Holiday!

I'm supposed to be on holiday in Wales, but I can't seem to leave work alone. No-one told me that writing takes over your life. If I'm not writing I'm researching for my book, or thinking about writing. In a land of rain and castles and my hubby's forefathers, all I really want to do is sleep, but that seems to be a waste of time there is a whole Welsh world going on out there and I want to be in it as well.  Hrmmmm sleepwalking could be the answer.

Although I was born on Highgate Hill within the sound of Bow Bells (A true cockney) and lived in the East End all my early life, I still don't know quite how I came to be living in the Cotswolds writing books, working in the grand houses, and best of all married to a toy boy.

I still have moments when people annoy me that I go "all Shoreditch on their ass" sometimes they don't deserve it. Sometimes they do. The last two years have been a hellova roller coaster ride, and I hope now it's over. I denied being myself for a long time, and took of crap from people believing that they were going through a hard time, tried to help when I should have stood back and let them get on with it. 

But that's what friends do isn't it? Well, that's what I used to think. Come to the rescue, listen to problems, give advice and comfort food. Not me, not any more. There's only five people I'll do that for now and two of them are cats!

One of the things that having my life taken apart by others has done for me has made me look at all my achievements again. Go through my boxes, look at all my old published stuff, some of it makes me cringe it's so naive. My invitation to my BAFTA, my letters from Marjorie Proops, Robin Ellis and others. The drawing of me at 17 done at Hornsey College of Art when I was dragged in to sit for the third year students. My portfolios of work, my Evans Design and Coppernob Design, my work for BBC News 24, Guardian Articles, my Beta tapes full of Rostrum Shoots and creative Collage work. My entry to the Tate Gallery Portrait competition. That was ME.  I did it and I'm proud of it, and no-one can take it from me.

Alongside that whenever I was pushed over in the 80s and 90s I got up again. I still do it day after day.
When I couldn't get a job in the 00s I employed myself and made money at it. Owner of two holiday cottages with a three and four star rating - the three star would never be a four star because it wasn't big enough so the Tourist Board said.  I did that ME.

I'm having a big party, lots of friends old and new. No family. I lost my family two years ago, it's hard, every day I think about it and feel the loss. But I have to move on I can't live in the past. I can miss them, remember the good times, but I have to live in the present. So we are going to celebrate our tenth anniversary in some style with my re-enactor friends from the 40s and the 17c should be a laugh!

Oh yes, I'm on holiday so I'd better go.