We were away this weekend. We went to Windsor on Sunday for two nights to celebrate our sixth anniversary and it was a sort of baby moon, not that that is really a thing in this country. It was wonderful, absolutely freezing, there is a big freeze here at the moment but that sort of enhanced it all, it made it utterly memorable. Walking around Windsor Castle in the snow was almost magical. And cold. Magically cold.
It’s less magical at home with a wind chill of -12.
Anyway. Six years. This is nothing, I do get that, not when people have been married for years and years, or with someone since their teens. But for me, this is something quite significant. I never imagined, when I went on a blind date six years ago, that we would be where we are now. About to have our third child, two beautiful girls and we’re really good. Things are hard sometimes, boring grown up things but then we go away and we are just good. Happy to be together, having fun, he makes me laugh so much and we talk a lot about our future, it’s one of those truly lovely things to talk about the future with someone you love.
I thought about writing a lot while we were away. I read a whole book during the two nights (there were some issues with the pillows…) and it made me think about my own book and my own writing future. The book was good and the writing too, it was confident writing, the type of writing that shows someone totally at home with their own style. I don’t assume that I have a style, but it made me think about passages of my own writing. There are bits that I reread and I love, and I can see a writer that is confident and happy with what she is writing and there are bits that I read where the writing is tentative and nervous and I can just tell that I wrote it in a completely different head space.
Driving home, I wanted desperately to write. Wanted to sit in the chair where I wrote my book and edit the beginning to send it off again. To continue on with the second book that I’ve started. And then I actually got home, to the madness, to my girls and the urge just disappeared. No, the urge is there. It’s always there. But the confidence to do it. I am almost set now on finding a job in October, when the baby is six months old. The thought of this is truly awful to me. The girls have had me all of the time for almost four years and this baby will get six months. That doesn’t seem fair. To me. To her. I envy and respect all working mums, I’d love to be one, but it didn’t work for me, for us and for our family.
Anyway, this is a stream of consciousness. I didn’t sit down knowing what I’d write about and I’m sorry if that shows. I wanted to write about J and to talk about our six years, I wanted to talk about writing but further than that, I didn’t know.
Right, enough rambling.
See you all tomorrow.
Fairy Lights and Fear 