I live with my head in the clouds a bit. I’m the first to admit it. I could quite happily walk around all day staring up at the sky, making up little tunes and stories.

When I was younger people found this quirk of mine quite charming, referring to me as eccentric or fruity. There was a tolerance for my idiosyncrasies because I had time. It was expected that with all the time that I had in front of me I would mould my quirks into something productive, something that would earn me money.

I even tolerated myself. I remember dreaming about becoming a famous writer, thinking how good it would be to earn a living doing what I really love except that the problem is I don’t love doing it as much as I love thinking about it. Writing a book is bloody hard work.

It’s like living in exile in Siberia without adequate heating, where your only nourishment is borscht, three day old bread and vodka which you eat and drink for every meal so that eventually you not only think you are in exile hanging out with Dostoyevky, you know you are in exile.

I’m doing NaNoWriMo at the moment. I’ve written 15,000 words of a novel in one week. My dearest friend Jules who is the only member of the cheer squad I have left (the others dropped out because I just kept not delivering) says it is one of the best things I have written. I don’t know if she’s right, but it is certainly the book I have written with the heaviest of hearts.

I am drinking my final whisky in the Last Chance saloon with this book. I am Scheherazade trying to ward off execution with her 1001 tales. I am watching the Titanic go down knowing I can’t swim for it.

I’m telling you this not so you will say Oh no, no, no, you are brilliant. You’re going to make it, you really are. You are kind if you do say that even though you and I both know it is not necessarily the truth. Because I don’t deliver. It’s been proven.

I could give you every excuse in the world as to why I either never finish books I start.  Or leave them sitting in my desk after three drafts. Or why I dump them after one rejection. And you would hear those excuses and offer your sympathies and feel bad for me for a moment, but it wouldn’t make any difference. I would still not deliver.

Many people have tried over the years to get me out of this mindset. They have harassed me, cajoled me, begged me, killed me with positive reinforcement, but to no avail. I still cannot deliver. This is the fatal flaw in my character that even the most successful life coach in the world would not be able to address.

Is it lack of self belief?

Is it a fear of success?

Is it laziness?

Is it apathy?

I don’t know.

What I do know is that I don’t take the advice I give to others and I perplex and annoy myself in equal measure.

In my time on this planet I have learnt that there are only two ways to get what you want – put one foot in front of the other on a daily basis and work hard.

That’s it.

Should be easy enough even for me to follow.

Yet my head remains in the clouds.

But there comes a time when even the greatest daydreamers among us give in to the forces of gravity and land with a splat in their middle of their lives. When we realise that we shouldn’t leave the things we really want to do until it is too late.

Elvis is singing on my iTunes selection. It’s Now or Never. Couldn’t be more timely.

There’s no time like the present is what the King is saying.

Tomorrow will (might) be too late.

It’s now or never. My books won’t wait.

Do what you want to do. What lies deep in your heart. Find a way. That really is what life’s about.

Don’t leave it too late.

I saw a little girl in a red tutu at the shops today. She would have been about three or four years old. She had a teddy in a little toy stroller who was also wearing a red tutu.

It’s funny how you can see things that remind you of something else. Almost exactly.

My sister, Shelley, about the same age had a tutu in non-traditional colours. It was grey.

Her grey tutu, was grey by accident. It had been a white tutu a neighbour had washed with a black leotard that wasn’t colourfast. Her little ballerina decided she would not settle for a grey tutu so it was passed on to my sister.

Shelley wasn’t a ballerina but she liked the outfits the ballerinas wore. She wore that grey tutu everywhere. It was a soft kind of grey like the fur of a cat, but everywhere she went people would say :’ Oh look at you and your grey tutu, you poor, sad, little ballerina.’

I remember Shelley glowering at all these people who thought it was unfortunate to have a grey tutu. I used to hide the magic wand I had been given for Christmas, fearing that if she got hold of it she would use that glower to curse someone.

When I saw the little girl today in the red tutu I got a catch in my throat for more reasons than one. That little girl reminded me so much of my sister who was a non-conformist of the glowering sort as a child and remained that way as an adult.

I had friends and cousins who dressed as ballerinas and fairies in the more traditional pinks, whites and sometimes (daringly) lilacs, who even today follow a more conservative way of dressing. And living. It got me thinking that it might be possible that our character is formed from a very young age. Our steadfastness. Our strength. Whether or not we are forthright. It is easier to follow the pack as a child. To not follow puts you in danger of being whispered about behind cupped hands or pointed out in a crowd. I wonder why a child would willingly encourage those whispers.

Seeing the little girl in the red tutu also made me think of when I was a little girl. My non-traditional ways. I didn’t like ballerinas with all their primping and posing. I certainly didn’t like fairies, at least not the good ones.

I used to dress up as Merlin or as a Knight of the Round Table, devising strategies to save the world on old sheets of butcher’s paper taped to my bedroom floor.

I was the way I am now from a very young age. I wonder what made me that way and not the ballerina type of girl with her beautiful posture and perfect mannerisms. Why was I a clumsy, plodding wizard or a Knight destined to never find the Holy Grail? Would my life have been different if I had worn pink tulle and had rosebuds in my hair?

The things you see at the shops sometimes bring the past back so rapidly it is as if current existence is completely imagined. And the little girl I used to be remains.

* Image sassypantstutus.

We didn’t go trick or treating last night. We had two punk bands playing in the shop so we got our black gear on and went to watch. They screamed a bit, but they were good.

One of the bass players, an imposing 6 foot 5 hunk of punk rock muscle turned out to be very funny. He looked like someone you’d never want to meet in a dark alley but he had a well-stocked arsenal of corny jokes.

Here are his best corny vampire jokes.

What’s it like to be kissed by a vampire?

It’s a pain in the neck.

What type of dog does Dracula have?

A blood hound.

Why are vampire families so close?

Because blood is thicker than water.

What is Dracula’s favourite flavour of ice cream?

Vein-illa.

Just goes to show that punk rockers can be silly too.

Hope you had a fun Hallowe’en!

Here’s another Hallowe’en story.

Hope you like it.

The rain beat against the window of the bar. Drops of grey water slid unbroken down the glass collecting in pools on the greasy window sills. A tiny black spider huddled under the eaves, using its web as a raincoat. Janice was surprised she didn’t even shudder at the sight of its gangly legs, instead she nodded, acknowledging the spider’s ingenuity.

Someone was playing a tune on the juke box. A song about love. Wasn’t every song these days about love? The pain, the weeping, the broken, twisted hearts. Where were the happy songs about love?

The guy at the table next to her came back with a jug of beer. As he moved his chair out to sit down a black spider edged against the wainscotting. The guy asked Janice if she’d like to join him and his two friends, a man and a woman who couldn’t keep their hands off each other.

Sure, Janice said. Why not? But I don’t feel like a beer. I’m going to get a Hallowe’en cocktail.

The cocktails were served in silver goblets. It was a thick, treacly mixture.

It’s a Black Widow, said the bartender. Out of the corner of her eye Janice saw a series of black spiders crawling among the mixers at the back of the bar.

Appropriate name, she said.

The drink was sweet, but also peppery and musty as if the goblets hadn’t been cleaned of dust before the drinks were poured.

Janice drank deeply, feeling a flush rising from her toes. She saw black spiders scampering around her feet.

The guy with the jug of beer had drunk most of the jug himself by the time she returned to the table. His friends had disappeared, probably to a hotel room or the back of their car.

The lights in the bar were flickering. The ceiling was speckled, stained. Janice could have sworn it was covered in hundreds of spiders. Her heart was pounding. She felt insignificant and omnipotent at the same time. She was incredibly hungry.

The jug of beer guy said he had a room nearby, asked her if she’d like to join him there. She didn’t hesitate, nibbling on his ear as they walked along the inky wet streets. Spiders hung from the streetlights, their webs thickly spattered with rain.

The jug of beer guy’s room was plain, barely furnished. But his bed was enormous. Janice thought of the glutinous cocktail she had relished, her throat still warm from it, and threw the guy on the bed.

She ripped off his clothes, pinning him to the bed as if she had more than two arms. He moaned in delight. Their lovemaking was passionate, intense. Janice had never been so dominant, so in control. The jug of beer guy’s eyes were rolling back in his head as if he had reached a point of rapture.

Janice was suddenly repulsed by him. By his stupid little masculine wants and needs. How easy men were to please, to manipulate.

The hunger that had begun to plague her in the bar grew. She became aware of jug of beer guy’s quickly beating heart. She imagined the rich, treacly, peppery taste of it.

She plunged her teeth, sharp as daggers, into jug of beer guy’s chest, ripping out his heart and eating it whole. He died before he could scream.

The blood filled her head like power, like the sun. She was everything, she was nothing. She was merciless.

Janice wiped herself clean and walked out into the streets still glimmering with rain. Thousands of tiny black spiders ran from her, scuttling in the shadows.

*Image by Paperflowers from DeviantART.

Do you think the planets, the moon, the Universe play a part in human behaviour?

I don’t mean that someone on Perseus 812 zero 5 in a far-flung galaxy is pressing buttons that determine whether we fail or succeed, or even if we live or die; I just wonder if all the energy being flung around out there affects us in some measure.

Take this week. Saturn is moving into Libra. This move is meant to impact on relationships. Challenges will arise. There will be a need to re-establish boundaries. Saturn’s move signifies the chance to bring harmony and balance into the world for the next three years, but there may be political and social unrest as a result.

If you want to read a good article on this go and visit my favourite astrologer Anne Ortelee who lives in New York.

I have, on occasion, been skeptical about astrology.

But this move of Saturn into Libra really seems to be shaking things up out there.

I’ve had friends and work colleagues announce they’re just not going to take it anymore. Loyalties have been questioned, incompetence has been highlighted.

A situation at work that has been bothering my husband for over a year was addressed (not without a little bit of aggro) and sorted out.

Nick reported several incidents at school where bullied kids turned on their bully and BOP, POW, WHAM – made it clear that enough was enough. These are quiet kids who normally wouldn’t resort to violence.

Then there was the milk incident. I visit my local cafe several mornings a week. I know the owners quite well and often have a chat to them. On Tuesday morning the owners – a husband and wife – had a terrible argument. I know where you really go when you say you’re going out for milk, she said. I know you’re not discussing the merits of skim versus full cream.Why do you go out for milk so much?

Let’s just say that we were all agog over our lattes. Sounds like they should get their milk delivered in the future.

I cleared the air a bit with my sister. I needed to do it. I am tired of the drama that continues to arise. I just can’t cope with it anymore. I am happy to help her if there is a genuine problem, but I’m not going to become embroiled in imaginary problems from now on.

She accepted my point of view. Was sorry she hadn’t seen it before. She didn’t cry or protest. It almost seemed too easy; made me wonder if perhaps this whole Saturn in Libra thing has some truth to it.

Maybe the planets have as much influence over us as the cycles of the moon do.

I wonder if somebody on Perseus 812 zero 5 is actually pulling the strings.

Or is the course of our days just written in the stars?

I’m writing a few stories this week for Hallowe’en.

Here is the first.

[Image by superfluousmonkeys at DeviantART]

Tina was so angry with Robbie. The way he had just dumped her like that. And for Missy Adams too. It was humiliating. Everyone knew that no one missed with Missy.

It was hard when you were in a group of friends and someone fell out with someone else or in Tina’s case, you broke up with your boyfriend. The power of the group meant that unless you wanted to live in social isolation and be dubbed a loser you still had to see each other.

Tina was sick of pretending she was okay with it. Seeing Missy all over Robbie was making her stomach turn. Missy had actually put her hand on Robbie’s crotch when no one was looking. Robbie’s face had lit up like a Christmas tree. Her Aunt Julie said that all the time. I won the meat tray at bingo and my face lit up like a Christmas tree. I got two for the price of one at the discount store and my face lit up like a Christmas tree. I told Juniper she looked like she’d lost weight and her face lit up like a Christmas tree.

Juniper was Tina’s cousin. She has a glandular problem, Aunt Julie said, brightly, thinking no one saw the furtive look she threw at the thin daughters of her friends.

I’m fat, Mum, get over it. Juniper believed there was nothing to be gained from beating about the bush. Beating about the bush causes nothing but trouble, she said. Juniper used beating about the bush the way her mother used lit up like a Christmas tree. They were a family fond of catch phrases.

It was Juniper who told Tina about the Hall of Mirrors. The carnival was in town and in the Fun House was a hall of mirrors. As usual Juniper didn’t beat about the bush. That Hall of Mirrors will change your life, she said. It will reveal your true self.

Tina got the chill at the back of her neck she sometimes got when talking to Juniper. For a long time now she had thought her cousin had some kind of power inside. She knew things it wasn’t really possible to know, like she had a sixth sense or something.

Tina and her friends attended the carnival that Friday night. The lights were soft amber and gold. There was sawdust on the ground. The scent of toffee apples rose. Tina saw that Robbie had already bought one for Missy. She held it aloft like a trophy as if it was a symbol of his love for her.

Tina went on all the rides alone, crying over the stupid toffee apple. Robbie had always bought her one when the carnival was in town. Toffee apples were her favourite.

Juniper was waiting for Tina when she got off the Ferris Wheel, her vision blurry from flashing lights and tears. She handed her cousin a toffee apple. Missy and Robbie have gone into the Hall of Mirrors, she said. I thought we could watch.

Juniper linked her arm in her cousin’s and dragged her to the Fun House. They waited by the exit.

A horrible scream came from inside, then crying. People came running out, all of Tina’s friends. Then Robbie, sickly white, eyes wide as if he’d seen something shocking; trembling, cowering.

Let’s go and see what’s going on, Juniper said. Somehow Tina ended up in the Fun House with her cousin, standing in front a row of mirrors that rippled like water. Tina looked fat, then thin; tall, then short. Juniper pulled faces, posing and laughing.

The Hall of Mirrors was fluid. They felt it wouldn’t take much to lose their footing, as if they were walking underwater.

Each mirror revealed an unfamiliar image of themselves. They held their breath as they were transformed into creatures not of this world, their faces snaking outward and upward like ribbons.

Someone at the end of the hall was crying. Lying face down on the floor. It was Missy.

She was different. Shrunken. Crooked and buckled like an old gate. She was moaning, clutching at her stomach. Juniper turned her over. Tina screamed. Missy’s face was wrinkled and misshapen, her hair was thinning and grey.

Don’t look at me, she screamed. Don’t look at me.

Missy half-slid, half-crawled out of the Hall of Mirrors and disappeared into the night.

Robbie was still outside, shaking, gasping as if he’d run for miles. What happened to Missy? he cried.

She saw her true self, Juniper replied. That’s all.

Tina felt the chill at the back of her neck again. Juniper had a power inside her. She knew it now.

I’m sorry about Missy, Robbie said, taking Tina’s hands. I missed you the entire time I was with her. I really want you back.

You don’t beat about the bush, do you? Juniper said.

In my weird half-pagan, half-agnostic way I do a reasonable amount of praying. I pray to a mixture of God, the universe, Mother Nature, saints I loved as a child like my all-time favourite St. Francis of Assisi, the archangels, people I know who have passed on, the sky at night, the sky in the morning, and in an odd kind of twist, sometimes to my inner self.

I think that most people, whether they view themselves as religious or not, engage in some kind of praying. Surely, prayer is about aligning our thoughts in a positive way so that we calm and restore ourselves;we don’t necessarily need to invoke God or Jesus or the Virgin Mary to do that.

I have found that along with the prayer comes the altar. A place to sit, or kneel, or lean against where contemplation comes easily. It is a natural altar that has just presented itself. It could be under a tree, on a bridge or an office desk that happens to be beside a window.

This photo is of my bedroom window. It is a little dark inside because it is the evening but it is still light enough outside to sit and reflect and watch the colours dress the sky for night.

I often sit there. Sometimes on the bed. Sometimes leaning against the lintel. Sometimes on the floor so I can see the rooftops turn from red to amber.

Sometimes the sunset casts a pink and orange glow on the curtains. You would swear they had changed colour but in the morning the shades of sunset have faded to cream.

Often the birds call. A plaintive sound, a sonata in a minor key that soars and twists and aches like weeping.

I watch as the lights come on in houses up and down the street like hands being raised in welcome and hear doors thud one after the other against the night.

I give thanks then. For making it through the day. Whether it is to a god or to myself, I can’t be sure. But it works. It crystallises hopes and dreams. Then I think of, hope for, pray for those that need some good to come into their lives. People I know and people I don’t. The animals. The trees.

It is a prayer. It is a poem. It is a story. It is a song. A mantra, an anthem, a meditation, a psalm.

It works. Sending out all that energy to be gathered by the spirits who wait to catch and disperse it. The ether zings with wishes and prayers flung out from altars of our own making.

Who would have thought that sitting by a window could provide such coherence, such relief?

I’d better watch out.

I might start believing in something.

I closed my Twitter account yesterday. I had it open for about 8 months. Before I joined I was decidedly anti-Twitter but by the end of it I actually really liked it.

It was a challenge to write something in only 140 characters. I participated in a daily poetry prompt to begin with but then I just began engaging in conversation with my fellow Tweeters. There are some really great people on Twitter who are funny, entertaining and just plain profound. I already miss many of them.

So why stop something you really enjoyed, I hear you ask?

There are a few reasons.

The time difference was one. Most of the people I followed lived in the northern hemisphere so I was up to 18 hours ahead of them. I was constantly missing out on the gist of conversations and there were many things it wasn’t even worth responding to because it was so long after the fact.

I also had a problem with people who tweeted more than ten things in a row in the course of a minute. I like haiku as much as the next person but I don’t want to read your ten versions of haiku based on the word boat. No offense.

The main reason, however, is time management. Twitter is great for those of us with procrastination in our blood. It’s fun and it can be a good way of keeping abreast of current events, but it really does add to the amount of time you spend online.

Recently, I have felt that I don’t devote enough time to getting the projects finished that I need to finish – like my novels. Oddly enough, they are not going to write themselves, so I really need to bite the bullet and get them done because I am becoming increasingly aware of how quickly time marches on, of how easy it is to make excuses; and I don’t want to look back when I’m fifty and wish I hadn’t wasted all that time.

So something had to give. And it was many of the items in my Google Reader – no more messing about with the LOLcats  and their ilk – as well as Twitter, that got the chop.

Bye bye Twitter. I will miss all the friends I made there and the great chats I had but it’s time for me to get serious.

At long last.

Agnes Booth is dead. My cousin, Jessie, rang me last night from Ireland with the news. There was a shaky tearfulness in her voice and a question she didn’t dare ask.

Agnes Booth lived in Jessie’s village. She was an odd, shrivelled little person who you could imagine listening at keyholes and opening other people’s mail if it happened to land in her postbox by mistake.

She had long, silver-black hair she tied up in a chignon. It was quite an elegant style for rural Ireland, and with her penchant for chic black ensembles from the London high street and sometimes from Paris (I know this because my Aunt Nelly was a fashion buyer in the 1970s for a London boutique), she set herself miles apart from her more dowdy village contemporaries.

It was incongruous, seeing her shuffling to the shops, her tiny frame swathed in black silk. She rustled as she walked.

It was inevitable, really, that the local kids began to regard Agnes as a witch. The black silk and constant rustling certainly didn’t help. Neither did the fact that she lived alone in a house with a huge gate at the end of the garden. The gate squeaked, worse than nails on a chalkboard whenever it opened, and some of the neighbourhood kids took to saying: ‘The witch is nigh. The witch is nigh’ whenever they heard the squeak.

For many years Jessie, my other cousin, Aine, my sister Shelley and I believed Agnes Booth was in fact a witch. This was highlighted by what she did to Jessie; something which I believe has impacted on her to this day. Something that challenged the beliefs of all of us.

Agnes Booth cursed my cousin.

I know it sounds unbelievable, the stuff of fantasy, but she did it.

Jessie loved flowers, daisies in particular. Her nimble little fingers couldn’t help but pick them when she saw them, forming them into daisy chains that she would hang around her neck or weave into her hair. Agnes had Black-eyed Susans in her garden. I made a joke about them, saying they were children Agnes had turned into flowers, their eyes turned black with sorrow, warning Jessie not to pick them. I had seen Agnes out in the garden in the mornings, crooning to the Susans, as we called them. I could see how much she loved them and feared that if Jessie picked them there would be hell to pay.

A few days later as we were playing dress-ups in the garden, Jessie finished off her old bedsheet doubling as a Roman toga with a new necklace she had made. From Agnes Booth’s Susans. She had sneaked into the garden earlier that morning and picked a handful. What we didn’t know at the time was that in her haste to pick the Susans she had pulled several of the plants out by the roots and trampled a few others.

It wasn’t long before Agnes found out. She stormed into the garden. How she knew it was Jessie who picked the flowers, I will never know, but she knew and she was angry about it.

You hateful child, she shouted. You nasty, thieving little madam. You picked my flowers, the ones I love best.

She bared her teeth, they were pointed like a kitten’s. With a shaking, gnarled finger she spat out the words that made us all gasp aloud: I curse you for taking the things I love. For now and evermore the things you love will slip from your fingers, always out of reach. For now and evermore.

You can imagine how shocked we all were. Our ages ranged from 8 to 12. We were highly imaginative and quite superstitious. I remember clutching my chest after Agnes Booth rustled off, convinced I was having a heart attack from the shock. Shelley and Aine were crying, but it was Jessie who was the most affected. She was so pale and still I thought she had died where she stood.

Jessie believed she’d been cursed. We all did. But what the curse actually meant, we weren’t sure. ‘Is Jessie going to die?’ Shelley asked. ‘No, of course not, ‘ I replied. But as the cool afternoon breeze swept up from the Atlantic a sense of foreboding grew in me that stayed there for several days.

The jury is out on whether or not curses are real, but what is real is the power of suggestion that often accompanies a curse. How many stories have we read of people cursed – particularly when Voodoo is involved – who withered away and died? Is it the actual curse or the power of suggestion that does the damage?

Some curses are famous. The Kennedys were supposed to be cursed.

Bruce Lee.

Blues guitarist, Robert Johnson.

Jeff Buckley.

The list goes on and on. These people experienced misfortune and a great deal of tragedy in their lives, but does that mean they were cursed?

Jessie is in her forties now. She has never been married. Has no children. She was almost married several times but the grooms to be either got cold feet or the relationships fell apart. She lost her brother a few years ago and a while back she was working overseas and her tenants burned her house down.

Despite this, I believe Jessie has had a good life. She is a highly respected doctor and has worked all over the world for the Red Cross and similar organisations. She has a beautiful new home and is quite well off. She has always seemed busy and fulfilled.

I was surprised to hear that she sometimes blamed any perceived bad luck on Agnes Booth and that more than thirty years later at the back of her mind she still wonders if she’s cursed.

After chatting for more than an hour Jessie still hadn’t asked me the question I know she wanted to ask. So I answered it anyway.

The curse will be broken now, I said. Now that she’s gone.

For Jessie’s sake, I hope I’m right.

*Image by MsCrys at DeviantART.

I was blanked by a friend of mine this morning in the park. It is horrible when people you know well, have known well for ten years, pretend they haven’t seen you and rush off as if they have left something on the stove.

I have literally scraped this woman off of her kitchen floor after mishaps with booze and drugs on more than one occasion. I have held her hand when her father was ill, offered a shoulder when her relationships with men have crumbled and had her kids stay over so she could go out – single again in her forties – and have a life.

Yet when I told her 6 months ago I was so depressed I wasn’t sure I could go on, I didn’t see her again until today. Whereupon she blanked me.

Fair weather friends, eh?

People can be so perplexing.

Makes me want to become a hermit.