wartcap

"If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it."

– Toni Morrison

Campervan Crazy

A poem I wrote. Please read and review. Thanks :)

We went to Turkey.



A global pedestrian, I had been awaiting the time that I could finally take the kids off the beaten track. Before I was a mother I had camped across the Namib desert, ridden a camel to the Tunisian/Iranian border, been kidnapped by rebels in Senegal, sailed in Angolan crocodile-infected swamp.

Motherhood has been tame.

Alysha, my youngest, is now fully articulate, weighs forty pounds and has travelled to four continents. She's four. Rocking up to immigration Asia was a breeze for this pint-sized explorer.

I had expected Turkey to be a stinky dustbowl. How wrong can you be? Breezy marinas, pavement cafés, pine tree-covered hillsides and somewhere I can only compare to Portugal's Algave.

I highly recommend Turkey as a destination. We stayed in Fethiye, 2 hours south of Istambul. The Turks are very family-orientated and are lovely with children. The Meditteranean is clear and full of sea bass and other fish you can explore with a snorkle set. You're 90 minutes via hydrofoil to Rhodes, 200 miles from Baghdad and never more than 100 yards from a herbal tea shop.

I explored some 4000 yr-old ruined amphitheatres. Although littered by teenager's broken beer bottles and ciggerette butts, I could discern the ancient from the Roman addition stage and sourced a lot of material for a novel.

Most importantly, I felt all the stress fo the last few months purging from my system. Single is good. Medication is fine. Kids are happy. I have found peace.

Loved it :)

I hung up. I didn't even speak to him.

He emailed me three times a day, rang five times a day for about a week. I contacted my solicitor and asked her to inform him we wished for no contact with him whatsoever.

In a final email, he said, 'Come on, baby. Let's stop all this. You have my phone number. My Skype is ***, I'm on IM. Ring me, let us be happy again.'

So I'm wondering how happy we could be, all three of us together? Him, me and his teenage wife?

So I replied, 'I don't have your telephone number, I don't want your Skype. I don't wish to IM you, send you a telegram or even wave at you from across the street. You are nothing.'

And that was that. I blocked his email address from sending to me and a bailiff was sent with the divorce papers. It was very empowering to finally end his games. I feel sorry for Fatou, his new wife. She apparently dotes on him and he gives her very little in the way of affection. He sleeps on the floor instead of with her and she has to beg him for any small favour, the example recounted to me was money for a haircut.

I wish her well.

"If I don't write to empty my mind, I go mad."

– Lord Byron

I was low in February, as I mentioned in the earlier post. I was dragged to London to see Phantom by those that love me as a cheer up and it had rather a marvellous spin-off.

We were on the train and we past Lancing College and we were talking about private schools (in the USA you call these public schools, I believe) and then a bit later we past Christ's Hospital. What follows is all tenuous, but it transpired that my children qualify for a full scholarship to Christ's Hospital when they are 11 years until they are 18 years. This would cost £18,900 per annum, per child. Subject to entrance examination when they are 9 and an interview they would get this wonderous 'gift' for free.

The school opened in 1554 by the boy king Edward, son of Henry the Eigth following the dissolution of the monestries. They still wear the Tudor gowns as pictured. It is a full boarding school and they would go up on the train to the school own train station.

Is this the school Hogwarts was based upon, I wonder?

So I threw myself into educating the children and doing lots of fun things together. Alieu's reading and writing improved off the scale and he was selected for the West Sussex enhancement programme for gifted children because of his understanding of nature, the enviroment and science.

I was still a bit down, certainly, but at least there was some good news and something to aim for.

Then, in March, my husband rang saying he wanted to get back together!

To be continued...

"I wrote my first novel because I wanted to read it."

– Toni Morrison

"Being a real writer means being able to do the work on a bad day."

– Norman Mailer

It's been 6 months I've been away from LJ. What a six months it was. Last December an aid worker returned from West Africa and rang me to let me know she had met my husband and stayed in his house... with his wife and two children.

He had remarried without divorcing me. What a womble. The new wife is called Fatou. She's about 17 years old and it was an arranged marriage. I don't bear her any ill will, it is unlikely she had much choice in this. They have had two children. A girl who is now about two years old and a boy who is one.

Not too surprisingly I ended up on anti-depressants by February. I was very sleepy all the time and became withdrawn, even from my family.

It's mean and underhand, polygamy. I went to a solicitor in January and started divorce proceedings. Divorce is stressful in any circumstance: it drags up deep-buried pain and spreads it out the uncaring law professional's desk. I bled inwardly, I am sure of it.

Anyway, more tomorrow. I shall tell you what happened next. And it's not as doom-and-gloom as you might expect!

"What I like in a good author isn't what he says, but what he whispers."

– Logan Pearsall Smith

"When I sit down at my writing desk, time seems to vanish. I think it's a wonderful way to spend one's life."

– Erica Jong

"When we read, we start at the beginning and continue until we reach the end. When we write, we start in the middle and fight our way out."

– Vickie Karp


"No one is asking, let alone demanding, that you write. The world is not waiting with bated breath for your article or book. Whether or not you get a single word on paper, the sun will rise, the earth will spin, the universe will expand. Writing is forever and always a choice -- your choice."

– Beth Mende Conny