Geek Girl Eats Cake

Don’t make me read aloud! 😭

Ever since school I have been horrified if I have to read something out aloud. My palms get sweaty, my heart starts to race, and I sound like a teenage boy who’s voice is breaking.

There has never been an ordeal, a moment when I had to read a sex scene from Romeo & Juliet or a nightmare memory of saying poo instead of pool. Anyone fancy a dip in the poo? Ewww!

Nope, there just seems to be a natural reaction within me that peeks out every time I have to speak to the general public.

So, today.

Today started off great. The charity my book was written to raise money for, did a lovely posh press release where I sounded fabulous!

AND they sent it out, got an interview straight away. Wahoo! Great work team! All excited.

Radio? Okay

Isles of Scilly? Cool! Lush part of the world!

Today? Umm…sure! Yep, let’s do it! And everything is tickety boo. Then I get the call from the station.

Looking forward to having me on the show? Me too.

Then…

Can you read a passage or poem from the book? Yes, no problem. (Inside: panic!) (Dammit!)

So after the call and for the next 90 minutes I freak out.

Help! My husband is on a conference call in the twilight zone. It never ends!

Help! Facebook are just being super supportive by liking and telling me I’ll be fine 😳

I flick through my book, scouring for something I can read that doesn’t give the plot away, have swearing, or need character description.

My daughter tells me the most supportive thing she can whilst laughing : ” Oh my god Mum, I am so glad I am not you!” 😐 Brilliant. So supportive. So helpful.

I finally settle on a couple of poems, and my knight in shining armour turns out to be a writing pal who does this thing for work. She calls and preps me with amazing advice. Breathe. Its okay to pause, and power pose.

Of course when the interview comes, I forget to breathe, although I do sit for 2 minutes with my legs spread wide (not my usual prep for an interview, but it worked.).

I survived and came across human (luckily my natural forte) and promptly rewarded myself with a cold beer at half past two in the afternoon.

So today I conquered my fear and survived.

Truthfully, my victory over scary things would have been even sweeter if I hadn’t have made it obvious I didn’t know where the Scilly Isles were and had to have it explained live on air.

So in short, the whole of the Scilly Isles think I’m a numpty who can write a bit but on the bright side, at least I got to use my new post-its. Not a bad day after all.

Vogue gets Real

I love fashion, especially seeing the creative juices flowing on the catwalk. I get inspired by future trends and adapt them to suit me if I like what I see.

So, every month I look forward to Vogue. This month they have done a whole issue with everyday keyworkers. July’s issue has a train driver, midwife and a lady who works in Waitrose as its cover stars.

Quite rightly Vogue thought these women were the right representation of inspiring, powerful women. Inside is a feature of lots of different keyworkers, different ages, sex and professions that have worked through isolation.

When they do feature Supermodels, its to showcase photos you can buy and auction pieces where the money goes to the NHS. Bravo Vogue 👏 👏👏👏

And with Judi Dench hitting the headlines as their oldest ever cover star last month, the magazine is going from strength to strength 💪 Congratulations to all involved, you have made one Subscriber very proud 👍

Lockdown Gallery

Moments of Lockdown:

1. I begin to write my masterpiece Isolation Tales.

2 and 3. Baking Bug. I make a Bruce Bogtrotter cake. THE BIGGEST CHOCOLATE CAKE IN THE WORLD!!!!!!

4. Bored. This filled 87% of the time. The rest was filled with eating, thinking about eating and drinking cider.

5. The book is released and my friend Sarah shows me how I should have celebrated.

6. My husband finally lets me loose on his hair for the isolation cut. I didn’t tell him about the scalp patch round the side.

7. I discover a farm near by delivers eggs. I immediately order 30.

8 and 9. I make and taste scotch eggs for the first time. All fancy though with quail eggs because MasterChef was in finals week.

10. My friend Emma completely upstages Sarah by adding in a BBQ with a personal chef (her husband) who works while she drinks from a posh glass.

11. A happy ending. A Cappuccino! Oh how I have dreamed of this moment!

How was your lockdown?

🖤Humanity Matters🖤

Today is Black Out Tuesday, I wanted to share this poem I wrote about the horrific events leading up to this day.

Cornish Skills Italia

Being Cornish does come in handy when you love Italian food. Above is a Calzone. Basically a pizza in the shape of…yep! A pasty.

I can make them. Mama do the crimp!

As I can crimp and make my own pasties, I can make these. Ideal for dinner parties as friends are always ultra impressed at the poshness look of it all.

Just another example of how brilliant the pasty is. Gives you skills all over the continent. What a clever dish!

Pure imagination

I talk about comics because I love them, but I’ll be honest my love is just as pure for one other thing. Notebooks. I love them. I have them everywhere, and a cabinet full of them. Every size, special ones, exercise books, felt ones, leather ones, I am the easiest girl to please come birthdays and Christmas. Get me a notebook, I’ll be your best friend.

So, now you know how much I love them, you can see my delight when I was given this Wonka one as a present for publishing my book. It is beautiful. I am a MASSIVE fan of the film and Pure Imagination is one of my favourite songs of all time. The inside is a Wonka Bar wrapper. And at the back, a sleeve. And inside the sleeve…magic. Lets just say I’m a winner and found one. I can hold the glimmering foil prize every one was searching for. What I have is what I dreamed of holding ever since I saw Charlie Bucket enter the sweet shop after finding the coin in the gutter. A golden ticket. That is one hell of a notebook. One hell of a present. Now, does anybody know the way to the factory? I wanna swim in the chocolate river and sing with the Oompa Loompas. Actually, after that boat ride, maybe sitting down with a mars bar and a cup of tea is just as nice.

Home-school Report

Now the UK is thinking of going back to school, how exactly have I done during these last two months?

Start of lockdown: Schooldays will be 9am-3pm with one hour for lunch.

Now: School begins 11:40am -12:15pm. Break for lunch. Then 2:30pm-3:20pm.

Start of lockdown: Listen out for the bell…School is starting. (bell sound on YouTube)

Now: “SCHOOL!”

Start of lockdown: Spellings will be practiced every morning, then a test on Friday.

Now: Please write your name.

Start of lockdown: Our topic is Charlie &the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl. We will make story packs, do bar charts of chocolate health benefits and character profiles.

Now: I have lost one of the story packs, we are still on chapter 8 and we have made fudge and ate it.

Start of lockdown: We have made a beautiful giant model of a chocolate factory which has been shared to teachers and in the school newsletter.

Now: The blasted thing is massive and I am wondering how long I have to wait before I can rip it apart and put it out for recycling with out the kids noticing.

Start of lockdown: Science. We will look at the Solar system, planets and their distance from the sun.

Now: We drop vague shapes of Playdoh in a pasta tube filled with water.

Start of lockdown: P.E. Ball skills, team games, throwing, catching and kicking.

Now: Walk through the lounge without stepping on Lego or pieces of cereal that stick to you.

Start of lockdown: Learning to tell time with confidence.

Now: Breakfast time, snack time, Crisps time, lunch time, snack time, wine time.

Evaluation: The kids are all living and still know what a tree is. Pass. (Just) Job Done.

Poison on the Hedgerows

So, I’m watching Bear Grylls and then he drops a bombshell. Foxgloves can kill you if you eat them. Foxgloves. The ones you take the flower and put on your finger like a hat and you draw a face or pretend it’s a flower fairy. No? Just me? Well, I also bite my nails. I could not believe I had been dicing with death for this long.

So, I am spreading the word! Tell your kids, point them out. Please do not pick the larger flowers, put it on yourselves to see if your girlfriend gets sick. NHS have enough on. Okay, I may have been reading Adam Kay’s This is going to Hurt. (If it did fit, can you imagine telling the doctor that? Not something to brag about that’s for sure. And you may end up in his book, since Adam Kay’s has been no. 1 for 2 years. The publicists will want more like it and unfortunately the medical profession is full of foreign objects stories.)

And don’t use this information as a top tip if you are insane and a serial killer. Or if your husband is driving you mental during lockdown. I merely tell you as I did not know myself. So watch out for the purple heads. They pop up everywhere. You have been warned.

Iconic Advertising Newbie

So, when you release something into the world you have to advertise. I am new to this, so I had to think “what would I look at?”

Those of you who follow this blog will say food. Yep, but unfortunately for me sometimes my creations turn out somewhat questionable. For example, I recently decided to make a lemon meringue pie for my postman. It’s his favourite and I wanted to thank him for working through lockdown. For some reason, I checked on it in the oven and it was expanding. Sideways. I quickly scooped it up and put it on top. In the end it looked like a bird had pooed on top of the flat pie. In case you do not know what bird poo looks like:

Of course I still gave it to him (I do not want poo in my house) and apologised as I did. I also said “Remember its the thought that counts” which is what everyone says when things go a bit south. Luckily, he thought it tasted delicious! Although he did give a whack to his parents so I think he either must not like them very much or wanted to share the car windscreen pie around.

So, food is out. Comics? Maybe, but how? So, that left films. I took classic scenes where they were all looking at something and plonked my book in their eyeline. Some worked, some maybe not so much. You be the judge. If you have any suggestions, comment. You can tell me which one you like most too that way. Very useful feature. 🙂

This Lockdown, Matthew, I’m going to be….(lights dim)…a land girl (applause!), I disappear through garden doors.

Okay, I’m not going to be a land girl, I kill everything with a stem. But this quarantine my husband has turned into a green fingered magician. The above picture is a patch in our back garden. My part? I dug a hole. My husband? He’s been rooting through stuff for the compost bin and growing plants out of my chopping leftovers.

So what exactly has he done? well, some he’s grown from seed. These are Beetroot (you can eat the leaves, we have tried a grand total of 2. Apparently if you take too much it can stump growth and it ends up being the vegetable version of an Oompa Loompa), Spinach (the gift that keeps on giving, and the holes never ending), rocket (shooting up), Courgette and radish (both of these have one single plant from one lonely seed from a gazillion within the packet. Similar to sperm trying to get that egg in that video you saw at school, but the rest of the seeds were defeatist rather than not quite fast enough.).

The rest of the growing green things have all been taken from the bin (compost not rubbish). So all around my house are these little pots:

He even tried growing a pineapple, but as soon as he realised we lived in Cornwall and not Jamaica he threw that one away.

So far he has potato plants which are growing into extras from the little shop of horrors from sprouty ones I forgot about. Peppers from seeds inside bell peppers (I must admit, I love bell peppers so this one I am really hoping for), Garlic (I do believe I could live on garlic, I use so much. This is how I found out I am not married to a vampire. He’s survived!), and he even made onion plants. Mind you, to be honest the work was half done by the time we found them.

So, there we go. Our little patch. I wish I could take credit. Oh, what the hell, I chopped the ends off and forgot about the various bits and bobs. Here is me next to my vegetable patch. Didn’t it do well?