"What is the most sensible river in the world?"

Answer: (from a Christmas Cracker) THE SEINE.

So did we all have a good Christmas?  A merry, festive season full of fun, frolics and an assortment of other eff words… (like ‘faffing’ I mean… why – what do you THINK I meant?) *ahem*.  Focus.  Oh there’s another.  Slippery  little buggers aren’t they?  And did we all like the Queen’s Speech and the Open All Hours and the return of Sherlock on New Years’ Day – what HAVE we done without him *sigh*.

And writing.  Have we done any writing? 

If we’re talking about the Royal ‘we’ then, no.  We haven’t.  Not a blind solitary single… actually hang on, I did find a short story I hadn’t quite finished and – well, finished it off.  Sort of.  It’s one I wrote in my ‘People’s Friend’zy towards the latter part of last year and even though I’ve had every single one of the six I sent in (duly tempered and with no sweary words and not even a *hint* of Bad Things) returned with a nice ‘thanks but no thanks’ I’m a devil at trying.  I could give up but that’s too easy isn’t it?  I stall; that’s what I do.  I’d like to imagine that I do a Crouching Tiger Bruce Lee style impersonation at this juncture – you know, before going in for the slowly, slowly and KILL! Scenario, but I don’t do that at all.  I slink off, have a bit of a bleat, get a bit angry, vow never to write another word because I’m clearly sh*te and then bit by bit I regain my composure. 

Because writing’s a bit like breathing for me.  If I don’t do it for long enough I start to die a little. Inside I mean.  And metaphorically I mean.  Alright then, meta-drama-phorically.  But don’t we all, us writers, feel that way at times?  We are the tortured artists who dream up neverworlds where people who don’t exist are created and nurtured and dressed in  funny clothes and made to say weird things to impossible other things and some will die, some will cry and others will kill or love and all this comes from the one same body we’ve also got to drag around a supermarket twice a week in the Normal world.

It doesn’t make sense.  At least it’s never made sense to me.

This festive season (and what misanthrope christened it that please?) I’ve been to so many social gatherings and entertained so many people that my head feels as if it’s been peeled, squashed inside a blender and switched to level 5.  And my eyes are still whirring around – see them? I know – too visual – and on top of all these leftovers too.  Just call me Blenda.  (coming to a Christmas Cracker near you).

I sat afore so many merrimakers during this season of goodwill that I am still surprised Ant and Dec weren’t there at some stage.  And if they had been I’d have been the first (possibly only) one to have risen to her feet, puffed up her chest and announced “I AM A WRITER – GET ME OUT OF HERE!” (please?).  

Because there’s only so much small talk and so many shortbread cookies a writer can take before it breaks their spirit and they begin to imagine perhaps ‘writing’ was something they’d imagined having done in another realm of fantasy and this is what Real Life is all about.  Cold Sprouts, bits of tinsel stuck down the sofa, queues of miserable faces in DIY shops and newsreaders saying the same thing they always say but wearing different outfits in which to deliver it.

Oh I could not imagine a chillier world in which there were no opportunity to make stuff up and make people smile in the process. 

Back to work, everyone -
the world needs us!

So, forget the Hokey Cokey, chaps – Writing’s what it’s all about!

Happy New Year one and all!  

And may 2014 bring us all unheralded delights.