Christina Phillips is having a party!
Christina Phillips is gearing up for the release of her debut novel, Forbidden and to celebrate she's having a massive blog party.
In addition to the party, Christina's giving away a signed copy of Forbidden to one lucky person who helps spread the love. All you have to do is mention the party (you can copy and paste this blurb), being held from 1st to 6th September at http://christinaphillips.blogspot.com. You can Tweet about it, blog, Facebook, MySpace or anything! And then drop her an email at ChristinapPh @ gmail dot com (no spaces) to let her know. Please put Forbidden Launch Party (or something similar) in the subject line. The winner will be drawn for that on Monday 6th September.
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Look Mum - no hands!
My baby boy, Sam has finally learnt how to ride a bike without stabilisers and I could not be more proud. He is not really a baby, about to turn 6 in a couple of weeks, but he is my baby!
Our eldest, Ben, decided one day in February that he wanted to learn to ride without stabilisers and went outside into the street and in the few short moments it took Aidan and I to grab a coat and suitable shoes managed to teach himself. He does not have much patience for waiting and figured "How hard can it be?", so he just kept pedalling until he stayed upright and in a straight line.
Sam on the other hand had used so many delaying tactics to put off the moment he would have to go it alone that I began to think it would never happen. We tried bribing him with treats which is usually a winner, we appealed to his pride and showed him that all the other boys in the street could do it and even took off the stabilisers so that if he wanted to ride with everybody else it would have to be like a big boy - nothing! He would cry and insist he did not want to ride, anytime it was mentioned.
How 2 kids could be any more different I do not know. Sam is so cautious by comparison with Ben who flings himself out into the ether and trusts to some kind of divine hope that he won't get injured. Sam likes to know he will be safe. You can almost see him thinking ahead to the consequences.
So, to our surprise, on Monday he got dressed to go out and play in the street and asked Daddy to help him learn to ride. Not sure what made him change his mind. He does this - thinks things over in his head and just comes to a decision and sticks by it. So out into the street they went. It was perfect timing because all the neighbours were not home so he had the street to himself with his brother and Daddy.
I gave them 15 minutes before following them out and by that time Sam had mastered the riding in a straight line thing but still needed someone to help him push off. Some encouraging clapping and yahooing, lots of hugs and high fives and another hour of back and forth up and down the street and he could do a tip toe running start on his own and turn in a nice tight circle at either end of he street. Miraculous!
What it is about boys in particular that they don't set limits on what they can achieve. By the end of the next day, Sam was copying his elder brother, racing down the street with his legs up on the handlebars, rubbing his chin and calling out "suspicious" or riding while standing up in the saddle and mounting the kerb at every opportunity. I had to intervene when he thought he could ride down the hill and try and jump over a ramp used by the big kids in the estate when they skateboard. Evil Kneivel eat your heart out!
Our eldest, Ben, decided one day in February that he wanted to learn to ride without stabilisers and went outside into the street and in the few short moments it took Aidan and I to grab a coat and suitable shoes managed to teach himself. He does not have much patience for waiting and figured "How hard can it be?", so he just kept pedalling until he stayed upright and in a straight line.
Sam on the other hand had used so many delaying tactics to put off the moment he would have to go it alone that I began to think it would never happen. We tried bribing him with treats which is usually a winner, we appealed to his pride and showed him that all the other boys in the street could do it and even took off the stabilisers so that if he wanted to ride with everybody else it would have to be like a big boy - nothing! He would cry and insist he did not want to ride, anytime it was mentioned.
How 2 kids could be any more different I do not know. Sam is so cautious by comparison with Ben who flings himself out into the ether and trusts to some kind of divine hope that he won't get injured. Sam likes to know he will be safe. You can almost see him thinking ahead to the consequences.
So, to our surprise, on Monday he got dressed to go out and play in the street and asked Daddy to help him learn to ride. Not sure what made him change his mind. He does this - thinks things over in his head and just comes to a decision and sticks by it. So out into the street they went. It was perfect timing because all the neighbours were not home so he had the street to himself with his brother and Daddy.
I gave them 15 minutes before following them out and by that time Sam had mastered the riding in a straight line thing but still needed someone to help him push off. Some encouraging clapping and yahooing, lots of hugs and high fives and another hour of back and forth up and down the street and he could do a tip toe running start on his own and turn in a nice tight circle at either end of he street. Miraculous!
What it is about boys in particular that they don't set limits on what they can achieve. By the end of the next day, Sam was copying his elder brother, racing down the street with his legs up on the handlebars, rubbing his chin and calling out "suspicious" or riding while standing up in the saddle and mounting the kerb at every opportunity. I had to intervene when he thought he could ride down the hill and try and jump over a ramp used by the big kids in the estate when they skateboard. Evil Kneivel eat your heart out!
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Happy Birthday to a heroine
Where have all the great female role models gone? I think about my heroines and compare them to the women today's young women want to grow up to be and feel a little sad.
Magazines are full of stories and pictures about the likes of Cheryl Cole, Posh Spice and Jordan. If you ask teenage girls who they want to be when they grow up, it is a pop star, a model or a footballer's wife.
I cannot remember the last time I saw a great article about a clever, witty young woman that was not about who they were sleeping with and whether they had plastic surgery. No-one asks what their favourite book or film was and who their childhood heroine was.
One of my own heroines - she helped me decide who I wanted to be when I grew up is Dorothy Parker. She was terribly glamorous, brilliantly witty and lived an adventurous and slightly wild life.
Born in 1893, she shares a birthday with me - which makes today the anniversary of her birth. Happy Birthday Dottie!
More caustic than the best drag queen, more social than the most flittering butterfly and willing participant in many ill-fated marriages and affairs, she was a prolific writer of magazine articles, verse and was nominated in 1937 for an Academy Award for Best Screenplay for "A Star is Born".
She led a life dogged by controversy. She was a vocal advocate of radical left-wing causes, a fierce civil libertarian and civil rights advocate and a frequent critic of those in authority which meant that she was on the Hollywood blacklist and had an FBI dossier after being listed as a Communist.
She made the move to Hollywood after a prolific decade during the 20s writing for the likes of Vanity Fair, Vogue and The New Yorker. In the 1920s alone she published some 300 poems and free verses. The subject matter ranged from her short, viciously humorous poems about her many (largely unsuccessful) romantic affairs to others wistful about the appeal of suicide, which was a warning for her numerous attempts at taking her own life.
Along with Robert Benchley and Robert Sherwood she was a founding member of the Alonquin Round Table, so named for the daily lunches held at the Alonquin Hotel which joined by other newspaper columnists and it was through their re-printing of her lunchtime remarks and short verses, particularly in Adams' column "The Conning Tower," that she began to develop her national reputation as a wit.
One of her best known quotes sums her life up very well:
I like to have a martini,
Two at the very most.
After three I'm under the table,
after four I'm under my host.
For more information, pictures and videos please check out the Dorothy Parker Society at http://www.dorothyparker.com/index.html.
I have often wished I lived in New York in the 20s and 30s just to be part of her glamorous lifestyle and if she could manage to write with everything going on in her life there is hope for me yet.
Magazines are full of stories and pictures about the likes of Cheryl Cole, Posh Spice and Jordan. If you ask teenage girls who they want to be when they grow up, it is a pop star, a model or a footballer's wife.
I cannot remember the last time I saw a great article about a clever, witty young woman that was not about who they were sleeping with and whether they had plastic surgery. No-one asks what their favourite book or film was and who their childhood heroine was.
One of my own heroines - she helped me decide who I wanted to be when I grew up is Dorothy Parker. She was terribly glamorous, brilliantly witty and lived an adventurous and slightly wild life.
More caustic than the best drag queen, more social than the most flittering butterfly and willing participant in many ill-fated marriages and affairs, she was a prolific writer of magazine articles, verse and was nominated in 1937 for an Academy Award for Best Screenplay for "A Star is Born".
She led a life dogged by controversy. She was a vocal advocate of radical left-wing causes, a fierce civil libertarian and civil rights advocate and a frequent critic of those in authority which meant that she was on the Hollywood blacklist and had an FBI dossier after being listed as a Communist.
She made the move to Hollywood after a prolific decade during the 20s writing for the likes of Vanity Fair, Vogue and The New Yorker. In the 1920s alone she published some 300 poems and free verses. The subject matter ranged from her short, viciously humorous poems about her many (largely unsuccessful) romantic affairs to others wistful about the appeal of suicide, which was a warning for her numerous attempts at taking her own life.
Along with Robert Benchley and Robert Sherwood she was a founding member of the Alonquin Round Table, so named for the daily lunches held at the Alonquin Hotel which joined by other newspaper columnists and it was through their re-printing of her lunchtime remarks and short verses, particularly in Adams' column "The Conning Tower," that she began to develop her national reputation as a wit.
One of her best known quotes sums her life up very well:
I like to have a martini,
Two at the very most.
After three I'm under the table,
after four I'm under my host.
For more information, pictures and videos please check out the Dorothy Parker Society at http://www.dorothyparker.com/index.html.
I have often wished I lived in New York in the 20s and 30s just to be part of her glamorous lifestyle and if she could manage to write with everything going on in her life there is hope for me yet.
Monday, August 16, 2010
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Eddie Izzard for Children?
One of the biggest joys of having more time to spend with my boys is the random conversations we have. At lunch yesterday, the topic came around to what ringtone would different people have on their mobile phones - when they were old enough to have one of course!
After some discussion about the pros and cons of various suggestions, it was decided that Daddy would have the original Star Wars Darth Vader theme tune. A pretty good choice I think and one I had no input in, it was all Ben and Sam.
We moved on to try and decide on what Mummy's ringtone would be, but before we got very far I noticed that Sam had stopped contributing. He was sitting at the table with his hands over his face and chuckling so hard that his whole body was shaking. I asked him what was so funny, but he said he could not tell me because it involved swear words. Had to find out what was amusing him so much so Aidan and I agreed to a once off lifting of the swearing ban so he could tell us what was so funny.
Sam then proceeded to compose himself and give us a word for word performance of Eddie Izzard's Death Star Canteen. To the best of my knowledge he had only ever seen this once before and it just goes to show the power of the swear word in a child's brain. He had the timing down and even had different voices for Vader and the canteen worker. Priceless! As mortified as I was that he remembered my Youtube faux pas - who thought that googling for Lego Star Wars would bring up such age inappropriate content - it was pretty funny. Note to self...don't google with the kids peering over my shoulder. All I can say is - classic comedy, just not from the mouths of babes!!
After some discussion about the pros and cons of various suggestions, it was decided that Daddy would have the original Star Wars Darth Vader theme tune. A pretty good choice I think and one I had no input in, it was all Ben and Sam.
We moved on to try and decide on what Mummy's ringtone would be, but before we got very far I noticed that Sam had stopped contributing. He was sitting at the table with his hands over his face and chuckling so hard that his whole body was shaking. I asked him what was so funny, but he said he could not tell me because it involved swear words. Had to find out what was amusing him so much so Aidan and I agreed to a once off lifting of the swearing ban so he could tell us what was so funny.
Sam then proceeded to compose himself and give us a word for word performance of Eddie Izzard's Death Star Canteen. To the best of my knowledge he had only ever seen this once before and it just goes to show the power of the swear word in a child's brain. He had the timing down and even had different voices for Vader and the canteen worker. Priceless! As mortified as I was that he remembered my Youtube faux pas - who thought that googling for Lego Star Wars would bring up such age inappropriate content - it was pretty funny. Note to self...don't google with the kids peering over my shoulder. All I can say is - classic comedy, just not from the mouths of babes!!
Thursday, August 12, 2010
The art of timeless travel.
It has taken me most of my life but I think that I finally might have worked out the important things in life. Real joy and happiness does not come from the things you own or even the job you do. The last ten years slogging it out, working ridiculous hours, wearing designer suits and a fancy title, provided money to buy lots of things we did not need, but left us bereft of one of our most precious gifts - Time. Time to be with family and friends, time to write, time to travel.
This is the year of timelessness - allowing myself the luxury of time. Time to spend with my two amazing boys, Ben 7 and Sam 5, doing lots of mummy activities - baking cakes, painting pictures, reading books, treaching them to swim and play piano as well as just be together. The most important lesson I have to teach them is the one I have just learnt. Allow yourself to just be. It is good to push yourself and want to do anything you set out to do to the best of your ability, as long as it is not at the cost of living your life.
It took nearly losing my Aidan to brain surgery to realise that we had become so busy working, paying bills and being parents that we devoted very little time to being a couple. This year, I am allowing myself the time to be a great partner, to just be together - not any enforced, weird date nights or allotted mummy and daddy time - but just chilling out together, maybe reading, going for a walk, playing with the kids, asking questions about what he wants from life and from the future. The answers have changed for me since we first asked the questions of each other, so probably have for him too. It also means taking the time to challenge some of his answers and help him to step outside of his comfort zone - to help him defeat the mental lethargy left behind by his illness. More challenging than you might think. Do you decide to address past hurts (the ones you were too busy or felt ill equipped to handle at the time) or draw a line in the sand and agree to go forward always into the future. Is there a right answer?
Time for family and friends. Time to remember the people who supported us through the dark times and kept the very fabric of our little unit together and more importantly kept me from losing my mind. No longer will time be the enemy. I will find time to be there for these guardian angels. After five years away, I am packing up the tribe and heading home to Sunny Queensland to be with my sister as she has her first child and meet my brother's gorgeous daughter's and the boys amazing cousin's, Amy and Isabel. The last time we were home was for George and Emma's wedding in Palm Cove. So many kisses and cuddles saved up for my cute nieces and cannot wait to see how the two little angels interact with my own two monsters. While on the subject of little angels, I am so excited that I will finally meet Sophie and Oliver, the babies of my very good friend and although she does not know it yet, the inspiration for one of the main characters in my screenplay, who I also have not seen in five years.
On the subject of my screenplay, this has been my biggest treat to myself - the time to write. For years I thought I would be able to both work and write - who was I kidding! When someone is paying you to do a job, they own a part of your soul - the part that gets to decide which hours of the day belong to them. This means that the writer inside gets the time that is left. In my experience, that time was full of exhaustion, crankiness and rare and precious mummy time. Very little got written and what did was generally best used in place of 3 ply in the smallest room in the house. Wrote a few travel articles and a few research pieces for banking and finance trade publications but the dream screenplay did not get beyond the planning stage. Did some comms work for other people but while this does officially count as writing it brings no joy because it is on the clock. Now, I get to write when I want to and more importantly, what I want to. Still struggling to bed down the routine that will turn this from a hobby into the ideal vocation but happier than ever with how I fill my days and feel brave that I gave myself permission to make it a priority. The strangest thing is that I have had more story ideas in the space of 6 months than the preceding 6 years.
The biggest sacrifice of the past decade was the way we travelled. Both Aidan and I travelled quite a lot with work and because neither of us have family here in Ireland, our family holidays were either to Sunderland or Australia for family events rather than relaxation or experience and adventure. Gone were the days of old when we went on lavish adventure holidays or simply rocked up to the nearest airport with a packed bag and bought a ticket to the next destination within budget. I really missed the freedom of having the time to travel, the time to pack up and go at the last minute, the unscheduled time to get a phone call and be able to meet a friend within hours even if they were in another country.
Kids and school mean that we won't get that back in full, but certainly we are making it a priority to travel without purpose and for pure unadulterated joy. The dream is to knock this recession on the head so we can sell up here in Ireland and take the kids out of school for a year to travel the globe. To rediscover the art of timeless travel. To go without a strict schedule, just a rough idea of places we want to experience and an agreement to be distracted by shiny things and interesting people. To go where the winds may take us.
This is the year of timelessness - allowing myself the luxury of time. Time to spend with my two amazing boys, Ben 7 and Sam 5, doing lots of mummy activities - baking cakes, painting pictures, reading books, treaching them to swim and play piano as well as just be together. The most important lesson I have to teach them is the one I have just learnt. Allow yourself to just be. It is good to push yourself and want to do anything you set out to do to the best of your ability, as long as it is not at the cost of living your life.
It took nearly losing my Aidan to brain surgery to realise that we had become so busy working, paying bills and being parents that we devoted very little time to being a couple. This year, I am allowing myself the time to be a great partner, to just be together - not any enforced, weird date nights or allotted mummy and daddy time - but just chilling out together, maybe reading, going for a walk, playing with the kids, asking questions about what he wants from life and from the future. The answers have changed for me since we first asked the questions of each other, so probably have for him too. It also means taking the time to challenge some of his answers and help him to step outside of his comfort zone - to help him defeat the mental lethargy left behind by his illness. More challenging than you might think. Do you decide to address past hurts (the ones you were too busy or felt ill equipped to handle at the time) or draw a line in the sand and agree to go forward always into the future. Is there a right answer?
Time for family and friends. Time to remember the people who supported us through the dark times and kept the very fabric of our little unit together and more importantly kept me from losing my mind. No longer will time be the enemy. I will find time to be there for these guardian angels. After five years away, I am packing up the tribe and heading home to Sunny Queensland to be with my sister as she has her first child and meet my brother's gorgeous daughter's and the boys amazing cousin's, Amy and Isabel. The last time we were home was for George and Emma's wedding in Palm Cove. So many kisses and cuddles saved up for my cute nieces and cannot wait to see how the two little angels interact with my own two monsters. While on the subject of little angels, I am so excited that I will finally meet Sophie and Oliver, the babies of my very good friend and although she does not know it yet, the inspiration for one of the main characters in my screenplay, who I also have not seen in five years.
On the subject of my screenplay, this has been my biggest treat to myself - the time to write. For years I thought I would be able to both work and write - who was I kidding! When someone is paying you to do a job, they own a part of your soul - the part that gets to decide which hours of the day belong to them. This means that the writer inside gets the time that is left. In my experience, that time was full of exhaustion, crankiness and rare and precious mummy time. Very little got written and what did was generally best used in place of 3 ply in the smallest room in the house. Wrote a few travel articles and a few research pieces for banking and finance trade publications but the dream screenplay did not get beyond the planning stage. Did some comms work for other people but while this does officially count as writing it brings no joy because it is on the clock. Now, I get to write when I want to and more importantly, what I want to. Still struggling to bed down the routine that will turn this from a hobby into the ideal vocation but happier than ever with how I fill my days and feel brave that I gave myself permission to make it a priority. The strangest thing is that I have had more story ideas in the space of 6 months than the preceding 6 years.
The biggest sacrifice of the past decade was the way we travelled. Both Aidan and I travelled quite a lot with work and because neither of us have family here in Ireland, our family holidays were either to Sunderland or Australia for family events rather than relaxation or experience and adventure. Gone were the days of old when we went on lavish adventure holidays or simply rocked up to the nearest airport with a packed bag and bought a ticket to the next destination within budget. I really missed the freedom of having the time to travel, the time to pack up and go at the last minute, the unscheduled time to get a phone call and be able to meet a friend within hours even if they were in another country.
Kids and school mean that we won't get that back in full, but certainly we are making it a priority to travel without purpose and for pure unadulterated joy. The dream is to knock this recession on the head so we can sell up here in Ireland and take the kids out of school for a year to travel the globe. To rediscover the art of timeless travel. To go without a strict schedule, just a rough idea of places we want to experience and an agreement to be distracted by shiny things and interesting people. To go where the winds may take us.
Saturday, August 7, 2010
Goodbye Superwoman and good riddance!
After 10 years spent trying to be Superwoman - mother to two amazing young boys, working 13 hour days to try and support a lifestyle we thought was so important and partner to an incredible man, not to mention the daily drudge of maintaining a House and Garden level of housekeeping - I got the opportunity of a lifetime. The banking crisis meant that my employer wanted people to volunteer to take a lump sum to leave the daily slog and spend more time with their families. For so many I know the decision was difficult but for me it took less than 5 seconds. I decided to take that package, satisfy some of those things I had put off with the "I wish I had the time.." excuse and find myself.
The previous four years had been the most difficult of my life - so much so that I had forgotten what my personality had been like before. Bear with me while I get if all off my chest therapy style... At the end of 2006 there was a massive change project at the bank and long hours, excessive stress and pressure led to the loss of a baby. Within weeks of this news, we finally got the diagnosis for the illness my Aidan had suffered for months. A barrister, he had started falling down stairs and slurring his speech without any visible cause. He was found to have a number of blood clots on his brain and had to undergo firstly an experimental sonic treatment to break down the clots and then to have surgery to remove the clots left behind.
To top it off, I found out that one of my best friends from school who had been like a brother to me and another son to my mother since my dad had died, had been physically and mentally abusing my mum in order to get access to her bank account. The bank reported it to the police and found that over $10K had been taken. However, the pressure of police questioning and the betrayal led to my mum having a heart attack and fall that left her with brain damage and unable to look after herself. I am so far away and my brother and sisters are so busy that we had to make the difficult decision to put her into a home due to the amount of medical care required. Despite the CCTV footage from the bank it was impossible to go ahead with the case without mum's testimony so the charges were dropped - so not even the satisfaction of justice being done to ease the pain.
In the aftermath of all this, I was offerred a role in Risk Management which in the spirit of looking for a change I took. Seemed like a good idea at the time but took me away from a job I loved - the coaching and mentoring of future leaders. Still long hours, still very stressful but with more travel and less job satisfaction. Not a win you might say. By the time the package was offerred, my bags had been packed for at least a year!
I left Halloween 2009 with plenty of plans and dreams for the future and not at all scared. The rough outline for a feature length film screenplay, a book and lots of adventures to have with my gorgeous boys.
The previous four years had been the most difficult of my life - so much so that I had forgotten what my personality had been like before. Bear with me while I get if all off my chest therapy style... At the end of 2006 there was a massive change project at the bank and long hours, excessive stress and pressure led to the loss of a baby. Within weeks of this news, we finally got the diagnosis for the illness my Aidan had suffered for months. A barrister, he had started falling down stairs and slurring his speech without any visible cause. He was found to have a number of blood clots on his brain and had to undergo firstly an experimental sonic treatment to break down the clots and then to have surgery to remove the clots left behind.
To top it off, I found out that one of my best friends from school who had been like a brother to me and another son to my mother since my dad had died, had been physically and mentally abusing my mum in order to get access to her bank account. The bank reported it to the police and found that over $10K had been taken. However, the pressure of police questioning and the betrayal led to my mum having a heart attack and fall that left her with brain damage and unable to look after herself. I am so far away and my brother and sisters are so busy that we had to make the difficult decision to put her into a home due to the amount of medical care required. Despite the CCTV footage from the bank it was impossible to go ahead with the case without mum's testimony so the charges were dropped - so not even the satisfaction of justice being done to ease the pain.
In the aftermath of all this, I was offerred a role in Risk Management which in the spirit of looking for a change I took. Seemed like a good idea at the time but took me away from a job I loved - the coaching and mentoring of future leaders. Still long hours, still very stressful but with more travel and less job satisfaction. Not a win you might say. By the time the package was offerred, my bags had been packed for at least a year!
I left Halloween 2009 with plenty of plans and dreams for the future and not at all scared. The rough outline for a feature length film screenplay, a book and lots of adventures to have with my gorgeous boys.
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