Dear friends, it’s a playschool morning so I’ve a few precious hours in which to DO something that will make me happy for the rest of the day or to do nothing and be rightly pissed off.

I have this blueprint I can’t seem to shake where it’s only the things I get done before lunchtime that count and whatever they are break or make the hours I’ve left.

Afternoon is frustratingly crowded with uniform changes and homework, laundry, phone calls (ugh) and actual lunch and etc, bah humbug.

Evenings are dinner and clean up and catch up and tiredness, I resent tiredness and sleep, and don’t forget that major mothering role, keeping the peace, she did this and don’t do that and she did what???

It’s frustrating, but if I get on top of things early it has a knock on effect. The more I get done, early, the more I seem able to do. And you know I feel I get nothing done really, ever, not yet, nothing like what I want, nothing like what I’m capable of.

People are always saying to me, ‘How do you do it?’ They’d love to be a fly on the wall they say, they ask, ‘How do you write a book and a blog and run that fb page and paint, garden and so on with a family, children etc?’ And all the time I’ll be thinking I did/I do these things because I want to, I decided to BUT it’s nothing when you want to be completely and utterly absorbed, forget everything, forget your living. It’s not even the tip of the iceberg.

Because I have this constant yearning to create, create, create and it’s real, it’s me, I know that now. I’ve surrendered, committed myself to it wholeheartedly, for better or for worse, for whatever happens. I don’t care where it leads me, if it goes nowhere, it’s just how I am and how I’m going to be, and when I start, writing, painting, styling, photographing, decorating, I find I don’t want to stop, ever, not for anything. Nothing on earth could entice me. To me that’s reality.

My ideal day would start early, I like six, a quarter to six? Even better. The house would be just tidy enough so as not to distract me. I’d have coffee, outside preferably, and step straight into a dress without having to search for it…maybe dress before outside coffee.

My hair would just fall into place, my eyes would magically work without hassle of lenses or glasses and I’d magically have make up on because I can’t spare even a second. I could, and at the height of writing my book I have gone straight from the bed to my book and got right down to it BUT I don’t want distractions later, I don’t want to feel bleugh and have to take a break to get dressed once I’ve started! Are you crazy!!! I don’t want any breaks! This is why the best thing is to be ready to get down to work so I don’t have to stop, ever, remember?

Magically ready like that I’d write the poems that are in me, the concepts for photography, the next draft for my book, a short story, my ‘about me’ for the blog! I’d capture a few of those blog post ideas that keep whooshing right past me, settle on one, then another and other.

Then I’d eat, something easy, no cutting or cooking no mess, not sure what but delicious, write lists while I’m eating and the paints would be magically in front of me and for the first time I’d release all that’s in me, no walls or distractions.

By the time Adrian gets home with a takeaway, not your usual takeaway, something amazing, scented, north African, feel just great after you eat it (in other words doesn’t exist) and he asks me how was my day and I tell him all I got done and we talk and eat and laugh and drink champagne and go for a walk and talk some more and marvel at our surroundings and each other and congratulate ourselves and I’m bursting with ecstasy.

All my work tucked away or set free, all except that large scale painting and where we should put it. ‘The west wall of the sitting room,’ says Adrian confidently. ‘Oh yes perfect, I suppose we should pick up the children?’ ‘No need, the aunts have them.’

The End