I will miss. I'm going to miss choosing my JJs (pyjamas) based solely on what I'm going to be comfortable in and not who might run into my on a midnight loo run, who might come into my room to wake me up (I ignore alarm clocks with alarming frequency) or how long I'm sitting downstairs in the living room with my dad, and whether one of the neighbours might come around to borrow something from Dad's garage and I might have to answer the door. Being able to do whatever you want, within reason, is really freeing. 

The flat has also been good because of its location. Whilst Sutton is a very hilly high street, it has three large supermarkets, a big Waterstone's a library, several gyms, Greggs, coffee shops - both chains and independents - a massive TK Maxx and so much more. It has been incredible to have all of that almost literally on my doorstep. If I need something to make dinner, I can stop at Morrisson's on my way home; I walk past it to get from the train station to the flat. If I want to go for a pint with a friend, there are about seven or eight pubs and a couple of bars between the train station and my flat, and if I need almost anything, Wilko is around the other side of the building. I was home for six days whilst I cleaned, packed and patched up the paintwork on some of the walls and I was in Wilko every day picking up food for Teddy because it's the cheapest place that stocks his food (half the price of Waitrose and two thirds what Tesco charges. Given it's a four-box pack and he eats up to three boxes a day, that means getting it at the best price is a serious thing). We ended up having to pack twenty-two boxes of dog food into the van to come home with, but it was worth it. Also, compared to everything else that was in there, that wasn't really so bad. 

I've loved the area, loved the people and if it were possible, it would probably be pretty high on my list of where to move to when it comes time to go back to London, but I'm trying to be realistic and that means Sutton is likely to be out of my price range considering what I want and being on a Civil Service salary, but I'm glad to have lived there. I'm really glad to have had the experiences of living there and it makes me look at other properties differently. Previously the lack of a lift wouldn't have phased me, because I was two floors up in Hackbridge and that never really seemed to bother me, but here the stairs have been exhausting. Sometimes, that's been a good thing, because when it was raining, I did some stair running to build my fitness and that really worked, but as a day to day thing, I could do without it. 

I've also realised though, I am too content by myself to consider buying something bigger and making myself need to rent out a 'spare room' as I know other people have done. Although you have the opportunity to vet people and make sure that you're setting the house rules, I think it's a level of stress that I just don't need, so I'm going to be really conscious about the costs of running a flat or property and if I would need to think about a lodger, it's just not going to be worth it, in my eyes. 

Anyway, the only thing left to do now is pop down, finish the painting, throw a few things into the rubbish that didn't make it yesterday because we just wanted to get on the road and grab a coat, a blow-up mattress and a blanket, then hand the keys back to the landlords and come home. For most intents and purposes, I no longer have an address in London, and after so long, that's really weird, but here's to a new start and going home soon. 

The Very Last Thing I Want To Be Doing Right Now,

Is writing a blog, but I made a commitment to myself that this Camp NaNo I was going to stick to it and achieve my goal, so I am writing every day and I am posting a blog every day if it kills me, and today I think it might. 

I knew that I would struggle to sleep last night, but I decided I didn't need a sleeping tablet or Valium before I went to bed, and by the time I realised how terribly the attempting sleep thing was going, it was too late for a medication based intervention, because by that point I would not have got up on time if I took it, so I fell asleep somewhere around three to half-past three this morning, after having finishing packing most of the flat, taking some stuff downstairs and getting rid of some furniture to my neighbour's son. When my alarm went off at seven-thirty this morning, the furthest thing from what I wanted to do would have been to get up and get my life moved out of my flat, but the van was downstairs and there were moving guys coming to help and it was an expensive undertaking to get that far, so there was no going back on it by then, so I was just really glad that my mum made me a mug of tea and brought it to me whilst I came around. When we called my dad - there wasn't enough space for us all to stay at the flat - to suggest he get coffee from McDonald's, he also picked up egg McMuffins and that made functioning a bit easier, but then I could feel a panic attack coming on and that did not make anything easier, so it was another day for Diazepam. I warned the movers I was on medication and might be a bit dopey, and they were cool and within three hours, most of everything was downstairs and on the van. We had been dreading it for weeks and it was still a mammoth task and a really long day, but getting everything out was the biggest hurdle in my head and all of that went well. 

The next hurdle, which I was marginally less worried about, was my dad driving the van full of my stuff out of London and all the way back up to Manchester. The motorways were pretty clear except one section of the A something something where there was an accident, but even that wasn't too bad and we were clear of it quickly, and we made it back to Manchester in pretty good time. 

Hurdle number three, which could have been a nightmare, was getting everything off the van and into my storage unit. Well, aside from the things I needed to bring back to the house. At first, it looked like there were no trolleys to be able to move everything, then we found one, and then my mum managed to find someone going into the other bit of the building and brought a second. With a little system of me sorting what was storage and what wasn't, Mum packing and pushing a trolley to the unit and then my dad emptying the trolley into the unit, we did pretty well actually. and everything was unloaded in a bit less than forty-five minutes, so we could head home, pick up the puppy (he's not a puppy, he's six, but he's our puppy), snuggle him and love him and tell him we missed him whilst he wriggled and barked at us and licked my face, have cheese on toast for dinner and finally shower down. 

The building I used to live in is hot and pretty airless, and we've been doing a lot all day. Even sitting in the van is a bit trying, because three adults with elbows doesn't go smoothly and something about the seats was making my hips and knees ache, or maybe I was tense in the same position for too long... but either way, it was a long old day and I am so glad I'm back in Manchester, in my jjs (I call PJs jjs, get over it) and just getting ready to tuck myself into bed because I am beat. Also, my phone was basically dead on the way because my dad needed Waze to get out of London and find the M25, so I couldn't write from the van like I tried. Tomorrow, I'll write part two and the reasons I will miss the flat. 

Part One

Tonight is likely going to be the last night I will spend in my flat in Sutton. Part of me is really sad about that and I'll be writing about that tomorrow, likely whilst we're in the van driving back to Manchester and hoping to avoid the traffic, but part of me isn't actually all that sad, so today I am going to write about that, because I need to remind myself that leaving tomorrow is actually a good thing, even if it doesn't necessarily feel like it right at this moment. 

For the past few years, I've lived in a flat on the high street of a town called Sutton. It's a tower block opposite a park with a high street on the other side of the building. I wanted the flat across the corridor, which was slightly more expensive, but slightly bigger, had a bathtub and a space I could have turned into a reading nook and it overlooked the park. I got the smaller, cheaper flat with the shower and the view over the high street, but it does get good sunlight, even if the view of the car park is a bit rubbish. The building is nice enough, but I'm in the section which was designated for 'Affordable Housing' which is separated from the rest of the block because this is owned by a housing association. I'm on the Intermediate Market Rent scheme to save money for a deposit for my own place.

Being in this section of the building means you're not allowed to access the car park, the gym (even if you paid the same additional fee that the 'private' section pay) or the bin store where you can separate out recycling and our lift starts at Floor 1, but the entrance is on Lower Ground, so it's a hike up two floors worth of stairs every time you enter the building. I get that we rent flats in this building by choice, but it's 20% cheaper than the market value of the area (the point of IMR) and you don't realise how knackering it's going to be after a hard day at work, with all of your shopping bags, or even for things like getting a new freezer delivered, because everything has to go up and down that one flight of stairs... Previously, the owners of the 'private' side of the building have allowed some access to the lifts on the other side of the building, which go straight to reception, but even that is no longer permitted, because of accusations of damage being caused to the lifts by residents from this side of the building. Part of me would love to point out to them that if they can pinpoint that its residents from this side, they must know who it is and should penalise that person accordingly as opposed to everyone in this section of the building. It wouldn't even by so annoying if the guy wasn't in this side of the building, the car park didn't attach to this side of the building and the buildings weren't actually, oh wait! one building... This whole thing is tedious, annoying and pretty bogus because it's only affecting those on affordable housing schemes. There was a mum with twin toddlers who was threatened with a call to the police if she kept using the "other" lifts to get her kids and their stroller downstairs safely. 

That aside, this building is WARM. It's a big concrete structure so it absorbs heat and it can feel pretty stuffy and airless in here, but as I mentioned, I'm on the high street side of the building. Sutton hasn't really got any clubs anymore, but it has bars and those bars are busy and they get loud and then the people coming out of them get loud. Every. Night. Of. The. Week. I'm all for a good time, especially at the weekend, but I don't like listening to out of tune happy birthday on a Sunday night at midnight or the two in the morning calls of 'FOOTBOLLS COM-IN OMMM' as people drunkenly stagger to the bus stops at the opposite end of the high street after getting bladdered on a Tuesday night. I especially despise that the route between my building and the high street is down a relatively large street which hosts the disabled parking bays for the area, but which seems to offer enough privacy for, sorry, I can't call them gentlemen, blokes to relieve themselves up the wall so that it smells like a urinal in the morning. It's also occasionally a game of dodge the vomit pile and that's just more than I can bear in the morning. Again, all for a good time, but one where bodily fluids of any variety are not left publicly displayed is much more preferable. 

My least favourite thing about Sutton is the hill. I hate that hill. Given how much I loved San Francisco, you might expect that I would love that long and steep hill down the high street, especially because I'm most of the way up it, so getting to the train station each more is not as hideous as if I lived at the bottom of the hill, nor do I need to hike it every day, but the McDonald's, and the ASDA and the Sainsbury's are all at the bottom of the hill, and Morrisson's just doesn't stock everything. 

Actually, the above is only my second least favourite thing. My current least favourite thing is proximity to my ex-partner's parents' house and the fact that his mother and sister work in an office building close to here, so I've seen them a couple of times. I also ran into him a couple of times in the Morrisson's pre-March so being back here gives me an unwelcome sense of discomfort that he might pop up somewhere. It shouldn't make me uncomfortable, because this is my home and I know that, but at the same time, a bit of distance from it is welcome. 

There are probably plenty of other things I could moan about on here, like how my sofa drove me insane (but that's now gone!) and the window being as vast as it is in the living room made planning the room difficult, but my final moan is about the kitchen. I bake, I cook and I like to make things in batches and then freeze them. The kitchen is tiny. I stored caking things along the top of the wall units, in one of the few cupboards, on the breakfast bar and had another unit to pack them into as well, and it still was not enough. When I did the food shopping, I had to be careful not to buy too much or it might not fit in the fridge or the cupboard doors might not close properly. It drove me insane. The washer-dryer is built in where there should be a cupboard as is the fridge, so once you factor in pans, plates and all that, there wasn't a great amount of space left for anything else and I like having a decent supply of staple foods, so that made it quite tricky. 

I feel like that is enough moaning about the flat though. It's not been awful. It was the right price and it was close to work and it's been home for three years, so I have to be really glad of that, and I am, but now is a good time to be moving out. 

Pixie Wasn't Well

Today was a bit terrifying.

Around two years ago, whilst in San Francisco for The Night of Writing Dangerously, I invested in the second most expensive piece of computer kit I have ever bought myself, otherwise known as buying myself a new laptop. It was a Pixelbook and I named it Pixie, because everything in my life gets a name. I name dresses pretentious things, name typewriters after Greek gods and goddesses and I name my computers after their models - except the Toshibas I've had. They've been Craptop one and Craptop 2: Return of the Craptop. So, I have Pixie, Prodigy and Pie (iPad). 

Pixie is a bit of an extension of myself by this point, because I'm either watching films or TV series, scrolling through Twitter or writing with her, or a mixture of all three. Pie occasionally steps in, but the external keyboard of the iPad feels much the same as Pixie's keyboard so it's not even like I can switch between them to change things up. Prodigy has been in London for the last few months, so I haven't really used it, but that's going to change in the next few days because it's moving to Manchester and I'm going to have to organise the office and sewing room a little bit better. Thankfully I'm not expecting to keep Kronus (20th Century Imperial called The Empire), Hermes (my first typewrite - a 1960s Olympia which inspired the Greek name), Aphrodite (Sharps Font Writer and the Sister of Hermes), Apollo (Brother Electric Typewriter) and Hephaestus (Brother Electric Typewriter) in the office as well, because otherwise it might all get a bit cramped... Yes, I'm really weird, and I know it. 

Anyway, weird names for things aside, when I woke up this morning I tried to turn Pixie's screen on to look at Facebook marketplace since I listed a bunch of furniture, and she wouldn't come on. I was watching Lucifer last night and then she wasn't charging overnight, so I figured she was just out of juice. Twelve hours later and I'm reading every instruction on the Google Help Page just to try and figure out what's wrong with her and, most importantly, how I fix her. There were a lot of suggestions of press this for 60 seconds and then unplug and plug back in laptop first then into the wall and wait thirty minutes and honestly, it started to feel like the sort of old wives tales your nana tells (or that might just have been my nana. And my grandma thinking about it...) because surely there wasn't something timing how long I was clicking different buttons and because I waited twenty nine minutes not thirty it was having a grump and saying no. Thankfully I realised that in my distracted state of thinking my most used and very much loved piece of computer kit was done, finito, bye bye, I wasn't reading one of the instructions properly. It was press and hold one button whilst tapping the power button. Did that, and the little colourful G popped onto the screen and was thanking God. I've had to use my phone to Google everything today and it's annoying. 

I realise that it's a very 'first world problems' kind of problem and I know I'm extremely privileged/ spoilt to have access to the computers that I do, the space to keep them and ability to run them etc. I appreciate that I'm a certified (or certifiable) member of the geek squad because I am obsessed with them, but today did scare the hell out of me thinking I might have lost Pixie. I'm so used to writing with her and 4thewords and I'm not a big fan of change, so I was kind of worried that not having her would make writing really difficult, or impossible until I got home to Manchester where Craptop 2 is being used as a TV. 

Anyway, that's my self indulgent moan of the day out there and over with, particularly because the fear has passed and I think it was actually more to do with an update that I should have downloaded than any real hardwear problems or anything like that, so I'll just have to remind myself to keep an eye on that and not keep letting her battery die completely, which also means I probably need to order another new charger, though that's, thankfully, cheaper than buying a whole new laptop. 

Today Was a Day When Writing Got Difficult,

Because I had no idea of what to write about and I had no idea when I was going to get time to write either. 

Currently, there are a lot of boxes across my flat and some things which still need to be packed. I've been pottering about trying to get as much done as I could, but I didn't get a lot of sleep last night so focusing on anything for more than a few minutes has been a bit difficult. 

I'm going to head to sleep in the hope that I can write something interesting tomorrow. 

This Stung A Little To Write

I've started a couple of blogs recently with 'I cannot believe I'm writing this' or 'I don't want to be writing this' and I have put a lot of things into this that I never expected to. Sometimes, writing this blog feels cathartic, because it's like finding a value to my stress container and just letting it all come out, and others, well other times it feels like drawing a knife across my skin and letting all the of my stress out, but it's painful. It's not just a moment of pain either, it's all the time afterwards feeling raw. Maybe a knife is a wrong metaphor; maybe it's more like coarse sandpaper. It hurts letting it out, and then it hurts as it's healing, but it does heal. I will just say that I've not been cutting myself or hurting myself with sandpaper. I have spent the last few weeks with cuts and scraps up my arms but that's because we've been doing work in the garden and the plants aren't so fond of being deadheaded or chopped back so they don't look like a jungle, so they scratch the heck out of my arms and legs. 

Anyway, there was one thing that, when it happened, I pretty much thought I would never write about, but I'm thinking about writing about it, so I thought, why not just write it and then if you don't want to post it, that's okay. We'll see what tomorrow brings as to whether this blog sees the light of day. 

A few years ago I was in a relationship. At the time, I thought it was amazing, but looking back on it, it was pretty rocky. We were both pretty volatile, probably pretty bad at communicating and really, we were both young. We did a lot together and I have a lot of memories with him and up until recently, they were memories I could still look back on and smile because we were over the worst of the post-breakup stuff and we were doing well at being friends. Complicated friends, yes, but friends all the same. 

I'd gone past the stage of being like J.D. in Scrubs when he tells Turk that he misses him so much it hurt sometimes, though it still came out a bit when I was drunk because I was lonely and when I was with him when things were good, I wasn't lonely. I feel like I have been lonely for the past few years now and that is not a comfortable position to be in. Over the past few years we managed to settle back into a relationship where I could tell him anything and, I thought, he could tell me anything, or we could just go somewhere and do something and if there were moments or periods of silence, hell, that was fine. He cared about when I was struggling mentally. He was happy for me when I got the job I had been wanting for years, and I was happy for him when he bought his new house. We were weird, but we were getting there. Where exactly 'there' was, I didn't know, but still, we were talking and we were friendly and we were there to help each other when we needed it, and things were good. Or that was my perception of events anyway. 

When we had split, he and his whole family deleted me off of all of their social media platforms. I've seen his mother in the town that I live in and she either doesn't recognise me or she just ignores me. I don't think she even knew we were back to talking, but it was hard, because he lived with his parents when we were together, so I was involved with them. I had a relationship with them and his sister and the rest of his family. When we split, I felt like I was losing the whole family. Granted, we didn't all get along famously, but I got along pretty well with a few of them and that was really hard. Losing all of them at once was really, really hard, but it was what it was. The reason I mention the social media thing is because the things that I knew about him and his life were what he chose to tell me. I knew what he wanted me to know, and nothing more, but I trusted him still, so why would I have needed to worry that he was lying to me? He was asking me to go away with him to Paris and Prague for work trips because I needed a break and I loved to travel and the company wasn't a bad thing for him either. I met him after-work drinks and stayed up in town because being away from my flat and with someone else is quite nice sometimes. He would come over to mine, he invited me over to his, he brought his new puppy to meet me; I had no reason to suspect anything. Except...

One morning in March, before the lockdown started, I woke up and I was just, something inside of me was just nagging. My heart was racing and it was like there was this buzz inside of my brain and in my chest. It wasn't words, but it was a feeling, though it was a feeling that seemed very directed. That feeling nagged at me or buzzed at me or raced inside of me until I found myself on Facebook looking through my memories and thinking something, somewhere, somehow, someone for some reason is trying to tell me something and I don't know the who, the what, the why, or the where, but I knew the when was now for some reason. I don't know whether it was because I was finally back on antidepressants to help my anxiety to calm down a bit, or whether it was just coincidence, but it was loud and consuming and annoying and I needed it to stop, so I followed where the feeling took me and I saw a photo of him that looked like a wedding. I sat there telling myself that there was no way it could be his wedding, but I think I already knew then that it was, so I found his profile and what little I could see of it and I saw that this wedding wasn't recent. This wedding has happened eight months ago, so the story that he told me about going on a stag do and getting stitched up by a mate because he wasn't the stag, well, turns out, massive lie. The trip he told me about that was work, work and then a holiday because he just needed to relax, lie. It was his honeymoon. The stories he told me about the little place that he went to relax where he drank the whole place out of a specific type of rum he liked, it was all lies. He would take his wedding ring off when I saw him, he never mentioned it at all. When I had been at his place a few months before the wedding and asked him point-blank if he was seeing anyone, he told me that there wasn't anyone because he didn't have the time. It was a big wedding; there's no way he wasn't engaged to his wife by then. Realising how much he had lied could have destroyed me. Saying I was hurt does not cut it. I felt like the ground fell out from beneath, not because I was holding a candle for him and thinking that one day we would figure it out, but because the last person I had ever thought that he would be was a cheater, and yet he was worse; he was an adulterer. He is an adulterer. And a liar. And it got me wondering about all the times he told me I was paranoid when he went out with his female friends. Was I paranoid, or was I just being gaslighted? I've had to accept the fact that I will probably never know. 

The last message I sent to him was to say that if he had just told me he was married, I would have been happy for him, and I genuinely meant it. Had he told me he was with someone, the last few years would have looked very different for us for sure, but I like to think we would still have been friends. I might not have tit-ishly sent him a message when I was drunk - which I found out was the night before his wedding, if you're thinking the timing didn't already sound too ridiculous - apologising for messing us up because I had been on a really bad date and drank too much gin to try and make it at least mildly interesting. At this point, if I think of him, I can only think that there is no going back. There will never be a point where I could trust him again, not as a friend, not as a lover, not as anything. My parents have gone so far as to say they wouldn't piss on him if he was on fire, which I get because we were together a long time. We went on holiday with my parents and they loved us together. The split was hard on them as well, and not just because they knew I was hurting. 

I know there are probably people reading this thinking, 'the person I have most sympathy for is his wife'. Believe me, I have a lot of sympathy for her, too. I wrote her a message over Facebook and sent her screenshots of conversations that made his intentions and actions as well as the dates (after they were married) obvious, because yes, there are people with open marriages and everything, and I know nothing about her or their circumstances, but I would have hated someone to not tell me if they knew it was happening. I would hate to think that someone knew that the person I loved and the person I trusted was breaking that trust if that was what they were doing, and they didn't think I had a right to know that. Whether she read it or not, I don't know, but giving her the option of knowing felt like the right thing to do. 

Lockdown came around at the right time for me. I wasn't sure what was going on with COVID and I had really struggled to go onto the medication I'm currently taking. I was a bit of a mess and that just floored me and I couldn't process it, so I spoke to work and I went back to my mum's place. I thought I would be there for a week's R&R then back to London. I was there for a week, and then with lockdown being what it was, my dad drove me back to London to get what I needed for three months. That three months turned into four, and then we talked about the money I was saving, how much I spend on the flat, how long it would be before I was back in the office and whether it made sense to just move everything into storage for a year and live with my parents to save the money I spend on a flat I'm not living in towards a deposit for a flat where I'm paying my own mortgage and not someone else's. As I've been packing up the flat I've found bits and pieces of things which are reminders of him. Most of them have ended up in the bin, and actually, I'm really glad about that. 

One of the great things about leaving this flat, despite all of the packing trauma and trying to get rid of a lot of things and pack so many things and the trauma of actually getting it all out of a building where the lift doesn't run to the ground floor is that my next place, wherever it is, isn't a place where he's been. It's not a place where I've called 'Text me when you're home safe,' down the corridor after him as he's left or where the bookshelf that he gave me from his grandmother is sitting in the kitchen. My new place will have a sofa he's never sat on - not just one where the cushion doesn't have a mind of its own and tip you onto the floor. The wardrobe he built the first time in the first flat I lived alone in is going to the tip. If it wasn't chipboard, I would take it back to Manchester, chop it into pieces and burn it, because I'm still angry, but cleansing myself of the things which he was a part of is helping. Getting rid of things that feel like they're connected to him is really helping. Though there are some things which either he gave me or he was around for that I won't be getting rid of, like my gaming PC or the black and gold vases my Valentine's roses came in one year, but that's because I didn't just love them just because he gave them to me. I loved them as was. 

This is making me question my opinion of Ginger Dave the certifiable hamster though. He might have been a little weirdo that dragged his boy bits across my friend's palm so she realised that Pets at Home told me he was a girl when he was actually a boy (I probably gave the poor sod an identity crisis) but the only person he ever pooped on was my ex-partner. Maybe he was trying to tell me something. 

Whilst I'm thinking about it and talking/ writing about it, I should probably point out that when I found that photo, I was ashamed. I'm not the one who was married, but I felt horrific. I was in tears on the phone to one of the ladies from work and she was asking whether there was anyone I could talk to, and what was going through my head was that the people I could call or the people I could pop around and visit were married and this was going to change their opinion of me. It wouldn't matter that I didn't know, because somehow I should have. I was horrifically embarrassed. I was hurting inside out, I wasn't my self, I felt ill because of it, but I didn't feel like I could talk to anyone because I was terrified that they would judge me and I was just so ashamed of myself. I have had to go over it time and time again in my head that it was not my fault. I have spoken to a couple of the ladies from work who struggle with anxiety and who would know where I was coming from and even that was so hard because I didn't want them to have a changed opinion of me, but they were amazing. They were supportive and they helped me to get through it. One of them called him a rat; a love rat and reminded me that I couldn't have known. That line that I would never cross, I crossed it blindfolded with him leading the way. If things had been different, if I had known about his wife, it's not a line I would have gone across, because, to me, marriage is important. Taking a vow of forsaking all others is really important. I used to think I would never get married because I wanted to be a lot like my great aunt and travel and be myself and, well, now I worry that it will never happen because every date I've been on for a while has been horrific, and things just don't seem to stick, but maybe it's like spaghetti. You know spaghetti is cooked to ready when it sticks to the wall. Maybe my spaghetti is just not ready yet, so it's not sticking. If I found the right person, making that commitment wouldn't be a difficult decision, I don't think. Keeping my promise, keeping my vow to forsake all others wouldn't be difficult, I don't believe, because it means a lot to me. It's something that means a lot in my family, so I refuse to feel guilty and I refuse to feel ashamed about something that wasn't my fault and it wasn't my error. I'm not some sort of homewrecker. He's a man who lied to everyone around him and chose to cheat on his wife, and that is not my fault, so I won't take on that guilt. 

Mental Health Problems Are Not Comic Canon Fodder

Part of me wants to be writing this blog, but a part of me, a very large part, wishes I didn't have to. I wished I didn't have to point out that using someone's medical condition as a point to laugh at them, but we often do. Sometimes that's because the behaviour that is displayed when a person is ill can be quite erratic and seemingly amusing, but actually, it's a cry for help. 

I'm not a big fan of Kanye West and I'm definitely not a fan of the whole Kardashian crowd, but his diagnosis with Bi-polar disorder has been public knowledge for a long time, and it's not the first time that he's had a very public episode where his health has been badly impacted, however the way it is reported makes it seem as though we should be entertained by him, rather than actually helping him to access the kind of help that he needs. 

To me, it's personal, because about six months ago, I was having really worrying symptoms with my mental health. Some of the times I took my Valium was actually not because I was so anxious I felt like I couldn't breath without panicking, but actually because I was so overexcited and that energy turned into nervous energy, and I just felt as though my whole body was vibrating. That buzz of energy is really hard to cope with and it felt as though my moods were swinging from anxious to excited to nervous to panicked to happy to depressed and cycling back through them in no sort of order. It was a scary development, and I didn't want to admit that what I was terrified of it being bi-polar disorder, because I know that one of the hardest parts of bi-polar is that you get well, you come off your meds because you think you don't need them, and then you relapse. Obviously it's not the same for everyone, but it's a common experience. It's also an experience I've had with my anxiety medication, because I'm not big on the idea of having to pop pills constantly to be able to live my life the way that I want to. 

I had to go to a psychiatrist for an assessment on my mental health issues and I was terrified for the weeks before hand, but on the day, she was able to reassure me that it didn't seem to her like it was Bi-polar. I had taken the whole day off of work, because the last time I had to have an assessment because of my mental health and went into work afterwards, I was far from okay, and I really didn't need a repeat of that situation, but as it was, I was relieved. I came home, got on my sofa and almost cried because I was so relieved. I don't know whether that relief was more because she told me that she was going to put some recommendations for alternative medications into the medical report, or if it was more that it wasn't bi-polar. 

There's something really stupid about that as well. Being diagnosed with bi-polar wouldn't have changed my symptoms. It wouldn't have made dealing with what I was dealing with any harder than it already was, but I've seen what bi-polar looks like on other people and I was petrified that that was what was "wrong" with me. I was scared of what that label would do, because anxiety has been bad enough over the years. It's been bad enough to have a panic disorder that people know about. I couldn't have lived through it quietly, but I would be lying if I say that that diagnosis wasn't traumatic. 

That being said, I work for an organisation which is relatively supportive of mental health issues. My family are starting to understand it a whole lot better and that would have been easy enough to handle provided I point them to the right place to find information about what was happening. I would like to think I would have been able to convince myself that mood stabilising medication was a necessary evil, because I was definitely at the point where I needed something to change, but best of all, the friends I have around me are generally a wonderful and supportive bunch, so even if I had got that diagnosis, it would have been okay. 

Putting all my other opinions about her aside, KKW is doing her best to be as supportive of her husband as she can and as protective as she can, despite his behaviour throwing some pretty horrific accusations at her and her family at the moment. Maybe some of them have some truth in them, maybe there are other things going on in the background, but she's right to ask for compassion for him, and if she's trying to get him sectioned or sent to rehab to help his current condition, which is what it seems like she is doing, I have to admire her, because despite the fact that being away from her husband would be hard, she's pushing for the right thing for him. She's being an awesome support network for her husband and I have to have a lot of respect for her because of that. A lot of people would walk away for their spouse doing less, so I have to say, it's not hugely often that I agree with her, but this is one of those occasions. 

It plays into a larger issue with the media, as well. When someone has a breakdown or is struggling, there are so many prying eyes there trying to catch a glimpse and get a story on the situation instead of respecting the reasonable right to privacy and giving a person the time and space to heal. It's not just Kanye. It's happened to Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears and many, many others. We are fascinated by the grief and sorrow and heartache of others like it's a Live Action soap opera. Whilst that fascination seems quite natural, there are limits, and we should know when to allow a person their space to heal. Very often, given the time to people may wish to share about their traumas or their stories themselves. 

Claudia Winkleman comes to mind. When her daughter first had her accident, she needed time to make sure that her daughter was okay and recover from the fear that something as simple as trick or treating and candles could have caused her such injuries as she sustained, but then Winkleman has talked about what happened, both how she felt about the incident and what happened to her young daughter, and she used her platform to highlight to parents how dangerous store bought Hallowe'en costumes can be and to highlight to manufacturers how dangerous they can be. Personally I love pumpkin carving, even though I don't have an artistic bone in my body so they might as well look like a blob with a blob cut out, but her story made me think twice about putting lit candles into them, or any of the decorations I like to put out at Christmas, because around my parents' place we do still, sometimes, get Carole Singers at Christmas and the thought of a child getting hurt because of candles truly worries me. 

Granted, that's not the same as Kanye West's medical condition, but it is a trauma where the public want information constantly and they want to be watching the scenes unfold. First it's is the child okay, then will she need skin grafts, will she be left with scaring. On top of what life can be like for celebrity children, it's quite a lot, and then there's every fear you have as a mother because of that. It's possible that something like that makes a parent anxious, in the medical definition, because all they did was let their child go trick or treating and they got such a serious injury. 

I guess the TL;DR on this would have to be Mental Health issues are a big horrid beast, and being in the spotlight whilst experiencing them is really tough. Whilst it may seem amusing, we need to be compassionate and understanding, and if we can help someone, famous or not, to access the help that they need, that should always be the priority, rather than being entertained by their suffering, or feeling entitled to their story. 

I Constantly Thank God For Valium

With a slight nod to the Panic! At the Disco album A Fever You Can't Sweat Out and me Googling what Esteban they could be referring to, I'm going to instead say thank God doctors still prescribe Valium for panic disorders, because I'm not sure I will get through the next few days or would have got through the last few weeks, without it. The last time I took it, I also needed one of my American Advil PM tablets to sleep and it made me wonder why some of the best pills in the world are little blue ones. No one around me got the joke. Maybe they're all too young, even though they're older than me... 

Anyway, I'm currently on a train racing back to London and having to convince myself to do things now, because I work well on trains, when they're not hellishly busy, of course, and on the return journey, I'll be in the front of the van with my parents, so there will be no complimentary wifi and no desk to work on, so it will be a long trip not just because of the distance we need to cover. London to Manchester by car or van is not my favourite trip, but it's necessary at the moment. 

Pre-pandemic, it made sense to be spending around half of my wages on rent. When I think of everything that was to cover my job and living in London, we're probably more like sixty-five percent of what I earn in a month. I was still saving towards one day owning a flat, but it wasn't something that was going to be happening any time soon. 

During the lockdown, I moved back in with my parents, and even though I've bought things like some new clothes (and shoes) from Marks and Spencer and materials for making masks, plus buttons to finish off some projects my grandma has been working on for me, I've still managed to save a hefty chunk more per month towards the flat, so the decision was made to just move back in with my parents for the next x amount of months. We're thinking it will be about twelve months, but that's not fixed or anything. I'm still going to be paying rent, which is one a storage facility, but it's a hell of a lot less than I have been paying out for the flat, so that works out pretty well. 

One of the problems, the biggest problem, the only problem, I'm not really sure what to term it, but a problem of great magnitude is that I get stressed by moving. I know everyone does, but I was on the brink of tears packing my books into boxes because the idea of having to move them is not comfortable and the idea that I have to store them isn't great and the thought that some of my things may end up damaged, well, that's just horrible. My mum and dad are also pretty stressed out about the move, though less about me moving in and more the physical process of driving down to London, picking up all of my stuff and then driving it back to unload into a storage facility before taking the van home and dropping it back off the next morning. I think that no one is really happy about being away from our dogs for a few days, as well, least of all him. 

Thankfully, I've called in the cavalry in the form of moving men to help get everything out of the flat and down to the van and then when we get to the storage center, it's all just got to go to a unit on the ground floor and they have trolleys, etc for getting it there. Granted, the boxes will need to be stacked and we need to be careful about what's in them, etc and the glass stuff so that it doesn't get broken, but for the most part, it's a pretty simple plan and one which doesn't leave my stuff in a van overnight with the possibility of being driven away never to be seen again. I'm not dark and cynical, honestly. I just have anxiety and am prone to panic attacks. 

So my job over the next few days is get rid of a few last things and then finish packing the last bits into boxes etc and clean down the flat ready for handing the keys back at the beginning of September, but the move needed to happen earlier because I can't drive a car, let alone a van, and even if I could there was no way we were going to be able to do this just between me and my mum and a removal service all of that way would have been expensive as hell, so my dad needed to be off work which he currently is. It's going to feel like a long old task, but at least if I get it over and done with now, I can draw a line under it and focus on things like colour schemes for my next place, which I have found is a good distraction tool to keep away from the idea that I'm here for a year and everything is a lot right now. If I can make myself focus on what will come out of this then I can calm myself down, mostly, and for the rest of the time, there's valium.

Believable Characters and What About Angels

I have heard, or rather read, about people being irritated by unbelievable characters and for reasons I'm not comfortable sharing right now, I was thinking about it a lot today. People think characters who are entirely good or unbelievably good, have to have some sort of awful flaw or something to rehumanise them, because there is nothing in us that believes that people can be that good. When we hear of someone who is, we have to think there's something wrong with them or there must be something wrong with the person that is telling you that the person is that good. They have to be too easily pleased or too quick to praise someone. They're ignorant or naive. Either that or we have to find something that would colour their view of the person - they're family, they have a crush on them, all those sorts of reasons.

When it comes to characters, it's easier if someone smokes or swears or eats babies in between saving the world. It's better if they struggle and they fail for a little while and they have to find some way to grow. They cannot be perfect from start to finish, because it just does not work. That hamartia has to be there, because otherwise, we cannot accept them. And if they never have to struggle, there's no story there. 

One of the cool things is, we can accept characters that develop in the same way that the Japanese use Kintsugi to fix pottery. When something breaks or chips, the pottery is fixed with gold so that it fills in the damage, making it right, but without covering the damage and making it more beautiful because of the break rather than in spite of the break. When we see a character's trauma and see them overcome it, we see the beauty in it. When their trauma informs what they do with their lives, like a doctor who became a doctor because they lost someone that they loved right in front of them, we find them inspirational, because we see the gold veins running through their cracks. If we saw a live version of The Trolley Problem where a hero had to choose between saving the life of their partner, the person that they loved, someone like that, and a group of innocent people, we would judge them for compromising their moral standards for the person that they loved even if we loved that love, but we would remember their trauma if they chose to lose the person that they loved in order to save the innocent people. I think that is probably pretty natural though.

Personally, I know it's possible to think the world of someone and later find out they're not so great, or there were flaws that kind of tarnished their armour so that it didn't shine so brightly. It happens a lot with the figures we admire in childhood, because we're not looking for the flaws. Children don't see that everything being perfect is a little suspicious. A great example is my grandpa. He was my entire world and I honestly thought that he was perfect, but as I've got older I realise that he had some choice opinions on certain people that "weren't great". 

I know it's something pretty common for people of his generation, and it's pretty common for my generation to look up to our war hero grandpas and love them unconditionally. It is pretty uncomfortable to have to reconcile the love we have for them and the way we look up to them with the things that we have to find problematic about them, even if they have been a product of their environment. 

It's hard because we know that there are people out there that might feel the same about literal Nazis, and if there was a sliding scale, it's not like I have to deal with that, but particularly his opinions about people who are in my friendship group, or groups of people who I might work with in my work as a mental health and safeguarding lead. He might not have been the sort of person to say man up, but he was the stoic silent type that just got on with things and didn't really know how to slow down. We have a photo on the living room wall of when I was six weeks old and my mum dressed me up to go and see him in the hospital after his second bypass operation. My nana went to go and see if he was up to teeny tiny visitors and my mum waited in the room at the end of the ward, and the next thing she knew he had come trundling down the ward to come and see his granddaughter. He was as tough as old boot leather, but I wonder how he would have dealt with me having a breakdown in university and I wonder how he would have dealt with my continuous struggles with mental health, let alone the fact that the majority of my friends and people he would hold choice opinions on, and I have grown up to be a bit too loud and a bit too feisty in my defence of them. My parents think being older should give my grandparents a pass and I really disagree. I can't say for certain that he wouldn't have supported me, because I just don't know how he would have reacted. I don't know how he would have reacted if one of his own family had come out to him, but his opinions on gay people in general, like I said, not great, which I know makes the idea of coming out pretty petrifying. He died about sixteen years ago, so maybe as society changed, he would have to, but it's impossible to know. 

If I ever wrote a character like my grandpa though, his flaws wouldn't be the views that he held in life, partly because they don't fit with my own beliefs and partly because they don't fit with a lot of society these days, but I'd write his flaws to be his heart; his physical, blood pumping heart. Doctors suggest a bypass operation should last for ten years. His lasted for just over eleven, his second one, and then he had no more veins lefts to be bypassed or whatever (Cardiology is not my strong point in medicine). That operation gave me every day that I had with him, but he still wasn't a well man, and he still suffered from crippling chest pains, and other issues related to his heart and his lungs. We have heart problems in our genes, but then he also smoked roll-ups during the war when he was in the Navy, so he told me once there were probably times when he and his friends smoked a hundred cigarettes a day. His sister and his niece lost legs because of their heart conditions and smoking, so we were really lucky that that didn't happen to him, but it did mean he died sooner than we were really ready for because his heart just couldn't do it anymore and his body was giving up on him. To me, that is, well, was, his worst flaw, and maybe it's naive to think that life would have changed his mind about the other things, but I do believe it. Maybe I have to believe it. 

Where's Home?

With the trip back to London to pick up all of my stuff looming this is a question I have been asking myself a lot, particularly as squeezing myself back into my childhood bedroom is not going amazingly well. The hope is it will all get a little bit easier to manage when I get the storage unit which is not so far away now, but that's dependent on being able to organise that well enough to contain all of my books, clothes, the small amount of furniture I'm keeping and everything out of my kitchen, including Morgan, my coffee machine. There's not a whole lot of stuff to move across from the house to the unit, but that's partly because there is not a whole lot of space in this room and I would really like to get to a place where keeping things on the floor is the only option because it is the literal only place that has any space. Part of it is because I have used this place for storage for a while and part of it is because I have a hell of a lot of stuff. 

I would love to be in a place where I could put my gin themed tea set to good use or have the space for my sewing patterns to all be on a shelf above a decent-sized cutting table with my machine on and drawers underneath it for all my sewing odds and ends and knitting junk. I would love to have my shoes laid out where I can see them all, but the time for these things is not right now and it might not even be in my next place. To be honest, the main things about my "first" flat will be having a decent amount of space for bookshelves so I can house the books, enough wardrobe space and a kitchen with work surfaces so that I can have Morgan the Coffee Maker sitting on the side and still bake cakes, cool them and ice them without getting panicky that I'm running out of space to put things and space to breathe because that's what happens currently. It got marginally better when my microwave packed in and I got that to the type, then didn't replace it, but honestly, that kitchen was not designed for someone like me to live there. 

The unfortunate byproduct of all of this is I feel like I'm losing the home that I love, London, for a place that I don't feel like is home really, in Manchester. Even for a limited time, it makes me feel restless and it makes me feel pretty stressed out sometimes. My parents have finally managed to start redecorating the house and considered making my room one of the next on the list before we realised that we weren't going to agree on a colour, and I'm a stroppy whatsit - it might be their house, but this is my space, so I have to like the colour. The greys that I like are far too dark and if any part of this room looks beige or magnolia, it will make me feel no end of stress. My mum wants me to clear up my room and "find a home for" a whole pile of things, but it's impossible to find a home for things when the only places that they can go to are full of other stuff, and mostly, I'm limited with what I can do about that. 

Thankfully, my dad took me back to London pretty early on in lockdown and I managed to bring back my weighted blanket, some of my clothes that I couldn't do without, my favourite pair of shoes more recently (glossy patent and bright yellow heels, because I am that ridiculous) and those things have helped me kind of keep in together, feel like myself and still feel a bit more at home, but even they are not a magic wand that will make me be completely settled, but the good thing is I'm keeping an eye on what the property market is doing and what is going on at work, etc, so as soon as I can get back to London, I'll be back, I'll be settled and I might even be able to invite people over to the new flat. Once I've painted the walls greatly inappropriate shades of mustard, grey and dark coral, of course. And also, maybe, a violent red, but I've not really decided where I want that to go yet. Granted, my mum and I might clash about interior design a few times before then, given that when I told her about my idea of a blood-red feature wall, navy to royal blue sofa and a bright yellow wing back armchair with everything else in the room being neutral she looked like she wanted to throw up in her own mouth... At least I have the time to figure it out though. 

I'm a Freaking Terrible Vegetarian

I'm a terrible vegetarian. 

Today, as we were tearing up some of the garden to make room for the greenhouse, I was having an internal debate about how terrible of a vegetarian I am. I'm not talking about an American vegetarian, which I think is veggie except for bacon sandwiches, or people who think chicken doesn't could, or even pescetarians who still eat fish (although I did have phased where I did that to make life easier for my ex-partner - obviously before he was the ex) but it's more everything past the not eating meat things. People think it's more treading into veganism, but personally, I disagree. 

Prior to moving back home, I was off milk, which was good for me, because I'm either lactose intolerant or lactose sets off my IBS. I found this out when I was about fifteen and something with a really creamy sauce made me violently ill and I wouldn't go to Pizza Express for a while. I was drinking my coffee with either oat milk or almond milk, and honestly, I was happy to pay the extra for the really good alternative milk, because it didn't make me feel ill and it didn't taste like crap like most of the cheap ones do. Unfortunately, my mum shops at Aldi and they only do the cheap alternative kinds of milk, and, to be perfectly honest, I would sooner go without milk than drink them and I have an at least five cup a day tea habit I can't sustain without milk, so compromise, I'm having red milk whilst living at my parents' place. 

We're also growing our own veggies and things in the garden, however, there are aphids on some of the plants and cabbage looper caterpillars on others and they're trying to massacre the plants, so I spent some of today getting rid of the little yellow eggs off of the cauliflower plants and spraying the other plants down with a bug spray to try and save them from the insects, however when we ended up with stray worms in the gravel we were moving or on the concrete base where we were trying to clear to put up the greenhouse I was picking the little guys up and putting them in another part of the garden where they could run away into the soil and be happy and alive, but, on the other side, a spider was squashed because after me screaming at one of it's distant cousins for getting a bit too close that one decided to try and make a run up my arm as I was clearing a plant. There's another in the garden that I told my dad was going to get hit with whatever was closest if I saw the little sod again, but that was mainly because I ****-ing hate them, it was a Cupboard Spider, Cupboard Spiders bite and it gets nasty if you don't go to A&E and have it treated. I'm not going to the hospital any time soon if I can avoid it, so I'm not having one of those little ****houses bite me. I know I should live and let live and I know spiders help control the other bug populations, but there are rules around here. Spiders that try to/ get into my bed, dead, spiders in the house generally, probably going to get slipper-ed, large ones around me when I'm freaked out, likely to be ground into the carpet, in the garden, stay away from me and the worst that will happen is I'll scream because they're not socially distanced enough... 

There is the whole argument as well of the number of animals that die in crop production and the production of pet food and all that jazz, and I know I have some work still to do on no eating sweets with gelatine in and not eating Milky Ways and Mars bars because they're made with rennet (which I only found out a few weeks ago) as well as making sure the cheeses I'm buying are actually vegetarian, but after fourteen years of this, I think I'm doing pretty okay with it. And most of my main characters in anything I write now are vegetarian, so I think that should score me some points...

And We All Went Into the Arc

I love a good character arc. There are some pretty epic ones out there, and there are some terrible ones and one of the worst things about creating a character and letting them grow is when you then shoehorn them into something in a way that doesn't fit. The best example, and the one which prompted me to write this is the character of Alex Karev in Grey's Anatomy. Spoiler alert for Season 15/16. 

From season one, Alex Karev is a douche bag. He's a shark, he's occasionally incompetent, he's aggressive and he's very reactionary and it makes him a pretty abrasive character, but as the seasons continue, you see more of what it behind all of that, and when he's got some stability in his life, having a good job, a home and all of those things which help us to feel a lot more secure. You see his trauma and as he grows up a bit he learns to deal with it a little better and becomes something close to a decent human being, and someone that you can have a lot of sympathy for and also someone you can really root for and not just because he is a scrappy little underdog. And then he leaves the show with a letter saying he's going back to his first wife, who left him and he realised he was better off without her, left his second wife, and started raising kids with the first, who had a five percent chance of surviving a couple of years and this is over a decade later. It's as if the character arc got filled up with all these wonderful things and just at the point of casting off to survive the flood, someone shoots a flaming arrow into it and it burns and the wreck sinks and it all sucks. 

One of my favourite character arcs, and this is not just because I think Liam Hemsworth is hot stuff, is Gale Hawthorne from The Hunger Games. At the beginning of the series, he's an annoying kid and has this idealistic view on the world. By the end of the series, he has changed to the person that would be okay with dropping a bomb on Primrose and other innocent people in order to defeat someone that he sees as a tyrant. Granted, he's kept the naivety, because he doesn't see that the person he is fighting in the name of is just as much of a tyrant as the person that they are fighting against. People justify their actions in different ways, but there are times when the destruction that he character saw and the wilful disregard for the lives of others does rub off on you, and the citizen that support a system seem just as bad as the armies who fight for that system, and within that, Gale changed a lot. The trauma his character saw, both through his life, through The Hunger Games where he watched the woman that he loved fighting for her life, and then he watched whilst the place he had grown up and the people he had grown up with were decimated by people that they were made to serve. It's a really good character arc. It's familiar, but it's written well and played well. 

Developing character arcs is time consuming, and it is interesting and it is beautiful, but it means that you need to make sure that anything that is wildly out of character has a reason, and it better be a bloody good one.

That's All Folks

Okay. I wrote yesterday about getting close to the end of The Man in the High Castle and today I finished watching it, and right now, I need the book of it so I can read that and see if it actually explains the last of it, because it doesn't really make a whole lot of the ending clear, and that's winding me up. 

SPOILER ALERT 

It doesn't end with the 'it was all just a dream' scenario, so thank the high heavens for that, but I don't understand the bit with the portal at the end and how they made that happen, I don't understand why the death of the Reichsmarshal means the General can take off his Swastika medal and I'm only thinking that Abensen walks off to see if he can find a world where he hasn't met Caroline yet, or where Caroline isn't dead. I'm gutted for Thomas, because he's lost his dad, who seemed like a pretty decent guy and I really thought, or the ridiculous romantic in me hoped, that the reason that Juliana kept remembering Joe shooting her in one of the Alt- realities was because she needed to be gone in that world to do what she needed to do in another to ensure the safety of the Multiverse. I was waiting for him to come walking out of the tunnel, but instead she's all cosy with Liam/Wyatt and I'm thinking this is the third man you have been very much in love with over the space of not really that long. I'm not judging her for sleeping with them, but her actions kind of make me think she didn't really love any of them, but that's a whole side point right there... I understand what Kido did, and I kind of love his character arc, although I am confused at what he plans to do *next* and I feel like the story line with his son was rushed as heck, but that's that. 

At least it wasn't as disappointing as the end of Game of Thrones was, or the entire movie of Ready Player One. It was alright, but it just felt like it stopped short of where I wanted it to stop. I enjoy films and books and things that don't spell out everything, but I only really enjoy watching Donny Darko for getting to the end and thinking, I still don't get it... 

Today has been a bit of a weird old day. I had too much work to get everything done, no energy or inclination to make any more masks though the time where we in the UK should be wearing them most of the time trudges ever closed and I realise that it puts me back to the feeling of when I was in San Francisco in 2018. The Campfire was burning around California and honestly, with all of the wildfires, I was worried the trip might be cancelled. It was easing a lot by the time I went but the air in San Francisco was so full of ash that I didn't get to see the Golden Gate Bridge, I didn't really want to go to the Japanese Gardens in Golden Gate Park and we couldn't even see Alcatraz. For several days the boats to Alcatraz weren't running and neither were the cable cars because the air quality was just so poor, and you couldn't lay your hands on an N95 mask, the type with the filters on, pretty much anywhere, and then there were people around with these huge, industrial style masks and gas masks. It made it even more scary, but it was worth it. I used Uber a lot that trip, but the BART was okay and I still managed to do a lot of what I had planned to do, and in the Castro it was like everything was just a normal day. My anxiety was being awful then, too, and it was triggered by the planes and the ash in the sky and parkrun being cancelled across San Francisco, but somehow I just kept plodding through it, and so did most other people and that was how we made it through it. That was how we got to the end of it and it was all okay. Well, it was mostly okay. I loved California, but given that one of the things I have more nightmares about than anything else is fire, I don't think I would be able to live there even if I got the opportunity to move. 

So this time, too, we'll just keep plodding and hopefully it will all come right in the end. And until then, I'm going to try and wear the coolest or geekiest masks I can make and enjoy the time I'm wearing them. 

Charlieswrite

It Was Only Just a Dream

I don't know what it is with me and music references at the moment, but holy hecks, it is everywhere. 

I've been watching The Man In The High Castle recently and I am really enjoying it, in a strange way, but I know that the last series is either out now or out soon, and I'm wondering how on earth they are going to end it. I'm slightly scared it is going to end up being a deus ex machina, the worst of all deus ex machina of all deus ex machinas where someone wakes up and it is all just a dream. It has ruined things that I have read and watched before and part of me is worried that it is going to be some horrific sort of ending like that. Urgh, I don't want it to be that. 

So, why does the idea of an ending of 'It was only just a dream...' ruin endings of things? 

Dreams are fantastic for inspiration particularly for things like horror fiction, because when we are asleep our brains turn everything over and there are plenty of things that have popped straight out of people's dream worlds. Playing with dreams is pretty cool as well because things like Nightmare on Elm Street really work, but when that is the only way to write yourself out of a situation, it would be better if everyone just died, the world ended and the Nazi's took over the Multiverse rather than it just being the strange thing that someone's brain popped out whilst they were sleeping or on some form of medication that contributes to vivid dreaming, or it is just lazy. Even if your first draft is getting your characters into a dire situation, and then you go back and litter clues though the story as to how they're going to get out of it, provided it's not an alarm clock going off and someone waking up, you're a lot better off. 

The other thing that you want to avoid though is that awful thing of the world's most dire situation and then the person pulls Excalibur out of their backside and they took a sword-fighting class when they were seven and never mentioned it before this very point, and suddenly they have everything that they ever needed. You can't just throw in that sort of character development and act like it makes for a good story. 

These aren't exactly rules, and there are plenty of stories which break these rules, but they're the sort of half rules that are worth remembering, because whilst it is easier to write things quickly and break all of these rules, it depends on who you want to be as a writer. One of my favourite writers is S J Watson. He's not churning out books every other second, actually John Green as well. Their books are clever and considered and they have spent time pouring over them, and it is obvious. You might disagree with me on S J Watson with that one - a lot of people on Goodreads evidently do - but I really think that book is incredible. I did not see the end of that book coming and it was one of the most thrilling reads I have read in quite a while. Granted, Mills and Boon writers bash out a book a month and make a mint out of it, so it depends who you want to be. 

I'm not judging anyone for being either, by the way, I just know which I would prefer to be. 

Charlieswrite

The Current Big C

Once upon a time, I remember when Cancer was the only big C that people tended to be worried about and it was talked about in hushed tones and as if saying the word could summon it, but that seems to have changed a little over the last few months. 

I went through something where the big C could have referred to a certain dire profanity as a name for someone that my mother has taken to referring to as Billy Liar. Personally, I just use his name or that S***house. Then COVID happened and obviously, the big C was the coronavirus. It's something that hasn't really been talked about in hushed tones the way that Cancer always has been, but it's something which some have lived in fear of and others haven't been bothered by. There are probably a lot of stories where people have floated the rules and then experienced the big K of karma by falling ill, but there's a lot of stories as well of people floating the rules and not getting it, like those people who have smoked a twenty deck a day and live well past the age where many of their peers have succumbed to other illnesses. I've also heard of people who were so worried about their other illnesses that could make COVID even more dangerous that they haven't left their homes in months, and yet they still have got the virus, and they haven't really known how. 

It's a scary thing, don't get me wrong. When others have been flouting the rules or have been doing things that make life harder for everyone else, it's hard not to be angry and it's hard not to be scared. I get snarky and sarcastic with people and I wish I carried a detol spray in my bag to spray them with when they walk too close to me, but then nobody is perfect. I sat and sewed masks for my family and I, and yet I know we don't always wear them when we're out of the house, and we probably should. In the early days of lockdown, I went for a run and on the same day went out later to take my dog for a walk, and depending on whose version of the rules you look at, that might have been breaking them, but my dog runs in front of me when I run and I have kicked him before, unintentionally as he darted across the front of me towards something smelly, and he needs to be walked to 'do his business' and I need to run for my Mental Health and wellbeing. 

I know I've been pretty lucky. I was annoyed when the NHS clap seemed to turn into a fireworks parade because my dog has panic attacks. I've had to increase my meds because throughout the pandemic I have felt an overwhelming sense of dread, but other than that, the people I know who got the virus survived. I didn't lose anyone from my family to the virus. We lost someone in the last few days, but that's been coming for years. It's still heartbreaking and it's awful not to be able to go to his funeral and hug his family and mourn with them, but overall, we've been really lucky. 

This is going to be something that affects a lot of people because of other things, like a few of my friends who are pregnant, like the WriMos whose yearly social time is NaNoWriMo and everyone who has had to be shielding for the last few months. Everyone is having to adjust a little bit - wearing masks is a bit annoying, because it makes your face hot, but it's not a major problem for the majority of people. Hand sanitizer is shredding the skin on my hands to pieces, but as long as I make sure I carry my own, it's fine. Some people will be hyper-vigilant for a while. Anyone with a bit of a germ phobia will likely really struggle. Maybe we will all be a bit more cautious, but something tells me that it won't be everyone. With how a lot of people have acted in lockdown, I really don't think that it will change everyone, and I would be lying if I said I wasn't one of the people who was really worried about what happens next. As much as we got through one lockdown, I think it would be really miserable to go through that again during the winter because the weather up here is horrific in the winter, it's really cold and you lose space by not having the garden to use as an extra room. The whole mood of the season seems more depressed as well, which wouldn't be helpful for anyone. COVID and seasonal flu could be an absolute disaster, but I am trying not to worry myself whilst keeping my fingers crossed that everything will be okay. 

I'll keep on sewing masks together and giving them to people who need them and donating some of the proceeds to Macmillan and spending the rest of the money on things like the ever depleting amount of elastic that I need to use to make them fit and the cool material I'm using to cover the masks. I've made Manchester Bee ones that are the cutest thing ever and I have London themed prints on the pile for making into some really cute ones. I'll keep carrying my sanitizer, so I don't keep reacting to the really high alcohol stuff that some of the shops are using at the moment, and I'm going to keep wearing long-sleeved things so I can use the sleeves when I need to do things like press the buttons on lifts or use the keys on a pin pad because I don't trust how often they are cleaned. We're managing to stay in most of the time, only going out for things which we need, though a bit more than the urgent supplies of a few weeks ago. We have been out to get things like clothing and my mum has been out to look at new curtains for the rooms that we decorated, but the good thing is that we have been going out as early as we can to make sure the stores aren't packed and Mum goes out during the week when things are less busy. Life isn't going to be normal again until I'm back in London and my parents get their place back to themselves, and my mum can move back into her office upstairs which is currently my office and sewing room. My machine lives in there and so do all of the numerous elastics and fabrics that I need to make the masks and another project that I'm working on to create a cushion cover for my grandad's favourite cushion. If we keep plodding on, then one day this will all be over. 

Charlieswrite

Why I Suck at 4 The Words

Okay, so I have been taking a lot of opportunities recently to talk about how much I love NaNoWriMo and one of their supporters, 4thewords, and I'm going to take another to do that today. 

So, for those not aware, NaNoWriMo is the organisation behind NaNoWriMo and Camp NaNo writing competitions which are basically the size fifteen steel toe capped boots buried in the ass of a lot of writers in April, July and November. It is the spur which reminds us to do like Dory and just keep swimming, because if you aren't writing, the magic may never come out. (I mean, maybe one day you'll fart glitter, but I'm not going to bet anything I want to keep on that, so let's just write instead.) 4thewords is a productivity tool/ game where you create an avatar of something called a Dust Warrior and join in the fight against the Dust (if you're lucky enough to not live with your mother and you tell her you're fighting the Dust, she'll either think you've gone mad or you're cleaning, one gets you good attention, the other, not so much...) It's all challenges and quests and resources and do dads and shiny things and I have the personality of a magpie; I like me the shiny, shiny things, so I like the hell out of this thing. 

They also did Pride like a Boss. Or a whole team of Bosses. Or even better, a parade of glitter coated, hot pant wearing, flag flying BOSSES. There was a whole different wardrobe for Pride (necessary) and you dressed your avatar off and sent them to walk in the parade. It was even made so that people who are not Dust Warriors could see it, love it and possibly even join in, because when Pride across the world was cancelled, people came out in force across the internet and shows the love for diversity, inclusion, representation and just a love of love really. 

I love that 4thewords focuses on a tiny nugget of writing - just four hundred and forty four words per day gets you a streak point (and no, those points cannot be used to allow you to streak in the pride parade) - and it fits so well with nudge theory, because if you can't do that, that's cool, just log in once a day and it is possible to "fix" your streak for free. You can also, if you are inclined to, buy a product called a Stempo (it looks something like a boomerang with one of those static currents that makes your hair stand on end running through) and fix days ahead if you'll be offline or fix days before if you've been ill or the internet failed. You can earn Stempo in the game or you can buy them. It's not like normal game add ons though - there is no requirement to buy Stempo to keep going in the game and actually, it's nice to buy some things like that because a well fed developer is a happy developer and a happy developer makes you nice quests to play with and we like quests! Also, the damn thing is incredible so they deserve every cent that they earn through it and more. (God, am I gushing?)

So, how do I suck at 4thewords? Back to my magpie personality, I like all things shiny. I want to have all of the wings that you get for streaks - I love my current metal pointy ones!! - I want to do all of the quests, at once, now, and immediately - and that's not possible - and it can be a bit like chess, that having a game plan is helpful, but even when I have one, I go off of it so quickly. 

One of the rolling quests through the game is fighting ten monsters daily, twenty weekly and thirty in the bi weekly quest. It gives you keys to chests when you do these quests, so it makes sense to keep space in your questbook for them and do them when they come through so you keep churning through keys, particularly as you can sell them in you don't need them, but the seemingly unlimited inventory means you don't need to if you don't want to. My quest book is always too full to do this though, because I don't possess a brain. It also makes sense to try and get through the daily quest of five thousand words. partly because it rolls over into the next day if you don't finish the whole amount in the one day and because it gives you the chest that goes with the ten monster quest key. Keep opening them and you get coins and other stuff that can be pretty useful. Again, makes sense to leave room for that, and then you have the special events like our current aliens, and you get a whole load of time limited quests that give you even more cool stuff, but if you start with a full quest book you either have to 'toss' a quest with little progress, diminishing interest or where you're collecting items, because you can't lose progress on that unless you use the items for something else and that's going to happen if it's there in the book or not, or try like hell to finish something before you can start on the new super shiny, time limited thing. I have anxiety - how well do you think that plays out? 

There are some short quests, and then there are some big ass quests where you have to defeat a large number - well, twenty five - of the 'bigger' monsters where it takes more words to defeat them. For example, Ylly, for seven hundred and twenty words. Twenty. Five. Of. Them. Or Desert Rudakai. Defeat fifteen of them for eighteen hundred words each monster. Seriously. One thousand, eight hundred words PER MONSTER. 

If logic were to rule the day, I wouldn't keep to many of these bad guys around at once, but recently I seem to have filled my quest book with them and it's daunting as heck, but then I also have a couple of streak quests (again, not about streaking in the parade) and one had forum posts attached to it. Thankfully there isn't a rule about setting up a thread just to talk to other people trying to race their way through that quest or a few of us, probably either the introverts or the obsessives, would be screwed. 

So, other than being the proof I need to level up my nerd credentials, I hope that this little blog about my love affair with 4thewords has made you consider giving it a try, or if you're already a Dust Warrior, I hope that my view on tactics gives you some food for thought at the very least. Without further ado, FOR THE VALLEY!! I'm going to sleep before I turn into an even bigger nerd. 

Charlieswrite