The Curse of the Cracked Toilet Seat

What is this blog coming to? I never thought I would stoop so low as to blog about toilets. One toilet in particular, to be more precise -- and that would be the toilet in my bathroom. But, although I am writing about my toilet, I’ll excuse myself by telling you that’s not entirely the point of this post.

In the meantime, back to the toilet seat, which, as you can see from these photos, has a lovely big crack in the lid...



Just as it did when I viewed the apartment in April. That seat was replaced. And I moved in at the beginning of June to enjoy a pristine and un-cracked loo seat ... for all of six weeks, because that seat then cracked in exactly the same place as the first one.

A couple of weeks later, the plumber replaced that seat. And all was well in the bathroom ... for about six weeks, because on Saturday evening, when no one was here, that seat then cracked in exactly the same place as the first and second one! Making this the third toilet seat to have cracked in less than six months.

Weird! Bizarre!

I thought I’d left the ghosts and ghouls behind when I moved out of my haunted house. But perhaps the little poltergeist jumped in with the pots and pans.

Or, was it a mistake to write a story about a woman who is haunted by a ghost that hangs out in her bathroom? That story is currently on submission. If it’s accepted for publication, will my toilet seat woes be over, or *shiver* have my problems only just begun...?

Spooky!

From last Friday until this morning, my high-speed Internet connection was travelling at a snail’s pace. Which I calculate as seven-times slower than dial-up!

According to my ISP, there were no problems with the service. So I assume this must have been another manifestation of life in a haunted house.


I moved here in August 2006. And the first ghost I saw was a little girl, about 8-years-old, peering at me through the wrought iron gate of the walled garden. That first summer and autumn, I saw her several times. She always took a quick peek at me from exactly the same spot. She had short, mousy-blonde hair and wore a red sweater. I liked her, and was quite happy that she enjoyed playing in my secret garden.

I’d lived here for about two months, when I awoke one night to see what I thought was my maternal grandmother standing in my bedroom. She wore a dark-beige cardigan and jeans, and her wooden walking stick looked freshly polished. Just like the little girl, she looked straight at me.

But my grandmother NEVER wore jeans. She wore a dress and hat until the day she died. (I have her mink hat in a cupboard in my office.)

Though I wasn’t particularly interested in the history of the house, it has been thrust upon me. The old man who delivers the free local newspaper lived here until the mid 1970s.

One day, a late-middle-aged man was jogging along the pavement, and stopped me as I headed towards the car. He told me he was born in this house, in what is now my bedroom. He told me about the number of deaths of men from this street, and the impression that made on his uncle, who, as a child, lived here during the First World War. At one point, only two of the sixty houses did not have a black ribbon on the door.

He told me about the family who lived next door, and how his grandmother helped nurse their children before the youngest daughter died of TB. The land that is now my walled garden was part of a communal clothes-drying area … where the little girl loved to play.

Speeeeed

This week I’ve been busy writing, planning my next round of submissions to agents (must remember to keep submitting), and polishing a short story.

I have phases of focused productivity when nothing will stop me. I’m oblivious to distraction (including music blaring through the party walls). I can block out the world, and achieve in two days what might otherwise take a week!

Then I have phases when EVERYTHING is distracting (especially music blaring through the party walls).

It's a fantastic feeling to be calm and working well. But this level of productivity creates a benchmark, and I set targets based on continually achieving at a perfect pace. Then, when I falter, I’ve created the stick with which to beat my back, the reason to berate myself for failing.

But I predict: the slow-down will coincide with the release of Speed Racer, and I will venture out to the cinema for an evening of visual overload that will kick start my return to focused productivity.



I love the visual style of the Wachowski brothers' films. And Speed Racer looks amazing.


P.S. There’s a poltergeist in my office that keeps stealing my notes. This has happened twice in the last two days. On both occasions, I’ve placed an important note on the clutter-free part of my desk, only to find that when I need it -- it’s gone! And it does not turn up, even after I search through the clutter!!

Ghosts

I’m recovering from another heavy cold. This is the second within three or four weeks -- so it seems the tone is set for the season.

I sailed through last winter without a sniff. But this year, it looks like I’ll be sneezing right through to spring. Not that this stops me working. No way! It does stop me returning a phone call, if an email will do, and the dust has reprieve from the hoover. And, of course, I’ve had deadlines on design projects, so my allocated sleeping hours have suffered too.

Yet, I feel inspired!

Now my first novel is ‘finished’ and on submission to agents, I had begun to work on its sequel, or, second in the series (I would love to write six). But I also have a rough outline and first chapter of a completely different story. A ghost story, with a fifteen-year-old protagonist named Daisy Pine. Two nights ago, I was so preoccupied with this story that I couldn’t sleep. I saw Daisy standing at the top of a flight of stairs, and she was smaller, younger, eleven-years-old to be precise. Then all sorts of bits and pieces, well, big things actually, like Daisy's circumstances and the ghosts' motivation, fell into place.

The essence of this story has been with me for a while, but I felt uncertain about writing a ghost story. The very first novel I seriously attempted was a psychological thriller. But spending so much time with a dark and frightening story just wasn’t me! There was no way I could stay with it and ditched it halfway through. For this reason, I didn’t want to rush headlong into a novel I couldn’t sustain. Then, a few weeks ago, I wrote a short ghost story (with midget ghosts ;)) and survived! I didn’t frighten myself to death or turn into a totally strange and scary person.

I’m now really excited about this new novel, and want to write it with momentum, without all the stops and starts that have plagued my previous writing. I’ve set a deadline of the end of March for the first draft. It’s doable, so long as fire and flood stay away from my door!

*****

I've just read in the comments section on Patricia Wood's blog, that she wrote the first draft of Lottery between January and March. I take that as a very good sign.