Linking up today’s pic with Jay at Cosmic Girlie for Silent Sunday, Darren at One Dad 3 Girls for My Sunday Photo and Jodi at Practising Simplicity for The 52 Project. Check out their blogs for some fantastic photography from across the blogosphere!
It’s so good to have you to myself again. I know you’ve been busy, making people’s ouchies better in the hospital. I know you’ve been working hard.
But I’ve missed you.
Life is so much more fun when you’re around.
I love going on adventures with you and mummy – I asked her where you were, every time, when we set out on our own. We had lots of good times together just the two of us, but it’s even better when you can come too.
Your shoulders are broader, and your hair doesn’t tickle so much.
I always got so excited when I saw your car pull into the drive: clamouring against the window, nose pressed to the glass as it misted up with my giggles. You would come right up and put your nose against mine and draw love in the cloud of our breath. When you disappeared again I would worry for a moment, but then I would hear your key in the lock and run as fast as I could for cuddles in the kitchen.
Thank you for always having time for me, even when you had been up since before dawn and had been ground down by mean consultants and endless traffic. Thank you for not even waiting to take off your coat before kneeling down to play train tracks, for finding the patience to do washing things before bed even when you would rather be having a glass of wine and collapsing on the sofa. Thank you for making me laugh and reading me stories until we both fell asleep in the chair.
I love it when you read with me.
Thank you for the tickles and the Gruffalo cuddles and the prickle kisses.
Thank you for making mummy smile.
I know that sometimes I am hard work with my throwing and my hitting and my frustration at the world. But every time you listen to me it helps me begin to work it out, and every time you hold me it helps me remember how much I am loved.
I love you too, daddy.
Thank you for being.
What is it we find so irresistible about dark and twisted fiction?
I’ve wondered sometimes whether it’s just me: often when I relay to my husband the plot of one of my favourite books, or try to convince him to watch a film that’s caught my eye, he can’t quite understand why I would want to immerse myself in such torment.
It’s not so much horror I like, and certainly not gore, but rather the depths and depravity of human emotion at its worst.
Since I first read it when I was about seventeen, my favourite book has been Ian McEwan’s ‘A Child in Time’ – a harrowing account of the impact losing a child has on her parents. He is still the person I come back to as my favourite author, the person whose body of work I most aspire to, and it is the strong element of macabre I think that lures me in most effectively.
More generally I find myself drawn to tales of loss, of death, of suffering and abandonment. Stories which explore the evil that humanity is capable of, and expose parts of the soul that you would never wish to encounter in real life. And I find them fascinating rather than depressing. There is definitely something cathartic about them – a place to play out my deepest fears which I can put to bed again simply by closing the book.
My most recent novel definitely strays into this territory. An examination of the horrible ways people can treat each other, with an antagonist who brings together some of the worst traits I have come across in my experiences and those of others. It was a little harder to switch off from that – there were days (and nights) when his consciousness seeped into my own and left me feeling distinctly unsettled. But still I found myself compelled to tell his story.
The short stories that I have written are even more twisted. I’m sort of playing around with the idea of putting together a collection, and in trying to identify the common thread which binds them together there is no escaping the darkness at their core. Obsession, murder, man-eating hermit crabs, psychosis, self-amputation: putting them all side by side is making me wonder a little exactly what it is that’s going on in my head!
But it seems that I am not alone in feeling the pull of the dark side. When I alluded recently to a short story I was working that was possibly too dark to share I wasn’t intentionally building up intrigue, but it seems that just that thought was enough to make people want to read it. It’s still sat on my hard drive, waiting for an appropriate outing, but it’s kind of good to know that I’m not the only one who likes to immerse myself in these shadowy worlds.
I’ve been working on another story this week, one inspired by the awesome story of a woman in Exminster placing a Gumtree ad for someone to help her test her home-made time machine. I was struggling for a hook at first, and of course when it did begin to emerge it was from those shadows.
I guess there is just a part of me that is fascinated by the more sinister workings of the human mind, and how they play out in interactions with other people. The seeds of those workings must be lying somewhere in the recesses of my mind, but by germinating them in the realm of fiction I am satisfying that desire for darkness whilst being able to focus my real life on altogether more pleasant pursuits.
And I suppose that is one of the many reasons why fiction is so important! Who knows what would happen to the world if our imaginations did not have that safe place to explore their darkest fears…
Linking up today’s pic with Jay at Cosmic Girlie for Silent Sunday, Darren at One Dad 3 Girls for My Sunday Photo and Jodi at Practising Simplicity for The 52 Project. Check out their blogs for some fantastic photography from across the blogosphere!
How do you get your toddler to eat more vegetables?
This was not a question I thought I’d be asking. Having followed Arthur’s lead on weaning, a year ago he would happily tuck into courgette, mushroom, sweet potato, broccoli – pretty much everything, in fact, that we put in front of him. In the back of my mind I knew it was too good to be true.
Nowadays cucumber is the only thing we can be sure of. And potatoes, but I don’t think they count. He normally likes peas and sweetcorn, and will go for a carrot stick on a good day. But that’s it!
So I am always on the lookout for new ideas to persuade him that actually vegetables are pretty delicious. Having had lots of fun with bluenana muffins last week something that would involve him in the whole culinary creative process was even more appealing. So when I came across the idea of omelette muffins I knew I had to give it a go.
Veg, cheese and eggs. All put together in a cupcake tin and forgotten about whilst it cooks. What’s not to love?
Arthur was intrigued by the smorgasbord of ingredients put in front of him, and was super keen to get involved with the liberal sprinkling into the (well-greased) tins.
Once we’d we’d exhausted our supply of fillings, it was time for eggs. That was even more exciting – Arthur loved having a go at cracking them against the jug, and then mixing them up ready to pour.
Once the pan was topped up with eggs, they went into the oven. I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect from these super-healthy, super-paleo muffins, but they looked amazing once they’d done their time.
And they tasted pretty awesome too! But before I get into that here’s the recipe in case you want to have a go…
Super healthy omelette muffins
One of the brilliant things about this recipe is that the flavour possibilities are almost endless. What follows is what worked for me, but feel free to mix it up with whatever you’ve got to hand!
You will need:
12 hole cupcake/muffin tin
Ingredients:
Finely chopped:
Half a red onion
Half a courgette
3 mushrooms
Half a red pepper
Small handful chives
Cheese to taste
9 eggs
Splash of water
Salt and pepper
Olive oil for greasing
Directions:
1) Preheat the oven to 180 c
2) Grease the cupcake tin liberally with olive oil
3) Evenly distribute the vegetables and cheese amongst the tins
4) Whisk together the eggs with a splash of water
5) Pour egg mixture into tins
6) Place tins in hot oven for 20 mins, or until raised and lightly browned
7) Allow to cool for a few minutes before turning out to serve
This is is the perfect lunch for toddlers and adults alike, working just as well with carrot sticks on the side or on top of a dressed leafy salad.
They also provided the perfect snack for my husband to keep his brain going in the run up to his medical school finals, and worked just as well cold the next day.
All in all, for someone who loves eggs but finds conventional omelettes a bit of a chore, these were a revelation.
But…
Arthur wasn’t entirely convinced.
He observed and poked and prodded and nibbled, but not an awful lot was actually ingested.
So the quest for veg to please the toddler is still ongoing.
These have definitely made it onto my regular lunch list (sorry kiddo), but if you have any other suggestions for ways to get Arthur to eat more vegetables then please share them below!
This week, I finally got round to writing some fiction. I’ve been in something of an involuntary hiatus recently, talking myself into a bit of a corner where I was not writing, not very happy about it, and seemingly incapable of wrestling back control.
And then something caught my eye, a book I’d bought back in September which from its title alone had given me the nudge I’d needed to get on with the edit of While I’m Alone. I’d been generally trying to resist reading, thinking that might be one of the things stopping me from getting any words of my own down on paper, but seeing as it didn’t seem to be working I thought I might as well dip in and see what else it had to offer.
I reminded me of a couple of things that I think I’d forgotten. How not every piece of fiction I write needs to (nor should be) part of some bigger purpose – be it working on a novel, or producing something for the blog, or moving closer to publication. How it’s ok (even important) just to let the words flow at first, without worrying that they seem a bit rubbish. How planning (which I have tended to rely on so far) is not the be all and end all, and actually starting to write something without any detailed ideas about where it’s headed has the potential to be even more powerful.
On one level this got me thinking again about the novel that’s been waiting patiently for months for me to get on and write it. One of the things that’s been holding me back is feeling the need to have a concrete idea of plot and structure before I begin to write, rather than just the key scenes and characters that have set up home in my mind so far. But actually I think just getting started might be a better option.
Having said that, with my world still full to bursting at the moment I’m not quite feeling in the right headspace to immerse myself in a whole new novel. So instead I turned to another idea I had scribbled down in the middle of a night some months ago…
I initially thought that too might have had pretensions to be a novel. But actually I realised, for now at least, it would make a much better short story. And so I wrote it as that.
I’m not going to share it here – it’s too long, and quite possibly a bit too dark… But I’ve written it, felt once again the pleasure of words rushing through my fingertips to create characters and emotions and tension, and that’s what’s important.
We went for a walk in the woods this week. Arthur had been asking for a while – unusually, as he tends to prefer the sea. And so once the rain had cleared and the colds we have both been laid low by had begun to recede we headed up towards the trees.
It’s a walk we’ve done many times before. We’re so lucky to have Berry Head on our doorstep: as well as the spectacular views from the top it offers a winding woodland on the way. I had thought, once we’d wandered through our usual patch of green, that we might make our way to the cafe on the headland. As he is increasingly wont to do, though, Arthur had other ideas.
There is a gate just off the main path which I’ve noticed several times before, but which we’ve never actually been through. Not for any particular reason – it’s just not the way we go. This time though Arthur was intent on seeing what was on the other side. He actually managed, as I hung back dreaming of a latte, to get the gate open himself. And once he had? Well, it would have been churlish not to follow.
I let him lead the way from that point, and I think the images capture the adventure that followed better than I can in words. He was so fascinated by everything he discovered – things to look at and smell and touch and hear. Occasionally he threw a glance in my direction to check I wasn’t too far away, but essentially he was lost in his own little world.
The finale to Arthur’s explorations was suitably spectacular: at the end of this little avenue he discovered what he could only imagine was a spaceship. Not long after this last pic he made a dash for my shoulders – there had been plenty of exploring for one day.
This particular adventure clearly left quite an impression on him. He has talked about the ‘big and strong’ spaceship in the woods as he’s drifted off to sleep the last couple of nights. I can only imagine the wonders he has been seeing in his dreams.
Linking up today’s pic with Jay at Cosmic Girlie for Silent Sunday, Darren at One Dad 3 Girls for My Sunday Photo and Jodi at Practising Simplicity for The 52 Project. Check out their blogs for some fantastic photography from across the blogosphere!
When I started this blog, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. Not just with the blog itself, though that was definitely uncharted territory, but more generally too: over the previous couple of years everything I thought I knew about my life had changed. I liked where I was, most days, but I couldn’t help being curious about where I was headed.
The name of my little corner of the internet, ‘Sophie is…’, was the beginning of a sentence that I hoped I might be able to complete some time soon. With actions at first, and then, as time went on, with a label – something to replace the title of ‘teacher’ which I had worn with pride for the preceding decade.
There were obvious contenders – ‘a mum’ being the strongest one. I remember having a conversation with one of my oldest friends a few weeks after I’d entered the weird and wonderful world of blogging. Like me, she had recently celebrated the first birthday of her first child. Like me, she was struggling to come to terms with putting to one side the career she had worked so hard for. And also like me any regret or guilt she felt at that was still superseded by a strong sense of relief at being allowed, if she so chose, to be ‘just’ a mum.
We spoke about the power of that little qualifier, how hard it was for us – and for society – to accept that nurturing a child was a worthwhile use of our time. We discussed how there were days when being a mum felt more than we were capable of, even with all the time in the world, and others when we longed to be filling our time with something that reflected more of who we used to be, not just this new person we had become.
I think about this a lot, still.
I have not yet been able to relinquish my son to nursery or any other form of regular childcare. I worry that we would both miss too much. But at the same time I have not been able to entirely throw myself into being a mum.
I have needed something more.
And so, as well as ‘a mum’, Sophie is… ‘a writer’, ‘a school governor’, ‘a local councillor’, ‘an education consultant’. All of these things are exciting and fulfilling, and take an increasing amount of my time. Only the last is guaranteed to bring in any income, though I’m still holding out for those novels finding a publisher.
I know I am incredibly lucky to have the choices that I do.
But now I worry that I am spreading myself too thin. I still have not found a satisfying way to complete the unfinished sentence that began this blog.
And the blogging itself is confusing me recently – not the act of doing it, but what it’s all for. I found myself in a heated discussion about this a few weeks ago with someone who shall remain anonymous but whose opinion means an awful lot. The nature of the argument is too complicated and personal to go into here but it left me feeling a bit empty, a bit pointless.
Except I love this blog. I love how it jumps from one topic to another, piquing the interest of a wide range of people even though it never lures them in as deeply as it might if my writing was more focused. I know I don’t play by the rules, I know my target audience isn’t clearly enough defined to attract advertisers, I know that I’m not interested in making the blog in itself a commercial enterprise. I know I could channel my efforts much more effectively if I picked an area and stuck to it, but I don’t want to – not yet at least. And that is where this blog, still, is a mirror of my life.
It hasn’t yet decided where its priorities lie, it’s enjoying making the most of all the new opportunities that are presented to it, being able to say ‘yes’ to all the ones that look like they might be interesting or fun.
It’s hard, though, going from an existence where you think you have it all figured out into one where you’re not even sure what your goals are any more, let alone how to reach them. It’s particularly hard for a validation-seeking, confidence-lacking, perfectionist like me.
But I’ve never been one to shy away from a challenge.
And so I think I’m going to have to put to one side this desire to figure out who I am and what I’m doing with my life. It may be hard to get my head round, but I think I’m going to have to accept that, for now, Sophie just is.
On Saturday afternoon Arthur and I decided to make muffins. Faced with an abundance of blueberries and very ripe bananas, as well as a few hours to kill whilst Leigh knuckled down to some revision, there was nothing else for it really.
I decided to go for a paleo recipe – coconut flour, coconut oil and no added sugar. We’re not strictly paleo here by any means, but I do like to mix things up a bit. And if I’m taking the time to bake I figure it makes sense to go for something nutritious and delicious – especially since Arthur’s current diet is beginning to look a bit stereotypically toddler-esque for my liking…
I’m pleased to say that Arthur took the whole thing very seriously. He was particularly taken with the gloopiness of the eggs, and almost managed to whisk them without spilling half of them on the counter. Almost.
He was happy for me to keep an eye on the recipe, resuming his duties once everything was ready for the final mix – again using the worktop as the testing ground for the consistency, natch.
(I decided at this point that the batter was looking a little bit too solid, and added a generous glut of coconut milk to the mix. This might not necessarily have been a very good idea…)
Arthur’s attention wavered at this point, and he left me to get the muffins into their cases and on to cook whilst he got started on a second batch.
These ones took way less time to cook, and it was mere seconds before he ran off to grab his unsuspecting taster.
I can only imagine that dolly decided they needed a little more time, as they were soon back in the oven for another burst of cooking.
By now fortunately the original bluenana muffins were starting to waft their almost-cooked scent across the kitchen, and Arthur could barely contain his excitement.
A few minutes later and the muffins were finally ready. Despite my insistence that they needed to cool, Arthur was straight up there to check for himself, blowing on them impatiently.
He just about managed to hold off until they were no longer boiling hot, and proceeded over the next hour or so to eat six. Six! I’m very glad I went for a healthy recipe is all I can say…
I have to admit though that I was not overly enamoured with them. It may well have been the extra coconut milk but fresh out of the oven they were a bit soggy for my liking… We managed to keep a few back and they were admittedly much tastier after a day in the fridge. Though Arthur wasn’t interested in them at all then! Go figure…
All in all it was a highly entertaining use of a couple of hours, not just the ‘real’ baking, but Arthur’s seamless segue into his imagination too. I will definitely revisit this recipe and see if I can’t perfect it a little: I’ll report back when I’ve had a bit of a play… In the meantime though there is a bunch of rhubarb in the fridge crying out to be made into oaty crumble bars. That’s tomorrow afternoon sorted then!
Sophie is... 