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.