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Mid Week Flash Week 36 - Perfect Moments

Thanks to Miranda Kate  for this week's prompt

The General Guidelines can be found here.

Perfect Moments

I was going to tell her.

Years I'd been building up to this. All the times I almost said something, all the times I nearly kissed her, all those times I should've told her I'm in love with her smile, her laugh, that her eyes are the colour of heaven. It had all built up to this mundane Monday morning. I woke up and decided yes, I was going to tell her.

Maybe if I had gone straight there, things would've been different. But she was so special.  She deserved a perfect moment. She deserved a lifetime of perfect moments. So once I'd made myself presentable, I headed down to the High Street to the little florists to buy her some roses. Everything was more beautiful than usual. The grey street, the uniform houses, the tired little shops all looked like they had been sprinkled with magic. Even the drizzle couldn't get me down.

I rehearsed it in my head as I skipped into her street. She would open the  door, see the flowers. That puzzled little smile would form but before she would be able to say anything, I'd tell her “I love you Zoë. I always have”, and we’d kiss. Not one of those everyday, standard kisses either. One of those all encompassing, wildfire kisses that leave you with tingly lips and make you dizzy. The kind of kiss that made violins play in your head and the rest of the world fade away. A perfect moment, to start a lifetime of perfect moments.

I glance up to smile at a bird, singing its heart out on the silver birch, and I see the blue flashing lights. My heart drops into the gutter with the roses. The ambulance is at her house. My head starts to spin. The sky opens with a single thunder crack, and the heavens pour out their tears. She has to be ok.

And then they bring out the trolley. I'm so dizzy. Her face is covered, but I know it's her. The rest of the world fades away, but there are no violins.

Ocean Dreams

 It's week 25 of Miranda Kate's Mid Week Flash challenge, and illness, work and general life chaos has meant I haven't been able to participate as much as I'd have liked to, but this week's image really spoke to me. Anyone is welcome to join in, the general guidelines can be found here.
This week's prompt:

 Ocean Dreams

We dreamed of going to the ocean. She had this romantic ideal of walking on a moonlit beach, hand in hand, listening to the roar of the unseen sea. Our dream sustained us through the long, hard years we couldn't be together, when our relationship was built of dreams and texts and snatched moments. We were going to go to the ocean.


They say life’s a bitch, but she's got nothing on the twisted sense of humour Fate has. Finally together, finally able to touch instead of talk, to kiss instead of dream. We were finally going to the ocean. Packing up the car together, all excited.  She looked like a painting, the light on her face too perfect to be real. I kissed her, then turned away to load the last bag into the boot. When I turned back, she was on the floor, lifeless, hair sprawled in the mud.

Three months later, life is drained of colour. She smiles through the pain and the sickness and the exhaustion, brave little stoic smiles, drained of their warmth. Every time I walk down this disinfectant scented corridor I hear the doctor telling us “I'm very sorry, it is terminal. We can make her comfortable…” and I have to swallow my anger, my pain, my disappointment, push it all down into the pit of my stomach and try to have my smile ready for her. I can't let her down.

We can't go to the ocean.

She asked me once if I would go for her, after she's gone. I told her not to be so daft, that miracles happen all the time, that she would be coming with me. I knew I was lying. She knew I was lying. But it helped.

We’ve returned to living through shared dreams, texts, snatched moments between chemo and physio and more tests. Funny how life goes sometimes.

We can't go to the ocean.

But sometimes, when she is feeling strong, I lift her delicate, fragile little body into a wheelchair, and we take a stroll down to the hospital garden. Well, I say garden. It's as hopeless as the rest of this place, a few sad daffodils in pots on an area of cracked, fractured tarmac, littered with cigarette butts.

None of this is fair. It should be our time.

“I'll be going soon” she says one night, startling me out of my brooding.

“I'll thought you were asleep.”

“Nah,” she says, “there'll be time for that…” she doesn't finish the thought. “Can we go outside?”

“Now? It's dark, love. It'll be cold.”

“I'm always warm when I'm with you.”

I can't say no to her. Never could, really, but I definitely couldn't now. So I fetch her chair, and argue with the night nurse and find a blanket. She dozes in the chair as I walk her down, returning the night porter’s solemn smile. It's so silent here at night, you could forget the hundreds of families going through their own private dramas in every ward.

It has been raining, and it is cold. The sad little wooden bench is soaked, so I lean on the back of her chair, under the full moon.

“let me sit on your lap” she says, so I lift her as gently as I can, terrified I might break her, and settle into her chair. There's no weight to her now, but feeling her head on my shoulder, and her quick, shallow breathing is enough to feel comfort.

“This garden is so depressing,” I say eventually. “You deserve to sit somewhere beautiful”

“It doesn't matter as long as I'm with you,” she says, “but look there, see?” she points and I try to see what she's talking about. All I see is cracked tarmac potholes filled with rainwater, cigarette butts and darkness. “it's like the ocean”

I put my head right next to hers, look down her arm, and see it. The pothole is what she's is pointing to. The water filling it ripples gently in the breeze, distorting the reflection of the moon for a moment.

“It is” I'm forced to concede, and we sit there for an immeasurable moment, watching the miniature waves lapping at the tarmac beach.

“You can find beauty anywhere, if you open your eyes” she tells me.

We never made it back into the garden.

We never made it to the ocean.

But we built our own ocean, out of dreams.

Mid Week Flash - In The Mirror

My next offering for Miranda's Mid Week Flash challenge. The General Guidelines can be found here.

This week's prompt was taken in a former, now abandoned, TB sanatorium in Grabowsee, Oranienburg, Germany, which is a little north of Berlin. It was taken by someone over on Flicker called Michael.

In the Mirror

They say I’m mad, but I’m not. That woman in the mirror isn’t me.

Oh she looks like me, no doubt. Whenever someone is looking, she mimics me perfectly. Then when they turn away her blank expression twists into a malicious grin, she gives me a seductive little wink, and my blood runs cold.

I know she’s up to something. I don’t know what. They all think I’m mad, but I’m not. That woman in the mirror is not me.

I can feel the cold fog of evil seeping from the mirror in the night. I can hear her softly giggling. What does she do when I can’t see her? What does she want from me?

I can’t take it anymore. Lying here, straining my ears, trying to hear what she is whispering. I can’t stand it. I can’t take it anymore.

The rage propels me out of bed, I stride over to the mirror, rip down the sheet covering it, shaking with rage and fear in the cold fog.

She stands there, tall and proud in a perfect replica of my nightgown. Thrusts her chin up at me, a small smile playing about her lips. She doesn’t say anything, just gives me a look as if to say ‘What are you going to do? There’s nothing you can do, you’re powerless’

I scream, punch at her face. As the mirror shatters,  I hear her little squeal of delight. Driven by fury, I hit and screech and scream over her laughter.

 I feel the cold drain away, as pain fades in. My hands and feet are covered in blood, I’m surrounded by glass.

My housemates come rushing in and see with a glance the blood, the shattered glass around my feet, my tear-stained face. They see all that, but they don’t see what I see.

In the fractured mirror are all their reflections. But there isn’t one of me.
She has gone. I’ve set her free.

They all think I’m mad, but I’m not. That woman in the mirror wasn’t me.

TMI Post - Periods and Menstrual Cups

Fair warning, this post is going to get a bit...icky. I’m going to be talking periods, menstural cups, hormonal crashes, bleeding, cramps and spots. I won’t be posting pictures or anything, but if you faint at the thought of blood or cringe when you see the word “vagina” I’d recommend you skip this post. I’ll go back to strange stories, political pondering and random rants later, I promise.

I hesitated a lot before writing this post, which is kinda weird when you think about it. A massive proportion of the population have periods but talking about it is still pretty taboo. I struggle a lot with my period; I suffer migraines, cramping, extremely heavy bleeding, acne, bloating, anaemia and hormonally triggered depression. When it’s that time of the month, I feel and look really ill. But if anyone asks what’s wrong with me, I tend to say I’m a bit run down, or a bit tired, or I’m feeling under the weather. I’ve no idea why I don’t feel able to say I’m in so much pain I can barely move, I’m bleeding so heavily that if I move too much I’ll “leak” and I feel completely and utterly worthless. I guess that is a bit of a conversation stopper, but I’m not usually one to shy away from the tough topics.

Everyone experiences periods differently. There will be some people reading this who have no struggle with their periods, who get a little light cramping but can still jump about on a trampoline, ride a horse and work out like they are in a tampon ad who will be rolling their eyes at this post. Fair enough, lucky you. There will be people, trans men, for example or non binary folk, who have real emotional struggles with their period because it is a physical reminder of an identity struggle I can’t begin to understand, and they’ll have their own menstruation issues. There may even be some people reading this who don’t have periods, and wish they did, or who have fibroids or PCOS and therefore have a much tougher time of it when they are bleeding, and think I should stop whining. Fair enough again. I can only speak of my own experiences.

My battle with my periods has been ongoing. I’ve tried every type of hormonal contraception to ease my symptoms, with little success. Even when I found a method that stopped me bleeding completely – the depo jab -it didn’t stop the other symptoms. If anything, without the bleeding, I felt the other symptoms – digestive issues, mood swings, dry then very oily skin, bloating, etc more keenly. It also had the downside that it turned me into an irrational, paranoid wreck. Worth a try,  if you’re looking for a long acting contraceptive method you don’t need to worry about and you’d like to not bleed, but it didn’t work out well for me.


A couple of years ago I decided that being on various types of hormones from my early teens was probably not great for me, and I decided to come off hormonal contraception completely and see if my body settled itself. I’ve had mixed results.


Coming off hormones completely has made my period a lot more regular, which shocked me. One of the reasons I was drawn to the pill was that I thought it would regulate my erratic periods, but for me it just resulted in spotting throughout the month and terrible acne (again, everyone is different and it may well work for you). Since coming off of contraception, my periods have settled into a 29 day pattern, which has at least reduced the anxiety I used to suffer about unexpectedly starting to bleed in public (or when wearing nice panties).

My period now lasts 5-7 days (which, as someone who once had a 4 week long period, is so amazing), but I still bleed really heavily, particularly in the first 2 days.  I’m taking full on Niagara Falls, bleeding so fast I’m clotting, getting through a super plus tampon *and* a pad in an hour heavy. During a typical period I’ll easily get through two packs of super plus tampons, a box of regular tampons (for days 3-7) and two boxes of pads. That’s a considerable chunk of my monthly income. I’m not quite sure why sanitary products are considered a luxury item and caviar, for example, is not, but you do have to pay VAT on pads and tampons. So I’m paying an extra 5%* on top for the luxury of sobbing my way through my monthlies.  Our government came under pressure to scrap the tampon tax, but decided instead that they’d give the money raised to women’s charities. On the face of it, that’s hard to argue with, but then I found out that a proportion of that money goes to anti choice charities.

Nope. I’m not having that.  I don’t want my money being used to dictate what other women – often desperate, vulnerable women, do with their bodies. I find organisations like that highly immoral. I know there are people that disagree with my view and that’s fine – they can donate to the charity if they so wish. But I think it is fundamentally wrong that my money was being used to fund this group without my knowledge or consent, by way of a tax on a product that I am forced to buy.


So I started looking at alternatives. There’s a fair amount out there I hadn’t heard of before, including washable pads and tampons, specially designed panties that absorb the flow, and menstrual cups.

There is maybe a certain ick factor to reusable pads and tampons, but in theory they are perfectly hygienic provided you keep them clean. I didn’t choose them however, for the same reason I didn’t use washable nappies for my babies. Although they seem a lot more eco-friendly (even when you take washing and drying into account), I have 4 children and I already do a lot of washing. I didn’t dare add anything however small, to my ever growing mountain of laundry. I’m rubbish at keeping up with it all as it is.

But while I was looking at reusables, the menstrual cup caught my eye, particularly the anecdotal claims that it makes periods lighter. Save me money and make my monthly hell more bearable??

I’ve seen it claimed – although I can’t tell you how accurate it is – that the chemicals used to bleach cotton and control odours in pads and tampons can make you bleed more heavily. It’s certainly true in my experience that tampons-being absorbent- can leave you feeling dried out and sore, because they absorb all the moisture in the vagina, not just menstrual fluid. The cup was supposed to help with both of those things. They are made from medical grade silicone, and collect the blood rather than absorb it, so they don’t suck all of the moisture out of you. I figured it was worth a try, so I started looking into buying one.

There are loads of different cups out there, that come in different sizes and different levels of firmness, but the basic idea is the same with them all – they are soft silicone, bell shaped cups that you fold and insert into the vagina, where it opens out and forms a vacuum seal to hold it in place and prevent leaks. When it’s time to empty it, you squeeze the end slightly, give it a little wiggle, the seal breaks and you pull it out to empty it. More on that later.

I was a bit bamboozled by the range of cups, and decided in the end to go for a cheap version while I test it out rather than spend around £40 on something that might not work for me. Menstrual cup users have since told me that’s really dangerous because it might not be medical grade silicone, but it was sold as that and I got it from a fairly reputable retailer, so I’m not too worried. I only ever intended on using the cheap one for a couple of cycles anyway.

They come in two standard sizes, size A is for women under 30 who have never given birth, either vaginally or by caesarean. I got the size B because I am over 30 and have given birth 4 times, including once by c-section.

It arrived in a small, pink storage bag, similar to the type you get jewellery in, which would be fairly discreet to carry in your handbag. My first thought was; “that’s enormous.” Honestly, I nearly gave up on the whole idea without trying it out. But when I folded it, I saw it was a comparable sort of size to a super plus tampon. I thought back to my first time using tampons and having that exact same thought.

The cup has markers on the side to show you how much blood you’re losing. Not really important for me, but some people might find that useful, especially if you’re trying to get to know your period and what is normal for you. All of the cup, including the stem, sits inside the vagina so you don’t have a string dangling, or wings hanging out of your panties and sticking to your leg or anything like that. If the stem on yours is too long, you can trim it. The end of the stem should be about an inch inside you, give or take.

Apparently it can ride up a little in the night and cause you to panic that you’re gonna have to go to A&E and explain to a hot doctor that you need help removing a cup of blood from your vaj, but that hasn’t happened to me yet. According to the many reviews and videos an comments I’ve read over the last couple of weeks, if that happens all you need to do is chill out, have a cuppa and sit up or walk around for a while and let gravity pull it back down again. There is no secret door in your vagina for it to escape out of, it isn’t going anywhere, and leaving it in a tiny bit longer isn’t going to hurt – you can leave a cup in for 12 hours at a time (flow permitting).


One of the advantages to the menstrual cup is that it carries no risk of TSS, so you can put it when you’re expecting your period, which is brilliant for me because I go from nothing at all to full on Carrie with no warning.

So when I started to get  cramps just before bed and checked my calendar to see I was definitely due on, I decided to put the cup in before I actually started to bleed. You should never ever ever do that with a tampon-- it can give you a potentially fatal infection-- but it’s fine to do with the cup. I needn’t have worried about the size – once it’s in place, you can’t really feel it. You do need to run your finger around the edge of the cup once it’s in place, to check it has opened fully to create the seal. If you are squeamish about touching your own vagina, a cup probably isnt for you. If can feel your cervix when you run your finger around the cup, you need to take it out and try again, because it won’t catch anything like that.


I woke up the next morning expecting river of blood all over my bed and an extremely grumpy husband,  but my underwear was clean. I decided I’d probably done myself a damage by leaving it in all night for no reason- I had mild cramps but I wasn’t feeling nauseous or lightheaded at all so I figured I hadn’t started yet. Then I went to the bathroom to take the cup out, and had the shock of my life to discover it was half filled with blood.


Was it gross? Well, it wasn’t exactly pretty. But I didn’t get any blood on my hands at all, so for me it was less messy than tampons, because I bleed so heavily the tampon string is often saturated. If you find the sight of blood hard to deal with, you might find emptying it into the toilet a bit gross. 20mls of fluid looks like a lot when you tip it into the toilet, and menstrual fluid is thicker than blood from a cut, and can contain clots, so it does look kinda grim. It was really easy to remove and empty though, and then you just give it a quick rinse and reinsert. Nothing to throw away, no product to flush, no fuss. At the end of your period you give it a more thorough wash, and sterilise it. You can do that by simply boiling it in water on the stove, but I have a steam steriliser I no longer have a use for, so I just chuck it in there.


The big test came straight away – my son needed a lift to school for his exam. I can’t usually drive on the first day of my period; I’m in too much pain, I’m nauseous, and I'm too clumsy. His school is 20 mins away. That’s 40 mins without access to a bathroom. I’d have soaked through my seat. My cramps were still bad, but they were bearable and – whether it’s related to the cup or not, I’m not sure, but I don’t seem as clumsy this month. I’ve not broken anything yet, anyway. So I drove him, without even a pad. It was terrifying. But when I got home, my underwear was still clean. In fact, I got through the first 24 hours without a leak at all. Unheard of.


I did have a minor – and I mean very minor – leak during the second night. I even felt/heard the seal break, but I didn’t get up to check it because I was already in bed, and I’m lazy. It was literally just a spot though, so no big deal. And I’ll know next time.


Will I carry on using it? Almost definitely. I’ve only used it for one period and already I find it less messy than tampons and pads, and more comfortable. I’ll probably invest in another one, partly because people scared me with their horror at me buying a cheap, off brand one, and partly because it’d be good to have a spare because I am clumsy when I’m on my period and I’m almost certain to drop it down the toilet at some point so it’d be good to have another for while I’m sterilising that one. I may also invest in a couple of washable pads to wear at night in case it shifts (some cups come with a couple as standard).


I’ve yet to empty it in a public toilet. You wouldn’t necessarily need to anyway, because you can leave the cup in place for 12 hours, but it may be worth carrying a small pack of flushable wipes or a small bottle of water with you if you feel you may need to. Some people have said you can just go into the disabled toilet so you can wash it in the sink without having to leave the stall, but I'm uncomfortable using disabled toilets personally, as I'd hate to make someone who really needs to use it wait. There isn’t any smell or noise with the cup, so it would be as discrete as changing a tampon, if not more so (less rustling). You don't need to remove it to go to the toilet, but if you have those fun kinds of periods that play havoc with your bowels, you may need to check the cup is still in position after.


It’s a bit early to tell if it has made a major difference to my symptoms. Could be that I feel less crampy and nauseous because I hoped to – but placebo or not, I’m just grateful I’m only dealing with anaemia, acne, and a tearful sense of worthlessness this month.

  Someone pass me a giant chocolate bar and hit play on the Dirty Dancing DVD on your way out, I have a three day date with a hot water bottle and my quilt.

*Originally, I said 20% here, wrongly assuming we pay full rate VAT on sanitary products. I was then sent a link to the gov.uk page showing that sanitary products are charged a reduced VAT rate of 5% - thank you to @rosamundi on twitter for correcting me on that ☺

If you'd like to donate a couple of quid to help keep me writing, you can do so here.

Mid Week Flash Challenge Week 5 - You Are My Heart

My next entry for Miranda Kate's mid week flash challenge, the General Guidelines for which are here.  

This week's prompt photo was created by Marcela Bolivar, a digital artist from Columbia. You can check out some of her other wonderful creations on her website here.

You are my heart

Once, I am sure, I was complete. A whole, living, breathing being. I used to taste food, feel music. I used to be alive.

Then along he came. He filled me so completely, there was no room for anything else. Where once I held passion for art and dancing, good company and good movies, now there was only him.  I lived him, breathed him, he didn't just hold my heart, he was my heart. I didn't mind, I didn't miss any of it. I didn't need any of it, he fulfilled me completely.

And now he has gone, and I am a shell. I eat without tasting, I go through the motions of social interaction without engaging. I stare at screens without taking anything in.  I exist without living.

All that's left of me is the ghost of him, as intangible as a rippling reflection on a midnight pool.

Mid Week Flash Week 3 - The Beat Goes on

My next entry for Miranda Kate's mid week flash challenge, inspired by this guy:

 The picture prompt this week is by  Ekaterina Zakharova, a Russian photographer who named him '1Fairy'. You can find more on her Deviant Art page.

The General Guidelines for the mid-week flas challenge are here.  

The Beat Goes On

The trouble is, no one believes in fairy tales anymore.

Back when I was a kid, some people took them seriously. My Nan did, certainly - she left cream out for the little folk, touched wood, sprinkled salt, and always warned us to stay on the paths if we ventured into the woods. She even gave me a tiny iron horseshoe to keep me safe. I should have kept it.

But nowadays, with our lives so dominated by social media and selfies sticks and double shot mocha cappuccinos, we are lulled into a false sense of security. The woods are just somewhere I jog through, not an otherworld of mystery and magic.

I was panting along, well on course to beating my personal best, the only sound the slapping of my feet on the path, the thudding of my blood in my ears. I was totally in the zone. Then I noticed the annoying little stone in my shoe.

I tried to ignore it, but after a few steps I realised I couldn't. Look after your feet, and they'll look after you. If I ignored it, I'd get a blister, and that would totally mess up my training.

I reluctantly stopped,  and stepped off the path to sit on a convenient log and sort it out. As soon as I sat, it was like the volume had been turned up on the world. Suddenly I could hear the wind sighing through the canopy, the birds calling to each other. The sun was warm on my back and the air smelled so sweet. I lingered too long, breathing in the magic of the woods.

Then I heard it - or maybe felt it, I'm not sure. The steady beating of the drums, the low, intoxicating oboe, the high, infectious pipes that made my toes tap. I should have stayed on the path. Nan warned me. But I wanted to see where the music was coming from.

I walked away from the log, away from the path, struggling through the bracken.  Each time I thought I was nearing the source, the wind changed and just like that, it was far away again.

I tripped on a bramble whip and stumbled, and suddenly he was there, catching me.

He was not of this world, that much I know. It wasn't just the antlers, wasn't just the forest colours that swirled over his skin, wasn't just the deep, hypnotic, amber eyes that gave it away. No mortal creature could be so perfect. Naked but for a deerskin loincloth, every muscle perfectly defined, as if sculpted by angels. I was suddenly very aware of my sweaty tracksuit, scraped back hair, the spot on my chin that I hadn't bothered to try and cover.

I tried to burble out a question, but he held a finger to my lips and suddenly all I could hear was the music, all I could feel was his warmth.

His fingertip left my lips, trailed slowly down my neck, along my collar bone, down my arm. He entwined his fingers in mine, and I let myself be led into the clearing, where the other Fey folk danced.

I've never been much of a dancer, but with him leading me it just seemed natural, easy as breathing. Like being drunk but without the queasiness,  I span and danced with the beautiful ones, laughed as they ripped my clothes from my body, paid no heed to anything but the beat and the dance and his hypnotic eyes.

I don't know how long I've been dancing. I carry on through light and darkness. Through the heartbreak of him leaving, my bloodied feet continue to dance. I laugh through the jealousy as he brings some other girl to the clearing. I sing with the fair ones as we rip at her clothes. I am the dance. I am the music.

Somewhere inside, the old me cries out to stop, to rest, to go home. But the music never stops. The beat goes on. 

Mid Week Flash Challenge Week 2

I'm coming in to this party fashionably late , since it's week 2, but this is my piece for Miranda Kate's  Mid-Week Flash Challenge.

The picture is the prompt, and is by Kasia Derwinska, a polish art photographer.

It’s the picture that keeps me going.


Because fuck, it’s dark here. There’s no end to the desolate, barren emptiness. It stretches on and on forever, but at the same time it’s closing in so tight that if I stop and think about it for a second, falter even a moment, I won’t be able to breathe.


I focus on the picture.


It gets me through the screaming silence, keeps me going through the blackness, when all is dust. It is my talisman against the aching fatigue of battling on. It reminds me that smiling is possible, here where I have forgotten how.


I focus on the picture in my mind.  Nothing fancy – I don’t want much. Just one foot in front of the other, just like now. Only the sky is blue, and the air is sweet and I can breathe again. Smile again. See the world in colour again.


I focus on that picture – blue skies to temper my storms, a life lived in colour, with feeling – I hang it in the foreground of my mind, and I keep on walking.


I focus on the picture, and I refuse to give up, and curl up, and disappear.


One day I will have my blue sky.

Broken Hearts

It's Valentine's day, so everywhere I look there are hearts. Heart frames for photos on Facebook,  hearts in hashtags on twitter, heart stickers coming up as options on prisma,  hearts all over the high street.

Hearts don't automatically make me think of love though. For any parent who has experienced what I have, hearts have a very different association- CHD.

Today marks the end of CHD awareness week. 10 years ago I couldn't have told you what CHD stood for, such was my lack of awareness. Now I could bore you about Congenital Heart Disease for hours. I won't here though, honest.

I was expecting my third child - a surprise, but a welcome one. My first two children had been textbook pregnancies, easy deliveries, resulting in chubby, healthy, pink little babies. We skipped into our anomaly scan, toddler in tow, excited to find out if we would be blessed with another little boy or another little girl. We were chatting away with the sonographer about what baby's siblings were hoping for, how different it would be this time itht a big gap between babies, what a beautiful day it was outside. Then she went quiet.

I asked if everything was ok, and she told me she was having problems getting a clear view of baby's heart and she might need to get someone in to have a look. I could tell she was lying, and turned my face to the screen.

I don't know if you've ever seen an ultrasound scan, but when you look at an unborn baby's heart in 4 chamber view, it is supposed to look a bit like a circle with a cross in it. My baby's heart looked like three quarters of a circle, with the final quarter, instead of a smooth curve, bubbly like a blackberry. Every beat and pulse of his little heart looked strained, causing the blackberry quarter to bulge out in strange directions.

"There is something wrong with his heart" I said, putting the sonographer in an awful position. It isn't her job to break bad news, I know that now, protocol dictates that she calls in a consultant who will then have a look, and explain that you need a referral to a specialist. But she couldn't lie either. She asked me what made me say that, and I pointed and said "that looks wrong." She told me she wasn't quite sure, and went to get the consultant.

All the jovility of the room drained away, leaving a thick,  heavy silence that even our toddler didn't break.

The consultant referred us to the Evalina Children's Hospital in London for a foetal cardiology scan. A very different experience to a normal anomaly scan, during this type of scan there is no speaking. The consultant had to focus completely on measuring every tiny part of baby's miniscule heart. Afterwards we were taken to what we now think of as the bad news room.

The bad news room is tiny - just enough space for four chairs, and a low table with a very conspicuous box of tissues on it, and a less conspicuous stack of cardboard bowls, presumably there in case the news makes you vomit.

I didn't really react as they told me my son had two problems with his heart - Coarctation of the aorta and an AVSD - I was still in shock, I think. I felt weirdly calm and detached.

The consultant sketched out a diagram of a healthy heart and then drew a diagram of my baby's. The Coarctation meant that my baby's aorta - which would, after he was born, supply the lower half of his body with oxygenated blood, had a narrowing which would stop it being able to function. The AVSD (Atrioventricular Septal Defect) part meant that he had two holes in his heart, one either side of the valve.

The consultant explained that my son's collection of defects was fixable on its own, with a fair success rate, but that it was very rare for someone to suffer those defects without also having a severe, life limiting chromosome disorder. If he had the chromosomal issue they suspected, his chances of  surviving open heart surgery would plummet to about 2%, with an even slimmer chance he would see his first birthday. They gently let me know that, despite the late stage of my pregnancy, "ending the pregnancy" was an option. I had no idea what that would involve, so they explained that a termination at that stage would involve giving birth.

We opted for an amniocentesis to tell us what exactly we were looking at before we made a decision. By this point I was 22 weeks pregnant. I had a very definite bump, and a very active, kicking baby in there. Every time he kicked my heart broke anew. My baby had a name, he had siblings, he had a family that loved him already - and every time he kicked I was reminded that I might have to plan his funeral.

An amniocentesis is an uncomfortable procedure involving a very long hollow needle being passed through the stomach into the womb, to remove a tiny bit of amniotic fluid for testing. During the test there is another detailed scan, where measurements are taken of baby's nose, limbs,  and the fold of skin at the back of baby's neck.

I couldn't take my eyes off the screen. I just kept thinking; "This might be my only chance to see my baby alive."  At one point he reached his tiny fist up towards the cold jelly on my stomach, opened his hand and closed it again. I felt like he was waving to me, telling me "I'm fine mum, just you wait and see."

The doctor told me that what he had seen had been encouraging, but was no guarantee of a healthy baby and I would have to wait a week for the results. He also told me that he would be prepared to perform a termination "for the good of the child" if my son had the chromosome disorder they suspected - which is described as being incompatible with life.

You know how slowly time goes in the last hour before you finish at work? The next week passed like that - a fog of guilt and trying to be cheery around the other children, crying in desperate, secretive bursts in the bathroom. It doesn't matter how many medical professional tell you there is no known cause, it's nothing you did, just one of those things - as a mum the guilt shreds your soul.

A week later I got the phone call that had my legs turn to jelly and collapse beneath me. A kindly nurse that called me to say there was no chromosomal anomaly detected. I made her repeat it four times. Our baby was "just" facing a complex heart defect.  He had a 70% chance of surviving both operations. He had a chance.

I was induced two weeks before my due date, in the Evalina Children's Hospital,  where there was a whole team of experts in tiny hearts. I am so unbelievably lucky that we live in a country that has free healthcare. In countries where they don't, my son's operations alone can cost over a million, and that's without costs for delivery and care. I didn't have to worry about that, I could focus on being there for my boy, learning all I could about his condition, giving him what care I could.

At nine days old my son had his first operation - the Coarctation repair. The cut either side of the obstruction in his aorta and reattached the ends, discarding the piece with the narrowing. Unbelievably, a week later, he was home.

He was tiny, fragile, fed constantly because his body needed so many extra calories just to keep his broken heart beating, but he was alive. For a little while, he almost thrived.

Then he started to lose weight. Not just a little bit, he was so far off the growth chart that they had to add paper at the bottom. He started regularly projectile vomiting. His breathing was laboured, his eyes sunken, his skin an achy grey-blue. He kept on determinedly smiling through as I cut every known allergen out of my diet in case my milk was making him sick and woke him hourly to feed him. We introduced high energy milk into his diet, dripping it into his mouth with a syringe because he didn't have the energy to suck. I was terrified he was vomiting up too much of his heart meds to survive.

When our appointment at the Evalina finally came, we were given more bad news. Baby was failing to thrive because he was in heart failure. One of his holes had begun to close by itself, but that wasn't a good thing; the two had been balancing each other out. If he didn't have his operation soon, he might die.

We weren't expecting it so soon - had hoped he would be between 3 and 5 before he would need his main repair. His heart was the size of a walnut and would still be beating while they were sewing patches on to cover the holes.

My baby was 7 months old when he went down for surgery, on my birthday.

The longest 6 hours of my life followed. We tried to distract ourseles, but mostly we hung around the hospital grounds, with me clutching his blanket like a mad woman. When we got the call to say he was in recovery, we sprinted to PICU.

When we arrived, they were having troubles rousing him. Panic gripped me again. Could we really have come so far, only for him to fall at this hurdle?

I laid my hand on his tiny head and said "hey little man. Mummy's here now"  and he opened his eyes. A miracle.

We had our dramas in the days that followed. He developed a tolerance to morphine and would not be sedated. He would only relax and lie still in my arms - mummy morphine, the nurse called it. He had an SVT -where his heart sped up dramatically and he had to have yet another new medicine - but we got through it. Within days of his op he was pink and able to breathe. No longer so weak he could barely drink, he was no hoovering up solids like they were going out of fashion.

Two weeks later we took him home for the last time.

Fast forward 9 years and you'd never know, but for the telltale scar, that there was ever anything wrong with my son. He hasn't been on any meds for years, and now goes for a check up only every two years. For all intents and purposes he has a fully functioning, healthy heart. He is in mainstream school, participates in a wide range of sports, including kick boxing, and is an unstoppable dynamo. His energy and infectious happiness light up rooms.

We got our happy ending.

But on Valentine's day, when the hearts are everywhere,  I am taken back to that dark time, and my own heart breaks for those who didn't.

If you'd like to donate a couple of quid to help keep me writing, you can do so here.

2016: A Patch in Time

Hi everyone, I've missed you!

I've been snowed under since I started contributing to Ungagged last year, and so I've not been as active as I'd have liked to be on this blog. That doesn't mean I've not been writing though - I've been churning out pages and pages of political tirades (let's face it, between Brexit and Trump, there has been a fair amount to talk about!), participating on the Friday Phrases (#FP) hashtag over on twitter working away at the third and final long awaited Strange Stories book.

My sci-fi dystopia, Before Digital Dreams, is now in its very final stages, out with first readers who have been giving it some amazing feedback. I'll be starting the submissions process within the next three months and will likely be posting lots about that journey in the coming months, because it's new to me. Any advice from seasoned hands at this traditional publishing lark warmly welcomed!

You may have noticed that I've added a PayPal link to this blog - it's not there to make anyone feel pressure to make donations they can't afford,  but if you do enjoy my writing and would like to help support me to continue, any donations - whether 20p or £20 - would be a real help and would be very gratefully received.

I didn't just open this post to give you and update and ask for your hard earned though - I've also come to share what I was working on over Christmas. Those who have followed me for a while will know I *love* Doctor Who - and have always wanted to write an episode.

Well in 2016, with the help of multitalented political and philosophical poet Steve McAuliffe, that dream became a reality when I wrote and performed in a mini-episode of Doctor Who for the Ungagged podcast. Grab yourself a cuppa and a blanket and curl up for a 12 minute adventure that should (hopefully!) leave you laughing.

You can download or stream it FREE here.

 

The Clock Strikes Christmas - An Alternative Christmas Tale

“You have to understand, we didn’t want this” said Berry nervously. “Every elf in the workshop chose this job because we are passionate about bring hope, joy and laughter to people all around the world-"

“Yet here you are, threatening to strike days before Christmas” said Santa, stroking his beard. Something about the movement made Berry nervous, reminding him of a Bond villain stroking a cat. “Happy to disappoint every child in the world, and for what? To make some kind of political point?”

Berry tried to swallow his nerves. He wished more than anything that it hadn’t been him that drew the short candy cane.

“With respect sir, it isn’t about the politics. Whether we agree with the expansion or not, things just aren’t workable as they are.” He scrambled around for the words to explain, words that would make him understand. Santa rarely visited the shop floor, preferring instead to sit in the grotto with his sexy secretary Mrs Claus and some of the perkier elves, counting out cookies and mince pies and basking in the adoration of the masses. He rarely saw the worker elves sobbing with exhaustion as they tried to work out how to craft the latest piece of gadgetry.

“We’ve become so focused on the side venture that we are losing sight of our original mission statement.”

Santa snorted, then leaned back in his seat, tucking his thumbs into his red braces.

“We have to move with the times Ber,” he said. “Joy and hope are nice, of course, but that’s not what the modern consumer wants. They want HD ready, virtual reality compatible real time gaming experiences.  They want the latest smartphone, suitable for socialising and work on the go. They want status symbols, material proof they are loved. The market has spoken.”

He said it with an air of finality that booked no argument, as if he had said “it is written” or “God wills it.” Berry took a deep breath, clenched his bladder against Santa’s thousand yard stare and said; 

“With respect, we don’t serve the market. We never have” he flinched as Santa leant forward, then ploughed on when he realised the big man was just taking a fat cigar out of the gold plated case on the desk between them. “We serve Christmas.  Our primary job has always been to gift enough hope, compassion and joy to the world to see them through the year. We can’t do that when we are tied up making drones and smart phones.”

Santa chewed on the cigar, raising a single, fluffy eyebrow. Berry tried to fill the silence.

“We’ve always been about bringing people what they really need,” he said. “It’s the reason most of us came to work at North Pole Incorporated. I mean, we could cope with the workload when all we had to make was a small wooden train and a yo-yo.  But this is beyond a joke, it’s all too big, this isn’t what our job is all about.”

“Your job” Santa said “is to make whatever the fuck I tell you to make. Hope? Joy?  Laughter? Outdated concepts not fit for a modern workforce.”

“But it’s our primary purpo-"

“But nothing. Wittering on about love and peace like they are saleable commodities. Going on like the humans are the important part of this-"

“But sir,” Berry interrupted, trying not to pee in his stripey tights “the humans are the only important part of this. They are the reason the firm was founded. Joy is what Christmas is all about-"

“Wrong.” Santa sat forward in his chair suddenly. “You know what Christmas is all about? Me. I am Christmas. It’s about what I say it’s about. And I say it’s about $14billion sponsorship deals from coca cola. It’s about $200 billion per year contracts with toys r us.  It’s about Samsung and Apple entering into a bidding war with each other over who gets my endorsement. You think people care about joy and love and goodwill toward men? People care about going one better than their neighbours. No one cares about our invisible gifts. People want things they can hold, and show off and sell on eBay.”

“But without our gift of hope, humanity will fall into darkness...”

“I’m not saying don’t give them the hope. We will do that alongside the material gifts, like always.”

“We can’t keep up with the demand, sir.” Berry said “We don’t even have time to pee! Holly gave birth on the shop floor, she was too scared to stop work. When the Festive Joy-O-Matic crushed Buddy to death, we didn’t dare shut the production line down. We had to return the body to his family in a set of jumbo sized crackers. We just can’t go on like this!”

A pair of blonde, giggly she-elves burst in, but when they saw Berry, they stopped,  uncertain of whether to come in or not. Santa raised a finger at them to wait. Berry eyed them distastefully. Tall, leggy wood-elves had no place here at the pole. They weren’t suited to the climate like the small, pointy eared snow elves that traditionally ran the workshop. They were too flighty to work the shop floor, and too noisy to fill stocking.  No one knew why Santa bothered employing them at all.

“This just isn’t sustainable sir.”

“Listen here you little shit” Santa growled. “We might have started out as a two-bit not for profit, scraping together a living on stale mince pies, but I’ve moved on. I’m a someone now.” He beckoned to the wood elves. “and I’m not going back to being a small time demigod  scraping a living in the snow. You can do what you want as regards hope and joy and all that shit. As long as you keep my profit margins up. I have shareholders to appease.”

He pulled the identikit blondes onto his lap.

“You’re dismissed Berry-"

"But-"

“Berry. Either run my corporation how I say, or I’ll sack the lot of you. It’d be cheaper to outsource your jobs to China anyway. Go ahead, give me an excuse. You think no one wants your job?”

Santa fixed Berry with his ice blue stare. What more could he say? Berry was defeated.

“Understood sir”

“Good. I make that 16 minutes you’ve been in my office. You can make that up at the end of your shift.”

Berry sagged, sighed, and trudged out to give his coworkers the news.

“Now then my lovelies” Santa said, nuzzling into one of the elves necks. “which one of you is naughty, and which one is nice?”

NaNoWriMo 2016

I'm in a writerly quandary.

It's the start of NaNoPrep season, and I don't know if I'm going to participate this year, let alone which WIP I should work on next.

For those who don't know,  National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is a challenge that takes place in November, where those writers who thrive on pressure, competition and deadlines (as well as those who just need a running kick up the backside to get started) try to write at least 50,000 words in a month. I did it last year, and finished my first novel, Baby Steps, and then took part in camp NaNoWriMo in July to finish off the WIP I have been working on *forever* - Before Digital Dreams.

NaNoWriMo is really good fun, and I've met some brilliant writers through it. It's a good way of keeping in the habit of writing each day as well, and I find the progress graphs a really good motivator. But I will be a lot busier this November. Last year Youngest wasn't particularly mobile, and had two naps a day. Now he is a curious, exploring toddler who isn't keen on naps and hasn't yet developed any sense of danger.

I have been asked to contribute my political thoughts over on HeavyMetalPolitics (and with that as my outlet, I won't be putting my political thoughts here anymore, just chatty posts like this and fiction). I start in a couple of weeks though, and I'm not sure if I will have the energy to NaNoWriMo on top of researching and writing for HPol. 

So the sensible thing to do would be not to participate in NaNoWriMo this year.

But I know once it starts I will wish I had.

And I do have at least two novel ideas that have been badgering my brain for ages - A clone story called My Better Half and a young adult novel exploring the back story of Malcolm, one of the characters from A Tale of Two Princes.

The coloured post-it notes are calling me.

I'm going to need a *lot* of coffee in November...

Never A Dull Moment In The Labour Party

The Labour party's spectacularly shambolic coup attempt took another two major blows yesterday, both in the High Court and in the NEC elections, and the reactions have been extraordinary.

For those who missed the millisecond of coverage on the BBC, yesterday the High Court ruled that advertising membership of the Labour party with the wording “New members will be able to vote in Leadership elections” meant that the NEC had no authority to impose a retroactive freeze date on new members voting in the upcoming election, effectively returning the vote to the 130k voters who had lost out. This also means that those members who then managed to scrape together the ridiculously inflated £25 to vote are likely to be refunded (which is good news for me, as a member of a low income household, but also saddens me because it meant I sold treasured possessions for no reason).

There was immediate talk of an appeal, which would be funded through members donations. A large chunk of the membership are understandably incensed by this, given that they pay their fees on the understanding that  their money will be going towards supporting the party and fighting Tories, so a petition has already been started to block the party from fighting the decision using member’s money. I am convinced the members will win again – the law is very clear on misselling – so it seems this is just another way to splinter the party further.

The NEC election result was another indicator of strong support for a more socialist, traditional Labour party, with all six “left field” candidates storming to victory on a massive margin. We are consistently told by the right wing of the labour party that social media success has no bearing on election results, but the opposite seems to be the case in this instance. All six candidates were heavily supported on social media (particularly twitter). Perhaps social media won’t make an impact in a General Election, but it certainly makes an impact within the party, and that’s a strong start. Like I’ve said previously, a strong, united membership could be an election winning tool, if they are properly guided on how to campaign for Labour.

What has shocked me, is the reactions among the right wing of the party. Ok, so none of us like when a vote doesn’t go our way, but that’s democracy. Surely, as we are all members of the same party, and therefore members of the same team, this is the point (had it not passed already) where we start to put electoral success above petty factionalism and unite against the Tories?

Britain is in a dangerous position. The Tories, now fully untied behind Maggie – sorry, May – have the future of our country in their hands. Post-Brexit ref, there is a lot of uncertainty. We are looking at an historic opportunity to create a British Bill of Rights, and enshrine a British Constitution in law. We will desperately need that when we are no longer protected by the EU. And we are leaving the details of that to a Conservative government who see workers rights, maternity benefits and the rights of children as “red tape and bureaucracy.” The country is being run by a woman who said, in her first PMQs, that there is no such thing as austerity, “it’s called living within our means.”

Brexit will  cause uncertainty, instability in the markets and give Conservative governments Carte blanche to roll back all of those pesky rights that put the needs of people above the profits of shareholders. We desperately need a Labour government to see us through this unprecedented period of change. It beggars belief that the plotters are continuing to undermine the party that they are members of, and cause such disunity when the electorate need them so desperately.

None the less, over the last 24 hours I have personally seen some of Owen Smith’s most vocal supporters say that a party split is inevitable, that they will actively undermine Corbyn at every turn, and that they would rather vote for Theresa May than Jeremy Corbyn. All anonymous accounts of course, so they wont be picked up by Labour's compliance unit. What shocked me the most, was that I’ve even seen Labour councillors say that they would rather vote Tory than unite behind Corbyn. Saying something like that, as a key figure in the labour party,  on a public forum is beyond all reason. It is self defeating in the extreme, and I can only conclude that self interest is far more important to that person than the needs of vulnerable people who urgently need a Labour government.

I’ve stayed quiet on the subject of Tom Watson for now. He wouldn’t have been my first choice for deputy party leader, but I had high hopes for him. As a perpetual fence sitter, he was fairly well placed to unite the different sides of the party, hear both sides and appeal for unity, for the good of the public, who deserve a strong opposition at this time. Instead he decided to launch a bizarre and barely coherent attack on the party membership, through the Guardian newspaper.

In the attack – sorry, interview  - Watson claimed that Trotsky entryists were “twisting the arms” of young Labour supporters to shore up Corbyn’s support in the party. He said:

“ There are some old hands twisting young arms in this process, and I’m under no illusions about what’s going on. They are caucusing and factionalising and putting pressure where they can, and that’s how Trotsky entryists operate.” And added “some “Trots”, who have returned to Labour after being driven out decades ago... certainly don’t have the best interests of the Labour party at heart”

I don’t know how Watson intended this to come across, but he must see that it’s massively insulting to the membership. At 31, I’m a little too old to be classed as a young Labour supporter, and I’ve definitely not had my arm twisted by anyone.  To suggest that any young supporter of Corbyn must have had their arm twisted is insulting to their intelligence. People want Corbyn for his policies, his polite method of debate, and his vision to return the party  to its roots. To suggest that people want socialism because they have been intimidated, are brainwashed cult members or are being influenced by entryists is dismissive in the extreme, and won’t serve Watson well at all.

  So given my age,  I have to assume that, as I’m a new member, Watson must think I’m a Trotskyist. Never mind that 180,000 people joined up as registered supporters and there are barely enough “Trots” in this country to fill a small village hall, (indeed, even Owen Smith could muster up as much support as the SWP, if he gives out free ice cream); we live in a post-fact political landscape, so that doesn’t matter. Watson says I’m a trot, so I must be. I must have been expelled in the 80s, despite being an ova then. I must have been an in utereo hard leftist.

So here we are now. The leadership takeover bid lies in tatters, Owen Smith hasn’t been seen since his disastrous performance in the first hustings debate, his supporters swing between cheerleading the Tories and furious denials that they are losing, the members are having to look into an injunction to prevent their money being misused to fight the High Court and instead of calling for unity, the deputy leader took to a national newspaper to smear the new members of his own party as Trotskyist Entryists and silly children who are being manipulated.

Never a dull moment in the Labour Party! I think I will go and amuse myself by scrolling through the #TrotskyiteTwist  hashtag on twitter.

It Doesn't Have to Be This Way - Mobilising the Masses

Yesterday, I wrote a piece detailing my view of the current mess the labour party is in, and, to an extent, who I see as responsible for it. The Internet,  newspapers and blogosphere is awash with such pieces at the moment though, so on its own, it’s not particularly useful. It seems you can open just about any paper or click just about any link and read a story that will leave Labour and left voters in a state of despair, bracing ourselves for a generation of hard right, Thatcherite rule.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

So many people are calling for solutions. I have woken up feeling very optimistic today, and so I would like to propose some.

Under Corbyn we have seen the labour party grow into the largest left of centre party in Europe. That is an amazing achievement. It represents hope in politics. It represents the thirst for change. It tells us people are sick of the same old politics and want something new. It could go on to represent a revolution in British politics. We should be immensely proud.

Somewhere along the way though,  Labour politics became unbelievably polarised. We forgot we are in fact a team, fighting against the Tories, their social injustice and austerity. We started yelling at each other across the divide, rival fans of team Corbyn and team Smith. It’s crushingly sad to see and, as I said yesterday, it pushes us toward divisions that are too great to heal, and that annihilate our chances against the Tories.

As a result, when either side make a point, we shout them down. Corbyn supporters point excitedly to the crowds and say “isn’t this amazing?” and are immediately  down with the retort “Crowds don’t win elections.” We scoff and shout back. But we shouldn’t. We should listen.

It is perfectly fair and reasonable to point out that massive crowds at rallies and huge support on social media don’t necessarily translate to votes at the ballot box. After all, we live in a country with an ageing population, whose over 50s overwhelmingly vote conservative. We have lost the majority of Scotland to the SNP. A huge percentage of the under 25s don’t vote. And although we are winning on social media, our message is not translating to MSM, when many people who aren’t generally politically engaged absorb their information prior to  elections. These concerns are valid and we need to take them seriously. The worst thing we could possibly do now is become complacent and over confident.

So how can we turn our movement into a credible electoral force?

I think Corbyn was quite right to say that this leadership election is an opportunity to reach out to new voters, and showcase the best of our party. But we also need to mobilise these huge crowds into a campaign force. Yes, it will be hard to promote our party without the support of the PLP, but there are 500k of us. If we organise,  we can do it.

Many of the people who are inspired by Corbyn have been disengaged from politics, for various reasons, up until now. New members want to help; all labour members want to see Labour in power. They don’t necessarily know how to. It isn’t as simple as haranguing your friends and neighbours to vote labour (although that’s a start). We need guidance.

I would like to see Labour send out campaign packs to members. Give us flash cards with Corbyn’s   policies on, to help us showcase the best of labour. Perhaps tailor them so we can pull out the card that best addresses our neighbour’s and friend’s concerns. The little old lady down the road will probably be more interested in hearing about Corbyn supporters plans to protect her pension and improve  in supported accommodation than his plans to scrap tuition fees. The newly laid off guy next door is going to be far more interested in his policy to create two million manufacturing jobs than his pledge to create a National Education Service. If new members were given simple, tailored policy messages, we would be a lot more effective as a campaign force. We need, at the very least, basic directional ideas of how to campaign for the Labour party. We are legion, but milling around not really knowing what to do isn’t helping.  Labour absolutely  must cash in on the mood of Corbyn supporters and mobilise us to spread the word.

In the meantime, there is still lots we can do to help Labour into power.
We can start pointing to what’s great about our party instead of what divides it. Don’t engage in bickering with members of our own party. It’s ridiculously self defeating, on both sides. If we can’t speak nicely and share ideas on a calm and rational way, then we shouldn’t engage at all.

We can take credit as a party for the times we have forced the conservatives to climb down on some of their most – yes I will use the word – evil policies.

We can cheerlead all the policies that we love under anti-austerity labour.

We can point to ALL the positives.

We should  ignore the badly behaved labour MPs in public, like the naughty toddlers they are,  and pursue due process by writing to party whips and seeking guidance through our CLPs where we think they have gone beyond the pale.

And most of all, and I absolutely cannot stress this enough so I’m actually going to caps lock it (something I never do)

**WE TAKE THE FIGHT TO THE TORIES!**

They are giving us an open goal. Tory failings are too many to list here. The current leadership of the Tory party makes Cruella Deville look cuddly. While we are busy fighting, they are rolling back all our rights and kicking electoral fraud allegations under the carpet. We *need* to shine the spotlight on them.

We might not be able to get MSM onside, but while they are busy trying to make us look like a shouty bunch of protest party student types, it is imperative that we appear reasonable, balanced and open to suggestions to counter that narrative.  Yes it’s insulting. Yes it’s frustrating. But we mustn’t give more fuel to the fire.

We need to get out in our local communities – scary I know- but we have to reach people who don’t get their news from social media. We can volunteer at food banks,  campaign to save our libraries, read to our elderly neighbours. We can help build a positive image of our movement in thousands of small but significant ways.  We are Jeremy Corbyn’s media, and we have to be that offline as well.

I’ve woken up optimistic,  of hope, and excited about what our movement can become if we work together. We should be good at working together for the common good – we’re socialists. It’s what we do.

Let’s get out there and do it.

A Month Is A Long Time In Politics

Wow.

Really doesn’t feel like less than two months since the country narrowly voted Brexit, does it? So much has happened in the political landscape of the UK since, it feels like we have crammed at least a year into the last 39 days.

 I’ve not commented at length as yet, because where would you even start? Just last week on twitter I was talking about how UK politics have become so unpredictable that I could throw out any old randomness and have a shot of it being true in a few short weeks. I personally think Boris Johnson training a parrot to attend his boring meetings, and said parrot becoming wildly popular and winning a by election in his own right is not that implausible given that one of the contenders for the Ukip leadership race is a Lithuanian man  who is running on a pro-European ticket. But here we are now, and I, like many left leaning voters, am still trying to make sense of it.

On June 24th we woke up to the cold hard reality that we have voted Brexit by 51% to 49%.  A lot of us expected the likes of Boris Johnson to be smugly grinning all over our TV screens, but instead much of the Leave camp did all they could to avoid being seen , and when  they were spotted in the wild they looked as shell shocked and confused as those of us who expected the country to vote for the status quo. Before breakfast, most of us realised that the Leave camp were not expecting to win, and had absolutely no clue what to do now they had. No one in Westminster had even the slightest notion of a plan. We were making this up as we went along and hoping for the best.

Obviously making things up and hoping for the best is all very well, but the one thing that the markets don’t like is instability. I’ll be the first to admit I have only the haziest knowledge of how stock markets and share indexes and all the other things I mentally categorise as Imaginary Money work, but “uncertainty is bad” is, as I understand it, a concrete fact. So, again by breakfast time the British Pound was worth approximately 2 rusty paperclips and a banana skin. And every time Farage opened his mouth, it dropped still further.

I can only guess that most of the country did as I did; sat and watched TV rolling news and social media in a state of shock, wondering how on earth we had woken up in an episode of Black Mirror.

The Tories fell apart completely. Cameron certainly hadn’t expected to lose the referendum he had called, and didn’t have a plan. Rather than deal with the fallout, he quit, effectively telling the leave camp that it was their mess, so they should clear it up. I felt a twinge of pity for Cameron when he resigned. Being the PM that allowed us to break our ties with Europe (pissing them off mightily in the process, which will make our divorce negotiations somewhat toxic), leading to a possible break up between Scotland and the rest of the UK and causing economic ramifications across the whole continent, the only way to console himself is that at least he will be remembered as more than the man who left his daughter in the pub and allegedly masturbated with a dead pig’s mouth.

 I don’t think Johnson expected to win either. He expected a narrow Remain vote, and a shot at being the PM who reunites us with Europe. And his mate Gove suddenly wasn’t his mate anymore. Boris bailed as well, and the Tories went into a full leadership battle, each candidate more horrifying than the last.

As a mother of four, in a low income household, all of that was terrifying. Like the markets, I like stability. I like to plan my family finances months ahead so that I can budget in for children’s birthdays, back to school shops, Christmas. Any unexpected expense can throw out a low income household’s budget for months or even years. I needed a sense of stability, but the Tories, the ones who created the uncertainty, were too busy focusing on themselves to worry about the anxiety they had plunged us into.

As a Labour voter though, I was optimistic. We have a party leader who has a strong anti-austerity message, clear ideas about areas in which to invest to get our economy moving again and a very proven record of campaigning for equality and inclusion. Labour would surely, at that moment, ramp up their campaigning for the amazing positives of having a Labour government. They would unite behind their leader and promote a strong anti-austerity message. They could reach out to those who voted Leave as an anti-establishment “sick of the same old politics,” vote, by pointing out that the current leader of the labour party has been fighting the establishment for the rights of workers his whole career. They could show those who defected to Green, or Lib Dem or Ukip, or stopped voting altogether under the Blair years that they were serious about rebuilding Labour into the strong, fair, socialist party it always used to be. They could say that yes, Jeremy Corbyn did acknowledge that the EU has faults. That’s because the EU does have faults, and he tells us the truth about what he thinks. He also heavily acknowledged the EU’s many good points. Being able to see both the good and bad of the situation surely makes him ideally placed to negotiate our relationship with the EU in a way that does the least impact?

As a Labour voter I was optimistic for the first time in a long time. We are going through a period of great social change and Labour were ideally placed to shape it into something that could be good for everyone.

Instead, the PLP decided now was the time to blow the party apart.

 A wave of brutal, live streamed and fully tweeted resignations, on the hour, every hour, all citing the claim that Jeremy Corbyn was “unelectable” as their reason. I thought I knew what unelectable meant. I thought it meant someone uninspiring, who people won’t vote for. I don’t really understand what definition the PLP are working from though. Under Corbyn’s leadership the Labour Party have grown their membership so that they are now the biggest Left of Centre party in Europe. They have won every by-election and Mayoral contest. Thousands of people attend rallies to hear him speak. He is neither uninspiring nor unelectable. Thousands of people are willing to campaign on Labour’s behalf. That all seems positive to me, but apparently it isn’t to the PLP. Those are the wrong  types of voters, you see. No, I don’t get it either.

The PLP put Angela Eagle up as a leadership contender, saying that it wasn’t Jeremy’s personality as such, just his policies were out of touch, and out of date. Eagle herself said that Corbyn’s lukewarm performance and lack of effort put in to the Remain campaign was why she was running against him. She forgot she had said not two weeks before that he had been running up and down the country with the energy of a 25 year old, but not getting the airtime on main stream media. And that his constituency voted much more comfortably to Remain than hers did.

Eagle seemed to have no problem getting herself on TV though, and she passionately put across her policies of being a woman and from the north, and the virtue of  having a mother who was a seamstress. I am fairly sure she meant the sewing kind, not the Pratchett kind.

 Having failed to convince Jeremy Corbyn to resign and just give her the leadership because she is female and she wants it, Eagle launched her actual leadership bid in a lovely chat room set, with a pretty swirly pink union flag with her name scrawled across it as her backdrop. That’s where the Eagle’s launch crash landed though, as just as she was standing opening the floor for questions, all the journalists buggered off to cover Andrea Leadsom dropping out of the Conservative leadership contest, making the terrifying Theresa May PM.

While the labour party hadn’t been looking, the Conservatives had fallen into line. Now more than ever labour needed to put this silliness aside and unite.
But instead, the coup continued.

Angela Eagle, who by this point seemed to just be shouting “but I’m a woman from the north! I should be leader! People are picking on me!” was joined in the race by Owen Smith. No, I hadn’t heard of him either. Angela later dropped out of the race. I felt for her, a bit. I think she really thought the PLP would back her leadership all the way, and she must be very disappointed that they all fell aside.
The once pharmaceutical company lobbyist Owen Smith (who used to praise the virtues of a semi-privatised NHS until quite recently)  is now running on an anti-austerity ticket, and has made noises about renationalising the railways and protecting th3 NHS from privatisation. Yes I know, those are Corbyn’s policies. Yes I know the PLP said Corbyn’s policies were out of touch and out of date and he is a good person but not a good leader. They’ve changed their minds now. Now his policies are good, but it’s his personality they don’t like. He is a bad person, and though as a leader he attracts loads of people to rallies,  inspires a big following despite poor main stream media coverage, those are the wrong type of people, so that proves he can’t lead. Or something.

Having tried and failed to keep Corbyn off the ballot, the PLP are now trying everything they can think of to smear his supporters, twist his words and his record and do maximum damage to the party they claim to love. I don’t understand why they, as Labour MPs, would sabotage the party’s electoral chances at a time when we were best placed to make real positive social change. But thy seem very committed to it.

Unfortunately I fear the unelectable mantra is starting to become a self fulfilling prophecy. Floating voters are not going to be tempted to vote for a party that looks so very divided. I think most people, like me, crave stability. Thanks to the actions of the PLP, Labour isn’t looking too steady right now. While the PLP are busying themselves with all of this in-fighting, the Tories are quietly uniting in their aim to roll back any human rights or workers rights we thought we had, privatise our prisons and our NHS,  and turn our schools into little more than totalitarian, profit run exam factories where primary school aged children are put into isolation at lunch time if their parents are late paying a bill. The PLP are leaving us undefended, and the Conservatives can cut unchecked.

So the state of the Labour party is very grim right now. Mainly, I think, because of the actions of the 172 (although some are, I think, more culpable than others). But I do have some hope.

Sarah Champion has already come back into the fold, which is fantastic. She is a veryour strong politician and does a lot of good, and it’s brilliant to have her back in the shadow cabinet, fighting for the most vulnerable.

We have seen some very promising, fresh new talent rising to the shadow front bench. I greatly admire Angela Rayner, I think Clive Lewiswill go far and Richard Burgon is one of the best orators I have ever seen. I will be very surprised if he doesn’t become party leader one day.

The road to the leadership election will be a long one, and I think we are likely to be exhausted by the end, by bitter insults on both sides, accusations of bullying and threats, smears on Corbyn supporters and probably Owen Smith supporters too, if we can find some that haven’t just turned up because they heard there will be free ice cream.

One way or another, Labour has to unite after this.  I don’t see how the can do it unless they unite behind Corbyn (as he is clearly the leader that the party members overwhelmingly want). I don’t see the 171 doing that. I wish I could see it. I don’t want the party to split, although I’ve heard there has been talk of it, and that Smith is refused to say he is against it. It would be sad to see the PLP flounce off in a huff. I think Labour would recover, and hopefully by the next general election, but it would still be another wound the party doesn’t need.
 My ideal would be that those members of the PLP who can work with the leader to bring about the electoral choice the party members desperately want, stay and team up with the fresh new talent we have seen hit the ground running and work admirably to pick up the slack the PLP so unceremoniously dropped. If they don’t feel able to do that, and be part of a broad church, left platform perhaps a different party would be more suited to them.

Given that 40 days ago I couldn’t have begun to predict the state we would be in today,  I don’t feel able to foresee the outcome of the leadership election. My gut says Corbyn will win. Hopefully then we can put this petty squabbling, (which Corbyn himself has refused to indulge in, showing remarkable dignity in my opinion) aside and get on with turning this massive new movement into a credible force to rival the Conservatives at the next election.

We need a Labour government more than ever. I have hope we can still achieve it at the next election. And the main reason I still have hope is that through all this drama, Corbyn, aided by McDonnell, Thornberry,  Skinner, Rayner, Burgon, Lewis and the rest of the Labour team who have refused to join the coup attempt have been calmly getting on with their jobs and trying to ensure a better UK  for the many, not just the few.

I’m with them.