Book Stuff: Instructions For a Heatwave by Maggie O'Farrell

I just finished reading the book instructions for a heatwave by Maggie O'Farrell.  This book rescued me from a bit of a reading slump, I felt like I hadn't read anything really good since the summer and I was beginning to lose my faith in my book choices, especially as I felt like I read so many good books last year.

Instructions for a heatwave tells the story of the Riordan's, an Irish family living in London.  One morning during the heatwave of 1976, Robert Riordan goes out to get a newspaper but doesn't come back, as his wife begins to fret over his disappearance she summons her adult children home to help her solve the mystery. 

I love a novel that delves into the psychology of a family, and the Riordan's are a family who have been pulled apart by lies, regrets, resentments and things left unsaid, so there was plenty to get my teeth into with the characters in this book.

My only gripe with this book was that it moved at quite a slow pace that sometimes felt sleepy, and if it wasn't for the notes on the heatwave act throughout the book I think the relevance of it being set in that time would have been lost on me.  That could be to do with the fact though that the heatwave was before my time, maybe if I had been around at that time then it would have sparked some sense of nostalgia in me.

This book is definitely worth a read if you like family drama type stuff, another book that I would compare it to would be fly away home by Jennifer Weiner.

Trust yourself!

I feel like I have been hearing a lot about trust within relationships or rather a lack of it over the last couple of weeks.  A friend told me of her endeavours to find out if her husband was lying to her about his work Christmas party, while another acquaintance informed me that she was trying to find out about her partners credit history after noticing a note on his file during a bank meeting.  Following on from that I then read an article in the Guardian earlier this week about the rise in lady detective agencies in Mumbai, with people who now instruct detectives to carry out pre marital searches on people and even hire spy's when someone so much as cancel's a date with them.  Jeez, all of this made me constrict around the throat, mainly because I would hate the thought of somebody doing that to me, how have we become so repressive?  It made me question why people have a need to have all of this information about somebody, and I think it is because increasingly we want to get everything that we need from just one person, we hate the thought that somebody could be lying to us because then our happiness might fall through.  The strange thing is a lot of the time people don't want this information so they can walk away from a bad situation, they want it so they can manipulate and coerce that person back into doing what they think they should be doing, back to providing the secure future that they were meant to be providing.  Since leaving a relationship where I felt lied to, manipulated and taken for a fool, I have made an effort to just place all of my trust in myself, it really doesn't concern me too much now if somebody lies to me or tries to manipulate me because I know I trust myself to know how to take care of my own needs.  I no longer believe that my happiness is within another person, it s in my own hands.  If somebody in a future relationship cheats on me, well more fool them because I was a good catch, if somebody has debts the truth will come out and I wont have placed all of my financial security with them, if somebody cancels a date with me and I think they might be making up an excuse, oh well I am not short of things to do.  Keep yourself protected, and understand that you might be let down by somebody one day but know that you have a deep trust within yourself and your own abilities and that you know how to survive and how to be happy.

Always celebrate your birthday!

Somebody said to me recently that they were told as a kid that they should make the most of their birthdays up till they were 21, because after that it would all be downhill and they wouldn't want to celebrate them. Until a couple of years ago I probably would have agreed with that statement. Right from the age of about 16 I didn't like getting older, I was a late developer at everything and I always wanted my actual age to match up to that, it felt like time was always flying by. All throughout my twenties I still celebrated my birthdays, but with each one came a sense of sadness that I was growing old too quick or that I wasn't quite where I thought I would be at that age, when my 30th approached I felt positively doomed. Everything changed when a couple of years ago my sister was diagnosed with cancer at the age of 40, when she turned 41 I kept thinking about the fact that this was probably one of the last birthdays she would have and I wondered how it would feel to know that the milestone that comes around every year, wouldn't be coming again. As I turned 33 this year, my first birthday without my sister, I felt nothing but grateful, whatever my age I had been blessed with another year of life, and that was something to celebrate. In a world full of the hurdles of crime, illness and stress it's an achievement to have successfully navigated yourself through that and to have been spared to see another year of life, and somewhere out there in the world people are being told that they won't see their next birthday, while we still have the hope of others to come. So on your next birthday no matter what age you are turning, take the time to celebrate, it doesn't have to be anything big, but just something that pays tribute to the privilege of growing older in this world.

Book Stuff: Trying out YA - Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell

As a 33 year old I can't get excited about YA books, but booktube has made me feel bad about this and I've been wondering if I'm missing out on something really great by not reading that genre. It's not that I don't remember what it was like to be a teenager, I honestly do, but when I read a book I want to relate fully to a character and for them to spark emotions in me that are relevant to my life today, and I think that requires adult main characters. Whilst watching booktube over the summer I made a list of a few of the YA books that people seemed to be raving about and decided I would give them a try at some point this year, one of those books was Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell. Everybody seemed to have this book in their top 10 YA book videos, so I was delighted to stumble across it in my local library. A few pages into the book I thought to myself "this book reminds me of something", and after mulling it over for a while I realised that it reminded me of Judy Blume's style of writing and characters and that made me reminiscent for my childhood. Eleanor & Park tells tne story of a girl named Eleanor and a boy named Park who are kind of the school misfits, through sitting next to each other on the school bus they develop a friendship that progresses into a deep teenage love. I wanted to love this book more than I actually did, it is wonderfully cute and it did take me back to those giddy days as a teenager when you first fall for somebody, and there is all that excitement of finding out about each other. I felt like I wanted more though, I wanted to know more of the intricacies of the characters and what made them so different to everybody else, it wasn't enough for me that Eleanor was an outsider because she had red hair and was slightly chubby, and Park didn't fit in because he was half Korean, there was scope to take the characters a lot further than the author actually did. I know that 14 year old me would have adored this book, and I would have found the ending the most romantic and heart wrenching thing ever, but I think it was just too 'YA' for me. I am glad though that young people of today have a 'judy blume' type author to give them 'all the feels'.

neighbours - Karl and Susan's 20th anniversary

I'm always watching Neighbours episodes about a month behind everybody else, so I only just watched Karl and Susan's 20th anniversary episode. It seems crazy to me that they have been in the show for 20 years, as it seems like only yesterday that I was watching them as newcomers to the street when I was just 13 years old. All of the old clips they showed made me really nostalgic for my teenage years of watching the show. When the Kennedy family first came into Neighbours I wasn't sure that I really liked them, but I think that was because they were replacing the Willis family who had been a kind of trademark family of the 90's era of Neighbours,and also I didn't fancy Mal or Billy, but when people ask me about my favourite characters today Karl and Susan are always top of my list. I love how Karl and Susan have evolved over the years, when they were first in the show Karl was more of an uptight Dad figure but he has become this kind of comic genius character over the years, and I particularly like Susan's development from doctors wife and mum to a journalist/ teacher/ business woman. I know that there will come a time when we have to recall Karl and Susan in the same way that we do Scott and Charlene, but I hope they have a few years ahead of them yet on Ramsay Street.

BBC Doctors - Bye Bye Kevin

I feel like characters exits from soaps are fairly cliche these days, they are either killed off or they head off somewhere for a 'fresh start' or to 'find themselves', so I like it when occasionally a characters departure is a little more complex and leaves me thinking, analysing and asking questions for days. I was sad to see Kevin leave The Mill last week and kept hoping for days leading up to it that there would be a turn of events and he would end up staying. I always associate Kevin with my first getting into BBC doctors two years ago,I had moved back in with my Dad following a bad break up, I didn't like the area we lived in so I never wanted to go out much so I turned to TV for entertainment. I wanted shows that I could watch every day and going through BBC player doctors kind of jumped out at me, the first episode I ever watched was where Kevin had discovered he had a sister from his Asian fathers new family and he was quizzing his mum about her relationship with his family, from that day onwards I have been gripped on the story lines and never miss an episode. I think what has got me with Kevin's exit was that it kind of feels so miserable and unnecessary, but it also tells a really good story of how pride comes before a fall, Kevin effectively became a victim of his own ego, and that ego pretty much defined his character in the show. What has happened to him with Poppy has brought his character full circle, and the intention is that he will go on to be a better person because of it, but a part of me still thinks why couldn't Zara have just kept the secret for him? So he could have had a happier ending somehow. Well done to the writer of that storyline and Kevin's exit, it still has me deep in thought and intrigue!

Never allow loneliness to drive you into the arms of someone you know you don't belong with

This weekend was the first one in about six weeks where I didn't have plans with other people. As much as I have enjoyed everything I've done with others over the last six weekends, I've been looking forward to a weekend with no agenda,to do some nice stuff at home like baking and reading and taking the time to catch up on the tons of washing I have piling up. I've been single for two years now and I'm one of those people who is generally okay on their own, but I did find myself noticing a little sweep of loneliness coming over me by Saturday evening. My first thought was that maybe I should be making sure that I always have plans on the weekend evenings, but as I showered I realised that I just wanted to run away from something that was making me uncomfortable, and really I still wanted to stay committed to being able to face up to things I don't like and ultimately allowing myself to grow from that. After making peace with my few moments of loneliness, it was kind of a surprise to me that I dreamed about being reunited with my ex boyfriend. In the dream we randomly met up again and ended up rekindling our relationship. The dream felt so real, that I woke up in a panic regretting the meeting with him, I didn't want to have to go through the awkwardness of trying to make a bad relationship work, I didn't want to have to be somebody I wasn't, and I didn't want to be used by somebody who didn't really care about me. It was such a relief when I realised that it was all a dream and I didn't have to do any of that stuff. The dream showed me how far I had come though and how much of my own happiness I am not prepared to sacrifice, just so I dont have to face up to things that are difficult or uncomfortable. Loneliness can be hard sometimes, but dont be so scared of it that you stay in bad relationships or hang out with people who don't value you, learn to accept and find your own way through those feelings and you will find that you attract the best people in life, because you don't have a need for anything other than that.