Always Freewriting

The fog had crept across the garden all morning, soaking into the space between tired daisy heads and trampled grass. It had stealthily stroked everything it passed and left a cold trace of moisture clinging to the underside of oak leaves, pampas grass and rhododendron blooms. Up in the sky the sun was battling to break through the thick cloud cover and every tentative shaft of light was being batted away by this endless trail of fog.   Two red wellie boots jump from an open doorway into this scene. Determined thuds on the back door step and with a second’s pause to contemplate which direction to run in they are off, racing into the gloom adding a jolt of colour and noise.   A second pair of boots join them, more slowly this time and in a gentler colour way of navy blue. The door is closed behind these boots and a voice calls out to slow the red boots down. A warning not to fall in the puddles, be careful of the tree roots, don’t go further than the stile at the end of the

It's been a while. And I definitely feel rusty. But hopefully it won't take long for my brain to catch up with my fingers and type something more interesting than the weekly shopping list for Ocado. Or Lidl depending on how much money is in the bank that week. With two little boys running round calling me mummy (artistic license at work here ~ my youngest is 7 months and not running or calling me anything) life has certainly changed from when I last wrote. But after 5 years of almost constant change I suddenly find myself back sitting in the same spot at work where I always used to sit doing the same tasks I always did just as though the last few years never actually happened. Except they definitely did. I have the scars to prove it and also as soon as I get home I don't throw myself on the sofa and exclaim dramatically that I'm so glad the week is over and isn't it wonderful to have nothing to do. I run upstairs to give lots of hugs and cuddles and goodnight

It's been almost a year since I've written anything.  I handed in my completed script last June and graduated from my Masters in September. In the end I was really happy with it and had planned to make 2012 the year I became less professional EA and more full time writer. The event I didn't foresee was that the day I handed in my script was the evening I decided to take a pregnancy test and The Man and I discovered we were going to be parents in 9 months time. Which brings us to today.  More technically it takes us to tomorrow when I'm due to become a Mummy. I don't know why I haven't wanted to write anything in so long.  Maybe the film sapped it all out of me.  Maybe I've used this pregnancy as one big excuse to avoid thinking too hard. All I know is that when The Little One decides to arrive I'll be ready with lots of stories.  Tales of how the stars dangle in the sky and why the moon smiles down on Brighton pier.  Or how The Cat goes dancing e

We all have regrets.  They may be large or small.  Normally they live on in a box tucked away on the upper shelf in the back of your mind.  Festering slightly but largely forgotten about and too far out of sight to cause any day to day trouble. But every now and then you search out a ladder, climb it to the highest rung and forage around on tip toes in the depths of your brain for the box that you know will make you feel rubbish but you can't help yourself.  Like a wound itching beneath one of those old school brown plasters. It would be nice to incinerate these boxes of regret.  Blast them into a furnace bubbling away at the ends of the Earth never to resurface. But you can't.  One of my biggest fears in life is that when I get older (if I get that much older) I get alzheimers and these regrets play on vividly in my mind.  On a loop that might suggest they're happening right now.  In this second.  Of this time.  Looking out through my eyes as they are at that great

The house lights went down over an hour ago and the audience has long fled into the London night.  The cleaners shuffled their vacuums along as quickly as possible past the lengths of banked seating and the ushers have downed their nightcaps and headed off home for bed. He is the only remaining soul in this ancient theatre. He pads through the stalls towards the stage looming out of the half-light infront of him.  With an effortless bound he lands on it and sends a small cloud of dust into the stale air.  Velvet curtains part as he pushes his way through them and he finds himself amongst a stage strewn full of set pieces, left for organisation in the morning.  Here he sits and watches the theatre flies.  The rigging of a spotlight catches his eye and he jerks his head around the space working out a way to get up there.  Up there to where he can sit and survey his stage.  His audience.  His theatre.  Or he could just sit down here and wait for the mice to wake up.  The theatre

I have come inside to feel the silence. Eighty seven people sit within twenty metres of me - I know because I counted them. And yet all the noise they make pales in comparison with the World outside the huge glass windows. Thirty five panes of rectangular glass make up the fifteen arched windows in this main reading room of the New York City Library.  Vintage marble lets in brief glimpses of monstrous glass and concrete beasts lurking on the boundaries of itself.  They bend and reflect light off their polished exteriors and offer no warmth or protection.  It is only from deep within this library, a vessel of precious words, that I sit and watch the beasts marching down 5 th Ave and feel safe surrounded by solid oak and tons of ink. The relentless roar of yellow cab traffic can’t permeate the walls of books and the snap of cameras stops within this gentle lit room.  I am quite totally alone in the midst of a crowded room.  A silent humanity sitting at the heart of