Apart from being a wannabee writer, I always wanted to create my own artworks, paintings and such like, I have a good eye for colour and creativity. So, let me set the scene for you, I used to have a part-time job as an assistant in an Art Gallery for a wonderful man called Arty. He was an old family friend, he went to the same school as my father and he was a very talented chap and a brilliant music teacher who owned the small Art Gallery in the sleepy Cotswold village of Chedworth.
Arty was married to a lovely woman called Miriam, who was always the life and soul of the party, it didn’t matter who you were Miriam always made you feel special. She was Arty’s second spouse, his first one Ruth, died in a car accident when I was thirteen. Miriam was French, he met her whilst he was taking a holiday in Paris and he was wandering around in the Louvre looking at the renaissance paintings. He says he caught sight of a beautiful female form out the corner of his right eye and plucked up the courage to ask her name and they have been together ever since. I think it was also his intention to stay at home with Miriam so that they could grow old and paint pictures together.
By trade Arty was a session musician, who used to play his guitar with some of the greatest names in the music industry. Then one day, he decided that he didn’t want to go touring around the world or do the daily commute into London anymore, so he gave it all up and opened himself an Art Gallery, and took a step away from playing music with famous celebs to providing the evening entertainment at weekends for couples entering into a state of wedded bliss.
I’ve known Arty since I was eleven years old or thereabouts and have worked with him on and off since I was nineteen. He taught me everything that I know about music, he also taught me how to play the piano, the guitar and the violin. When I used to come home for holidays, in the days when I was at Uni, Dexter and myself used to go and busk on the Underground with our guitars, but I never pursued a professional music career and music just became a hobby.
I’m the sort of person who likes to tinker with all sorts of different things, I have my long piano playing fingers buried in all sorts of different projects and I just keep on adding extra strings to my bow, pardon the pun, because you never know when they will come in handy. As for my nine to five job, well three thirty to be precise, the pay isn’t much and I’ve even dabbled in a spot of nude modelling for the art students at the local college to help make ends meet when times were really hard.
In my weekend job, as an entertainer, I play music alongside Arty at weddings. I play the violin whilst the bride, groom and all their guests, slurp their soup and push their knives and forks around their plates whilst munching on their glorious wedding luncheon and then I play guitar with a five piece band during the evening reception and hopefully the guests get up and dance to the music and generally enjoy themselves.
In that line of work I get to meet so many guys, but none of them are really my cup of tea and half of them have already met the loves of their lives and are rapidly progressing up the aisle into wedded bliss by the time I get to meet them.
So, as you can probably tell my social life never seems to be boring as there is always something going down, but on the other hand my own love-life sucks, it always feels like it is nonexistent even when it isn’t. I really did believe that the man of my dreams would be out there for me somewhere, but at this point I was only looking half heartedly, I know that he’s out there somewhere, and he just hasn’t found me yet.
Sunday 30 September 2012
The Bea Project - Chapter 1
Those of you who already 'know' me, will know that I usually love to write, magazine articles. In June 2012, a friend told me that I didn't really understand how much hard work went into writing a book, and indeed I didn't but it was something that I wanted to try my hand at. In the past I have entered several story competitions but without any real success and deep down in the back of my head I know that I don't stand a 'cat in hell's' chance of getting this one published either, albeit a bit longer than what I normally write. I've decided that I will blog it instead, it won't appeal to everybody, but it might just appeal to some people. It doesn't have a title yet and I just refer to it as "The Bea Project", but it does have a beginning, a middle and an end and now I am just filling in all the blank bits.
Can I just add that all the characters featured in this story are people that have been created by my wild imagination and deserve to have a life on paper and not be running around in my head!
Ladies and Gentlemen, may I present to you:
The Bea Project - Chapter 1
As I sit and gaze through the kitchen window and watch the raindrops fall against the glass, I rub my left hand in a small continuous circular motion across my swollen tummy, the baby kicks me gently to let me know he’s still in there. It’s nearly 11.00am and I haven’t done a thing all morning. I’m not even dressed yet, and I’m still wearing my nightie and my cosy dressing gown. My hair hangs down on one side in a tousled bed head look and I still have to wash and clear away the breakfast things which are sitting on the kitchen table.
I’ve also just remembered that I promised my sister Amy that I would meet her for lunch in the local village bakery which also doubled up as the local tea rooms at 1.30pm this afternoon so we could catch up on some gossip and grab a bite to eat.
The rain is still pouring down since the Water Board announced that there would be a hosepipe ban in our area. Contrary to popular belief the weather has done nothing else but rain. It seems that morning, noon and night for the last forty days and forty nights we have had nothing but thunderous grey skies and wetness. It doesn’t look as though it is going to let up today either, although it would be lovely to see just a little bit of sunshine peeking through the clouds or even feel a tiny bit of natural warmth but alas it is not to be.
I sighed, I think I’ll phone Amy and put her off again today and ask her if she can make lunch next Wednesday instead, as I really need to be getting some work done, need to earn some extra pennies before the little one arrives into our world in just a few months time.
Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve wanted to be a writer of Children’s story books, but I did a stupid thing and accepted a challenge from a friend who didn’t think that I would even be able to make the grade and write a romantic novel from scratch. Talk about complicated, I don’t know what’s worse, and perhaps, I really should have stuck to writing about “Lizzie and The Frog Prince” for all the little kiddie winks out there.
So, you already know that I intend for this book to be a love story. It’s loosely, very loosely based around my own lifestyle and how, through a whirlwind romance I came to meet my soulmate. I have always lived my life by the seat of my pants and to be honest some things never ever change. I tend to do things on impulse, but as I say, things happen in my life quickly, this story is no different.
Sometimes I need to take a couple of deep breaths and stop myself and the roundabout that my life spins around on and think about the consequences that could happen if I’d only taken the time to stop and think about them. A bit like engaging brain before mouth, but some of you will know where I am coming from on that score.
Okay, so let’s be brutally honest here. A ‘real life’ modern romance doesn’t come with instructions or a text book manual, although I sometimes wish that maybe they did. When thinking about those ‘real life’ situations that are far more exciting and a darn sight more adventurous, complex and complicated that you don’t have time to think what you might be doing and about how much baggage a person may be carrying along behind them.
So, if you are still tagging along for this journey with me I suppose that you had better buckle up for the duration and I should really introduce myself to you. My name is Beatrice, but please, do call me Bea, because Beatrice just sounds old-fashioned to me and so stuffy. The only time anyone calls me Beatrice these days is when I am in some sort of trouble or the hot water is boiling on the wrong side of the bridge. I think my parents were working their way through the alphabet starting with the letter ‘A’ because of their choice of children’s names.
I am the middle child of three and am blessed with an elder sister called Amy and a younger brother called Dexter. Yes, yes I know his name doesn’t run in sequence with the alphabet, because the letter ‘C’ would have been next in line, and my Mother was hooked on some American actor at the time she was pregnant with him and almost threatened my Father with a divorce when Dex was born because my Father had wanted the name of Curtis to follow on in sequence from us girls and in honour of the great American actor Tony Curtis, but my Mother was having none of it. Mother won!
This is where you get the low-down on what I look like so you are able to let your imagination run wild later on in this story and picture me strutting my stuff. I’m a bit of a flower-girl, a bit dippy and extremely lovable in my own way and to my brother Dexter, he will always tell you that I can be a bit of a, well okay, a right pain in the arse to be honest. Only because I always wanted to ‘mother’ him when he was younger, but he would have rather have told you that I liked to ‘smother’ him, and not a lot has changed. As he got older and wiser, my maternal instincts kicked in and my guess is that there are loads of girls who would love to date my little brother, but they live in fear of his two elder sisters who oversee his dating scene! I think that the pair of us, both Amy and myself, will approve of his final choice but we just want to make sure that he picks the right girl for him.
A bit more about me then, I am a tall, slender, willowy blonde in more than one sense of the word. Tall in the fact that I stand five feet nine inches in my bare feet. My naturally blonde curly hair hangs in long renaissance ringlet curls all the way down my back, I love it and I tie it up in a double knot at the back of my head, just to keep it out of the way. Oh yes, and my eyes are a piercing pale sky blue colour. I have what some people would envisage as a typical English Rose porcelain skin colouring, I think. The only oddity being a scattering of golden coloured freckles dotted across my nose and cheeks.
Can I just add that all the characters featured in this story are people that have been created by my wild imagination and deserve to have a life on paper and not be running around in my head!
Ladies and Gentlemen, may I present to you:
The Bea Project - Chapter 1
As I sit and gaze through the kitchen window and watch the raindrops fall against the glass, I rub my left hand in a small continuous circular motion across my swollen tummy, the baby kicks me gently to let me know he’s still in there. It’s nearly 11.00am and I haven’t done a thing all morning. I’m not even dressed yet, and I’m still wearing my nightie and my cosy dressing gown. My hair hangs down on one side in a tousled bed head look and I still have to wash and clear away the breakfast things which are sitting on the kitchen table.
I’ve also just remembered that I promised my sister Amy that I would meet her for lunch in the local village bakery which also doubled up as the local tea rooms at 1.30pm this afternoon so we could catch up on some gossip and grab a bite to eat.
The rain is still pouring down since the Water Board announced that there would be a hosepipe ban in our area. Contrary to popular belief the weather has done nothing else but rain. It seems that morning, noon and night for the last forty days and forty nights we have had nothing but thunderous grey skies and wetness. It doesn’t look as though it is going to let up today either, although it would be lovely to see just a little bit of sunshine peeking through the clouds or even feel a tiny bit of natural warmth but alas it is not to be.
I sighed, I think I’ll phone Amy and put her off again today and ask her if she can make lunch next Wednesday instead, as I really need to be getting some work done, need to earn some extra pennies before the little one arrives into our world in just a few months time.
Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve wanted to be a writer of Children’s story books, but I did a stupid thing and accepted a challenge from a friend who didn’t think that I would even be able to make the grade and write a romantic novel from scratch. Talk about complicated, I don’t know what’s worse, and perhaps, I really should have stuck to writing about “Lizzie and The Frog Prince” for all the little kiddie winks out there.
So, you already know that I intend for this book to be a love story. It’s loosely, very loosely based around my own lifestyle and how, through a whirlwind romance I came to meet my soulmate. I have always lived my life by the seat of my pants and to be honest some things never ever change. I tend to do things on impulse, but as I say, things happen in my life quickly, this story is no different.
Sometimes I need to take a couple of deep breaths and stop myself and the roundabout that my life spins around on and think about the consequences that could happen if I’d only taken the time to stop and think about them. A bit like engaging brain before mouth, but some of you will know where I am coming from on that score.
Okay, so let’s be brutally honest here. A ‘real life’ modern romance doesn’t come with instructions or a text book manual, although I sometimes wish that maybe they did. When thinking about those ‘real life’ situations that are far more exciting and a darn sight more adventurous, complex and complicated that you don’t have time to think what you might be doing and about how much baggage a person may be carrying along behind them.
So, if you are still tagging along for this journey with me I suppose that you had better buckle up for the duration and I should really introduce myself to you. My name is Beatrice, but please, do call me Bea, because Beatrice just sounds old-fashioned to me and so stuffy. The only time anyone calls me Beatrice these days is when I am in some sort of trouble or the hot water is boiling on the wrong side of the bridge. I think my parents were working their way through the alphabet starting with the letter ‘A’ because of their choice of children’s names.
I am the middle child of three and am blessed with an elder sister called Amy and a younger brother called Dexter. Yes, yes I know his name doesn’t run in sequence with the alphabet, because the letter ‘C’ would have been next in line, and my Mother was hooked on some American actor at the time she was pregnant with him and almost threatened my Father with a divorce when Dex was born because my Father had wanted the name of Curtis to follow on in sequence from us girls and in honour of the great American actor Tony Curtis, but my Mother was having none of it. Mother won!
This is where you get the low-down on what I look like so you are able to let your imagination run wild later on in this story and picture me strutting my stuff. I’m a bit of a flower-girl, a bit dippy and extremely lovable in my own way and to my brother Dexter, he will always tell you that I can be a bit of a, well okay, a right pain in the arse to be honest. Only because I always wanted to ‘mother’ him when he was younger, but he would have rather have told you that I liked to ‘smother’ him, and not a lot has changed. As he got older and wiser, my maternal instincts kicked in and my guess is that there are loads of girls who would love to date my little brother, but they live in fear of his two elder sisters who oversee his dating scene! I think that the pair of us, both Amy and myself, will approve of his final choice but we just want to make sure that he picks the right girl for him.
A bit more about me then, I am a tall, slender, willowy blonde in more than one sense of the word. Tall in the fact that I stand five feet nine inches in my bare feet. My naturally blonde curly hair hangs in long renaissance ringlet curls all the way down my back, I love it and I tie it up in a double knot at the back of my head, just to keep it out of the way. Oh yes, and my eyes are a piercing pale sky blue colour. I have what some people would envisage as a typical English Rose porcelain skin colouring, I think. The only oddity being a scattering of golden coloured freckles dotted across my nose and cheeks.
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